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The Week: The Mo, the Merrier

An eventful week was a reminder that golf is a game of streaks

By Alan Shipnuck

Barnes bashed his way through the Amateur field, but the final match turned on a great escape from the beach. Tom Pidgeon/Getty Images

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Momentum is the great X-factor in sports, an ephemeral, invisible phenomenon that's impossible to quantify, except in the black-and-white of the sports page agate. Last weekend's baseball standings were a valentine to Uncle Mo. The Oakland A's closed the week riding a 12-game win streak, while the New York Mets finally snapped a 12-game slide. The A's aren't that good, and the Mets are hardly that bad, but such streaks have more to do with momentum than anything else.

Golf is a lot like baseball -- a daily grind contested under ever-changing conditions on varied playing fields. Results are often best explained in terms of momentum, never more so than last week, when a spate of tournaments saw records fall and reputations made, and besmirched.

Craig Parry opened with a one-over 72 at the NEC Invitational but roared to victory by playing the final 48 holes without a bogey, thus stealing the momentum from the game's hottest player, Rich Beem, and denying him his third consecutive win. (Beem, worn out by the hubbub surrounding his PGA victory, still finished tied for sixth, playing mostly on adrenaline.) Meanwhile, one of the players who pushed Beem at the PGA, Chris Riley, built on that breakthrough performance to snag his first Tour victory, at the Reno-Tahoe Open, in which he defeated Jonathan Kaye in a playoff.

On the LPGA tour another promising young player, Michelle Ellis, played like the A's for three rounds of the Betsy King Classic, including a jag of eight birdies in 10 holes on Saturday that pushed her 54-hole lead to two strokes. On Sunday, however, Ellis suddenly looked like the not-so-Amazin's, playing the first 14 holes in four over. How to explain this stunning turnabout? "Golf is such a game of streaks," Ellis said following her final-round 74, which dropped her to a tie for sixth place. "When it's going good, the game can seem easy. When it's going bad...." Ellis's stumble set the stage for Se Ri Pak, who rolled to victory thanks to an effortless final-round 63, which wasn't even the most impressive performance of the day.

Adam Scott, the sweet-swinging 22-year-old Aussie, also shot a 63 -- finishing eagle, birdie, eagle -- as he won the Scottish PGA and capped one of the best performances in European tour history. Scott's 10-stroke margin of victory and 26-under finish are both second on the tour's alltime list, not bad for a guy who missed five cuts in six starts earlier this summer.

The mercurial nature of momentum can torment a golfer like Scott for months, but in match play its effects are felt shot by shot. The 36-hole final at the U.S. Amateur was defined by a dramatic reversal of fortune late in the morning round. On Oakland Hills' 15th hole, Ricky Barnes, a senior at Arizona who plays an outsized, freewheeling game, made an "unbelievable" up-and-down, as he put it, from a plugged lie in a greenside bunker, "stealing" a halve from his opponent, Hunter Mahan, a USC junior whose game is built on precision. Barnes, still one down in the match, then won the 16th hole when a shaken Mahan drowned two shots in a greenside pond. Barnes won the next two holes to stretch his lead to two up at lunch, and Mahan would never draw closer.

Following his 2-and-1 victory, Barnes singled out that four-hole stretch as the key to the match. "Huge momentum booster," he said.

O.B.

Golf lost an original on Aug. 20 when the self-styled King of Clubs, Robert H. Dedman, died of a heart attack at age 76. Dedman was born with a plastic spoon in his mouth in the backwaters of south-central Arkansas, but he amassed a fortune by perfecting a uniform system for managing private clubs, beginning with Dallas's Brookhaven Country Club, which he built in 1957. Dedman's ClubCorp Inc. later expanded to public and resort courses and now owns and operates more than 200 properties, including such shrines as Pinehurst, Firestone and the Homestead, where Dedman often played with his friend Sam Snead. (A former Dallas city champion, Dedman shot his age when he was 65.) As likely to quote Kipling or Longfellow as tell an earthy joke, Dedman devoted his final years to philanthropy -- a major medical center in Dallas and the law school at SMU are named for him -- and playing golf, including a round at the Homestead two days before his death. Dedman's son, Bob, who assumed control of the family business in the mid-'90s, told SI last week, "He is now on the fairway to heaven."

Teenager Ty Tryon's rookie year has been curtailed by a series of maladies, but his instructor, David Leadbetter, tells SI that Tryon is healthy again and will tee it up at next week's Buy.com Utah Classic.

European Ryder Cup captain Sam Torrance says that the first-day action at the Belfry will commence with the four-ball format (alternate shot) instead of the traditional foursomes (better-ball), hinting the move will help ensure that all 12 of his players see action before the Sunday singles. At the last Ryder Cup, three Euros -- Andrew Coltart, Jarmo Sandelin and Jean Van de Velde -- didn't see action until the final day, and all were handily defeated in singles as the Americans put together their historic comeback.

While the U.S. Amateur was playing out in Michigan, 2001 champ Bubba Dickerson, 21, was making his European tour debut at the Scottish PGA. Dickerson, who turned pro following this year's Masters, will have seven sponsor's exemptions as he attempts to earn a European tour card for next year.

Jill McGill shot a wild 66 during the first round of the Betsy King Classic, holing a wedge for eagle and chipping in for birdie. On the drivable par-4 8th hole, she was forced to take a penalty for an unplayable lie, but her birdie chip clanked off the flag, leaving a tap-in par. "My playing partners were ready to barf all over themselves," McGill says.

Issue date: September 2, 2002

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