Cink, Stewart

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares179 Views

    Names Old and New Top British Open Leaderboard

    by

    Conditions were calm at Royal Liverpool as the final men’s golf major of the year began. Don’t expect them to stay that way.A strategy for winning one of golf’s major championships only rarely looks like this: Find your flight canceled and the next one delayed, walk about a half-mile to passport control, endure a grinding wait at baggage claim less than 48 hours before the tournament’s first tee times and stare down jet lag.It worked well enough for Stewart Cink on Thursday at the British Open.“When the gun goes off and you start in the tournament, you’ve got that adrenaline, and adrenaline does wonders for your jet lag,” Cink, 50, said. It also seemed to do plenty good for his scorecard, which reported a three-under-par 68 that positioned him high on the first-round leaderboard at northwest England’s Royal Liverpool Golf Club.It is forever a dangerous game to forecast a tournament’s fate after a single round, and it seemed particularly risky after the early going at Royal Liverpool, where the leaderboard’s top reaches blended old names and new ones and an army of formidable, familiar challengers lurked just below.There was Cink, who won the 2009 Open at Turnberry in Scotland by outlasting Tom Watson, then 59, in a playoff. But Christo Lamprecht, an amateur who plays for Georgia Tech, finished his five-under round with the lead. Tommy Fleetwood, a past Open runner-up, and Emiliano Grillo, who birdied five of his last eight holes, matched Lamprecht later in the day, letting them begin Friday with one-stroke advantages over Brian Harman, Adrián Otaegui and Antoine Rozner.Fleetwood, Grillo and Lamprecht had two-stroke leads over a group that included Cink and Wyndham Clark, the winner of last month’s U.S. Open.The amateur Christo Lamprecht finished the first round in a three-way tie for the lead.Jared C. Tilton/Getty ImagesRory McIlroy, who won the British Open in 2014, when the tournament was last played at Royal Liverpool, finished at par, and Cameron Smith, looking to defend the title he won at St. Andrews in Scotland last summer, was one over.With the weather at the course, known as Hoylake, expected to deteriorate during the tournament — the R&A’s chief executive, Martin Slumbers, listed the weekend’s options as “wet” or “very wet” — Thursday was perhaps the best chance for the 156-man field to make shots without diabolical complications. (The players certainly had better odds of shooting par or better than finishing one of the course’s soft-serve ice cream cones before seeing it melt into a sticky, spectacular mess.)Fleetwood, who is from Southport, England, just 30 miles north, is a crowd favorite nearly everywhere but especially in Britain. On Thursday, he delivered the kind of sterling play that has lately eluded him early in the major championships. He had not finished below par in a major’s first round since the 2021 Open at Royal St. George’s, where he ultimately tied for 33rd.“As first rounds go, that’s absolutely the one you wanted, and to get off to a good start feels good,” said Fleetwood, who struggled with early tees but left No. 5 emboldened by a birdie. He returned the stroke on the next hole, before picking it up again on the seventh. He birdied four holes on the back nine and started a streak of three at No. 14.England’s Tommy Fleetwood on the 14th green. He birdied four holes on the back nine.Paul Childs/ReutersLamprecht’s rise began sooner, with a birdie on the third hole. But it came only after a poor tee shot at No. 1 — when he felt probably his “only bit of nerves” all day, he said — that prompted a pep talk from Devin Stanton, his caddie and his assistant coach at Georgia Tech.“Listen, you’re playing the Open as an amateur,” Lamprecht said Stanton told him. “No need to stress.”Lamprecht, who at 6-foot-8 is among the tallest players ever to compete in the British Open, now being held for the 151st time, responded in force. He stumbled twice on the back nine but used four birdies within that stretch to finish at 66.“I think the way I played today I earned to be on the top of the leaderboard, as of now,” Lamprecht, 22, said. “It’s not a cocky thing to say. I just personally think I believe in myself, and I guess stepping onto the first tee box if you’re a professional or a competitor, you should be believing that you should be the best standing there.”Cink, a Georgia Tech alumnus who still uses the practice facility there, has gawked over Lamprecht’s talents, including his enormous power, and marveled again on Thursday afternoon.“As a 50-year-old golfer seeing a guy like him, he is pretty much like your basic nightmare, watching a guy like him coming up,” Cink said on Thursday. “He can hit it like 330 in the air and he hits those little shots around the green so soft, it’s amazing. He’s got a lot of really good potential in front of him.”Not that Cink was ready to cede the tournament to Lamprecht, not after a day when he almost entirely avoided Royal Liverpool’s 84 brutish bunkers. Their flatness, Cink observed, sends a momentum-loaded ball toward the lip, unimpeded by gravity. And despite his score, he did not regard Hoylake as particularly suited to his strengths.“But playing smart and being disciplined and patient and keeping your heart in the right place, that fits my game,” said Cink, who turned 50 in May and has been mulling whether to play more events on the PGA Tour Champions, as the senior tour is known these days.The defending champion Cameron Smith, left, with Wyndham Clark during the first round at Royal Liverpool on Thursday.Paul Childs/Reuters“It’s required on courses like this, and it comes down to execution,” said Cink, whose wife, Lisa, is his caddie this week. “Today I executed very well, and it was pretty evident in the scorecard. It was a nice clean day. Putted well from inside eight feet. That’s the kind of stuff you have to do in a major.”The cut, set at the top 70 plus ties, is expected Friday night. Headed into the second round, the past major winners Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas were all in danger of seeing their ambitions of winning the claret jug end quickly. Thomas, who won the 2017 and 2022 P.G.A. Championships, shot 11 over on Thursday, putting him in a tie for 153rd.But some other major champions, including Brooks Koepka, Hideki Matsuyama and Scottie Scheffler, were only four strokes off the lead, laying the groundwork for a jostle toward the top.Cink insisted Thursday that the tournament was hardly the exclusive dominion of the game’s younger players. Two years ago, he noted, Phil Mickelson won the P.G.A. Championship at 50, and then there was Watson’s for-the-ages performance in 2009.“I have no doubts that I can win this,” Cink said. “It’s going to take a lot. It’s going to take some really, really exceptional play on my behalf, but it’s in there.”Indeed, even a player as preternaturally confident as Clark — last month he said that his May victory at the Wells Fargo Championship had (correctly) persuaded him that he was good enough to win a major — noted the rigors of a tournament like this one.“This is just Day 1,” Clark said. “Got three more days.” More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Golf

      With Son as Caddie, Stewart Cink Gets a Hole in One

      by

      Cink sank the 24th hole in one on No. 16 in Masters history. He would have rather made the cut.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Stewart Cink knew the shot had a chance, the way so many shots seem to on No. 16 at Augusta National Golf Club. So did his youngest son, Reagan, who was his caddie for the Masters Tournament.The ball thunked onto the green, commencing a leisurely, 11-second roll before it fell into the cup for Cink’s first hole in one in 20 appearances at the Masters. Cink, who had wielded an 8-iron, raised his arms and embraced his son. A double high-five followed.“Happy birthday,” Stewart Cink told his son, who turned 25 on Friday, Reagan Cink recalled in an interview later. “It’s a pretty good present.”The marquee shot hardly redeemed Stewart Cink’s frustrating week at Augusta, where he missed the cut after scoring a 76 on Thursday and one shot better on Friday, leaving him at seven over par. But the shot was a bit of a balm.The setting was familiar for hole in one aficionados: With Cink’s shot, No. 16 has now been the site of 24 such successes over the history of the tournament, which was first played in 1934. No Augusta hole has surrendered more.Known as Redbud, the par-3 hole runs just 170 yards, making it the second-shortest at Augusta. Players strike the ball over the water to a green where three bunkers lurk nearby.“The way I do things with my approach shot, I don’t just try to hit a number — I try to hit a zone of numbers, usually like seven to 10 yards of space,” Cink, whose best finish at the Masters was a tie for third in 2008, said after his round. “On that one, I knew to push it a little further back because that bank brings the ball not only left but also back toward the tee. So that extra couple yards is exactly where it landed, and it hit my spot. It was the exact right curve, perfect contact.”Like his father, Reagan Cink said he thought the shot could find the cup. With his father still hoping to make the cut after finding the water at No. 15, Reagan Cink tried to keep his ambitions in check as the ball made its way toward the pin.“When you think it’s going,” he said, “then it pretty much never does.”True enough. But that did not stop his British Open-winning father from expecting the ball to wind up in the cup.“Usually a lot of times anyway, you hear it was kind of a mis-hit or whatever,” Stewart Cink, 48, said. “This was not a mis-hit. This was exactly the way I would have drawn it up. It was like a dream shot.”And as he watched the ball travel, the spectators sitting close by became a giveaway about its trajectory on the green.“They knew it was in, and they all got up,” he said. “When they got up, I knew it wasn’t missing.”No. 16 has seen a burst of hole-in-one activity in recent years, with nine golfers now having aced it since 2016.“It’s very special,” Tommy Fleetwood said after he holed a tee shot on No. 16 last year. “Doing it at a major is great, doing it competitively is great, but at Augusta is probably just another edge.”But Cink, who had been playing exceptional golf recently, would have sacrificed the triumph for a chance to play on Saturday and Sunday.“I’d throw the hole in one ball right in the water if I could make the cut and compete for two more rounds, but I’m missing the cut,” he said. “That stings more than the hole in one. It doesn’t boost my spirits like missing the cut hurts my spirits. I absolutely loathe not playing here on the weekend, and it hurts.”The shot, though, did make for an easy birthday present for Reagan.He got to keep the ball. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Golf

      Playing the Masters Is Different With Tiger Woods in Your Group

      by

      “It’s way different when you play with Tiger,” Stewart Cink said. Often, it’s hard to hear a thing.AUGUSTA, Ga. — Joaquín Niemann could not hear his caddie.He had made another Masters Tournament. He had navigated the thicket of spectators. Now, as the 23-year-old Chilean stood at Augusta National Golf Club’s first tee on Thursday, Gary Matthews, who was carrying Niemann’s bag, may as well have been anyplace else.Such is life playing alongside Tiger Woods.It was only weeks ago that Woods, whose doctors weighed amputating his leg after a car wreck last year, seemed certain to miss the Masters. But his decision to play in the tournament, his first professional competition since November 2020, instantly transformed how spectators would follow the action — and any player accompanying the five-time Masters winner at Augusta National.Woods’s presence in a pairing or group has long defined the playing environment around his slice of just about any tournament, with his fans, and quite often just the curious, offering up a barrage of cheers, commentary, cameras, bustle and scrutiny. The spotlight, it seems, only barely tilts away from him, if it does at all.And so the chaos, or whatever counts for chaos on a golf course, can make Fred Couples — a Masters champion, once the world’s top-rated golfer and a hero to baby boomer duffers — look more like an afterthought than a leading man. It can render Stewart Cink, a British Open champion and one of the finest golfers of his era, a merely thrilling bonus, or Francesco Molinari, also a British Open winner, something less than a pairing’s marquee name.“It’s way different when you play with Tiger anywhere, and Augusta National is no different,” said Cink, who has often had an up-close view of Woods at the Masters, and who had a hole in one on No. 16 on Friday.At times, Joaquín Niemann struggled to hear his caddie because of the crowd.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWoods, who earned the first of his Masters green jackets 25 years ago, has long commanded one of the largest Augusta galleries, with some other champions certain that a “Tiger roar” through the pines simply sounds different than cheering for other players. And with Phil Mickelson, one of Woods’s rivals for attention and affection, absent from this year’s Masters, Woods is even more the player with the greatest following around Augusta this week.The frenzy of this particularly intense week began well before Niemann, Woods and Louis Oosthuizen found themselves peering down the 445-yard No. 1 on Thursday. Couples, who played in his 37th Masters this week, joined Woods for a pair of practice rounds and was left agog on Monday, the first day the course was open to spectators.“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he marveled. Couples said he found a way to get to the tee where Woods’s fans “were only four deep.”He added, “They wanted to see the big guy, and they saw him, and they saw good golf. He gets that here all the time.”But frequency does not necessarily make the scenario easier for others pursuing their own ambitions.“The biggest thing is just the energy in the crowd and the intensity of the reactions and the scrambling for position,” said Cink, whose best finish at Augusta was a tie for third in 2008. “There’s a lot of movement out there.”Cink said that Woods had routinely tried to keep it a fair fight by allowing others to finish playing a hole before he did, keeping the crowd in place just a little while longer.“When you play with him, it’s busy, it’s noisy,” said Molinari, who won the 2018 British Open at Carnoustie when he was paired with Woods and, the next year, played with Woods on Sunday at Augusta. “I don’t think it makes a big difference if it’s here or somewhere else.”Woods, mighty as he is, has only so much control.Woods chatting with Oosthuizen, left, and Niemann on the 8th tee.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Thursday, the spectators began to amass around the first tee box long before Woods emerged from the clubhouse to start his tournament. A drone flew overhead. At least one man shouted “let’s go Tiger!” at least twice, though it was hard to tell in a crowd that seemed about 25-deep in places so people could see Woods (or maybe just the top of his cap) as he took his first shot.Niemann and Oosthuizen received polite, restrained welcomes from the crowd, which started to break up as soon as Woods, who hit first, finished swinging his driver, all the better to get a head start down the fairway or to the second green, to see Woods again.The din quieted enough on later holes that Niemann said he could, in the end, hear Matthews as he played his way to a three-under-par 69. He said he had even come to find pleasure in the enormous crowds.“They were always telling me to make sure you try to finish before Tiger, that way the people don’t start moving,” Niemann said. “But they were really respectful, so it was an enjoyable round.”Daniel Berger suggested that a worse fate than being paired with Woods was playing just in front of him.“If you are one or two ahead of him, then it’s always a struggle with people trying to run up to see him,” said Berger, who debuted at the Masters in 2016.Padraig Harrington, another British Open winner who has played with Woods, had a similar assessment.“It’s very difficult if you’re the group ahead of him,” he said. “It’s very, very difficult because the crowds are watching him and they’re moving on to see him. When you’re playing with him 20 deep, you can’t hear a thing because there’s so much going on.”But Harrington, who has won two Opens and a PGA Championship, had no complaints about life with Woods as a playing partner.“He’s actually one of the easiest guys to play with over the years,” he said. “He’s a very simple guy to play with. He plays golf. He says ‘good shot’ only when you hit a good shot. There is no messing around, no rubbish about it.”Woods and Fred Couples bumping fists during a practice round on Monday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPractice rounds are, of course, less pressurized, and Couples, who has long been close to Woods and is now in the twilight of his career, signaled that he sometimes plays the court jester. It appeared that way this week when Woods played with Couples, who won at Augusta in 1992, and Justin Thomas, who was born the next year and was 3-years-old when Woods first won the Masters.“I like to tell them stories, but usually on the tees it’s very quiet and I let them do their thing, and as soon as we step down the fairway there will be a story about this guy or that guy or me or Tiger,” Couples, who said that Woods and Thomas make him hit last, recalled this week. “Then we laugh until we get to a ball.”The crowds are always thick, and always watching, and always bouncing. But Couples said there is a benefit of playing with Woods and Thomas, all of the theatrics and distractions aside.“It’s nice because they only want to play nine holes,” Couples, 62, said. “I am great with nine holes.” More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Golf

      Why Are There More Successful Older Golfers Today?

      by

      They have learned to stay fit and play smarter. And the British Open seems to be their fountain of youth.From the 18th fairway in the final group of the British Open in 2009, Tom Watson, the five-time Open champion, hit a shot that flew right at the pin. For a moment, it looked like Watson, then age 59, would win the tournament for a record sixth time and become the oldest player to win a major championship. More