Fore !

Will Phil recover from his U.S. Open debacle? Me thinks Lefty will have a difficult time getting over this one. Phil spent years striving to lose the label of “choker,” “can’t win the big one,” “too tricky for his own good.” Finally he broke through with his Masters win, then appeared to have established himself as a worthy competitor to Tiger. But now? My two cents is that he is right back where he was before the Masters win. Just as Manny will always be Manny, Phil will always be Phil.

Is Annika over the hill? No way. My money is on Annika to win the British Open, the one major that has eluded her. I think she is about to put her foot down, down on top of all the young guns who aspire to challenge her as the world’s #1 player. Unlike Phil, Annika has a history of mental toughness, the ability to make good strategic decisions and execute shots under pressure.

But on the topic of Phil, I wonder what it’s like to sit behind a tree, off the fairway and have absolute confidence that you can slice a ball 210 yards and land it on the green. It must be incredibly hard to resist the urge to try the shot. You figure without U.S. Open pressure he could make that shot 99 times out of 100. Not bad odds, really.

Is it my imagination or is Dottie Pepper quickly establishing herself as one of the best golf analysts on television? The combination of Dottie Pepper and Johnny Miller makes for entertaining golf coverage. I loved Johnny’s comment on the eighteenth hole about Phil, “you don’t have to ride in on a white stallion. You can limp in and say ‘thanks for the trophy.’” I haven’t heard Johnny skewer someone like that since he ripped into Hilary Lunke saying she doesn’t have the game of a U.S. Open champ.

This Thursday marks the opening of the 2006 Women’s U.S. Open, and to Johnny’s point, I’m guessing Hilary Lunke has no shot. And have you noticed that for all the press Michelle Wie, Morgan Pressel, and Paula Creamer have been getting that the two winners of the Majors this season have been a couple of oldies but goodies, Karrie Webb and Se Ri Pak. How about Juli Inkster for the win this week?

And speaking of the young Americans who have supposedly taken over the women’s tour, this weekend’s winner at the Wegmans Championship was Jeong Jang, one of the rising South Korean stars. There are 32 (count ‘em) South Koreans on the women’s tour. And this past week, 7 of them were in the top 20 on the leaderboard. They’re here and they’re good. And they will continue to challenge the young Americans—in fact all the women, on the LPGA Tour.

While Annika hasn’t won the British Open, a virtual unknown, Ben Curtis won the British Open in 2003, coming from nowhere to beat the likes of Vijay Singh, Tiger Woods and Davis Love. Since then, he has pretty much returned to nowhere on the PGA Tour. Until this weekend. He re-emerged and led wire-to-wire at the Booz Allen Championship. At press time, he led by 7 strokes (the 4th round was delayed by rain and was to be completed on Monday), and appeared poised to win another tournament. Sometimes the golf gods do smile on you.

Leslie Andrews is a LPGA Teaching Professional at Montauk Downs Golf Course