Fowler stays out front at Phoenix Open
Rickie Fowler closes out the second round with four birdies for a 13-under-par lead in Scottsdale.
With the temperature in the 70s, Friday was a perfect day for golf fans to find a vantage point around the third hole to watch second-round action of the Waste Management Phoenix Open at the TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course. Heading into today’s third round, Rickie Fowler is atop the leaderboard with a one-stroke lead at 13 under par. Read coverage of the tournament in
Rickie Fowler put on a charge with birdies on the last four holes to gain the bragging rights he wanted over good friend Justin Thomas. Now, he wants the title that has eluded him in the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
Fowler fired a 6-under 65 to take a one-shot lead over Thomas, who carded a 66, in Friday’s second round at TPC Scottsdale. Cameron Smith ........ (-10)
The stage is set for a rowdy Saturday at TPC Scottsdale, and the lone amateur in the field made the cut.
Mostly cloudy skies with a high of 69. Rain is possible between midnight Saturday and noon Sunday.
Golf Channel: 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Channel 12: 1-4 p.m.
There’s a saying among the Internet generation, “vids or it didn’t happen.” Don’t tell that to Branden Grace. He popped an ace on the par 3, 193yard No. 7 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open on Friday, helping push him toward the top of the leaderboard after the second round at TPC Scottsdale. “I
felt really good over the shot, hit a great shot,” he said of his hole-in-one.
But how great was it? Perhaps we’ll never know. There’s no video.
It’s remarkable that anything happens anywhere in the Digital Age without recorded evidence. It’s even more amazing to think that no footage was captured during one of the most widely attended sporting events in one of the nation’s largest metro areas.
The course is littered with TV cameras. There’s even one on a broadcast tower directly behind the green at No. 7. But it was empty at the time.
“Nobody thought that the (third) group off would hit a hole in one,” said Chuck Triplett, a Phoenix Open volunteer.
Logistically, it would be tough to get every shot of every round, even during an event aired live on the Golf Channel. There are 132 golfers split into 44 groups. Camera crews focus on the most popular players and hope the rest works out.
The broadcast Friday started at 1 p.m. Grace teed off at 7:40 a.m.
‘Maybe 100, if that’
His group got to No. 7 at about 9:15 a.m. There were as few as 20 or as many as 1,000 spectators in the gallery, depending on whose crowd-estimating skills you trust. The general consensus seems to indicate that there were a few dozen people around.
“Maybe 100, if that,” Triplett said, immediately walking back the estimate. “… If 100 people saw it, that’d be the maximum.”
Todd Dell couldn’t dispute that count, even if he wanted to. He missed it – by minutes.
“Been out here all day,” he said from a lawn chair behind the pin. “Been here since 9:30, and I did not witness the hole-in-one, unfortunately.”
He and his wife, Jennifer, come out most every year from Bellingham, Wash.
“I heard a lot of talk about it when we sat down,” he said.
There was something of a lack of detail, however.
“From what I understand,” Dell said, “he teed off, and it went in the hole, in one shot, thus deeming it a hole in one. I can’t tell you how many times it bounced. How far it rolled. But I know it went in.”
Only, he doesn’t know. He has to trust the people who were around. There’s no video! Apparently, no one had a cellphone out.
“Someone came with the big camera up there, like two groups later,” volunteer Snaque Rollo said. “And it was like, ‘You should’ve been here like an hour ago!’”
The tournament’s volunteers, most all of whom are retirees, provide the best account.
Lee Farrell was up by the tee box when Grace stepped in.
“I saw the ball strike, come up and just kinda mellow into the grass and then roll right in,” he said. “It hit the cup, and I didn’t even hear the pin make a noise.”
Triplett, who was posted near Farrell, saw it, too.
“It looked like it was gonna be close right from the minute it left his club,” he said. “It flew in there so beautiful, right, straight at the pin.”
Down by the green, Steve Nygren added some details.
“It was a high draw,” he said. “It hit the green, bounced twice and rolled in. It was just like a putt.”
The two bounces and short roll would have covered about 19 feet.
David Scott, also behind the green, helped paint the picture.
“If it had to go another six inches, it wouldn’t have made it,” he said. “It dropped right in the hole, right on the edge.”
‘Doing the jive’
Grace, for his part, knew it was a good shot when it left his club. Then he saw everybody’s reaction.
“The guys behind the hole were actually jumping up before the ball actually went in,” Grace said.
He celebrated his ace like you might expect.
“He was dancing,” Fred Cappello said. “… He was up here dancing, doing the jive and all that stuff. Yeah, he had a great time.”
Triplett tried to demonstrate as he described it.
“Just a little, kind of a foot stomp and a fist pump,” he said.
There’s at least one photo of Grace taking the ball out of the hole, but what he did next adds to the mystery of the unseen ace.
“There was a spectator here, who said, ‘Congratulations, great shot,’ or whatever,” Rollo said. “Branden gave him the ball.”
Scott corroborated her account. “He gave it to the guy, asked for it back, signed it, then gave it back to him,” Scott said.
By the time a sports writer showed up to ask who had seen what, that fan and his signed golf ball were gone.
There’s no video of any of it. But we trust that it happened.