Detroit getting blessed relief from in-slam mayor
BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. - And the mayor of Detroit thinks he has troubles?Well, he does, sort of, being in the slam and all, I mean. It seems Kwame Kilpatrick first ran afoul of the law early this year when his reaction to a few text messages of questionable content was taken by some people to be perjury. Then there was some other stuff that looked like obstruction of justice to others, and then, not long ago, after being ordered by the courts not to leave town - being under bond, you see -he left anyway. And then the other day, he was telling a judge how much he admired the judicial system, just before they led him away in handcuffs to be quartered in one of his own city's jails.
So the PGA Championship couldn't have come at a better time for Detroit, which probably thought it was already enough to be burdened by a closed highway running through the middle of town, a lot of decrepit buildings, a baseball team that is not so good and a pro football team that seems destined to continue to be not so good. So Detroit perhaps is sorely in need of distraction.
And so the proceedings at Oakland Hills are providing blessed relief in the form of the misfortunes of others. Few things are more fun that listening to golfers suffer. The guys came here to play the PGA Championship and found a U.S. Open, instead. I mean, Oakland Hills is not exactly playing like the user-friendly track the guys have grown accustomed to in a PGA, and so the air has been rent by weeping and lamentations.
Apart from the banshee wails of England's Lee Westwood in the first round - he followed that opening 77 with a 78 -- J.B. Holmes fired perhaps the heaviest broadside, and he was the perfect guy to do so, being insulated from criticism by his performance, a 2-under 68 and a one-stroke lead going into the third round.
“There are a lot of holes out there that are almost unplayable,” Holmes said. “They are a little ridiculous. Like, 17 is one of those holes. They have got a pin today, you could hit a perfect shot and it's not going to be on the green. I don't think that's real fair, when you hit good shots and in some cases, you get penalized for them.”
So, not being real fair makes for unfair?
“I think there should be some tough holes, but I don't think it should be - I hit a perfect shot here and I make double bogey,” Holmes said. “You hit two good shots and your ball is right next to the hole, and rolls over and goes into the bunker, and you have no shot from there. No - it shouldn't be like that.”
He was probably speaking, by the way, more for others than for himself. He's made a paltry seven bogeys in the two rounds.
But, given the guys on I-75, chopping concrete in the heat, and roofers spreading tar, to say nothing of the mayor making that long walk to the slam, aren't a few tough holes, or a lot of them, part of the mental test and the frustration in a major?
“Well, you've got long rough and everything, and that's the frustrating part,” Holmes said. “But when it's completely unfair on some holes - no, a major shouldn't be like that.”
It should be remembered, of course, that Holmes is a bomber off the tee and that he therefore bypasses some of the trouble that ordinary golfers have to contend with. There is no rough, for example, on the green.
He'd just three-putted No. 5 and bogeyed, and then drove the 300-yard No. 6.
“Pin-high, maybe 30, 40 feet left,” Holmes said. He two-putted for a birdie.
But for all of that, the PGA seems to have turned into the U.S. Open, swapped places with Torrey Pines, which was praised by all as being so un-U.S. Open, and retooled by the same course architect, Rees Jones.
“Yeah,” said Phil Mickelson, “very similar to what we see at Opens, normally. I thought this year's Open was set up so great.”
And here?
“Not so much,” Mickelson said.
Then there was Rocco Mediate, author of possibly the best story of the year, fighting Tiger Woods to a playoff at the U.S. Open. He shot 74 and made the cut, and grinned.
“The golf course is so nasty right now,” Mediate said. “Just nasty.”
Really?
“The pins are really tough to get to, the wind is blowing and the greens are cooking, drying out.”
Glad you're done?
Said Mediate: “Very glad. Very glad.”
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