But neither man could birdie the first hole, which seemed to get tougher as the day wore on. Price bogeyed it, while Singh missed a seven-foot birdie putt. Price also bogeyed the second to fall seven shots back before his round was 30 minutes old. Singh caught a break at number two when his 50-foot birdie putt, traveling at full speed, slammed into the hole.
“If that didn’t go in, it’s off the green,” NBC’s Bob Murphy said. “I’ve seen ten or twelve of them just like that today.”
Regardless, Singh was at six under and within four of the lead. He was also tied with Leaney, who had missed his tee shot to the right off the first tee and caught a bunker. That led to a bogey and his first discussion with himself about staying calm and in the moment and not letting one hole—good or bad—affect him.
Furyk had an excellent birdie chance at the first, but his 10-footer slid just past the hole. Even so, his lead grew by one, with Singh and Leaney tied for second.
By now it was apparent that this was a very different golf course than the one the leaders had trampled the first three days.
The first two days had produced the most ideal playing conditions possible—just enough cloud cover to keep the greens from getting too dry and fast, cool temperatures, and comfortable humidity. Saturday had been warmer and a little breezier, and the golf course had started to get a bit faster by the late afternoon.
Sunday was windier, with completely blue skies, meaning the greens would get fast early in the day. What’s more, the USGA had looked at Furyk’s 10-under-par score and, realizing that he would break the Open scoring record by two shots if he shot an even-par final round, had decided to go with some difficult pin placements, or, as the USGA calls them, “hole locations.”
Generally speaking, the hole locations are decided by Wednesday. In 2003, three men were responsible for setting up the golf course: Tom Meeks, Mike Davis, and Buzz Taylor, who was the chairman of the championship committee and, thus, the USGA’s executive board representative when the golf course was set up. Technically, he had final say, but, like most executive board reps, he usually deferred to the professionals, Meeks and Davis. After several days of putting on the greens from different locations, they had picked five spots on each green to place the pins, the fifth being in case of a Monday playoff.
Although golfers frequently refer to a difficult hole location as being a “Sunday pin,” there’s really no such thing. Neither the USGA nor the PGA Tour saves the eighteen toughest locations for Sunday. Instead, they usually spread them out across the four days. But they will also make adjustments based on how the weather affects the scoring and try to make the golf course a little bit easier or a little bit harder on Sunday.
The scoring had been much too low the first three days as far as the USGA was concerned. Even though everyone at the USGA claims to pay little attention to how far under par the leaders go or how many players are under par, they are well aware of it. That’s one reason why the USGA frequently turns a par-five into a par-four for the Open—to make the golf course a par-71 instead of a par-72, or a par-70 instead of a par-71, and thus harder in relation to par. Olympia Fields was normally a par-71, but the 12th hole had been converted to a par-four for the Open.
In 2002, after 54 holes at Bethpage Black, two players had been under par: Woods at five under and Sergio Garcia at one under. Only once in Open history had a player finished in double digits under par. That had come in 2000 at Pebble Beach, when in spite of the fact that the second hole had been converted from a par-five to a par-four, Woods had shot 272—12 under par. The USGA had consoled itself that year by noting that no one else in the field had come close to breaking par. Ernie Els and Miguel Angel Jiminez had tied for second at three-over-par 287, a jaw-dropping 15 shots behind Woods.
“We knew it was just a matter of Tiger putting on a once-in-a-lifetime performance,” Mike Davis said. “The golf course held up fine against the rest of the field.”
This was different. No fewer than nineteen players entered the final round at Olympia Fields under par, with Furyk in position to become the first player in Open history to break 270 just by shooting 69—two shots higher than he’d shot in any of his three previous rounds. That sort of scoring is fine at a regular PGA Tour event. It is not fine at a U.S. Open. In fact, Furyk was only the third player in Open history to reach double digits under par at any point. Woods had done it in 2000, and Gil Morgan had done it during the third round in 1992 when Pebble Beach played as a par-72. He had fallen back on a brutal, windy final day, and Tom Kite’s winning score that year was three under par.
That was more like what the USGA wanted and expected. And so, when Meeks, Davis, and Taylor made their choices on hole locations for Sunday, they opted for whatever was the toughest spot remaining in their arsenal. They weren’t going for unfair, but they were certainly hoping to make the golf course more difficult than it had been.
“As soon as I saw the pin sheets, I knew the course was going to play hard,” Furyk said. “When we got out there and I felt the wind kicking up, I knew it was going to be a long day. But it didn’t surprise me. It was pretty much what I had expected.”
The golf course setup and the weather pretty much ensured that no one was going to match Singh’s Friday 63 or the 64 that Woody Austin had shot that day or, for that matter, the 66 that Dicky Pride, the 444th-ranked player in the world, had produced on Saturday. That was good for Furyk and Leaney as long as they could stay somewhere close to even par.
All of that left Furyk and Leaney not so much wondering where a challenge might come from but trying to be careful not to start thinking the championship had become match play between the two of them too early in the day.
“You really don’t want to get caught up in that, but sometimes it’s hard,” Furyk said. “You tell yourself to keep attacking the golf course the same way you did the first three days, but that can be easier said than done.”
Furyk’s first show of nerves came on the second hole, when he pulled his drive into deep rough just in front of a bunker. He punched out and found rough on the other side of the fairway, then pitched to 20 feet.
Leaney, having taken a deep breath walking off the first green, played the hole perfectly. His drive split the middle, and he hit an eight-iron to 10 feet. “It occurred to me that if Jim missed and I made, the lead would be just two with a lot of holes to play,” Leaney said. “I had a chance to put some pressure on him if he missed and I made mine.”
Furyk didn’t miss. He has one of golf’s most unorthodox putting routines, standing up to the ball as if he is ready to putt, then backing off to read it—sometimes he’ll do it twice—before stepping up to take the cross-handed putting grip he’s used since boyhood. This time, not wanting to make an early bogey, he rolled the par putt into the hole. Leaney managed to keep himself together and make his birdie putt, so the margin was three.
Up ahead, things were starting to come apart for Singh. A poor drive and an awful second shot led to a double bogey at the short par-four third hole, and, a few minutes later, he bogeyed the fifth too. Leaney didn’t seem to want to make a par: he bogeyed the third but again bounced back with another birdie at the fourth.
Leaney hadn’t made a par yet, but Furyk was just the opposite, grinding out pars on the first four holes. If someone had been making a move, those pars might have given Furyk pause since he had played the first six holes in nine under par the first three days, the rest of the golf course in one under. But as he and Leaney walked onto the fifth tee, Singh, Mike Weir, and Billy Mayfair were tied for third place—seven shots back.
“It’s almost become a little golf tournament between Furyk and Leaney,” Miller commented.
That, of course, was the last thing NBC wanted: Furyk way out front being chased by the Unknown Aussie.
NBC did spend a good deal of Tom Watson’s last forty-five minutes on the golf course focusing on him and Bruce Edwards, which was certainly understandable. Watson was nearing the end of his round, and the r
oars for the two of them as they walked up 18 with Watson tied for 28th place at four over par were ear splitting. Kirk Triplett, who was playing with Watson, simply stopped 50 yards short of the green, took off his hat, and joined the applause.
Just as he had done on Thursday, Watson got up and down for par from a bunker on his final hole. The crowd was screaming “Broooce,” as he and Edwards walked off the green, most people understanding that in all likelihood it was the last Open for the two of them together.
With Watson finished and Woods a few minutes from completing his last round with a two-over-par 72 that would leave him one shot ahead of Watson in a tie for 20th place, the question was whether anyone was capable of keeping Furyk and Leaney from making it into a two-man tournament.
Leaney finally made a par at the fifth. Furyk was in trouble—again—and again saved par with a remarkable putt, twisting in a 12-footer that dropped at the last possible second. He laughed briefly when the putt dropped in, knowing he’d been a little bit lucky but relieved to have avoided giving up a shot.
“Looking back, the two most important holes of the day might have been two and five,” Leaney said. “Both times Jim was in trouble, and if he made bogey I’d have been within two. But he made both those putts, and I think that helped his confidence a lot. I could see that even if he was tight, he was doing a very good job of handling his nerves.”
After a shaky start, Leaney was doing a pretty good job himself, and the scoreboard was helping. Being four shots clear of everyone else made it a little easier for him to focus on the notion that his job was to catch Furyk, not to worry about the others catching him.
Walking around outside the ropes, Mike and Tabitha Furyk were counting down holes, tryng not to get ahead of themselves with their thoughts.
“Usually I like to walk around by myself,” Mike said. “I like to try to focus on what Jim’s doing and try not to get uptight. If Jim’s mom is with me, she’s like any mom—she worries about every little thing—and that can get to me. Tabitha’s usually with friends, so I just go off by myself.
“This time was a little different. The Exelon guys [the company whose name Jim wears on his shirt] were with me a lot of the day, and they actually did a good job of keeping me loose. Even so, I knew I couldn’t allow myself to think ‘He’s got it,’ no matter how good it might look.”
It only got better the rest of the front nine. Both players hit the sixth green in two, missed long eagle putts, and tapped in for birdies. Furyk had now followed one of Miller’s preround directives: he was one under par after six holes. So was Leaney, which was actually a surprise to most, who had thought the pressure would get to him.
In fact, while Furyk and Leaney were plugging along, the rest of the field was in full reverse. Singh and Price, the two players who had seemed the most likely candidates to make a move, were both two over par for the day after six holes and staggered through the rest of the front nine, both of them turning in 40.
Furyk, knowing he didn’t have to take any chances, kept hitting fairways and aiming at the middle of the greens. He parred seven, eight, and nine and turned in 35, meaning he was 11 under par for the championship. Leaney bogeyed both the seventh and the eighth, actually making a great bogey on number seven after his tee shot buried in a bunker. He had to make an eight-foot putt to avoid a double bogey.
“That bogey probably feels like a birdie,” said Roger Maltbie, who always walks with the final group for NBC.
The bogey at eight felt more like, well, a bogey. After a perfect drive, Leaney pushed his second shot into the right greenside bunker, yet another shot he had lost to the right. From there, buried again, he hit a superb shot to within 12 feet but missed the putt. Furyk’s par gave him a five-shot lead over Leaney with 10 holes to play. Only Mike Weir, who was at three under at that point, was fewer than nine shots behind.
“You know if this was Tiger with this kind of lead we’d all be on our hands and knees talking about how great he is,” Hicks said, as Furyk and Leaney walked to the ninth tee.
Miller was clearly bothered by the fact that no one was making a move. “The field is certainly folding as if Tiger’s in the lead,” he said in response to Hicks’s comment.
Things didn’t get any better for the chasers as they turned to the back nine. Singh, having bogeyed eight and nine, proceeded to bogey 10, 11, 12, and 13. Price had managed to settle down and was making pars, but that certainly wasn’t going to make Furyk nervous. The only players making any kind of move were guys who had been back in the pack, like Kenny Perry, who shot 67 to get to one under par, and Justin Rose, who shot 69 to finish at even par. Leggatt and Pride, the two surprise late-starters who had been in the third-to-last group, both came down to earth, shooting 77 and 78, respectively. Eduardo Romero and Jonathan Byrd, who had both been six shots back at the start, each shot 76.
In fact, by day’s end, not one of the nineteen players who began the final round in red figures for the tournament had shot even-par or better on Sunday. There was no doubt the golf course had played a lot tougher, but the fact that everyone went backward was stunning. “You hate to say it,” Miller said later in the day, “but most of these guys have gone out and played, well, stinkers of a round.”
The only person who had any chance at all to catch Furyk down the stretch—and it was the longest of long shots—was Leaney, who managed to stop the bleeding with a par at the ninth. Furyk also made par, meaning he led Leaney by five, and everyone else by nine or more, with nine holes to play.
Knowing there would be no Tiger Miracle and almost certainly no miracle at all, NBC was now clinging to Tom Watson and Bruce Edwards as if they were a life raft tossed from the Titanic, which, ratingwise, the telecast was about to become. If Woods had been running away from the field, not only would everyone be bowing and scraping, but the ratings would soar in the final two hours. If Phil Mickelson had a similar lead, the ratings would hang in because people would want to see him finally win that first major.
Furyk was a player people knew and liked, but he wasn’t going to bring people running inside on a summer day to see him win his first major. Perhaps if Woods or Mickelson had been chasing him, but not with (to use his full name) the Unknown Aussie Stephen Leaney chasing him.
Furyk is a bright, thoughtful man who is well liked in the locker room and by the media. To most fans, he’s the guy with the funny-looking swing, the move up and to the outside, followed by taking the club down and inside in a reverse-C motion.
He is methodical. Everything with him is routine: check the yardage, consult with Cowen, step up to the ball and take a practice swing, step back, tug on the pants, reset behind the ball without swinging, step up and swing. The bottom line is that it works. The fact that it doesn’t inspire screams has never bothered Furyk.
“It just wouldn’t be me to do a lot of fist pumping or try to get the crowd going,” he said. “I think I’ve always understood that my success means I have obligations to spend time with the media, to sign autographs, to interact with fans. But it isn’t something I’d ever seek out.”
Now his public persona was on the verge of becoming far more scrutinized if he became a U.S. Open champion.
“You know the first U.S. Open I played in back in 1966, Arnold Palmer was leading Billy Casper by seven with nine holes to play, and Casper was hoping to hang on and finish second,” Miller said as Furyk and Leaney stood on the 10th tee. “Next day he beat Palmer in a playoff.”
Palmer was always combustible, capable of shooting the 65 he had shot on the last day at Cherry Hills in 1960 to come from seven shots down to win his only Open; capable of blowing a seven-shot lead with nine holes to play. Furyk was much steadier than that.
And so, as the players headed for the back nine, NBC cut to an emotional, lengthy interview with Watson. Soon after, it followed with an interview with Edwards, who was struggling to talk because of the ALS but game to try his best to let people know how he felt about the outpouring of emotion he’d ex
perienced for four days. Not long after that, NBC showed Edwards and his wife, Marsha, with a flag from the 17th hole at Pebble Beach, that Ron Read, a longtime USGA official, had found and presented to Edwards that day.
The flag was a duplicate of the one used at Pebble Beach during the 1982 Open during which Watson had famously chipped in at number 17 to beat Jack Nicklaus, arguably the most remembered and replayed shot in Open history. Edwards’s house had been decorated with flags from Watson’s most memorable wins, but he had lost all of them several years earlier in a fire that had been set by his ex-wife. Read, who lives at Pebble Beach, found another one and brought it with him to Olympia Fields.
WALKING TO THE 10TH tee, Leaney had another talk with himself. He had shot 37 on the front nine—one over par—and was still comfortably in second place, leading Weir by three shots at that moment and a handful of players by four.
“I looked at the board walking off nine and realized those guys were still in position where they could catch me for second,” he said. “I had to have a talk with myself then, because I knew, absolutely knew, that if I started trying to protect second place I’d go backward. I didn’t want to be one of those guys who skids on the back nine at a major and goes from second to 20th. There have been plenty of guys who have done that.
“So when I walked onto the 10th tee, I told myself that I could still win the golf tournament. Sure, five shots was a lot, and Jim was playing well, but it wasn’t out of the question. There had been a couple holes on the front where there could have been a two-shot swing, and it didn’t happen. If it happened just once, the lead would be three, and maybe he’d start to feel the pressure. As good a player as he is, he was still in a place he’d never been before.”
Furyk’s thoughts were far less complicated. In fact, he was doing everything he could to empty his mind of all thoughts other than yardages and club selection and reads on the greens. The only voice he wanted to hear was Mike Cowen’s, discussing the next shot with him. He didn’t want to think about his parents or about Tabitha, who was already fighting her emotions as the back nine began, or about his daughter, who was playing happily at the day-care center set up for the players and their families.
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