Sips of Maginnes: Burgers, ghosts and nice guys

text size

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Let's start with something really important and agree that Phil Mickelson is just wrong.

Five Guys is not as good as In-N-Out Burger. Not even close. Lefty said that he ate Five Guys every day last week while competing in the THE PLAYERS Championship. Coupled with the fact that he was eating Krispy Kreme the Monday after the Masters and Corey Pavin may want to hold off on sizing his uniform for the Ryder Cup. But there may be something to Phil's particular affinity to Five Guys. Could it be that the name actually represents his life? Phil, Butch Harmon, Dave Pelz, Dave Stockton and Bones Mackay make up Five Guys trying to take over the world. No. 1, that is.

* Camilo Villegas missed the cut by a shot at THE PLAYERS but stuck around for the weekend. He could have headed north to Darlington, S.C., and caught the NASCAR race on Saturday night. Countryman Juan Pablo Montoya invited Camilo to the race but Villegas, ever the gym rat, stayed in Ponte Vedra working on his game and his physique. Camilo was spotted both Saturday and Sunday in workout gear going in and out of the fitness trailers. In his muscle shirt Camilo looked as fit as a featherweight boxer with less body fat than most of us have in the bottom of our feet.

* Three gentlemen plagued by the worst kind of golf demons were trying to get their personal ghosts to fly in formation on Sunday. Tim Clark waltzed into the final round as the most prolific non-winner in PGA TOUR history. Robert Allenby has sat by and watched the heroics of others who have kept him out of the winner's circle for nearly a decade on the PGA TOUR. And it had been a dozen years since Lee Westwood's only win on American soil. He had finished in the top three in each of the last three majors, though. Perhaps the fact that Tim Clark didn't know ifpars at Nos. 17 and 18 would be enough to win THE PLAYERS helped him.

* Never before has a player gotten more attention after shooting an 80 in the final round than Jason Bohn. Jason was the first person outside the Woods camp to know that Tiger was not only ailing but was going to call it a day on the seventh hole on Sunday. Jason, ever the professional and perhaps the nicest guy on TOUR, patiently answered questions about playing one third of a round with Tiger. He was empathetic after having been through three back surgeries over the last few years. Is there another sport where the media would even ask the members of a losing team about an injury to an opponent?

* Kris Blanks shot 70 in the final round of his first PLAYERS Championship. After the round Kris said that Tiger had in fact been in the physical therapy trailers on Saturday afternoon getting treatment on his neck. At the time, though, the incident didn't merit much attention. The trailers are there because players need treatment, stretching and adjustments on a daily basis. The extent of the injury that sidelined the No. 1 player in the world is not yet known. An MRI this week will go a long way to determine whether or not Tiger does have a bulging disk in his neck as he suspects.

* Four major champions and the 2009 PLAYERS winner may be crossing John Merrick off their Christmas card lists. Late Friday afternoon, playing in the next-to-last group, Merrick made birdie at the 18th and became the 70th player to post a 36-hole total of 2 under or better -- eliminating all the guys at 1 under from weekend competition. Those players eliminated included Angel Cabrera, Vijay Singh, Stewart Cink, David Toms and Henrik Stenson.

* One more note on the cut. Jay Haas, playing in his record 29th PLAYERS, hung around the cut line for two days but made a double bogey at the final hole to finish at even par for the championship and miss the cut by two. At 56, Jay would have been the oldest to make the cut at THE PLAYERS (eclipsing Julius Boros, who was 55 when he did it in 1975) and it would have extended his TOUR record cuts to 593. Most important, though, he would have gotten to play the weekend with his son Bill, who has a chance to do something this year that he has never done. Bill has a good chance to make more money than his father in a single season. Perhaps it is time for the kid to take dad to dinner.

* Finally, Tim Clark won THE PLAYERS by doing something that he doesn't get an opportunity to do very often. With precision accuracy with the driver Tim was able to shorten the golf course and literally play a handful of holes from closer to the green than his much longer-hitting counterparts. By aggressively hitting driver off every tee, Clark, who ranks 173rd in driving distance, was actually long this week. Where most players were throttling back, hitting fairway woods and irons off the tee on par 4s, Tim was bombing away to victory.