SALON

Friday, Jan 13, 2012 9:45 AM UTC

Weary Stricker Opens With 66, 3 Off Sony Open Lead

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Weary Stricker Opens With 66, 3 Off Sony Open LeadGraham DeLaet, of Canada, blasts out of a bunker on the 13th hole during the first round of the Sony Open golf tournament, Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012, in Honolulu. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia)(Credit: AP)

HONOLULU (AP) — Steve Stricker became a footnote in PGA Tour history by winning comeback player of the year in consecutive seasons.

Coming back after a win?

That’s been a little more difficult.

Three days after winning on Maui at the Tournament of Champions, Stricker was back to work. He did well Thursday in the Sony Open to open with a 4-under 66 and finish three shots behind Graham DeLaet of Canada. What made it impressive is that Stricker felt as if he were in a daze part of the time at Waialae Country Club.

“A little sluggish at times,” Stricker said.

That’s nothing new. In the seven previous times that he played the week after winning, the best he could manage was a tie for ninth in the Deutsche Bank Championship in 2007.

He won the John Deere Classic the last three years, flew across the Atlantic for the British Open and has never been a factor. When he won the Northern Trust Open at Riviera in 2010, he headed over to Arizona for the Match Play Championship and became only the second No. 1 seed to lose in the opening round.

This week’s trip was only a short hop over from a different island, but it’s no less taxing.

“I’m still excited from last week,” Stricker said. “You turn around and you’re right back in the competition. You’ve got to be focused. And I was, for the most part.”

The Plantation Course at Kapalua is a big walk, and Stricker said he was even more drained from nearly losing five-shot leads on the last two days and fighting off the contenders. Winning itself always takes a toll, so Stricker took Tuesday off, then spent Wednesday in what he described as a pro-am that was cluttered with media requests, not to mention dozens of players stopping to congratulate him.

“It’s a nice problem to have,” he said

But he’s back to work, now, and in the first full-field event of the PGA Tour season, feels as though he at least gave himself a chance to join Ernie Els in 2003 as the only players to sweep the Hawaii tournaments.

Walking toward the clubhouse, Stricker was approached by the Golf Channel and asked if he could come on the set for a few minutes. One of the producers said it wasn’t imperative, and Stricker — as if it were the hardest thing he ever did in his life — said no.

After changing shoes in the locker room, and speaking briefly with a PGA Tour media official to provide quotes for the Honolulu newspapers, he made a detour on his way to the hotel so he could do the Golf Channel interview.

There’s one big advantage coming off a win, however.

“When you can win, it just boosts that confidence level way up there today,” Stricker said.

DeLaet didn’t have reason for a lot of confidence considering he had not played in any PGA Tour event in nearly seven months. His excitement level was hard to match, though.

It was about this time a year ago when the Canadian’s lower back hurt so much that he had major surgery, in which part of a disk was shaved off to alleviate pressure on a nerve. He thought there might be a chance he would never play again, this right after a rookie season in 2010 in which he finished a respectable 100th on the money list to easily keep his card.

“I’m just so excited to be back out,” DeLaet said. “I had a good season my rookie campaign, and then it was all basically just taken away. And I realize now how fortunate we are to be playing golf for a living. My whole attitude is definitely better.”

DeLaet surged to the top of the leaderboard when he chipped in from just short of the green on the par-5 ninth, then holed a 35-foot birdie putt on the 10th and hit his approach to 6 feet on the 12th for another birdie. He took the outright lead with birdies on the last two holes, getting up-and-down from just short of the green on the par-5 18th.

Carl Pettersson and former Sony Open champion K.J. Choi were among those at 65, while Stricker was in the group at 66 with Webb Simpson and Bud Cauley.

Thursday was a gentle start of the season on the PGA Tour, with the ocean breeze barely strong enough to move fronds on the palm trees that line the fairways. Sixty-three players in the 144-man field broke par, including Oahu native Tadd Fujikawa, who was given a late sponsor exemption.

Cauley, who last year became the sixth player to go from college to the PGA Tour without Q-school, didn’t show any signs of rust from having not played in nearly two months. He ran off four straight birdies around the turn until he stalled, then dropped a shot on the 17th and missed a birdie opportunity on the 18th when he tried to hit fairway metal out of a bunker and topped his shot.

“I did a lot of things right,” he said. “I did a lot of things I was doing last summer.”

DeLaet’s injury was nothing new, first suffered when he was playing hockey as a junior. His lower back would give him fits, and then the pain would subside. Toward the end of his rookie season in 2010, however, it got so bad that he couldn’t sit for more than a few seconds.

Surgery took care of the pain, and DeLaet tried to return in the summer in the two tournaments sandwiched around the U.S. Open. His next start was supposed to be the AT&T National at Aronimink, but after playing a few holes before the Wednesday pro-am, he realized he was trying to get back too soon.

“I think I wanted to be there so bad that I felt that I was better physically than I actually was,” DeLaet said. “I just knew that it’s hard enough to compete out here when you’re healthy, and I just knew that I wasn’t in good enough shape to compete.”

For the moment, he feels great.

More Doug Ferguson.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
336 points337 points | 103 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
62 points63 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
36 points37 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
34 points35 points | 2 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
30 points31 points | 1 comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations