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LEMONT, Ill. -- A wedge in hand as he stood over what was indisputably the biggest shot of the day, Steve Stricker had to momentarily back away from the ball just before he was set to pull the trigger.
A well-meaning fan standing in the throng of folks by the eighth green, just as Stricker was ready to let it fly Saturday, had unleashed a guttural "Steeeeeeeve."
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| Hats off to Steve Stricker after his eagle draws a roaring ovation. (AP) |
Plus, it's nice to be loved, eh?
"This is like night and day," said Stricker, who is a former college star at nearby Illinois. "Any other part of the country, they don't know who I am, pretty much."
Truth be told, we hardly recognize the dude anymore, either, since the improbable Stricker fairy tale gets taller and taller with every passing round.
Already a solid second in the FedEx Cup standings, the personable 40-year-old became only the second player since the tournament moved to Cog Hill Golf and Country Club in 1991 to hit all 18 greens in regulation and seems darned well positioned to take home the $10 million bonus next week.
For a couple of very lean years, Stricker was in a catatonic state, where he wasn't sure he even wanted to play the game anymore. Now he's in an otherworldly zone that seemingly has no end. He didn't hit a bad shot all day and made the game that drove him to the brink of quitting two years ago look positively easy.
"Nothing else matters at the time," he said of his current mental plane. "I wasn't thinking about scoreboards or who was leading the tournament. I was just out there playing."
In itself, that's a victory already. For those of you who have been asleep all summer, let's briefly recap Strick's streak of late, since it sounds like something from the Brothers Grimm: He played in the final pairing at the British Open and held the lead on Sunday at the U.S. Open, AT&T National and Wachovia stops. He finally held on two weeks ago to win The Barclays -- the four-event FedEx series opener -- a victory that proved so overwhelming, he broke down crying.
After all, his last stroke-play victory had come at Cog Hill in 1996 -- two months before some skinny kid named Tiger Woods turned pro. His game on the skids, Stricker in late 2005 had fallen out of the top 125 in earnings, failed to recover his card at Qualifying School and plummeted to No. 337 in the world rankings. It got to the point where he wanted stay home with his family rather than play more half-hearted, tepid golf.
"You know, things off the golf course change, your life changes, it evolves, and all you need is to have your game slip just a little," said Woods, who is one shot off the pace and will play in the penultimate group.
It was a slip, it was a slide; it was not pretty. Stricker wasn't clinically dead, but they were preparing the embalming fluid and the hole was dug. From six feet under to 7-under on Saturday, his climb from the depths of indifference ranks among the best comeback golf stories in years.
