LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Around these parts, even the creative sorts who conjure up the Disney World rides and design the attractions, dubbed Imagineers, couldn't sell tickets to this ride if it was located in the theme park across the street.
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Too wild, too scary. It would be the shortest line on the property. But the title of the ride would be catchy, though. Something like Death Race 2010.
This potentially careening, career-wrecking attraction would require the ticketholders to take Dramamine, guzzle Pepto-Bismol, wear a crash helmet and strap themselves into a bumper car with a HANS device. The steering wheel would need an air bag, if not a barf bag.
Forget who won. More than any other tournament of the year, outside of Qualifying School finals, this week is mostly about who survived the final financial hurdle of the season.
The final money-list tally of 2009 will show in simple black-and-white print that Nicholas Thompson and Jimmy Walker jumped inside the top 125 this week from the nether regions. But that hardly explains the "how" part of Sunday's surreal equation at the Children's Miracle Network Classic.
Over the course of a predictably wild day at Disney, when the weather and the scores were both warm and warmer, a total of seven players who had begun the week outside the top 125 made moved inside the projected magic number over the course of the season's final round.
Rich Beem, who held on to retain his card by finishing 122nd, said it best as his head was spinning trying to fathom the upheaval after he finished.
"I can't handle this," he said. "I'm gonna go have a beer."
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| Mathias Gronberg moved into the top 125 for a while, but he didn't stay there. (AP) |
As evidence of the pressure of the moment, both Thompson and Walker barely made it off the course with their skin, nearly collapsing down the stretch before surviving -- with an assist from others who couldn't quite deliver the goods -- to earn their tour cards for next year.
Thompson started the week at 132nd and was sitting at a projected 116th as he played the 18th, then hit his drive next to a tree and found his ball among the roots. He bent the hosel of his 6-iron trying to hit a big slice left of the green, but overcooked it and it almost sailed into a water hazard along the right side of the green.
"The club is tostada," he said, slang for toast. "It was moving about like an 18-handicapper [had hit it]."
It was dry by perhaps 10 feet, and Thompson badly chunked a wedge shot onto the green, leaving him an uncomfortable 50 feet. How unsettling was it? His lag put was nearly a gag putt -- he left it nine feet short. But he somehow collected himself and ran it in.
"I knew if I missed that I didn't have a chance," said Thompson, who skidded to a projected 122nd with the closing bogey.
Thompson hopped in his car and bolted for his pad in South Florida, and didn't learn of his fate until he got a phone call while on Florida's Turnpike. Had he known what was happening in his rear-view, he might have crashed.
Over the course of the next hour, he was bumped out of the top 125, not to mention assaulted by several other players who didn't quite unseat him. Maybe it was best that he had no sniff of a clue.
Walker's ordeal at the end was even more hand-wringing. He began the week at No. 130 and was cruising along at 5 under for the day, absolutely safe and well inside the projected top 125. Nobody was even eyeballing him as a possible casualty, until he hit it sideways into the water on his tee shot on the 17th and made a double bogey.
"That's not my favorite tee shot," Walker said.
For good reason. He shoved his drive on the 18th into a fairway bunker and knocked his approach onto the fringe, where he knew he needed to save par from 75 feet or he'd have some painful explaining to do. He chipped to 5½ feet, then backed off and re-marked his ball after he addressed it.
He wasn't overwhelmed by the moment or mulling the bad possibilities. The alignment aid drawn on the side of the ball was slightly off, he said.
"I don't putt until it looks good," Walker said. "Rock the shoulders and keep the head down."
Keep your lunch down, too.
Walker finished 125th and kept his card by $2,997 over Will MacKenzie, who is already exempt for next season, anyway. Robert Garrigus, who finished 127th, will really be kicking himself -- had he merely made the cut this week, he would have earned around $7,000 and kept his job. He missed his card by $5,480.
As Walker stood behind the 18th green, sweating out his future with one eye on the tour computer tracking the money list, he laughed about his recent health issues, a strained shoulder and a bad bout with the flu, which knocked him out of two Fall Series events.
"You can't think, 'Poor me,'" he said. "Nobody cares out here."
Displaced from the exempt players for next year along with Garrigus, who began the week at No. 123 in earnings, was David Duval, unseated from his 125 position. Duval also missed the Disney cut.
Then there was the legion of guys who climbed the mountain and fell off the other side.
Joe Ogilvie, Matt Weibring, Jeff Maggert, Mathias Gronberg and MacKenzie all began the week outside the top 125 and jumped inside the number at some point during the round, however fleeting. None of them held on.
Underscoring the volatility of the day, Weibring eagled the 10th hole to jump to a projected 125th on the button, Because if the upheaval around him, before he hit his tee shot on the 11th, he had dropped to a projected 128th.
As Thompson was heading home, he was dodging traffic and bullets. When Carl Petterssen birdied Nos. 13 and 14, one more birdie would have knocked Thompson out of his perch. But Petterssen missed the 16th green and bogeyed, falling from a projected No. 128 to 136th. It was the tenuous theme of the day.
With three holes left, Zach Johnson was four-way tie with Thompson at T13 and birdied to knock him to No. 126, as Garrigus jumped moved to 125th. Ninety seconds later. Walker double-bogeyed the 17th and fell behind Thompson on the leaderboard.
Amid the cresting and crashing, two former Ryder Cup players had a shot to cement their futures and failed
Chris Riley, who started the week at No. 126, seemingly had everything under control when Duval and Garrigus missed the cut and he made it to the weekend, but he didn't make enough birdies. He was so far back in the field that the birdies he mustered Sunday didn't generate enough of a money move. He finished T40 for the week and No. 129th on the money list.
"I really finished golf tournaments off poorly this year," Riley said. "That's the reason I am where I'm at. But I'm getting older and I'm starting to think about it coming down to the end, so nerves were starting to play."
Maggert, a former Disney champion who started the week at No. 127, moved inside the top 125 several times early in the day, but a bogey on the 16th was crucial. Then he missed a 20-footer on the 18th for birdie that might have been enough, leaving him at No. 128. Maggert, who wasn't exactly in a talkative mood, plans to play at Q-school finals Dec. 2-7.
"You guys don't want to talk to me all year and now you want to talk to me?" he said afterward, before he walked off.
Ogilvie started the week at No. 135 and surged early, cracking the projected top 125 in the morning after two early birdies, but he ended his round with 14 straight pars and fell back to 132nd.
After his eagle on No. 10 moved him to a projected 125th, Weibring played the final eight holes in two over and cemented his fate with a double-bogey on the 17th.
Perhaps the biggest absurdity of the wild day was the fate of Roland Thatcher, who began the day at a projected 123rd after missing the cut. Perhaps he played it both smart and safe by staying home -- and improved two spots by the end of the day.
Beem, who won a major championship, provided a terrific postscript for the week. Or maybe we should call it an obit.
"I must say it was about as odd as I've ever felt," he said of being under the gun this week. "I never expected myself to feel the way that I did. You know, when somebody tells you that you can't do your job next year and you know you're so close, that's not such a good feeling."
