Shotgun Start: Break might restore fun, relevance to Sergio's game
While the fall has become a place for the less-heralded players to frolic and secure their status, especially in the States, two very recognizable global names have used the month to launch comebacks. CBSSports.com senior writer Steve Elling and Augusta Chronicle golf writer and columnist Scott Michaux take the measure of those men and eyeball the golf landscape.
Star-crossed Sergio Garcia is set to return to competitive golf this week on the European Tour after taking a two-month break to decompress. Do you think he will ever again be an elite player?
ELLING: That's a delicate question relating to a very fragile psyche. I ran into Garcia several times at the Ryder Cup, where he served as a vice-captain and was clearly enjoying being back among the boys. At one point, he walked onto a green and tried several times to pluck a stray nose hair from the nostril of Billy Foster, Lee Westwood's caddie and Garcia's former bagman, only to fail in his first few attempts. The laughter and camaraderie among the players as Foster's eyes teared up was priceless. Garcia even carried Westwood's bag in practice for a while. If Garcia can likewise laugh at the caprices of the game, he has a chance to climb back into serious relevancy. After all, at the beginning of 2009, he was No. 2 in the world and within striking range of unseating Tiger Woods as top dog. Then a series of personal events, including a breakup with longtime girlfriend Morgan-Leigh Norman, daughter of the Great White Shark, left him listless and lacking his typical feistiness. The daughter of Sharky took a bite out of Garcia, to be sure. I hope to heck the guy gets his inner fire back. He's actually morphed from being an occasional brat into one of the more personable and interesting guys in the global game. I have whacked the guy in print for his antics over the years, and deservedly, but I am pulling for him. Hard.
MICHAUX: I not only believe that Garcia will get his game back, I believe he will win that oh-so-elusive major. Garcia simply has too much talent not to be one of the best players in the world again. And he's still practically a "young gun." If you think his career is washed up because of a sour spell, you haven't been paying attention. All Sergio needed to do for inspiration at the Ryder Cup was go out and watch the No. 1 singles match pitting Lee Westwood and Steve Stricker. Those guys are the combined poster set for the fallen who can get up. Not so long ago, Westwood and Stricker disappeared from relevance and tumbled down the world rankings to the edge of oblivion. Now they are two of the best four players in the world who have been jockeying for that No. 1 tag much of the season (and Westwood will soon get it). Garcia did what he needed to do -- step back from the game for a bit to settle his mind. Going to the Ryder Cup and seeing the game again for the fun that it offers did him a world of good and surely rekindled his hunger. He will be a major player and a major thorn in the side of Americans at the Ryder Cup for years to come. If he needs comeback advice, he can always go talk to Jose Maria Olazabal as well for a copy of the map from hell and back. They are paired together this week in Spain.
Three-time major winner Padraig Harrington last weekend won his first tournament in 26 months, on the Asian Tour. How much stock, or stick, should he be given for the victory?
ELLING: First things first. Harrington is one of my two favorite players on tour, along with Stewart Cink. But did you see the names of the players in the field? No knock on the Asian Tour, but the Nationwide circuit has more depth. The only identifiable players for anybody but the most ardent fans were Retief Goosen and Colin Montgomerie, two guys who haven't won in a year or more. Has Paddy turned it around? Only slightly. Harrington's play as a captain's pick for the Ryder Cup was defended by Monty, the European captain, but his performance was hardly stellar. He finished 2-2-0 but was dragged to one victory by partner Ross Fisher. In the three matches where Harrington's individual card was tallied, he had a total of four birdies for the week and at one point was 5-down in his singles outing. Harrington's season isn't as bad as some have suggested, since he's posted eight top 10s worldwide in 2010, but it's hard to recall him being in the Sunday mix anywhere before last weekend, regardless of the depth of the field. Harrington is roundly considered the best interview in golf, and is an insightful deep-thinker whose opinions are good as gold. But his busy brain works against him sometimes. Maybe it's time he stopped messing with his swing and reverted back to something akin to the pass that made him a three-time major winner in a two-year stretch. How fast can things change in this game? A mere 26 months ago, Harrington outdueled Garcia to win the 2008 PGA Championship.
MICHAUX: Wow, all this talk about fall comebacks and we're not even mentioning Rocco Mediate. Oops, guess I did. As for Harrington, it's not like he's completely lost his game. He's just temporarily misplaced it. The constant tinkerer will do that from time to time. But Europe's invisible man at the Ryder Cup reappeared in Asia. Who cares if it was against a no-name cast? Winning is the thing and will breed confidence. Sometimes a guy has to go back to the minor leagues to find himself. Check out Texas Rangers ace Cliff Lee. The guy goes down to Triple A a couple years ago with a sour attitude and comes back as the baddest pitcher in postseason history. Maybe all Harrington needed was a little positive reinforcement. There are some big events coming up in Asia over the next month, and this might be the stretch that relaunches the old Paddy power we came to know and love in recent years. Let's hope so, because he's too talented and too interesting to fade away prematurely. As for Rocco, that incredible win this week got him a tour card that will carry all the way to the senior tour. That's another entertaining voice who will be long welcome on tour.
The women's game currently features five players who are separated by .54 points in the Rolex world rankings, meaning that the No. 1 spot has been a true hot seat, with revolving butts in the chair. Does that make the LPGA more interesting?
ELLING: All season, being totally gullible, I produced a slew of stories about the possibility of Phil Mickelson unseating Tiger Woods as world No. 1, a position Lefty has never held. He never made the climb. But in LPGA circles, that story line just doesn't play out as well, because the faces and talents levels are so interchangeable and far less identifiable, at least at the moment. Players from five nations -- Cristie Kerr, Ai Miyazato, Jiyai Shin, Yani Tseng and Suzann Pettersen -- are so close in ability, a win by either is usually enough to take over the top spot. That's terrific news from a competitive sense in that the tour has so many good players, but it isn't such a marketable angle if few fans know who the players are to begin with. With former No. 1s Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa, fans knew who to root for (or against) from week to week because those two owned the charts like Elvis and the Beatles. As with the Yankees, Lakers, Cowboys, Woods or Ali, it's often good for a sport to have a dominant player or franchise, if for no other reason than to spur a certain rooting interest, pro or con. Musical chairs atop the women's world rankings underscore how much the joint retirement of Sorenstam and Ochoa has left some wanting. Don't like the reigning No. 1? Wait a week and it'll probably change.
MICHAUX: Never in the history of sports has so much attention been paid to something so completely meaningless as the No. 1 ranking in golf. What does it get you, really? A top seed in the WGC match play? Whoop-dee-doo! That and a box of chocolates will get you a box of chocolates. It is nothing but a fabricated title that is good for the ego and little else. And as meaningless as it is as a topical diversion in the men's game when no player can emphatically seize the status away from Tiger, it is both meaningless and uninteresting in the women's side at the moment. The only thing the No. 1 rank is useful for is giving definition to a clearly dominant figure. When Tiger Woods was No. 1, he was most definitely No. 1. Same for Greg Norman in his day. Same for Annika, who we called No. 1 before there ever was a women's world ranking. When Lorena owned it, we believed it. Having a top ranking passed about week to week like a game of musical chairs illustrates that there is no No. 1 in women's golf. Just a bunch of good players with equal talents. Eventually somebody will separate from the pack and stake a claim as the next Annika or Lorena. But unless that player has a personality to match, it won't be the shoulders needed to carry women's golf back into the limelight. Paging Michelle Wie.
