Castle Rock – Could we get a milkshake to go? Golfers hurriedly threw bags in car trunks and raced to the airport, after it required 12 hours, 26 minutes to finish The International on Sunday.
This was an all-day hike, with 6-irons instead of walking sticks. Did the best golfer or the toughest Boy Scout win?
In the end, Retief Goosen beat 62 competitors and sundown. Barely.
But, for this rain-plagued and still-misunderstood tournament of lost luster, it was definitely worth the hike.
After his membership among the game’s Fab Five was questioned by final-round disasters at recent Open championships on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, Goosen needed the boost of confidence far more than the $900,000 first-place prize.
“I was sort of wondering where my golf was going,” Goosen said.
“When you win a tournament, you put four good rounds together, and I haven’t been doing that this year.”
After a run of largely undistinguished recent winners that sometimes made the International look as if the proud event had matured into a tired gimmick at age 20, our local PGA Tour stop definitely was helped by celebrating a winner of Goosen’s immense talent.
This tourney is plagued by bad timing, stuck between the start of NFL training camp for the Broncos and the final major event on golf’s summer calendar.
While courses around the globe have bulldozed tee boxes and dug deeper sand traps to make it harder for Tiger Woods to dominate, the Castle Pines Golf Club has found out it is no fun, not to mention bad for business, to be Tiger-proofed.
Woods did not show for this tourney. Again.
He was joined on the sidelines by Vijay Singh of Fiji and South African Ernie Els, forced to cancel after being struck down by a fluke knee injury.
So much for the field’s international appeal.
Just when nothing else seemed capable of cursing The International, weather gods took the tourney’s name in vain.
Rain washed out the opening round, forcing 36 holes to be played Sunday, enough time under the hot weekend sun to empty an industrial-strength bottle of SPF 50.
The combination of glare and pressure caused burnout in golfers, and made spectators give up and go home with the outcome in doubt.
At times it seemed as if everybody remaining in the gallery was a friend or relative of Brandt Jobe, who grooved his swing as a kid growing up in suburban Denver.
How long did it take to finish the final two rounds? Let me put it this way: When Jeff Maggert and partners in an early morning threesome were tapping 15-footers on the putting green not long after dawn in Colorado, I was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, dozing in Seat 32A of an airplane lifting off a runway in Honolulu, catching a red-eye flight to the mainland.
And I arrived at the course in plenty of time to witness the leaders walk every painful step of the final round.
Dealing with jet lag is easy compared to climbing the hills of Castle Pines.
“Piece of cake,” pro Scott McCarron said, laughing. “It’s what we train for. That’s why they call us athletes.”
The long walk was spoiled for Jobe.
Shortly after noon, he stood tall and alone atop the leaderboard, with a commanding 9-point advantage over Goosen in the tourney’s quirky modified Stableford scoring system.
As the shadows began to grow, Jobe’s legs began to go.
“Did fatigue play a factor? Absolutely,” admitted Jobe, whose fourth round was sunk when he plunked an approach shot in the water at No. 14, a par 5 that under normal conditions presents an ideal birdie opportunity.
Instead of leading a victory parade through his old Colorado stomping grounds, Jobe stumbled down the stretch and departed town still in search of his first PGA Tour victory.
For once, touring pros felt like the rest of us Sunday hackers do, trying to survive, praying the beer cart arrived before the next bogey did.
This was an ugly tournament. Nothing went right. Except the winner was Goosen. In another 20 years, his name will look beautiful on the trophy.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
