golly, Ollie
Jose Maria Olazabal's play to get into a playoff on Sunday was impressive. But, as soon as Tiger made the playoff, the look on Ollie's face changed. CBS did great camera work in cutting away to Ollie on the range when the crowd roared on 18 after Tiger's birdie. Ollie's grimace seemed to indicate greater anxiety and almost disappointment when Tiger joined the playoff party.
And why shouldn't Ollie get more anxious? After all, Tiger was 8-1 in playoffs and the World No.1 going into the tourney. But part of me thinks that Ollie should have tried to keep his "game face" on, without even acknowledging Tiger Woods' birdie to get into the playoff. Here's one time when the "Hal Sutton" attitude of take-no-prisoners, be-the-right-club-today! might have been better. Ollie should have wanted to go head-to-head against Tiger. He should have relished the opportunity. Maybe that kind of confidence would have translated into better play during the playoffs. For a guy who is touted for his iron play, Ollie came up really short -- literally -- on both playoff holes. First, his wedge from 90 yards rolled back onto the fringe. Then, on the 17th (which he parred everyday all week), his 2 or 3 iron hit the beach. From a two-time major winner, you'd expect a little more.
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Olazabal, like Garcia, started as a professional at such a young age, you would think of him as an old man about to hit the Champion's Tour. He started professionally in 1985, but he still isn't 40 years old (that stat always amazes me). So why does a 2-time major champion with 23 international victories have an 0-2 record in playoffs? Perhaps Tiger has regained that intimidation factor he held in 2000, or perhaps as a single European, he has eschewed the psychological assistance that most top ranked players now have in their traveling crew. I.e. he is a man's man. Whatever it is, he still remains one of my favorite Europeans to watch, despite the fact that he plays slow, but he doesn't have the cheap gamemansship of Seve.
As for this week, it is interesting to see that Gore is still trying to make his first cut, but the betting lines have dropped him to lower odds than Duval. then using Duval as a benchmark, I looked at what hopefuls have been downgraded to "sub-Duval" odds of winnning the tournament:
Jonathan Byrd
Aaron "Bads" Baddeley
Micheel
Ben Curtis
Todd Hamilton
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