Johnson, Koepka open strong as Tiger shoots par
Dustin Johnson could tell his 6-iron was close to perfect from the flight of the shot, where it landed and the reaction of the fans behind the par-3 sixth green.
The ball rolled around the left edge of the cup, inches from a hole-in-one.
Or were they cheering because Tiger Woods teed off on the hole ahead of them?
“I was kind of debating whether they were yelling for me or him,” Johnson said with a smile.
Woods returned to the PGA Tour’s postseason Thursday by making two birdies, two bogeys and 14 pars in a most ordinary round of even-par 71, attracting thousands of fans who kept relatively quiet at The Northern Trust.
They missed a better show right behind them.
Johnson made birdies without having any idea where his tee shots were going until the closing stretch. U.S. Open and PGA champion Brooks Koepka made birdies by smashing driver as often as he could and muscling it out of the deep rough with wedges when he missed. FedEx Cup champion Justin Thomas made his share of birdies while trying to avoid hitting in the trees.
Kevin Tway, Jamie Lovemark and Vaughn Taylor wound up sharing the lead at 5-under 66 among the early starters at rain-softened Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus N.J.
Johnson and Koepka were right behind in the group at 67.
Woods might have expected better after hitting nine of 14 fairways. He just never gave himself many chances.
“One of those days where I just kept having the halfclub and was never able to fully swing at it and having to hit little softies in there, control my flight, maneuver the golf ball,” Woods said.
Tway, Taylor and Lovemark all need to play well to make sure they are among the top 100 who advance to the next event at the TPC Boston. Tway and Lovemark are ranked in the mid-80s, while Taylor is at No. 112.
Czech Masters: Ryder Cup hopefuls Thomas Pieters and Eddie Pepperell made strong starts at the Czech Masters on Thursday to boost their chances of qualifying for Europe’s team.
Belgium’s Pieters, the 2015 Czech Masters champion, started with two birdies at the Albatross Golf Resort near Prague and added six more in his opening round to finish with an 8-under 64 and a share of the lead. He is tied with two-time major champion John Daly, Callum Tarren and Gavin Green.
Nacho Elvira, Andrea Pavan, Lee Slattery, Jeff Winther and Tapio Pulkkanen are one stroke back.
Woods-Mickelson set for pay-per-view: The winner-take-all match between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson is on.
WarnerMedia says it has secured the rights for a payper-view event it is promoting as “The Match.” It will be 18 holes between Woods and Mickelson held Thanksgiving weekend at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas. The winner will receive $9 million.
The pay-per-view cost is to be announced later.
Woods announced that the match was on in a tweet, setting off Twitter banter with Mickelson.
The college football season began this week, and the Buckeyes scored their first win. Ohio State 1, Ethics 0. That’s a big, fat zero. Ethics and a sense of morality and a clear conscience and overall integrity took a beating.
But the good news is the Buckeyes are still in the running for the College Football Playoff. For sure, they didn’t play the morality card. They played the it’s-all-about-winning card. Pure and simple.
If the Buckeyes’ head coach were named Bob Smith, he’d be ex-head coach Bob Smith today. But schools of Ohio State’s caliber don’t fire coaches who have won 73 games and lost just eight and delivered a national championship and flirted with several more. They wristslap them, as the administration did with Urban Meyer on Wednesday night when it suspended him for three games.
Meyer, the best college football coach not named Nick Saban, survived. But somehow the actual survivor barely got mentioned.
The president didn’t name Courtney Smith, the real victim in this case of domestic violence. The athletic director didn’t. The trustees didn’t. The head coach certainly didn’t. Metoo gave way to Meneither.
Meyer just couldn’t summon enough guts to say his heart pours out with sympathy and respect for the divorced wife of Zach Smith, who apparently is the most indispensable assistant coach in the nation since Meyer risked his job, career and reputation on his behalf. Meyer would only say, “I’m sorry about the situation we’re in.” Way to take responsibility, Urban.
He’s sorry, all right. A sorry excuse for a person for not standing up for Courtney Smith. If Ohio State truly doesn’t believe she was abused, have the courage to say so. You and I both know Meyer is internally incensed that he even received a three-game suspension. I was betting on two. Ohio State missed a real opportunity to make a landmark decision. It could have suspended Meyer for the entire season and donated his salary to women’s advocacy groups.
Meyer didn’t appear to have a shred of contrition, not an ounce of remorse. But he did immeasurable damage to his legacy. It’s a shame he didn’t express true emotion for the victim and say he would do everything in his power to right this wrong. It’s inconceivable that the trustees said they thought Meyer didn’t deliberately lie at Big Ten media day and said they thought he had real respect for the core value of treating women with respect. That’s comical.
His school violated every tenet of how best to deal with such crises. Be contrite. Have sympathy for the victim. Accept a real punishment with teeth. Ask for forgiveness.
Ohio State didn’t dot the i on Wednesday. It blackened its eye.