J.B. Holmes, Camilo Villegas and Bubba Watson have been lumped together so much this season that surely some enterprising photographer will pose them in fleur-de-lis tunics and shoot them storming the Bastille while crying, “Vive le 3-wood!”
Actually, if the legends are to be believed, these would-be Musketeers never would be seen wielding a 3-wood, or any weapon besides their trusty drivers, at The International this week.
More than anyone else on tour, even Tiger Woods or John Daly, the trio of rookies has come to symbolize a style of play known as “bomb & gouge” – as in, bombing the golf ball as far as they can off the tee. If they airmail their tee shot onto the fairway some 340 yards away, goes the theory, great. If it lands in the rough, that’s all right, too, because chances are they’ll still be able to muscle it onto the green with a wedge.
“It’s a totally different game,” tour veteran Steve Stricker said. “When I first came out, it was important to get it into the fairway, important to lay it up short of the bunkers, play position golf. Now, guys just take out the driver anywhere.”
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THE COURSE
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It’s hard not to when you’re playing on a PGA Tour that has embraced the “bigger is better” credo, a truth that’s found in the trampoline-like fairways and minimal rough that are de rigueur at tournament courses. While players used to relish the challenge of finding creative ways to get the ball into the hole, you would think you had stumbled into a 7,500-yard daycare center when you hear the wailing that accompanies any deviation from the regular course setups.
Such was the case at this year’s U.S. Open, when the USGA implemented its “graduated” rough, which penalized players the farther their tee shots went off the fairway. Similarly, there were changes at the Memorial, where the furrowed raking in the bunkers had multimillion-dollar players threatening to call their good friend, the president, if they saw it again anytime soon.
Throw in the technological advances that have helped players get increased distance, along with the Stepford courses and you get, according to many in the game, a generation of players who can hit the ball a long way but have little idea how to actually play golf.
“We need the people who hit it far, but only time will tell to see how good they really become, or how they adapt to courses where strength isn’t the only issue,” veteran Nick Price said. “That’s what makes a complete golfer, when you play a course that isn’t suited to you but you can still win on it.
“They need to play more of the Colonials and Hilton Heads, courses that aren’t all about length.”
Give them an inch
When Corey Pavin won the recent U.S. Bank Championship at the almost absurdly short 6,759-yard Brown Deer Park course in Milwaukee, it was his first victory in 10 seasons. His previous victory came at the Colonial in Fort Worth, Texas.
After his victory, Pavin’s 2006 stats showed an average drive of 264.5 yards off the tee. Watson, meanwhile, was leading the tour in driving distance at 319.3 yards per poke.
Of course, Hank Kuehne, who once famously hit driver, 9-iron on Castle Pines Golf Club’s 644-yard, par-5 first hole during The International, has long had prodigious length but has just eight top-10 finishes in 113 career starts.
But that lack of success doesn’t seem to apply to this trio. Watson finished fourth in the first full-field event of the season, the Sony Open, then grabbed a third in his fourth event. Holmes, who is second on the tour in driving distance (314.7 yards), won the FBR Open in Phoenix in just his fourth start. Similarly, Villegas, who is eighth at 305 yards, has two second- and one third-place finish this year, the latter coming in the prestigious Players Championship.
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STATS
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And while Stricker said it’s not only the younger players who are embracing the new philosophy, it almost seems to be a prerequisite. As recently as four seasons ago, Daly was the only player to average 300 yards off the tee. Through July there were 15 players on the list, including nine rookies.
Sorrowful John may have come out with his recent tell-all autobiography and its country-music catalogue of squandered fortunes and failed marriages because he realized he needed to do something to take a little bit of the spotlight back from the youth brigade. It’s clear he’s no longer the only guy wowing the crowds by going for the fences.
“It was a good marketing strategy for John, the whole, ‘Grip it and rip it’ thing,” Price said. “People love to see the ball hit a long way. Hats off. We need that, but you don’t get out here unless you do everything well.
“John has always had a wonderful short game, but he’s played on that hitting the ball a long way thing for a long time. Or he did until this bunch of guys came out and started hitting it even farther.”
When he won the FBR Open this season, Holmes led the field in putting, but the only thing anyone really remembered was his 308-yard average off the tee. That, by the way, was only 13th best in the field. Then again, Holmes’ numbers may have been brought down because on his final hole he didn’t even hit driver. He instead chose to cozy a 3-wood onto the fairway.
A 354-yard 3-wood
“You get a lot of, ‘You should hit driver on every hole,’ or ‘Why are you hitting 3-iron this hole?’ ” Holmes said. “Well, it’s because you’re supposed to hit 3-iron on this hole. Heaven forbid I actually play the right shot. We are PGA Tour players. We don’t just get up there and hit it as hard as we can on every shot. We actually can think our way around the golf course.
“I get tired of the stereotype more than being grouped with them. We are the young guys out here, and we definitely have a different style of playing golf. But it’s the idea that people think all we can do is hit it far, that we can’t putt or we can’t chip. We can’t hit it straight, just a long ways. None of us would be out here if that was the case. You can’t win a tour event, get seconds or thirds, without chipping and putting. It’s just not possible.”
Grand style
While Watson bombs courses with a pink-shafted driver, and Holmes can lay claim to playing for his high school team as a third-grader, Villegas takes the “different style” factor off the charts.
Though he’s only 5-feet-9, 160 pounds, Villegas stands out on the course as much as anyone not named Tiger. Dressed in iridescent colors that make Jesper Parnevik’s old outfits seem muted, with longish hair and brooding good looks, Villegas has driven galleries crazy all season. People Magazine included the Colombian in its list of the 50 “hottest” bachelors.
“My wife will look up at the television when we’re watching a tournament, and the first question she asks is, ‘Is Camilo playing?’ ” said Clair Peterson, the tournament director for the John Deere Classic. “He was at our tournament two years ago and nobody knew who he was. Now it’s like Antonio Banderas is out there playing.”
But even if he looks like he could have been Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell’s sidekick in the remake of “Miami Vice,” Villegas has acted like the man in the gray flannel suit throughout the season. Ask him about his People-bestowed status and he says it was “interesting.”
His reaction to the near-swooning that goes on when he walks along fairways?
“It’s fun to have people supporting you,” he said. “It motivates you to keep working hard, and maybe give them something to smile about.”
All season long, the focus has been about golf, Villegas said, and trying to soak in as much of the ins and outs of his new profession as possible. Holmes said he has taken the same approach, though he admits that winning the FBR changed things.
“I wasn’t surprised than I won, but it was a little earlier than I anticipated,” he said. “The goal is still to come out every week and do your best and try to win, but overall, my goal was to win, so now I’ve had to set new ones. Winning another tournament, getting into the top-30 on the money list, stuff like that.
“They were all goals that I had set before, but they were up a little higher on the list. Once you (cross off) the lower ones, then you start to look at them.”
Staying the course
Of course, much more than driving philosophies have changed on the pro tour in recent years. When Price was making his mark as the game’s best player just over a decade ago, pro golf likely would have never come up on People’s radar. In recent years the game has seen a marked rise in its hipness quotient, making celebrities out of lesser-known players.
While the young guns may be off shooting commercials or making the cover of Tiger Beat, Price said that won’t help them a bit when it comes to making the cut at a major.
“People always want to jump on the new young stars, predicting ‘the’ person to watch,” Price said. “Michelle Wie is a perfect example. I don’t think she’s won yet, yet she gets 20 times as much attention as Annika Sorenstam, which is kind of sad in a way.
“It’s not right to put someone up on a pedestal before they’ve achieved that status. It can hurt a lot of people’s careers. They say, ‘What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts’ – these guys may get big contracts because they’re high profile, and they make a lot of money, but how do they deal with that and carry on with their careers?”
According to Villegas, the answer is hitching up your electric blue britches with the accompanying orange alligator belt and shoes and go back out to the range.
“The main goal is to play good golf, but it’s not only about playing golf, there’s a lot more than that. There’s (doing interviews), there’s spending time off the course with certain people,” he said. “Nobody is fully prepared for it. You never reach the point where you can say you’re fully comfortable.
“There’s always room to improve. I mean, there’s no limit. So you constantly try to be on top of the ball and do your stuff to try to just keep up with a very tough job.”
Who are these guys?
Here’s a look at PGA Tour rookies J.B. Holmes, Camilo Villegas and Bubba Watson:
J.B. HOLMES
Age: 24
Birthplace: Campbellsville, Ky.
College: Kentucky
Key stat: Leads the tour by hitting 57.4 percent of his drives more than 300 yards.
Did you know? Changed name from John to J.B. earlier this season to avoid references with the former pornography star.
Quote: “I just got kind of tired of it.”
CAMILO VILLEGAS
Age: 24 Birthplace: Medellin, Colombia College: Florida
Key stat: Ranks second on tour with 11 eagles this season.
Did you know? Reads putts by reclining, almost lizard-like, down to the green.
Quote: “Obviously I do it because it works.”
BUBBA WATSON
Age: 27
Birthplace: Bagdad, Fla.
College: Georgia
Key stat: Ranks seventh on tour in hitting the green in regulation from off the fairway (57.6 percent)
Did you know? Used golf clubs to hit Wiffle balls in his back yard until his father took him to a golf course at age 9.
Quote: “He gave me a 9-iron and told me to hit the ball hard.”
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
