Payne Stewart lost to Lee Janzen–again. Janzen did it by shooting a 68–again.
“I’m just now realizing the coincidence,” Janzen said.
He found himself seven shots behind Payne Stewart in the final round of the U.S. Open Sunday with 15 holes to play. After he shot a closing 68 to Stewart’s final-round 74, he had won his second Open–by a stroke. It tied Janzen for the third-largest comeback in Open history.
In Thursday’s first round of the Motorola Western Open, Janzen caught Stewart from behind for the second round in a row. The difference this time was that there was less at stake and Janzen could look Stewart right in the eyes.
“It was somewhat awkward,” said Janzen of being paired with Stewart. “The chance of us playing together this week when there are 156 in the field is pretty slim. But it was less awkward because we’ve been friends for awhile. We didn’t talk about golf. We talked about our kids going to camp, about the fires in Florida.”
Stewart opened with a 72. Janzen made up a three-shot deficit on Stewart and surged four shots ahead of him. A seven-shot swing.
Frank Nobilo, ’97 Western runner-up, who completed the threesome at Cog Hill, shot a 78.
“I certainly was not playing (Stewart),” Janzen said. “And I know he was not playing me. That’s the last thing he wants to do, get in a duel with me. If we both shoot 4, 5 under and the winner is 15 under, what have we accomplished?”
Stewart led Janzen by three when he birdied the 525-yard par-5 fifth hole and Janzen settled for par. By the time the pair had reached the 16th tee, however, it was Janzen who led Stewart–by four shots. Stewart double bogeyed the eighth when he hit a 7-iron into the back bunker and couldn’t get up and down. He bogeyed the 10th, birdied 11 and bogeyed 12 to slip to 2-over par before getting back to even par with birdies at 15 and 18. Janzen had birdies at 10, 11, 15, 16 and 18.
“What happened last week didn’t even faze us at all,” Stewart said. “What happened last week happened last week. I had a great start today, but then I forgot how difficult this course is. I got to thinking I was invincible and hit a few bad shots. Par is not a bad score. I’m proud of the way I finished.”
Flesched out: Left-hander Steve Flesch scrambled to one of the two 69s Thursday (Jim McGovern had the other), but he had to work hard for it, especially from the rough, which he found often during a scattershot front-nine 36.
“This is kind of my mini-U.S. Open for this year,” said Flesch, who found the fairway consistently on the back to close with a 33. “It’s such that if the fairways were 5 yards narrower out there and the rough was about an inch longer, it’s set up just like the U.S. Open. I really didn’t expect it. The last time I played this golf course was, besides Tuesday, in an Illinois tournament in college (Kentucky). It was like 35 degrees and the grass was dormant. It was brutal. Then I got here and the grass was longer than I remembered it.”
Local front: David Ogrin, formerly of Waukegan, and Burr Ridge’s Jeff Sluman appeared to be the only players with area ties with a chance to make the cut. Ogrin shot a 2-over 73, Sluman a 74. Former Northwestern star and 1988 Western Open champion Jim Benepe had a respectable 75.
Crowd shrinks: Thursday’s crowd of 31,877 was down substantially from last year’s opening-day attendance of 40,106. The difference? Last year Tiger Woods was the reigning Masters champion. And last year the tournament fell on its traditional dates–the 4th of July weekend.
