FIRESTONE PLAYS ROUGH WITH PLAYERS
Two headliners are missing from the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational: Tiger Woods, who didn’t qualify for the event, and world No. 1 Rory McIlroy, who wasn’t healthy enough to defend his title.
There is still plenty of star power, however, including Masters and U.S. Open winner Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson, Adam Scott and Jason Day.
But the biggest star of them all, literally, is Firestone Country Club. The tale of the tape reads 7,400 yards of par-70 nasty, and the track with 18 powerful punches known as greens will be a big player in this week’s outcome. It played a major part in Thursday’s first round as the best players in the world were unable to tame the beast despite little wind and kind temperatures.
While Danny Lee didn’t get the memo about Firestone’s stern side — he shot 5-under-par 65 to grab the lead — and Jim Furyk and Graeme McDowell each shot 66, much of the field struggled to gain an upper hand.
Troy Merritt, last weekend’s winner in the Quicken Loans National, shot 82. Sergio Garcia made a 9 on the par-5 16th. Phil Mickelson shot 76. And 56 of the 77 players didn’t break par.
Making matters worse is that Firestone likely will only get tougher. The forecast calls for temperatures to spike into the high 80s and low 90s for the rest of the tournament with no rain expected. The sloping fairways will get firmer and harder to hold, and the greens will speed up, have more bounce and firm up, all of which will conspire to penalize approach shots.
“I played really stellar golf,” Victor Dubuisson said after a 68. “You don’t have many birdie opportunities here. It’s so long, and when you miss the fairway, it’s very difficult to go on the green then.”
“I had bouncy in my mind,” Justin Rose said after a 67, alluding to how much approach shots bounced when landing on the green. “It’s great to see this course play this way, though. You’ve got to be very strategic. I think we know the course so well in somewhat soft conditions, and many times you can get the ball up and down short siding yourself. It’s going to be much harder to get it up and down short siding yourself this week.”
Spieth, who came one shot short of earning a spot in a playoff in the British Open in his last start in his attempt to win three consecutive majors, worked off some rust. His wedge play — one of his many strengths — let him down. He birdied the last hole for a 70, just the 17th time in 69 rounds he hasn’t broken par this year.
“I hit the ball great last week (in practice). I was hitting it pretty good coming into here, and all of a sudden, I didn’t really miss many shots on the first two holes, but I just hit a poor wedge, and all of a sudden, I’m staring 3 over through three holes in the face,” Spieth said. “And trying to bounce back on a course that could host a major championship, it’s so hard.”
Which is fine with Jason Day, who shot 69.
“It was really hard. … With how the greens were bouncing and how fast the greens were, it was tough to really take advantage of any sort of close shot with a downhill putt,” Day said. “It’s a tough little track here. So something like this, you’ve got to be very patient. You’ve got to hit the fairways. It’s very difficult to shoot any sort of score when you’re missing fairways. You miss fairways, you can’t get close to the pin, and you’re leaving yourself 30-, 40-footers all day, if not missing the greens. ...
“But the harder the better.”