MEDINAH, Ill. -- The volunteers manning the scoreboard just
off the third green at Medinah Country Club didn't stand a chance.
It wasn't just that they were running out of red numbers, which
they were. So many players were going so low that there wasn't
enough room for all of them on the board.
Not that you could blame the people keeping score.
They came here expecting to work a major championship. Instead,
a Bob Hope Classic broke out.
About the only thing missing was the late comedian and his
buddies playing alongside Tiger Woods.
As easy as Medinah was playing, they might have had a chance to
get under par, too.
Everybody else seemed to be on a humid Saturday in the third
round of the PGA Championship, where birdies were flowing more
freely than the beer in the corporate hospitality tents.
It was so easy that even Woods couldn't bring himself to say he
grinded this one out.
"In most major championships, you make pars and sprinkle in a
couple birdies here and there, you're looking pretty good," Woods
said. "Today you would have just been run over."
Woods, of course, was doing a lot of the running. His 65 seemed
effortless, which had to give pause to Luke Donald, who shares the
lead with him at 14 under after three rounds.
By now we expect that kind of thing from Woods. He is, after
all, arguably the greatest golfer ever.
Mike Weir is another matter. Sure, he's got a green jacket, but
the short-hitting Canadian wasn't supposed to be flirting with a
major championship record or shooting a round of 65 himself on a
course stretched out to 7,561 yards.
Golf purists had to be aghast. Major championships are supposed
to be tests of survival, with the winner dripping in sweat and
caked in dirt after navigating his way through thin fairways, thick
rough and hard-baked greens.
That's the way they do it at the U.S. Open, where Geoff Ogilvy
never sniffed a round in the 60s and won despite shooting
5-over-par at Winged Foot. The 18th hole was so hard that Phil
Mickelson and Colin Montgomerie almost didn't finish it.
The folks at the U.S. Golf Association like that kind of thing
because it tends to separate the Tigers and Phils from the Shaun
Micheels and K.J. Chois, who, not surprisingly, are on this
leaderboard.
"We're not trying to embarrass the best players in the world,"
former USGA official Sandy Tatum once famously said. "We're trying
to identify them."
The stuffed shirts who run the Masters feel the same way. They
began growing rough and injecting holes with steroids after Woods
and his fellow long hitters began taking advantage of a course that
offered little resistance to modern balls and titanium drivers.
Bobby Jones wouldn't recognize the par-4 11th hole at Augusta
National, which has now grown to 505 yards. The way things are
going, they'll have to knock down a few Waffle Houses on the main
road next to the course to keep the long knockers at bay.
There aren't any such worries at the PGA Championship, which
welcomed players this week with a course almost as accommodating as
the catered suites that line fairways to give the wealthy a spot to
get away from the unwashed masses.
The rough was respectable, but it wasn't that difficult to find
a golf ball in it, assuming you somehow missed the wide fairways.
The greens were soft to begin with, but rain on Friday made it look
as though players were shooting Velcro balls from the fairway.
Conditions were ripe for scoring. And the best players in the
world didn't wait long to take advantage of them.
A record 60 of them were under par the first day. That record
lasted until the second day, when 61 were in red numbers.
On Saturday, there were so many good shots that CBS had trouble
keeping up with them. On the course, roars came from so many
corners that fans looked like bobble-head dolls trying to follow
the action.
And you know what? It didn't cheapen the last major of the year
a bit.
The best player in the world was still on top of the
leaderboard, a good indication that the game of golf was somehow
still intact. Apparently you can identify the best players by
letting them make birdies as well as you can by forcing them to
grovel for pars.
Know something else? It was fun.
Fans like seeing players at their best. They want to see Woods
hit a 3-iron 250 yards over water to within 8 feet of the hole, as
he did on the par-3 13th. They enjoy watching Mickelson making four
birdies in the first seven holes to get in contention.
The drama on Sunday figures to extend deep into the back nine
because everyone who tees it up believes he has a chance to shoot
65. Someone will win this major championship, rather than losing it
the way Mickelson did with a double bogey on 18 at Winged Foot.
When it's all over, it won't matter whether the winner is
20-under-par or 5 over.
The only thing that will count is who has the lowest score.
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Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated
Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org