The Ultimate Golf Blog: WGC

Showing posts with label WGC. Show all posts

Monday, March 24, 2008

Ogilvy wins World Golf Championship

With Tiger Woods all but out of the picture for the first time in nine months, an all-star cast of golf's other big names had a rare opportunity Monday to grab the hardware that the game's No. 1 player has been loath to share.

Woods has so dominated the golf headlines of late that it was difficult to determine the next wave of contenders, but there were Geoff Ogilvy, Retief Goosen, Vijay Singh and Jim Furyk -- major championship winners all -- battling for a World Golf Championship title.

They didn't exactly distinguish themselves with fine play down the stretch at the Doral Golf Resort in the weather-delayed CA Championship, pointing out again the difficulty of closing out tournaments, and winning at the rate Woods does.

Ogilvy prevailed by a stroke over Goosen, Furyk and Singh, failing to birdie any of the nine holes he played Monday morning and getting the kind of good fortune that Woods believes is paramount to winning. The eventual winner chipped in for an improbable par at the par-3 13th hole from 30 feet moments after flubbing a chip shot in the rough. Had the ball not struck the flagstick and dropped, it would have gone 15 feet past the hole.

It was Ogilvy's fourth PGA Tour title, to go along with wins at the U.S. Open, Accenture Match Play and Tucson Open. "It was a pretty stellar-looking leaderboard over those last nine holes, so satisfying to beat those players and pretty satisfying winning a big one," Ogilvy said...

Read the complete golf news story

Thursday, March 20, 2008

World Golf Championship - Round 1 Wrap

Rain started to fall just as Tiger Woods reached the 18th green Thursday, and it soaked him pretty good on the way to the clubhouse.

But it didn't cool him off much. Woods was still steaming after three-putting the final green on the Doral Resort's Blue Monster course, leaving him with a bad bogey that has been uncharacteristic of him during his torrid stretch of late.

"Yeah, I'm pissed,'' Woods said. "You three-putt 18, you're not going to be real happy.'' It says something about the expectation level Woods is bringing to the course these days, because it was certainly no shame to shoot 5-under-par 67 during the opening round of the CA Championship at Doral. Woods has won five straight PGA Tour events and all four of the tournaments he has played this year. Going back to last year, Woods has won six straight official starts around the world and eight of his last nine.

But as he has said all along, Woods started over Thursday, when he had seven birdies and two bogeys, but three times missed putts inside of 7 feet, including two birdie tries after nearly driving a green. "I didn't really do anything all that special today,'' Woods said. "I just kind of hung in there and took care of the par-5s and made a couple of other birdies here and there. All in all, just kind of ground it out.'' Woods trails first-round leaders Geoff Ogilvy and Miguel Angel Jimenez by two strokes in the World Golf Championship event he has won three straight years. He also has three straight victories at Doral, which was a regular PGA Tour stop before becoming a WGC event last year.

Stewart Cink is a shot back of the leaders and Woods is in a five-way tie for fourth along with Phil Mickelson, Adam Scott, Nick O'Hern and Anders Hansen.