The AT&T National’s dream scenario involves Congressional Country Club reconnecting with its kingmaker roots.
With Tiger Woods on the shelf and most of the game’s remaining marquee names absent from the proceedings in Bethesda, the second edition of the tournament needs a little luck to achieve memorable status. The event’s best bet lies with golf’s younger set.
Short on established stars, this week’s field is loaded with tomorrow’s would-be titans. A total of 10 twentysomethings boasting top-100 rankings will begin play Thursday on the 7,204-yard, par-70 layout. These aren’t the young guns of yesteryear (see Charles Howell), the underachieving group that followed Tiger on tour in the late 1990s only to wallow in his wake.
This crop of sub-30s arrived on the scene with a little more mean, a little more game and a different scale for success.
“I think we’ve seen a fundamental change in the game over the last few years,” said Brandt Snedeker, a 27-year-old who leads the group with five top-10 finishes this season. “I think guys coming out of college are more prepared and hungrier now. They’re not just content to stick out here. They want to win.”
Snedeker collected his first PGA Tour victory at the Travelers Championship last year and nearly added a major to his resume three months ago at the Masters, where he tied for third. His superb short game kept him in the mix at Augusta National well into Sunday’s finale before he was upstaged by 28-year-old Trevor Immelman, the South African who calmly held off Woods and the rest of the field down the stretch.
Immelman never truly had contended in a major before his three-stroke, wire-to-wire romp at Augusta National. Most young players need multiple chances to conquer (if ever) the Slam Everest (see Sergio Garcia). Not the unflappable South African.
“I’ve always been pretty good once I’m in with a chance of winning,” said Immelman, ranked No. 14 in the world. “That’s when I’m at my most comfortable. Once I got my nose out in front there, I was really stubborn, really strong mentally. I blocked out all the distractions to such an extent there that it took about a month for me to actually get my head around the fact that I’d won a green jacket.”
Immelman’s uprising came in the middle of a seven-week stretch in which six different twentysomething players captured six PGA Tour victories. Before Woods’ departure and Kenny Perry’s veteran renaissance, 2008 was shaping up to be the year of golf’s youth movement. That still stands as a major subplot for a season in which twentysomething players already have equaled last year’s total of nine victories.
“After a few years when it seemed like everyone was kind of beating up the younger guys for not reaching so-called expectations, it’s nice to be part of the wave that has achieved quite a lot early on,” Snedeker said. “You look around, and there are talented young guys everywhere.”
At the top of that talent chart stand Argentina’s Andres Romero, 27, and brash American comer Anthony Kim, 23. The former nearly won the British Open last season and then fulfilled the promise he displayed at Carnoustie by winning the Zurich Classic of New Orleans earlier this season. The latter might be the most naturally gifted player to land on tour since Woods came out of the amateur ranks in late 1996.
“I think Anthony Kim will be a great player,” said tour veteran and two-time U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen, who watched in amazement as Kim pasted one of the strongest fields of the season at the Wachovia Championship. “He hits the ball very solid, and he’s got a very sound swing. He hits it long, putts very well. He doesn’t play a lot of different shots. I’d say that’s the biggest hole in his game right now. Then again, some guys try and play too many shots, so you’ve got to be careful not to fall in that trap. But he’s young. He’s going to learn what shots he has to have to be even better, and I’m sure he’ll learn them. He’d be my pick.”
Given Congressional’s past, another pick could be Camilo Villegas, the 26-year-old Colombian who arrives at Old Blue playing as well as anyone in the field. In his last three starts, the charismatic swashbuckler known as “Spider-Man” for his occasional gravity-defying, putt-reading routine has finished third at the AT&T Classic, tied for 18th at the St. Jude Championship and tied for ninth at the U.S. Open. Throw in a shared victory with Bubba Watson at last week’s unofficial CVS Charity Classic, and Villegas looks primed to record his first PGA Tour victory after posting six top-three finishes over the last two-plus seasons.
“There is a difference in what ’breaking through’ means to the media and what it means to the players,” said Villegas, who obviously has addressed the issue of his anticipated debut victory one too many times. “I think that I have had a nice career. Obviously, you’d like to win here and there, but it’s golf, and I feel pretty good with the direction I’m going.”
Villegas should feel particularly good this week given Congressional’s history of identifying future stars. As host of the Kemper Open, Old Blue knighted Fred Couples in 1983 and Greg Norman the next year, providing the first PGA Tour victories in both Hall of Fame careers.
“That history certainly can’t hurt,” Villegas said. “But I know my time will come.”
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