James Hahn Salvages The 2015 NoTrust-A-Lead Open
Riviera was tough. Major tough. The firm greens almost reached 13 feet on the Stimpmeter after morning mowings. The poa was turning grey. The old girl required intense precision like never before.
Granted, some of the 2015 Northern Trust Open difficulty came from contrived elements. The fairway widths were down to nothing, with a few laugh-out-loud-to the naked eye landing areas (1, 3, 5, 8, 12, 15, 17, 18), no doubt the club's desperate last attempt to compensate for not getting the U.S. Open it so wanted and won't get by presenting bacon strip fairways.
That said, the rough surrounding those fairways was entirely manageable and rarely the hack-out stuff we saw at Torrey Pines a few weeks ago. But with all sorts of elite and rising players fighting for the lead and a chance at history, the same story of late emerged: elite players unable to hold leads. Or even elite players unable to make 5 on par-5s from the fairway...with a wedge for their third shots.
There is no nice way to encapsulate the 2015 Northern Trust Open antics as anything but a mix of choking and punitive defensive golf wearing the lads down. After three days of defensive golf, names like Garcia, Goosen, Furyk, Singh, Cabrera, Spieth, etc... flirted with taking command but ultimately fell victim to the many perils of Riviera's setup. For lovers of last-car-standing golf it must have been gratifying. But knowing the history of many events at this storied event, the inability for anyone to take hold of Riviera and separate themselves will make James Hahn's win a peculiar one in L.A. Open NoTrust Open lore, salvaged by his clutch playoff birdies to edge Dustin Johnson and Paul Casey.
Mark Lamport-Stokes, writing for Reuters:
Best known for his "Gangnam Style" moves at the 2013 Phoenix Open, James Hahn announced himself to a much wider audience by winning his first PGA Tour title at the Northern Trust Open on Sunday.
Doug Ferguson of AP added an Academy Award component to his lede:
Too nervous to look, too stunned to dance, James Hahn won the Northern Trust Open for his first PGA Tour title Sunday by holing a 25-foot birdie putt on the third extra hole at Riviera.
In a wild finish off Sunset Boulevard just as the Academy Awards was getting started, Hahn wound up with the trophy against a field of far bigger names to earn his first trip to the Masters.
Jason Sobel tries to answer the inevitable question: who is James Hahn?
Hahn was the tournament’s low-budget indie answer to those blockbuster hits. He’s never won a major, isn’t romantically linked to any starlets and didn’t jump straight to the PGA Tour from college.
No, less than a decade ago, this dude was a shoe salesman.
True story.
He was 24 years old and waiting for his golf career to take off. Before it did, he took a job working in the salon shoe section at two Nordstrom’s stores – one in Walnut Creek, the other in Pleasanton.
“I sold a lot of shoes,” he says now with a smile. “I was pretty good at it.”
It won't mean much to non-Angelenos, but back nine leader Sergio Garcia hit quite possibly one of the worst drives I've seen a professional strike in some time, leaving himself 10 paces behind Dave Stockton's infamous drop-kick hit in 1974 with a tiny persimmon driver. Stockton roped a three-wood in to the green and made birdie to beat Sam Snead. (Sergio did see the plaque but as you might surmise, did not stop to read what it said.)
On 18 @TheSergioGarcia was 10 paces behind the Dave Stockton plaque. pic.twitter.com/OphvzTtJHB
— Geoff Shackelford (@GeoffShac) February 22, 2015
The video highlights...starting with Golf Central's report.
Hahn's gutsy wedge shot and birdie on the second playoff hole that reminded us these guys are good.
And the clutch winning putt from the third playoff hole.
Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 05:36 PM
Reader Comments (64)
Regardless of DJ's character issues, he is the story of February. To come back from nowhere and play like he has shows exceptional talent and also pretty good management handling.
Any chance the course will ever be rewarded a PGA Championship? Or is the PGA too hell-bent on having it's championship at its own courses, seemingly all east of the Mississippi?
Congratulations to Hahn.
First Kostis got it wrong when he said if they had anything in their hand besides driver on 10 in the playoff then they were laying up because it was playing so much longer than regulation. Both Casey and Johnson were past pin high. Then McCord and Feherty say neither Hahn nor DJ will attempt a shot at the pin, especially DJ who had no chance. Apparently they were trying to do their best "Rossie" impersonations.
My conclusion from your brief critique of the setup at Riviera is that 13 on the Stimpmeter is excessive to the point of being unfair and that eight of fourteen fairways is too many to be "reduced" in width.
Alright then. Accepting that conclusion, this reader asks the question, what tick of the Stimp, becomes excessive, the 11th or the 12th for surely 10 is country cub Saturday member slow; and what is the proscribed width that makes a fairway unfair to a field of players that carry their average metal woods (driver plus 3 woods ,the majority of clubs selected on non par 3's), distances in excess of 280 yards? Alternately one might ask how many fairways may be excessively tight without creating overall unfairness, merely an exacting standard?
I could not help but noticing the link to George Thomas' book on the same page in which you vilify the setup of his course. We all respect your research and work in the area of architecture; perhaps an elaboration on what would be the right thing to do with this American classic course would be more interesting to your readers than today's reductionist sniping.
The backstory you allude to about bitterness on the part of the Riviera Board of Directors having been overpassed by the USGA, and their subsequent decision to punish the PGA by "embarrassing" its top players deserves elaboration.
If you write it, truly they will read it.
Regards, from the Eastern Long Island, Home of American Golf.
Robert A. Durkin
I, too, am curious as to the real reason for the vilification of the course setup by our host.
Help me Kostis: what's up with Sergio during the interview? He seems resigned to lose. As he reached the top of his back swing on 18, I thought "uh oh."
More so than any touring pro, he seems always capable of the dreaded double cross with his big stick out. None of us will forget that pro tracer duck hook at the Ryder Cup. Truly epic.
Glad Hahn won. Seems like a nice guy who truly appreciated the moment. Not a DJ fan, although their flop shots on 10 in the playoff were spectacular. The wet greens obviously helped, but that only made their shots out of the rough that much more dicey.
The "good work...?" The golf shots to commercials ratio reached a new low in the first two hours of the broadcast. It got to the point where you could easily miss any golf action while trying to stop your fast forward during the commercials. Throw in the porn music that CBS feels it has to start in the background any time there is even a hint of ambience from the course, and you have the blueprint for how CBS has decided to deal with upcoming competition for new and improved broadcasting of golf.
I'll say it again, Fox is going to eat their lunch by actually putting the viewer where he wants to be -- on the course and in the game instead of in suffocating booths with bloviating announcers.
I don't think that the skinny fairways are just fot the tournament, to many country club players think their course is to easy and won't cut down trees or widen fairways. Would love to have the Riv members jump on their private jets and play Royal Melborn right now and see what they think about the nice wide fairways and need to hit it on the correct side
Also for all of those complaining about the commercials - go buy yourself a DVR. Or go ride a bike.
Set up was over the top - 10 green is ridiculous. Rather see -10 or -15 and none of the tricked up course - that's a classic in it's own right.
If that's the real Peter Kostis posting what is BFTD?
Sergio and TIger both need a shrink. Sad to see this so talented guy not be able to close.
Watched almost all of it yesterday in real time (no TIVO, and lousy weather in NM) and enjoyed most of the commentary, with the exception of McCord. Just don't understand why he feels he has to talk incessantly - he brings the broadcast way, way down. But, like Chris Berman, until someone in power tells him to shut up he will continue to blather on.
Listening to PK say "KonicaMinoltaBizHubSwingVisionCamera" or anyone else say "theMetLifeBlimpSnoopy2from1500feet" over and over and over again has the same effect on an audience as a Power Point presentation where the speaker reads aloud every slide projected on the screen, i.e., after about the 10th time you have to listen to what you can see with your own two eyes, you're ready to kill and/or press the power off button...
Just SHOW it!
shotlink on sergio's drive on 18: 235 yds to left rough, 255 yds to hole. i like his interview post-round, he seems to have matured some in his outlook on golf and life.
from l.a. times on stockton's shot in 1974 (i did not know anything about this):
As Stockton stood there that day in '74, he had a one-shot lead on Sam Snead, who wandered over to mention to Stockton that he had birdied the last two holes at Riviera to beat Ben Hogan. That was in the 1950 L.A. Open, Hogan's first outing in 11 months after his near-fatal auto accident.
Stockton later related, in a 2004 book by Michael Arkush and Ron Cherney titled "My Greatest Shot," that Snead's perceived gamesmanship angered him. He yanked his drive way left into the deep rough, 244 yards to the pin.
"I remember the ball was about eight inches below my feet," Stockton said, "and Sam was standing out on the fairway next to my caddie."
Stockton, still fuming, hit a three-wood to 12 feet and won the tournament by two shots.
"After I hit it," Stockton said, "I walked past Snead and said, 'I guess Hogan didn't hit it that close.' "
There is a plaque at the spot of Stockton's shot. He has said he has tried that shot at least 20 times since and never come close.
Fun project for someone: Can someone run word recognition software through golf broadcast transcripts to identify the 8-10 words unique to each tournament? (Kikuyu, gnarly, Sunset Boulevard, Bogart, Hogan, Pacific Palisades, gum trees, etc). What do they say at Colonial? Hilton Head? John Deere?)
Not sure, but get ready to hear BEAR TRAP about 300 times over the course of the next 5 or 6 days.