The Scottish wind favors Johnson
What a crazy week at the British Open. Iowa's favorite son, Zach Johnson, won at St. Andrews on Monday in a four hole playoff over Marc Leishman and Louis Oosthuizen to win his second career major tournament along with his 2007 Masters victory.
The biggest golf story of the week though was the crazy stormy Scottish winds on Saturday. They were bad enough to force a ten and a half hour weather delay. The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews had no choice but to push the last round to Monday for the first time since 1988.
For the first two rounds, it was like another US Open had broken out. Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth were on the top of the leader board along with Jason Day. Dustin Johnson fell apart on the weekend, finishing in the middle of the pack, after completely dominating the first two rounds. Mr. Spieth, all of 21 years old, almost completed the third leg of the Grand Slam, but missed the playoff by only one shot. (And he did have a 4 putt that didn't help either.) Jason Day, who rebounded from a virus that caused him to have vertigo at the US Open, also missed the playoff by one shot.
No one would have picked Zach Johnson to win the tournament on Wednesday, but he took advantage of the different weather conditions when nobody could drive the greens. He wedged and putted his way to the championship. With this victory, Johnson will probably get into the World Golf Hall of Fame as he already has 12 tour victories.
The Phillies are actually playing pretty well coming out of the All-Star break, even though it is way too late for it to matter much in terms of the season. They have won five of the first six games in the second half. Just in case you're wondering, I had no clue that the Phillies were actually going to call up rookie phenom Aaron Nola after my prediction in last week's article. Haha! He was the only Phillies pitcher to lose in the last week, but he actually pitched very well in his debut. As has been typical for the Phillies this season, the offense gave him no run support at all and lost the game 1-0. Let's hope they can pull some wins against the Cubs this weekend.
