Ames Wins Players Championship
Stephen Ames, the 42-year old journeyman professional from Trinidad became the 2nd oldest player ever to win the Players Championship in Ponte Vedra, Florida. Ames definitely caught lightning-in-a-bottle today and shot a 5-under, 67 to win by 6 shots over Retief Goosen from South Africa.
Ames has only won one other tournament on the PGA Tour, but you would have never known it by his spectacular play, especially down the stretch. While 4 of the top 5 in the world were falling by the wayside, Ames kept hitting fairways and greens en route to the biggest win of his career. Ironically, this win comes only a few weeks after Tiger Woods eliminated Ames from the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship in a 9 and 8 lopsided victory.
The other surprising story this Sunday was the total collapse of Singh, Goosen, Els, Mickelson, Woods. Goosen and Singh had realistic chances to give Ames a run for the trophy, but neither could sustain a run of consecutive birdies. As usual, the golf course stole the ultimate show and while the winning score of -14 is outstanding, the rest of the field had more than their share of problems handling the TPC at Sawgrass.
Ames now qualifies for the Masters, which is two weeks away now and look for grumbling to begin there once the players start arriving because the powers-at-be at Augusta National have lengthened the course once again and the results have pretty much eliminated the medium-length hitters. The brain-trust at Augusta evidently isn’t aware you don’t have to stretch a golf course to 7500-yards to make it tough. Look at Hilton Head, where the course is very short by tour standards, but every year, the best in the world have a tough time navigating this gem of a course.