Notes and Quotes
To Goggin: 'Great going, tough break' – The Memorial Tournament
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Hail and farewell, Mathew Goggin. Or as one guy put it outside the scoring tent, “Well, great going and tough break.”If there was a sympathetic favorite in the 2008 Memorial, it had to be Goggin, the guy from Tasmania, who by PGA Tour standards is an unconventional as the spelling of his first name. With one “t,” that is. If he had won, tournament patron saint Jack Nicklaus would have been saluting the first Memorial winner badly in need of a shave. He wasn't growing a beard so much, it seemed, as he hadn't bothered getting to the razor. Earthy and no pretenses in this guy.
Goggin opened the final round with a three-shot lead and was 18 holes from his first victory. Alas. He faltered, shot 2-over 74, and tied for second, two strokes behind Kenny Perry and his 69 and 8-under 280. And also won $396,000, well over twice as big as his best this year.
“It's a matter of experience,” Goggin said. “I got off to a bad shot, Kenny shot a great round. I wasn't too far away, but I didn't do what I needed to do.”
If there was a blessing for him, it was that he had his trouble early, making two bogeys in his first four holes. He was soon tied, and then soon trailing, and maybe the pressure of trying to catch up is not as bad as the pressure on a first-timer trying to hold the lead.
“Obviously, with a three-shot lead, you expect to win,” he said. “I didn't do anything right to really get the round going. So there were a few things that when everything is going, when you're really on, those things work out. But it wasn't on today.”
CRUNCHED BY NUMBERS
-- Davis Love coulda been a contenduh if he'd handled the middle of the course a bit better. On the five-hole stretch, Nos. 8 through 12, he had one birdie and 13 bogeys. He bogeyed four of the five in the second round, all five in the third, and three of them in the final. He shot 10-over 298 and tied for 60th.
-- Masters champ Trevor Immelman made nine birdies in the final round, but only shot 69. Double bogeys at No. 9 and No. 13 were the major villains. He tied for 34th.
-- Former PGA champ Shaun Micheel was even on the front, birdied the 10th and 11th, then got crushed. He played the last seven holes in 9 over - he had two single bogeys, two doubles, and a triple at the par-5 15th, where he never missed the fairway, and four-putted from 31 feet. That was a closing 79 and a 17-over finish, tied for 69th.
-- Anton Haig, 22, celebrated as the next great talent out of South Africa for his Johnnie Walker Classic win on the Asian Tour last year, found that Muirfield Village was no respecter of youth and potential. Haig, in the field on a sponsor's exemption, finished 76th and dead last at 23-over 311. He made seven double bogeys, three of them on his back nine of the third round.
-- Woody Austin authored one of the most ruinous stretches in Memorial history. He played the last 45 holes in 22 over par, including one birdie (No. 3 in the third round) and four double bogeys. Three of the doubles were in the final-round 84. He finished at 19-over 307, tied for 73rd.
-- Matt Kuchar, who started three shots off the lead, saw dreams of his second tour win (and first since 2002) start to drain away early in the final round, then disappear completely in four bogeys in his first six holes coming home. He shot 77 and tied for 10th.
BOGEY PARADE - There were only four bogey-free rounds in the tournament: Rod Pampling (67) in the first round; Mike Weir (68) and Nick Watney (68) in the third and John Mills (68) in the fourth.
MUIRFIELD'S TEMPERATURE - The par-72 course played over par all four days: 73.7 in the first round, then 75.9, 73.9 and 73.6. It played at 74.4 for the week.
2009 IN WAITING - JoAnne Carner, “Big Momma” Hall-of-Famer of the LPGA Tour, and Jackie Burke Jr., former Masters and PGA champion, have been selected the honoree for the 2009 Memorial Tournament. Carner dominated women's golf in the 1970s and '80s, winning 42 of her 43 victories in a 14-year span. She was the only golfer in history to win the U.S. Girls' Junior, and U.S. Women's Amateur and the U.S. Women's Open (the latter twice). Burke won 17 PGA Tour titles, including four straight in his five in 1952.
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