Veteran gets his ‘claw’ on Open lead
Calcavecchia credits odd putting grip Young Glover tied at top after first day
VANCOUVER— Mark Calcavecchia is 45 years old. He’s won 11 times on the PGA Tour, including the British Open in 1989 and the Greater Vancouver Open in 1997. He’s stood over thousands of putts both tricky and easy and stared down thousands of fairways. But there are still times that his game splits wide open; times when he lines up a short birdie try and simply can’t knock even the shortest putt into the hole.
Lucas Glover is only in his second year on the PGA Tour. But the 25- year- old is already finding it’s a streaky game that can deliver someone to a state of glory one day and gleefully abandon them the next. On a Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club that many players say is as tough as most layouts for majors, Calcavecchia and Glover both managed to post five- under- par 65s to share the lead after day one of the Bell Canadian Open.
Like many golfers, Calcavecchia a while back switched from a traditional putting grip to the so- called “ claw” style. That wasn’t working this summer, so at the PGA Championship he went back to the traditional grip during his practice rounds and drained everything he saw. It was so tempting he had to try it during the first round.
“ The first hole I had a five- footer and yipped the s-- t out of it,” he said. “Missed the hole by eight inches. I thought, ‘ I’ll stick with it.’ Second hole, I had a 10footer for birdie. I yipped the s-- t out of it.
“ I cannot putt; I just cannot relax with a conventional grip,” he said. “ Practice rounds, pro- ams, whatnot, I’m fine. When the bell rings, my right hand, I get a little twitch in there, so I have to putt with the claw.” Such doubts aren’t uncommon even for the greats, explained Calcavecchia, who hasn’t won a PGA Tour event since 2001.
“ I was watching TV the other day and I couldn’t believe my ears. They said Mike Weir was something like 178th in putting and he’s got the most pure stroke you’ll see. Ernie Els a couple years at the British Open was saying there are demons that sit on his shoulder and put bad thoughts in his head.
“ We all go through it. I wouldn’t doubt it if even Tiger Woods does, but he wouldn’t admit it.”
Glover has played 21 tournaments and missed the cut in 11 of them. But, in the ones in which he played the last two rounds, he had six top- 10 finishes.
“ In the spring, everything was going right,” he said. “ But more towards the summer I was getting out of whack and lost confidence in my putting.”
Aside from Calcavecchia and Glover, most of the pros found Shaughnessy’s narrow fairways and tiny greens not at all to their liking. Defending champ Vijay Singh could only manage a 73, the same score posted by Stuart Appleby, Rory Sabbatini and Canadian Stephen Ames.