Weir still struggling to get his groove back
2003 winner still searching for his game
VANCOUVER — Mike Weir hasn’t been this tiny a speck on the Masters radar screen since ... well, last year. Or the year before that.
Truth is, the 2003 winner of the coveted green jacket is in a sadly familiar spot a little over two weeks before the golf season’s first major championship: searching for the missing pieces of his game, hoping to find them somehow before he returns to the scene of his greatest triumph.
“I’m definitely under the radar,” the 43-year-old, eight time PGA Tour winner said Tuesday, on a conference call with Canadian golf writers. “I hope to build on the next couple weeks. (Augusta National) is obviously a course I love, good vibes and memories there — and I definitely know how to play that golf course.”
He’s playing at this week’s Valero Texas Open in San Antonio, then at the Houston Open, and then he faces the annual test that never fails to ignite hope, and with good reason: in 14 trips to the Masters, he’s had five top-20 finishes and made $1,881,365 in prize money.
But he’s missed the cut his last three times there, and in those last six rounds at Augusta, he’s shot 79 three times.
At No. 22 on the PGA Tour career money list with just over $27 million in earnings, Weir isn’t hurting for cash, even if he never plays another competitive round. But he hasn’t come close to covering expenses for the past four seasons.
“I’ve been really struggling on the greens, which is unlike me. My last start in Tampa, I made only two birdies, from four and five feet,” he said. “I think I’ve spent so much time on the golf swing — 80/20, probably — I just needed to put more attention on the short game, which I’ve done.”
Weir’s last couple of seasons have been grim, for a guy once ranked No. 3 in the world. After making not a single dollar in 2012 and only $23,000 the year before, Weir had a modest bounce-back last season, making nine cuts in 22 starts, but he’s played the weekend just three times this season in 12 starts.
He’s been injured more frequently as he’s grown older, and withdrew with neck problems earlier this year in San Diego. That’s why he’s hoping the next two weeks can give him some confidence to take to Augusta.
“I would say the (Masters) field is maybe as wide open as it’s been in a long time. So many different players are playing well, not just the traditional guys you’ve been seeing the last 10-15 years,” he said. “You could have a first-time winner out there, I could see that happening very easily.”
Or a second-time winner, from 11 years ago? Hard to do, on a course that now plays nearly 150 yards longer than the one he conquered with his putter in 2003.
“When I first got on the PGA Tour, the long players — Love, Mickelson, Tiger — would be 30 yards by you, but with incremental effect of drivers, and golf balls, 30 yards has gone to 60 yards,” he said.
“For guys like myself and Zach (Johnson) who won there that are kind of in that medium length to shorter range off the tee, we just had to be completely dialed in with our wedges, and putt unbelievably.
“So it takes a special kind of week to win there, for someone outside the bombers. But it can still be done.”