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O’Hair Psychs Himself Out

Tiger Woods entered the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational with a five shot deficit to make up again 54 hole leader Sean O’Hair.  To that point in the tournament, O’Hair had played almost flawless golf among a field that was struggling to corral the Bay Hill layout.  Even if it were played at its true par of 72, scoring at Arnie’s place still would have seemed out of whack.

The final threesome, though – with former Masters champion Zach Johnson – proved to be the downfall for O’Hair.  Among the players that finished in the top ten on the final leaderboard, O’Hair was the only player other than Jason Gore to post a score worse than 70.  In other words, as fantastic as Woods was to post 67 and win the tournament for the sixth time, Sean O’Hair served it up to him.

O’Hair’s struggles with the 54 hole lead are nothing new.  In three other PGA Tour events in which he has held the third round lead, O’Hair has failed to win all of them.  Both of his PGA Tour wins – ‘05 John Deere Classic & ‘08 Transitions Championship – were come from behind victories.

His most famous loss has to be the 2007 Players Championship.  O’Hair entered the final round with a two shot advantage.  Trailing Phil Mickelson by a shot on the 17^th hole, O’Hair pumped his tee ball into the water twice en route to losing the championship and finishing tied for 11^th place.  It could be argued that the failure to win really had more to do with a gimmick hole than O’Hair.

Still, to fail now in three other tries with the 54 hole lead indicates a pattern of struggling to succeed in the most optimal position entering the final round.

It could be easy to simply chalk up this loss at the Arnold Palmer Invitational to the allure and intimidation of Tiger Woods.  Perhaps that is part of the reason for the collapse.

Then again, Zach Johnson was one-under par in the final threesome with Woods.  Johnson certainly faced no pressure from Woods because he was not in contention until the final two or three holes, when he secured third place with great play.

It was on O’Hair to maintain his massive lead, win for the first time with the third round lead in tow, and stare down the best player in the universe to prevent him from making his comeback victory happen on O’Hair’s watch.  Admittedly, that can produce a lot of pressure.

O’Hair maintained throughout the press conference on Saturday night that he would play his own game, ignore Woods for better or worse, and do everything he could to win.  Unfortunately, O’Hair never really found the game that got him into that coveted position.  He flared to the right almost all day.  Consistently short on putts, O’Hair struggled to hole out at crucial times to stave off Woods’ charge.  O’Hair may very well have played his own game, but it simply was not there.  With no good play to focus on, O’Hair’s mind was likely sucked into the vortex of Tiger Woods’ intimidating aura.

Sean O’Hair is a very talented kid.  He is in his mid-twenties and will have many years on Tour to figure out how to win while leading the pack.  O’Hair, though, is not unique in his struggles to learn how to win.  In fact, he is among a group of twenty-somethings that cannot seem to thrive when the pressure is applied.

It may have something to do with the pace of play of O’Hair and his peers.  O’Hair is one of the slowest players on the PGA Tour.  As the round drew out and Woods grew closer, O’Hair became even more deliberate in his routine.  The longer that O’Hair took to play, the worse the results seemed to be.

The old Bobby Jones saying is that “golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course – the distance between your ears.”  O’Hair may well psych himself out in the time that it takes for him to select a club, practice his new mechanics, visualize the shot, get all of the bad thoughts out of his head, and swing the club.  For O’Hair, sports psychology may be failing him because he is using it to an extreme.

I have always found that I play my best golf when the sun is about to set.  The only reason that I can think of to explain the trend is that I play quicker and with better focus as the sun is setting.  If I can play both quickly and well, then I’m more likely to finish my round.

It seems apropos, then, to offer this as advice to Sean O’Hair on the day after the Arnold Palmer Invitational was stolen from him in the dusk:

Stop burning daylight.

Return of the Mick: The Old Lefty is Back

In Phil Mickelson’s illustrious career, he had never won a World Golf Championship event.  That fact was among the many knocks on Mickelson, particularly compared to Tiger Woods – whose shadow Mickelson has been in for over a decade.

Mickelson had never won at Doral, either, though he had stared down the aforementioned world number one on this very course in 2005.  The epic battle resulted in another Woods victory, but stands as one of the few instances in which Mickelson challenged Woods in a showdown.

This week, though, Woods was still experiencing ring rust and was never a contender.  Mickelson, on the other hand, was in charge from wire-to-wire as much as Lefty could be.  Locked in a battle of who would lose the championship first, Mickelson found a way to survive against Nick Watney and a surging Jim Furyk to win the CA Championship.

Per usual, Mickelson did not win pretty.  He made strategic errors that had him in almost every conceivable hazard this weekend.  He played shots right-handed (quite well, in fact).  Mickelson was forced into a host of awkward bunker shots and greenside chips to get out of trouble.

Fortunately for Mickelson, he has the innate talent to be able to get out of the trouble that he causes himself time and again.  Nick Watney told reporters in a press conference that he admired Mickelson’s ability to have the same focus on any shot, regardless of the outcome of the prior shot.  That ability was on full display during the week as Mickelson simultaneously ravaged and was ravaged by the Blue Monster.

Mickelson led the field in a number of categories, including birdies and was second in putts per round.  In other words, some of the stats made Mickelson’s performance look seamless.  Other revealed the truth about Mickelson’s game.  He was near the bottom of the field in pars and bogeys.  Those stats are demonstrative of the classic Mickelson approach to golf.

He is an aggressive player that is unapologetic about his strategic and mental blunders because he knows that he has the talent to bail himself out when needed.  Keeping his foot on the pedal is the best way for Mickelson to compete.  The results may vary wildly from shot to shot, but the aggressive approach is the one that yields the best end results.

Since the meltdown at Winged Foot in 2006, Mickelson had become demonstrably less aggressive on the course.  He was overthinking through the round and in his physical and mental preparation for tournaments.  The culmination of this self-imposed psyche out came at the US Open at Torrey Pines when Mickelson opted to not carry a driver on one of the longest major championship layouts ever played.

In 2009, Mickelson appears to have reverted back to the player that has a raw and exciting approach to tournament golf.  For all of the polish and poise that Woods shows in his wins, Mickelson is at his best when it appears that he has no control whatsoever.  Before Mickelson went on to win three major championships, he said that he would win them his way and playing his style.  He may not have won two Masters titles and a PGA Championship with the exact same aggressive style that he showed this week, but what Mickelson showed at Doral is a lot more similar to the best of Mickelson than the one that was moving sideways in his career in the past two and a half seasons.

Butch Harmon, Mickelson’s teacher, has said that Mickelson is playing some of the best golf he has ever seen him play since working with him.  The results seem to be indicated that Harmon is right.  They also seem to show that the Phil Mickelson we know is back and ready to become a major champion again.

Ogilvy is New Golf Overlord

Geoff Ogilvy has won twice so far on the PGA Tour in 2009 – the only man to do so.  He also won the Australian PGA Championship at the end of 2008.  He has won three times in a very short period.

His performance this weekend at Dove Mountain was the sight to behold on a week in which all eyes were glued to the wrong place.  It was certainly great that Tiger Woods is back and playing golf.  Having the best athlete in the world back on Tour is a positive.  Still, Woods is human and will take some time before he is fully able to play at a level at which he is accustomed.

In the meantime, this is a great opportunity for golf fans to really appreciate the kind of player that Geoff Ogilvy has become.  Evolving from a player known more for his anger and errant driver, Ogilvy is now a fantastic iron player with a very cool demeanor.

Those two characteristics work extremely well in a match play scenario.  He is now a two-time winner of the Accenture Match Play and has a better winning percentage in the event than the aforementioned Woods.  In other words, Ogilvy has won half of his four starts in an event that does not lend itself to that kind of success.

At a record of 17-2, Ogilvy has disposed of a wealth of global golf talent in this event.  He has made three very deep runs in the championship.  This week, he took out the rising phenom Rory McIlroy.  He beat a red hot golfer and friend in Paul Casey.  The margins he won by were not particularly dominant until the final, but he had a fantastic sense of timing.  Making critical putts when he needed to do so, Ogilvy found a way to strike the crucial match play balance of playing within yourself and within the match.

Critics might say that match play is “fickle,” but really that’s a convenient excuse.  At best, it is a cliche term meant to describe the idea of the “one game scenario” that is so feared in other professional sports.  The hallmark of a great match player is one that can keep their head in every shot of the round.  They don’t take holes off to relax or lose sight of the end game, even when the natural ups and downs of the round happen.  After all, match play comes down to playing good enough to beat your opponent – not breaking the course record, or making a certain number.  Ogilvy is mentally tough enough to know this and is physically gifted enough to be able to call on it under the bright desert sunlight.

At 31, Ogilvy is hitting the prime age normally attributed to golfers.  He is hitting that stride brilliantly by winning twice last season in two significant tournaments and already twice this season.  The confidence in himself grows with every round.  Ogilvy is now fourth in the world and within striking distance of Phil Mickelson in third.  Sergio Garcia is not all that far away either.  Given the longer-term period that the Official World Golf Ranking covers, it makes sense that Ogilvy is not second.  One would also be able to argue that Padraig Harrington should be second since he won the last two tournaments that really matter most.

Perhaps this is too much loaded praise for Geoff Ogilvy.  I would hate to be accused of Geoff Worship in the way that so many accuse the golf media of worshipping one Tiger Woods.  Ogilvy is not Woods, and neither are a deity.  Still, Ogilvy is undergoing a remarkable maturity before our very eyes and it is something that should be appreciated.  It is not a maturity that should be shielded by the overhyped comeback of a player already proven himself as the best ever.  Ogilvy deserves his due credit.