Weir ready to go, bad ribs and all
AUGUSTA, GA. — The ribs still pinch a bit on the wedge shots, but you wouldn’t have heard any complaints from Mike Weir when he played the Par-3 contest Wednesday at the Masters.
For one thing, the 2003 champion — despite just one nine-hole practice round hitting full shots — declared himself fit to play in the season’s first major beginning Thursday morning, when he’s paired with Lee Westwood and Jim Furyk at 9:06 a.m. EDT.
For another, his caddy for the Par-3 outing, daughter of an old friend of the family from Brights Grove, Ont., was 15-year-old Jackie Viglasky, who’s just completed an extremely aggressive round of treatment for cancer.
The Grade 12 student at Northern High School in Sarnia had a big smile on her face when Weir’s caddy for the Masters, Danny Sahl, escorted her to be fitted with a pair of white overalls for the late-afternoon stroll among the pines on Augusta National’s picturesque nine-hole short course.
“I love it here. It’s beautiful,” said Viglasky, whose father grew up with Mike and his brothers, and asked Jimmy Weir whether Jackie might do the honours Wednesday.
“Mike told me the bag weighed 200 pounds,” she said.
“You can handle that, can’t you?” kidded Weir, who only required a couple of clubs, and a putter, in a small bag.
Since suffering separated rib cartilage and being forced to withdraw after making the cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational three weeks ago, Weir has been unable to play, or even swing very hard at a golf ball.
But he played the back nine Wednesday, and said the ribs were “not bad. Playable. I’m going to give it a shot. It didn’t seem to get any worse out there, and that’s kind of my barometer, so ...”
He’s got the ribs taped, and says he’ll have no problem passing the PGA Tour’s drug test “unless they’re banning Advil” — and he may only be swinging about 80 per cent but said “as long as you hit it on the centre of the face, it’s going to get out there. I don’t feel I can really go at one, no.
“The worst case is I just get back to where I was at Bay Hill, which is not a good scenario. The good thing is, there’s no heavy rough out here so I don’t really have to go down after anything. It seems to be when I’m bent over a little more with the wedge, it gets me a little more. But you know what, it seems fine.”
If he does no further damage here, he intends to play next week at Harbor Town.
“I haven’t hit a ton of balls. But it feels pretty good,” he said. “My short game’s been very good, so if I can plot it around here, you never know. I think adrenalin can carry a lot, and experience on the golf course, knowing how to play it. My recipe when I won here was keeping it in the fairway and great short game.”