What A Warmup!

It's been a long time since the PGA Tour stop in Memphis seemed important. Then came last week's Last Stop Before the U.S.�Open and unavoidable irony. During a 20-year run with hometown goliath FedEx as title sponsor, the newly rechristened Stanford St.�Jude Championship never delivered like this.

There was a great winner. What else can you call Woody Austin, a self-proclaimed underachiever who shot a brilliant eight-under�62 in the final round, pulling away with five birdies on the final nine at TPC Southwind to win by five strokes?

There was a great enigma. Adam Scott, the marquee name on the leader board, held a three-shot lead after 54 holes, but as Austin charged, Scott badly blocked his tee shot into the water at the par-3 14th hole, made a triple bogey and fell apart. Instead of Scott's cementing his place as the Next Big Thing, we're left wondering if he isn't the best player not to have won a major, after all.

There was a Cinderella story. That was in the form of England's Brian Davis, who previously had only one top�40 finish this year (21st at Atlanta). He had to rush to Orlando on the Tuesday of tournament week after learning that his wife Julie and two sons, ages three and 18 months, had been hospitalized because of a gas leak in their house. The good news: Everyone is fine and they're back home. At Julie's urging, Davis, 32, flew back to Memphis on Wednesday night and enjoyed the best week of his career by coming in second. "Golf took a backseat this week," he said.

Finally, there was a great soap opera. Are you surprised it involved John Daly? He opened with an even-par�70, then showed up at the course the next day with what looked like fresh claw marks on both sides of his face. Daly, who owns a house at Southwind, said that earlier that day he had filed a complaint with the police alleging that he was attacked while he slept by his wife, Sherrie, who came at him with a steak knife shouting, "I will kill you!" Daly, 41 and playing on a sponsor's exemption, soldiered on despite his unsightly wounds, shooting a 74 to make the cut on the number. He went 75-79 on the weekend and finished next to last and had no further comment about the incident. Sherrie, 31, is Daly's fourth wife. In 2006 she served time in prison for money laundering. They filed for divorce but later reconciled.

Scott's collapse was almost as messy. If he had won, he would've jumped past Jim Furyk to third in the World Ranking. "I played 70 good holes and a couple of bad ones," said Scott, whose closing 75 dropped him to seventh. "Obviously, this wasn't what I was looking for."

In the short run, Austin's resurgence could be significant. His profile is not unlike that of another player with a homemade swing, 1983 U.S. Open champion Larry Nelson. Austin, a latecomer to the Tour (he worked as a bank teller and a bartender to support his golf), is a terrific ball�striker but struggles with his putting and his confidence. Austin also fights his nerves. "I'm not afraid to admit that I'm probably the most nervous person who has ever played this game," he says. It's one of the reasons that, at 43, he still hasn't realized his full potential.

Like Nelson's, Austin's strength is his accuracy, and his iron shots were deadly during Sunday's final nine. Austin has flirted with the lead several times in the early rounds of past U.S. Opens and sees the event as his best chance "if I'm ever going to get lucky enough to win a major."

Make a note: If Oakmont delivers as well as Memphis did, this could be a week to remember.