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Waite-ing for no one Kiwi pulls away from pack for PGA lead
Updated: Friday August 17, 2001 9:29 AM
DULUTH, Ga. (AP) -- Tiger Woods says he's not that far off. Try telling that to the 99 players in front of him after one round of the PGA Championship. The list starts with Grant Waite of New Zealand, who rolled in an 18-foot birdie putt on the final hole for a 6-under 64 and a two-stroke lead over nine players, a group that includes British Open champion David Duval and Phil Mickelson. Ernie Els led a dozen others at 67. In fact, the 55 players who broke par was the highest number in six years at the PGA Championship. Three of those guys were club professionals. And then there was Woods. His summer swoon continued Thursday on a day when just about everyone else took advantage of the soft, spongy greens that allowed for an incredible scoring assault in a major championship. Woods had two double bogeys, two three-putt bogeys and not nearly enough solid shots to join the mix. Instead, he signed for a 73 and wound up nine strokes back, matching his largest first-round deficit in a major since he turned pro five years ago. He also was nine back at the 1997 U.S. Open.
"If I play a good round tomorrow, I should be able to get myself back in the tournament," Woods said. "That's the good thing about majors. If you play well, you're going to be rewarded by moving up the leaderboard." He'll have to navigate more traffic than he ever saw growing up in southern California. If the scoring was surprising, so was the leader. Waite had never made the cut in four previous PGAs. He had never even had a round in the 60s. The last time he was in contention anywhere, Woods hit a 6-iron from 218 yards out of a fairway bunker, over the water and right at the flag, to birdie the last hole and beat Waite by one stroke at the Canadian Open last September. "I've never been close to any position like this before," Waite said. "This is an adventure. I want to look back at the end of the week and say I enjoyed it." There's a lot of golf left, and a whole lot of players in contention. The most daunting prospect is Duval, who played as if he just got off a plane from Royal Lytham & St. Annes without losing a step from his British Open victory. Duval started with three straight birdies, all inside 6 feet, and hit perhaps the most impressive shot of the day with a 5-iron from 198 yards -- over the water, right at the flag -- to 4 feet on the 490-yard 18th, the longest par 4 in PGA Championship history. "I haven't felt this good about my golf or as confident in my abilities in a long, long time," Duval said. Mickelson is as confident as ever, despite having never won a major. His strategy this week is not to win, but to win by a margin he won't disclose. "I don't want to come down the stretch and have one shot here or there be critical," he said. "I want to have a comfort zone." Others at 66 were British Open runner-up Niclas Fasth of Sweden; Stuart Appleby, Dudley Hart, K.J. Choi and short-but-straight Fred Funk. Els was in the lead at 5 under in the morning until hitting his approach in the water on No. 18 and taking double bogey. He slipped to 67, along with Hal Sutton, Thomas Bjorn and even Nick Faldo.
The group at 68 includes Sergio Garcia, and Senior tour player Larry Nelson, who won the PGA Championship at Atlanta Athletic Club in 1981. Woods was just starting first grade that year. When the final group walked off the Highlands Course, Woods was tied for 100th, in desperate need of a solid round to avoid missing the cut for the first time in a major -- and only second time overall -- since he turned pro. The PGA Championship traditionally groups the year's three major champions, and Woods looked like the one who didn't belong. U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen had 69. It was the first time Duval and Woods played together in a major championship since the final round of last year's British Open. After six holes, Duval already was six shots ahead. The directions they are going was evident on two occasions. On the par-5 12th, Duval badly hooked a 3-iron that rattled around the pines and then spit out right to the front collar of the green. He bumped a chip to 3 feet for birdie. "Those were the breaks that in the year-and-a-half before Lytham, it would have kicked left," Duval said. "Those things made a huge difference in a round of golf. Breaks are huge, and I got a good one there." Then came No. 3, where Woods and Duval both missed the green to the left in a large swale. Both managed only to loft the pitch to the top, still in the first cut. Duval chipped it in, the ball swirling 360 degrees around the cup, coming all the way out and falling for par. Woods smiled at him, then left his chip 4 feet short and missed the putt. It was his second double bogey of the day, the first time he has done that in a major since taking triple bogey and double bogey three holes apart in the Masters last year. The other double bogey came on the par-3 15th, where his 3-iron soared into the gallery, across a cart path and into a lie so deep that Woods thought his ball was imbedded. His next shot came out hot, landed 6 feet past the flag and trickled into the water. "I just didn't think this was the kind of course where Tiger could run away," Scott Dunlap said after his 69. "More guys are going to have a chance." Some of the more likely candidates are right there. "You can't win the tournament on Thursday, Friday or Saturday, but you can put yourself in position to win, and that's the goal," Mickelson said.
He achieved it Thursday. And he wasn't the only one.
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