Wacky Bank Championship

Trevor Immelman fell apart the week after winning the Masters. I guess his head was not in it. Keven has his stats from the Augusta, however:

* 1st in driving accuracy (48/56 fairways, 85.71%)
* 4th in driving distance (287.50)
* T2 in greens in regulation (51/72 greens, 70.83%)
* T3 in putting (1.56)

That’s pretty much outstanding.  No one was as sharp as Immelman from tee to green, and he
was able to maintain the laser-like focus for the entire 4 rounds.  His only mistake was a double
on the 70th hole, the par 3 16th.  Whether his ball ended up in the drink because of a cross
breeze or because of a mishit, he ended up with a double-bogey and still won by 3 strokes.  His
drives were well-placed, his approach shots were never far from the pin, his pitching was
incredible and he seemed to be making almost every putt.  He was able to put himself in perfect
spots and as a result he only had 2 3-putts for the entire round.  Immelman became the first
South African to win the Masters since Gary Player in 1978, exactly 30 years ago.

This week the PGA features Wacky Bank’s (WB-NYSE) Tourney. The best nickname for a symbol on the Big Board, hands down.

Good visit Kevin at PGA 365 for more golf action.

The Wachovia Championship has quickly become a premiere event on the PGA Tour. Played at Quail Hollow Golf Club, the tournament has boasted some top-notch winners since inception including Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk, and Vijay Singh. Even with Tiger out of commission for some time, the tournament will be stacked with talent including Adam Scott, last week’s winner of the EDS Byron Nelson Championship. Also in the mix will be Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk, Vijay Singh, Geoff Ogilvy and Sergio Garcia. Consider this tournament the warm-up event for next week’s monster Players Championship.

After a ho-hum performance at The Masters, look for Phil to be rested and sharp this week. His T-5 finish at Augusta was respectable and typical of Phil (in the sense that he had another great Masters overall) but a 75 in the 3rd round took him out of contention on Sunday. Mickelson, who was the winner of the Player’s Championship last year, generally plays well for the entire first part of the season up to this point, and then starts a “decline” if you will. That’s not to say he won’t or can’t win again in 2008, but historically a large amount of his best finishes and wins come in the first part of the season. I’m going to also stick with Adam Scott for a 2nd Tier 1 pick. He really is on the verge of greatness, but won in a weak field last week. Scott has also won the Players Championship before as well so he’ll be working hard to shoot low this week in preparation. When he’s on, he’s on…if he can hit the ball long and straight off the tee and attach pins as well as he did last week, he should have a good showing. What about Singh and Furyk, you say? Well, no one can deny their talents (and past wins here!) but I just don’t have the faith in them at this point. Remember the Big 5? Right now it’s really the Big 2 - Mickelson and Woods have pretty much established that they’re consistently the top two players in the world, but everything that comes after them just seems to be a big revolving door of players, with Furyk and Singh slipping to 8 and 9 (respectively) in the official world rankings.

Tier 2 contains an interesting mix of characters. First on my list is Stewart Cink. You know the deal with Cink - he’ll play 4 good rounds, maybe even have a great round, but he won’t win. Cink has had an awesome year with 3 top-3 finishes and only 1 missed cut. I’m sticking with Ian Poulter this week as well, with no real reason why…just a hunch. He’ll need to keep his wits about him but I like his style of play and I think it fits this course well. Anthony Kim and Stephen Ames are solid replacement choices for Cink and Poulter.

Trevor Immelman is back again this week after a horrendous post-Masters showing, shooting double-digits over par and missing the cut. He’s out. Luke Donald, he’s in. He is such a solid pick from this group week in and week out, and I’m not quite sure why he’s Tier 3 because he should be Tier 1. Luke has played well this year and out of the large group of Tier 3 players this week he clearly stands out as a solid choice. I’m also going to go with Jose Maria Olazabal. I just like this guy. I think he can get a couple of solid rounds in and he makes sense as a back-up to Donald and vice-versa should either one start to stray off. 

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