Goggin has another party to remember in Memorial
DUBLIN, Ohio - Wait'll Jack hears this one.This one's about Mathew Goggin, age 33, listed out of Australia but actually from Tasmania, the big island state about 100 miles south of Australia. From which the Tasmanian devil gets its name, and it's more than a cartoon character. It's real. Goggin is pretty real himself. Wait, also, till the PGA Tour's Department of Good Manners and How To Hold Your Teacup hears this one.
Goggin had the mike yesterday. He had just finished the first round of the Memorial Tourmanent, and shot a beautiful 7-under-par 65 to pluck the first-round lead by a shot from Kenny Perry. Goggin's 65 was all the more beautiful because this is his first Memorial, and this was, therefore, his first competitive round at Nicklaus' pristine Muirfield Village course.
It was not, however, the first time he had ever played the course. Well, partially played it. The thing was, he had to call in drunk at No. 8.
So did Gary Nicklaus, son of Jack Nicklaus.
“I was staying with some friends and it was my birthday,” Goggin said, this being back in 1999 and his 24th birthday, when he was playing the Nike Tour (now the Nationwide Tour). “And we got so drunk. We were going to play the course the next day, and I was all fired up.
“But we had a big night, and I think was like eight holes. I had such a bad hangover, we decided to pull the pin and get out of the sun. So that was a little different experience that playing in the tournament.”
Staying with friends?
“We were staying with Gary Nicklaus, actually,” Goggin said. “He was a bad influence.”
His dad doesn't know about this yet, right?
“Yeah.”
This is not to say that Goggin is a hell-raising, wild-eyed carouser, etc., etc., against which churches bar their doors. But it is safe to say that Goggin likes a drink now and then. And to come out and say stuff like that. Though truth be told, the tour itself has a marketing deal with a well-known vodka, so any sounds coming out of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., should be muffled and should not be carrying any dollar amounts with them.
Goggin, if an easy laughter, was in full control of himself on a tough course Thursday. A 65 is not easily come by on Muirfield Village, a course of swift greens, deep rough, and now bunkers furrowed again, as Nicklaus had done experimentally two years ago, to the muted anger of golfers who felt over-taxed by the idea.
“The first 10 holes, I played pure,” said Goggin, who's still looking for that first win since joining the American tours in 1999. “I really hit the ball great. And it's actually the last six holes where I didn't play so well. So it was one of those bizarre days where I didn't drop any shots coming in, with the poorly played holes.”
Goggin settled in right away, starting on the back nine, going birdie-birdie-bogey from the 11th, and then nailing the short and mean-tempered 14th, off a controlled layup tee shot and a 123-yard approach to about 4 feet.
He got away with a little murder at his 13th, No. 4, where he went for a tight pin and caught the bunker, short-siding himself - leaving himself very little green to come out to - and escaping the predicament by holing the bunker shot. He was over the back at the par-4 ninth, just about 14 feet from the pin but looking at a chip shot that was doomed to run over the green and down into the front water. And he holed that one, too.
He even birdied the par-3 No. 8, the hole he last saw in 1999, out of weary, bloodshot eyes.
It was part of a blessed stretch. Starting from his eighth hole (No. 17th), he went 11 holes with seven one-putt greens, two chip-ins and no three-putts.
And so Mathew Goggin, in his first visit to the Memorial Tournament, found himself the leader in the first round. How many times had he led in the first round?
“A couple times this year,” he said. “I've learned that it means absolutely nothing.”
But he did come away with what he thought was a certain knowledge that things will change once Jack Nicklaus learned about the party of '99,
“I'd better play well the next three days,” Goggin said. “Or I might not get invited back.”
Return to Man About Golf archives