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Same Four Top Of Field Again
By Brendan Tierney, USGA
Toledo, Ohio -- When the third round started at the Inverness
Club Saturday, only four golfers possessed a score under par
after two rounds.
When it ended, the same four players -- Allen Doyle, Vincente
Fernandez, Bruce Lietzke and
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| With a 1-under 212, Allen Doyle is one
of four players under par for the week. (Steve Gibbons/USGA) |
Tom Watson – were again the only ones with a number in red.
In fact, the closest player to them, Mike McCullough, was
2 over par after the day.
What makes these four golfers special? Why have they been
able to tame the fast greens and difficult rough of the Inverness
Club when many of the others have struggled?
If you ask them, it is all about hitting fairways.
"This course has a lot of pitfalls," said Watson,
who shot 1 under Saturday and trails Lietzke by four strokes.
"When you don’t hit the fairway, you’re in trouble because
of the severity of the rough."
Fernandez had a similar outlook on the course, saying, "When
you don’t hit fairways here, you’re always fighting to get
par."
However, despite the importance that these four put on hitting
fairways, the numbers don’t seem to agree. Only Watson, who
has hit 80 percent of his fairways this week, is close to
the top in that category. Doyle is in the top half of the
remaining field at 20th, but leader Lietzke and
Fernandez are at the back of the pack, only hitting 51 percent.
For Lietzke, this makes some sense according to the others
fighting for the top spot.
"He does what he has to do to keep the ball in play,"
said Doyle, Lietzke’s fellow competitor in the third round,
but maybe more important. "He’s strong enough to get
it out of the rough."
Watson concurred, saying that Lietzke can simply "cut
it out of that rough."
So if it’s not the fairways that are keeping these four under
par, what is it? Perhaps the answer lies in the toughest five-hole
stretch on the course, between holes three and seven. These
five holes all rank in the top eight holes in difficulty and
have resulted in a number of bogeys for the field.
The four seem to be the only ones with any success on the
difficult stretch, shooting even par over the week. By comparison,
the next four golfers on the leaderboard have shot a combined
18 over the same stretch. The ability of the top four to deal
with the tight landing areas and putt well on the sloped greens
of these five holes seems is the reason why they are separated
from the rest of the field.
Brendan Tierney is a second-year Fellow with the USGA
Foundation. E-mail him at btierney@usga.org
with comments and questions.
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