Breakfast With Lydia

Apologies for the delayed blogging this morning, but I treated myself to breakfast with Lydia Ko this morning.  While the snow gods have been treating us quite harshly, the gods of televised golf have given us a veritable feast.

The best men in the world (at least a few of them) have been battling George Thomas' classic Riviera at max firmness, and the distaff tour is finding similar conditions in the famed sand belt of Australia.  And kudos to Golf Channel for giving us 18-hole coverage that aired overnight.  My Lydia and Amy Yang are nip and tuck on the back nine, and I see no reason to try to set an edge in extremely firm conditions.

I found yesterday's play at Riviera among the most pleasurable golf to watch this side of a proper links.  Whether it's the drought or the fine efforts of the greens staff, the course is a magnificent test, with the possible exception of the famed tenth hole.  And with heavy rains in the forecast for today's final round, I'm very glad I saw the course at its finest.

First, from Doug Ferguson's game story:

Retief Goosen made only two pars on the back nine Saturday at Riviera and survived a

day of wild shots and bad breaks for a 2-under 69 to take a two-shot lead into the final round of the Northern Trust Open. 

The 46-year-old Goosen wasn't sure how his nerves would hold up because he had not been a 36-hole leader in more than four years, and he is approaching the six-year anniversary of his last victory. Those nerves were tested at Riviera, which is getting increasingly difficult on the greens. 

Goosen was flawless on the front nine before he strapped in for a rough ride over the final two hours. He hit a tee shot into the trees on the 12th and 13th holes, both times making bogey. He had to make an 8-foot bogey putt to stay in the lead. 

And then he recovered with a chip-in from 35 feet on the par-3 16th for birdie, and then a two-putt birdie on the downwind par-5 17th. 

Goosen was at 8-under 205, two shots clear of Graham DeLaet of Canada, who had a 70.

Doug omits to mention that one of the "routine" pares on the incoming nine required an 85-foot two-putt.  I'm not sure it's quite fair to expect Retief's game to hold up after so many days with the lead, but the tougher today's conditions the more I like his chances.  

But we've all been witing for DeLaet to break through, and my golf radar indicates this could be as good a chance as he'll find.  Or not...

But the golf world is buzzing over three specific shots yesterday, the first referenced by Ferguson above,  Goosen's tee shot on the short Par-3 sixteenth stuck on a tongue above a bunker, leaving him a routine chip, well routine if it were out of normal grass.  We all tire of the announcers' endless focus on the Kikuyu grass, but in the video below watch Goosen's wedge stop abruptly as it enters the grass (the chip is at the 2:15 mark of the highlight video below):

The second shot generating buzz was Sergio's escape from a bunker on the tenth hole.  The difficulty being that he was, in fact, playing the 13th hole at the time.  Someone named Adam Sarson felt compelled to tweet an artist's rendition of the par, seen below:

Here's Sergio's description of the par:

Q. Have you ever had a better 4 than the one on 13?

SERGIO GARCÍA: Yeah, I would put it in my top three. I would say so. I've had some beauties I guess.

Q. Your caddie said you had a 4‑iron out of the trap ‑‑

SERGIO GARCÍA: 3‑iron.

Q. How would you describe the gap you had to hit?

SERGIO GARCÍA: Unfortunately I had the TV tower, which if I would have been off the bunker, it would have been nice. It would have given me a better angle. But because I was in the bunker ‑‑ if I took full relief off the TV tower I was going to be up against the lip so I had pretty much no shot.

I probably had a couple yards, I would say between the TV tower and the trunk of the tree. The difficult part about it was that I was in a little bit of a downslope in the bunker, ball a little bit above my feet, having to hit like a low, low cut that went underneath the branchs. So it just clipped one little branch.

But I was thrilled to, I mean, I would have been happy with five, so four was a bonus.

You got that?  A 3-iron from the bunker....not that many 3-irons out there any more.  Shack has the video here, worth a look just to hear Feherty's description of the shot's difficulty.

The third and most discussed shot was Ryan Moore's almost ace on No. 10, which ties in nicely to our previous discussion as to whether the hole's set-up was too severe:

Well, he did push it a titch... I think we can all agree that a ball traveling at that modest speed, especially afyer catching some lip, should at the very least stay on the putting surface.  Moore was unable to get up-and-in for birdie, and we can all agree he deserved better.  

Shack discussed the Fazio changes to this hole in this 2009 post, which is getting lots of hits today.  Moore later hit the flagstick on No. 16, but there he got his birdie.

I'll cover Lydia's win a bit later, as I'm off to the Valley to run some errands.