EastStandBlue
Life President
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- May 29, 2005
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Two weeks after Tiger Woods' misery at Hazeltine, He was rocked again at The Barclays by the most unlikely of contenders, 124 Seed Heath Slocum.
Sergio Garcia took an early lead after the first round, yet characteristically threw it all away by shooting a 75 the very next day. After this, the field was pretty open... Nobody wanting to stake a strong claim for the first round of the FedEx Play-Offs.
Like Garcia, Woods struggled in the opening rounds and, going into the third, was eight shots behind. He was joined by other Golfing heavyweights Ernie Els, Steve Stricker and Padraig Harrington in the middle of the mix, as the rookies and also-rans took to the top of the table.
Rookie Webb Simpson shot to the top after day two, while Steve Marino and Paul Goydos topped the table on -9 going into a final day that anybody could have taken.
Tiger took to the field and was soon on the prowl for some fowl, overcoming a bogey on the 4th with three birdies to finish -2 on the front 9. Harrington and Els shot towards the top but fell short, allowing Heath Slocum in for a shot at the lead. Nothing out of the ordinary there, until you hear that just last week, Slocum wasn't even sure he would be featuring in the Play-Off's and scraped into the cut... coming in just two points over and 124th out of 125 in the rankings.
Elsewhere, Tiger was finishing immaculately and, on the final hole, was left with a simple-by-his-standards 7 foot putt to tie the lead with Slocum, who was all of 21 foot away from the cup. You may have to read this twice, but it wasn't Slocum who missed.
Woods managed to evade the hole, a damning indictment of the problems he's been having lately, whilst Slocum slammed in his 20ft putt to take the tournament, the $1.35m prize money and, in rising from 124th to 3rd in the FedEx Cup rankings, a shot at the $10m prize fund at next months climax in Atlanta.
Sergio Garcia took an early lead after the first round, yet characteristically threw it all away by shooting a 75 the very next day. After this, the field was pretty open... Nobody wanting to stake a strong claim for the first round of the FedEx Play-Offs.
Like Garcia, Woods struggled in the opening rounds and, going into the third, was eight shots behind. He was joined by other Golfing heavyweights Ernie Els, Steve Stricker and Padraig Harrington in the middle of the mix, as the rookies and also-rans took to the top of the table.
Rookie Webb Simpson shot to the top after day two, while Steve Marino and Paul Goydos topped the table on -9 going into a final day that anybody could have taken.
Tiger took to the field and was soon on the prowl for some fowl, overcoming a bogey on the 4th with three birdies to finish -2 on the front 9. Harrington and Els shot towards the top but fell short, allowing Heath Slocum in for a shot at the lead. Nothing out of the ordinary there, until you hear that just last week, Slocum wasn't even sure he would be featuring in the Play-Off's and scraped into the cut... coming in just two points over and 124th out of 125 in the rankings.
Elsewhere, Tiger was finishing immaculately and, on the final hole, was left with a simple-by-his-standards 7 foot putt to tie the lead with Slocum, who was all of 21 foot away from the cup. You may have to read this twice, but it wasn't Slocum who missed.
Woods managed to evade the hole, a damning indictment of the problems he's been having lately, whilst Slocum slammed in his 20ft putt to take the tournament, the $1.35m prize money and, in rising from 124th to 3rd in the FedEx Cup rankings, a shot at the $10m prize fund at next months climax in Atlanta.
