Friday, August 10, 2007 Woods, temperature; hot topics at US PGA
TULSA, Oklahoma—High noon at Southern Hills Country Club looked like a ghost town.
Wednesday before one of golf’s major championship usually is bustling with activity, especially at the US PGA Championship, the last chance for players to win a major until the azaleas bloom in April at the US Masters.
But it’s particularly quiet at Southern Hills, so quiet you could almost hear drops of perspiration sizzling on the sidewalk.
“My guess is a lot of guys are playing practice rounds at 4 a.m.,” Paul Goydos said.
British Open champion Padraig Harrington was among the brave. He teed off shortly before noon to play 18 holes as the temperature climbed toward 38 degrees Celsius, and it looked even hotter with a flame shooting from the top of a refinery on the horizon. An elderly gentleman approached to say he was from Ireland, and Harrington looked toward the blazing sun.
Heat
“You’re a long way from home,” he said.
They also are a long way from the gray skies and cold rain of Carnoustie,where Harrington won three weeks ago.
Heat figures to be as intimidating as anything defending champion Tiger Woods might do at Southern Hills, which has a history of hosting some of the hottest majors. Retief Goosen, who won the US Open here in 2001, played nine holes Wednesday and went through five bottles of water.
Not too many players went more than nine holes, if that much.
Practice
“I can’t imagine anyone practicing a lot,” Chad Campbell said.”
Woods stopped playing a practice round on Wednesday at the majors a few years ago, and he must have been especially glad to have changed his routine.
The world’s No. 1 player has one last chance to add a major to his collection this year. Woods has not played Southern Hills particularly well in two recent trips, although he points out that he was an emotional wreck in 1996 with his father in the hospital. (AP)
