It’s a Golden Goose deuce
by Retief on golf 01/07/2004, 22:05
Retief Goosen’s incredible display of getting the ball up and down to win his second U.S. Open championship may have been outshone by the spotlight on Phil Mickelson but slowly the golf world’s attention is turning back to the man described as the “Rock of Shinnecock.”
The latter, singular compliment was the headline alongside a picture of Goosen on the cover of America’s ‘GolfWorld’ magazine as disappointment at Mickelson’s failure gave way to generous admiration for arguably one of the greatest displays of clutch putting yet to win a Major.
Goosen had 12 one-putts in the final round, finishing his round with six straight one-putts. Not surprisingly, Goosen led the scrambling stats, and that and his putting were the keys to his victory.
Mickelson made three birdies in four holes at one point on the back nine to take a one-stroke lead, but that didn't faze Goosen. In a span of 12 minutes, he went from one behind to two ahead when he birdied the 16th hole while Mickelson three-putted the 17th.
Goosen is the 21st multiple winner of the U.S. Open, and his win was the fourth in the last 11 years by a South African golfer. Ernie Els won the championship in 1994 and '97, and Goosen's other victory came in 2001 to go with Gary Player’s ground-breaking victory in 1965.
Goosen, who led by two strokes going into the last round, needed only 24 putts and recorded 32 one-putts for the tournament on greens as treacherous as ever set before a championship field. Possibly the most significant statistic is that the quiet South African did not have a single three-putt green.
As these stats emerged it was also recalled that Goosen had, in spite of his last-hole black-out when he all but yipped a tiddler on the 72nd green, also putted exceptionally when he won his first U.S. Open at Southern Hills.
And the interesting thing is that Goosen, after some experimentation in the intervening years, used the same model putter to claim his victories. I have been unable to establish whether it was, in fact, the same putter but have been able to confirm that he had in his hands a Yes! Golf C-Groove putter that he made famous at Southern Hills.
A neat twist is that this putter is now called the “Tracy” in honour of Goosen’s wife.
Goosen was also using one of the hottest new drivers on the market – TaylorMade’s R7 Quad that comes with tiny interchangeable weights that enable a golfer to manipulate the launch conditions he wishes to achieve.
According to Mike Stachura, a technical editor on “Golf Digest” magazine, this club, which has just reached the South African market, is “all about optimising launch conditions and the new R7 Quad attempts to take that theory to a personal level.”
“Just like the R500 series of drivers, the 400 cubic centimeter R7 features the same TaylorMade trademark inverted-cone shape on the inside of the face (designed to produce a higher coefficient-of-restitution rating on a wider area of the face around the club's hot spot). The new story is that you control the weight distribution on the R7.
“The clubhead's weight has been reduced by thinning the walls of the shell to 0.8 millimeters. The weight saved is reallocated through four weight ports in the sole. The four weight cartridges can be repositioned in six configurations to produce six center-of-gravity locations to fit a desired ball flight.
“By comparison,” according to Stachura “you would need 12 two-inch strips of lead tape to move the same amount of weight on your driver. Of course, with lead tape, you would also be making the clubhead heavier, which changes the swingweight and likely the feel of the shaft.”
Sal Johnson, the respected golf historian and statistician, writing on the Golfonline website, paid Goosen the compliment that “he could be the toughest competitor in golf. In his youth, while playing the European Tour, he gained a reputation as a player that folded under pressure. But all of that is in his rearview mirror as we know him today as a player that knows how to hold a lead. We know how tough he is and how he never seems to back down.”
Johnson pointed out that in statistics kept of the U.S. Open Goosen was first in scrambling – a measure of how many times a player gets up and down for par or better on the holes where he missed the green in regulation.
Mickelson, significantly, was second in this category.
Sal Johnson also provided the following insights into just how tough Shinnecock played:
In the final round it played to a scoring average of 78.73. This was the highest final round since the 1972 U.S. Open, which had a 78.8 average at Pebble Beach, but Pebble's par was 72 for that Open, so if you were to compare it, Shinnecock averaged 8.73 over to just 6.8 over for Pebble.
Looking at other rounds, Shinnecock's average is the highest in comparison to par in a major since the first round of the 1958 U.S. Open, which played to an average of 9.70 over par (79.70 on a par-70 course, Southern Hills).
28 players shot 80 or over on the Sunday, the most in a final round since the 1972 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach when 28 players also shot 80 or over. No-one broke par at Shinnecock on Sunday, and the last time that happened in the final round in a major was at the 1963 U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass.
How hard was Shinnecock all week long? A total of 36 players (23 percent of the field) shot at least one round in the 80s; including Ernie Els who shot 80 while playing in the final group on Sunday, his worst score in his U.S. Open career by three strokes. The high round was an 89 by Billy Mayfair. J.J. Henry made just one par in his round of 86 on Saturday. Since records have been kept, going back to 1970, it's the lowest number of pars for a single round in U.S. Open history.
In the last round the par-4 10th hole played to an average score of 5.030, while the par-3 seventh hole played to a 3.652 average. Only 12 players out of 66 (18.2%) were able to hit the seventh green in regulation.