Football
Associated Press 21y

Heading home ...

SANDWICH, England -- Hey, Jim Furyk, you've won your first
major championship. Where are you going this weekend?

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Furyk

Home.

The tiny, winding roads leading out of Sandwich were a little
more crowded Friday, with big-name players such as Furyk, David Duval, Bernhard Langer, Justin Leonard and Jose Maria Olazabal heading away from the course.

They'll get no more swings at Royal St. George's. For them, the
British Open is done after just 36 holes.

Furyk was probably the biggest surprise to miss the cut, melting
down just five weeks after he held up the trophy as U.S. Open
champion. He won't even get a glimpse of the claret jug, doomed by
a 7-over-par 78 that left him two strokes shy of the line that
separated haves from have-nots.

''I got on a train wreck,'' Furyk said, ''and I couldn't get
off.''

Duval has been on that train for a while. Just two years ago, he
claimed his first major title at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. Now his
game is a mess.

Duval posted rounds of 83 and 78 for a 19-over total, sharing a
place on the scoresheet with locals Philip Golding and Malcolm MacKenzie.

Only seven players who went 36 holes had a worse score. Duval
couldn't even beat the three amateurs in the field. No wonder he
was a little testy when asked about his mystifying slump.

''You're asking about the same old stuff. I played 32 holes of
good golf, make three triples and a quad and I'm out of the golf
tournament. So, thanks,'' Duval said.

His performance wasn't that surprising, considering he's already
missed the cut 11 others times this year. This was actually the
second time he's shot 83 in a major, posting the same score in the
second round of the Masters on his way out.

Duval was in no mood to muse about possible explanations for his
swift downfall.

''Let them find their own theories,'' he said. ''I try to
explain my position and talk about it and nobody wants to put it
out. ... I had better just stop there.''

Also out: 1999 British Open champion Paul Lawrie and 2001 PGA
Championship winner David Toms.

Meanwhile, obscure players such as S.K. Ho, Hennie Otto and
Marco Ruiz will be on the course this weekend, proving again that
golf is the ultimate what-have-you-done-for-me-lately game.

Olazabal, who has won The Masters twice, missed a 15-footer for
par at the final hole that would have pushed him through. He
preferred to focus on a bogey-double bogey start.

''It was not the bogey at the last hole. It was the beginning,''
he said. ''I four-putted the second green. It was the disaster of
the round.''

Furyk opened with a 74 -- respectable on a course that has
yielded only one 36-hole score below par -- and he made the turn
Friday at 1 over, giving him four strokes of leeway on the menacing
back nine.

It wasn't enough.

Even though he drove well, Furyk closed with six bogeys. He
simply couldn't handle the lumpy links and awkward pin placements.

''It was supposed to be a driving course, but I didn't find it
that way,'' he said. ''I was in absolutely good position on every
hole (except 15) and still managed to shoot 7 over.''

Furyk has a couple of fourth-place finishes at the British Open,
but he's now missed the cut three years in a row.

Langer always has played well at Royal St. George's, finishing
no lower than third in the three previous Opens played on this
bedeviling course.

This time, the 45-year-old German matched Furyk with a 152.
Langer had to take a one-stroke penalty for an unplayable lie in
the rough, and he needed two shots to escape after driving into the
bunker at No. 7. That led to a bogey at a par-5 hole where he
needed to make up ground.

While Langer had reason for some optimism heading into his 26th
British Open on a course he likes, what was Charles Challen
thinking?

The Englishman, who plays on a minor-league circuit in Europe,
had to enter a two-day qualifying tournament just to have a chance
to play in his first Open.

Challen won a playoff for one of the final spots. But he posted
scores of 87 and 86 -- nine strokes behind the next lowest player in
the field.

In fact, a makeshift ''173'' had to be constructed for the media
center scoreboard, apparently because tournament officials didn't
think anyone would shoot that high.

''I'm disappointed in myself because I thought I'd make the
cut,'' Challen said. ''But it has been a great experience. The 18th
was great. Everybody claps for you no matter what.

''There are probably a lot of people,'' he added, ''who would've
swapped places with me.''

With that, he headed off to drown his sorrows.

''I'm a red wine drinker,'' Challen said. ''I'm going to get
right into it tonight.''

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