A Mighty (Wonderful) Struggle

Filed in archive Golf News on August 10, 2009

Courtesy: Golf Digest

Bobby Jones put it best. Golf, he said, was a game played on a five inch course - the distance between your ears.

Surely that is what we witnessed yesterday at the WGC Bridgestone Championship at the venerable old Firestone Country Club.

Padraig Harrington and Tiger Woods in true head-to-head fashion. What more could you want from a tournament on Sunday?

It was a mind game from the opening tee shot for both players and both players were up to the task.

Actually, it was a mind game for Harrington since Woods is a master of those situations. Yet Harrington proved he was Tiger's equal mentally, didn't he?

Was he Tiger's equal technically? No. Despite how well Harrington drove, pitched and putted, Woods out-did him on the first 5 holes.

That would usually have meant a complete mental meltdown for other tour players - even world-ranked players like Sergio Garcia.

But Harrington didn't back down and ground on, drawing even with Tiger on the back nine.

It was Harrington's dreadfully unfortunate 16th hole that turned the entire tournament in Woods favor once and for all.

But it was a terrific round to watch. Woods was clearly enthusiastic about that point afterwards when he said it was a battle all the way with each player earning an advantage and then surrendering it, earning it back and so forth.

That's what he relishes now in his career - a real donnybrook of a struggle with a player up to the challenge.

We don't get the chance to see that much, anymore. We've given up on Woods vs Mickelson and Woods vs Garcia (that never materialized).

We have come to embrace Woods taking on a tough course. But that only happens in majors now.

So yesterday was a treat; a difficult course and a superb opponent combined to produce real golf drama again.

How much we have missed that mental game on the PGA Tour.