Rubenstein at the Honda Classic

by Lorne Rubenstein

This week, Lorne will bring us frequent updates from the Honda Classic as the PGA Tour's Florida swing begins, leading to the first major of the season, The Masters.

6:30 pm et...

Weir's back nine was more of the same as on his front side, except that there was more good than bad as far as his swings in the brutal winds went. I'll get to those in a moment. First, the stuff that went wrong.

He missed the fairway badly on the second hole--his 11th--but caught a tree and the ricochet sent the ball back to the fairway. Weir hit the bunker with his second and then hit a fine bunker shot to tap-in distance. At the par-4 sixth where the wind was ripping into his face, the test was on. Could he trust what he's been working on with Jim Flick and come up with a good drive? He pulled his tee shot into a difficult spot in the right rough, and stood at the side of the tee staring into the water there. It appeared he was doing some deep thinking. Then, on the par-three seventh, which was playing straight downwind, Weir came out of his shot and the ball was always left of the green.

Then there was his putting, which continued to hurt Weir's chances of bringing in a decent score on a day when par 70 was in the top ten. He missed for pars from five feet on the third, four feet on the sixth, and four feet on the seventh. Weir missed six putts inside five feet during his round. He made four inside 8', and did hole one bomb for birdie. That was from 35' on the fifth.

Still, Weir hit plenty of really solid shots that he controlled in the wind. He and his caddy Pete Bender discussed shot and club selection before Weir pulled the trigger on any shots, and they appeared to work well together. There wasn't a lot of banter. It was all business, which would be expected on such a difficult day.

I really liked the tee shot and the second shot that Weir hit into the idiot wind on the eight hole. He smoked both, and his second shot was always working toward the hole before the wind killed it and brought it up short. And on the last hole he drilled his tee shot to the right side of the fairway with the hole cut back left. From there he hit a shot that penetrated the wind and came up 20' short of the hole. But he putted the putt.

It all added up to 77, obviously a poor start as far as the score goes. We chatted after this round beside the putting green, to which he went immediately to work.

"That killed me," Weir said of his putting. "I never read the greens right. I'd think I had an uphill, into the grain putt and hit what I thought was a good putt and it would go five feet by, and I'd have that straight downhill. My putting surprised me. I've been putting so nicely."

Weir said that he and Flick have been working mostly on his set-up, and that he's been hitting the ball very well on the range. "But it's not easy always to trust it on the course, especially in conditions like we had. I didn't feel comfortable over some shots."

But, Weir added, he hit enough good shots to take something positive out of his round as he builds towards next month's Masters.

"I'm trying to get rid of the Stack & Tilt stuff," he said of the approach he'd worked on before going with Flick. A golfer using that method stays on top of the ball during the swing rather than transferring weight. "It's all about building good habits. I'm going to think about the good stuff out there today, and forget the bad stuff. I'm just trying to build on the small victories."

Weir is struggling, for sure. He'd probably have been better off had he not gone to the Stack & Tilt approach. But golfers are always trying to improve, and he had suffered a neck injury a few years ago and felt staying over the ball rather than moving back would help. So now it's all about small victories and trying to think about those and get to bigger victories. Weir agreed with something the late George Knudson said.

"It's not what you do, but what you attempt to do," Knudson said. Weir knows what he's attempting to do. He didn't do it enough in the high winds that expose any faults to post a good score. But he did it enough to keep on keeping on. I hadn't seen him play since last summer, but I've of course seen his scores. They've been pretty high, and today's was also high. But from what I saw, I think he's on the right track. There's no guarantee he'll play top-notch golf again, but from what I saw, he's making progress with his swing.

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