It took 90 years for someone to do what Francis Ouimet did at the 1913 U.S. Open: win a major championship in his first try at it. Ben Curtis matched that feat at Royal St. George?s by shocking the world with an Open Championship win.
Just eight years later, PGA Tour rookie Brendan Steele has a chance to do the same thing at the PGA Championship at Atlanta Athletic Club. He has a share of the 54-hole lead with unheralded Jason Dufner?at 7-under; the duo is a shot clear of PGA Tour rookie Keegan Bradley.
Sure, Steele won earlier this year in a wind-swept Valero Texas Open. But since surviving that final-round logjam to win in regulation, Steele has made just one more cut than he has missed ? and one of those events had none. Needless to say, no one saw this coming.
Maybe they should have, though. Steele is ranked 121st in the Official World Golf Ranking. Open champion Darren Clarke was 111th when he won at Royal St. George?s last month. See, in this age of parity where the sport is about to crown a 13th consecutive different major champion, the bulk of those winners have emerged from the lower reaches of holf?s version of the Bowl Championship Series.
The upper echelon of the OWGR is reserved for the most consistent players while the majors appear the place for the unknowns and the once-was-es to hop into the spotlight. Luke Donald and Lee Westwood have a fighting chance on Sunday, but they brought zero major hardware to Atlanta this week.
With the greatest golfer of our generation pronounced dead on arrival to this major and the manchild on whom the sport pins its wishes dealing with a self-inflicted wrist injury, the door is open for the likes of Steele to, well, steal a major.
And to cap off the whole thing, Steele wields a long putter. He would be the first guy to win a major using one. If this win could be made any more improbable, one need just add that guys with the longer flat sticks are 0-fer the universe with them in majors. Again, the best players in the world according to our accepted rankings almost universally have putting woes. The lone guy who doesn?t ? Steve Stricker ? still has a fighting chance to win on Sunday.
But karma is against a proven commodity like Stricker and working for the Man of Steele. 2011 begs for the latter to win.
A guy birdied the last four holes of the Masters to win in unprecedented fashion. The guy who choked the Masters away blew out the field at the strangest of National Opens. A man who took 20 years to get there finally took his Claret Jug.
Why not a long putter wielding, cut missing, one-time winning rookie to take Glory?s Last Shot?
Source: http://progolftalk.nbcsports.com/2011/08/13/man-of-steele-could-take-major-in-first-try/related
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