Golf in New Orleans is just … different.
It isn’t major championship pressure. It’s something else entirely.
Players walk past the water hazards and semi-nervously keep one eye on the ever-present alligators, like former U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick did as he stepped off the ninth green Saturday with his brother and playing partner Alex.
They don’t have alligators in the Fitzpatricks’ hometown of Sheffield, England. Then again, the local team here isn’t bound for relegation like Sheffield United, even though the Pelicans now find themselves down 3-0 to Oklahoma City.
It’s golf with the swamps, the gators, the most unforgettable characters. A sample: A Forrest Gump lookalike ran around TPC Louisiana the entire third round Saturday. He jogged past me near the 18th green. The long hair, long beard, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company hat, red swoosh Nike shoes. Striking.
Maybe, it was …
“He’s like my favorite person I’ve ever seen,” said Mark Hubbard, two strokes off the 54-hole lead with playing partner Ryan Brehm. “I don’t think he was dressed like him. Like he was him. That beard looked super real, everything. It was phenomenal.”
All these guys can play golf amazingly well, even the guys on top of the leaderboard whose names you may never have heard of: Zac Blair and Patrick Fishburn.
As my late friend and fellow beleaguered golfer Howard Arceneaux once said, these guys chip like we putt. If you think golf is boring, try pulling off some of their up-and-down artistry from time to time. With people watching.
But to play well, to contend, to win in New Orleans, you can’t just be in the top 0.1% of the golfers on this planet. You have to embrace the different. The unusual. The downright oddball. You have to be able take notice of Forrest Gump hoofing down the gallery ropes or the occasional man-eating reptile mere feet away from your feet, then find the confidence and concentration to get back to business and drop the 15-footer for birdie.
Familiarity certainly helps. Blair and Fishburn have known each other since junior high back in Ogden, Utah. The Fitzpatricks shared the same house growing up and, you’d think, the same shag bag of practice balls. And the headliner duo — Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy and Ireland’s Shane Lowry — share a home island, Ryder Cup experience and lots of rounds played in the kind of wind that raked TPC Louisiana on Saturday and is expected to do so again Sunday.
McIlroy and Lowry got off to a slow start, just 1-under par through six holes, and looked like they’d get buried in Saturday’s more scoring-friendly best-ball format. Then they caught fire — well, mostly McIlroy did — making birdies on seven of the last 12 holes to close within two of Blair and Fishburn by the end.
“He hit that 6-iron into 9, and he rolled in the (birdie) putt to get us going,” Lowry said. “From then on it was Rory McIlroy at his best. It was a joy to watch.”
I’ve covered/attended a lot of golf tournaments in New Orleans, going back to the days at old Lakewood Country Club in Algiers with the likes of Lee Trevino, Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros. Or Phil Mickelson playing at English Turn. I’ve never seen any of them engender the kind of rabid adulation, the rock-star like support that McIlroy has.
When the Rolling Stones play Jazz Fest here this coming weekend, Mick Jagger and the old boys should do well to get this kind of reception.
We don’t have the benefit of ShotLink here this week, the PGA Tour’s stat program that tells you how far a player hit it and how close to the hole, is getting a USS Kidd-like overhaul.
But my expert golf repertorial skills (I’m eyeballing it) tell me Rory hits it a ton. He’s driving the ball places in the fairways where there are no divots taken by other players. Seriously. McIlroy talked about going down to Bourbon Street — briefly — and getting a T-shirt. Maybe the kind they have there that says, “Let the good times roll.”
McIlroy needs one that says, “Let the golf ball roll. Far.”
Even though they’re two back of Blair/Fishburn and one shot behind Luke List and Henrik Norlander, McIlroy and Lowry are the betting favorites to win Sunday. One big reason is the format. Unless you’re one of the fortunate few who gets picked for the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup, you never play alternate shot like they’re going to play Sunday. McIlroy and Lowry have that experience in abundance.
Maybe it will help them win. Maybe someone else will. It’s golf.
But it should be fun if the gators are hovering and the Gumps are running and the wind is blowing. Weird, fabulous, New Orleans kind of fun.