Graham DeLaetBernard Brault
Graham DeLaet was fighting the cut by the time he reached the back nine during the second round of the RBC Canadian Open on Friday. The 28-year-old from Weyburn, Sask., was even-par for the tournament at the St. George's Golf and Country Club, and he knew the cut would be one under and perhaps even another stroke lower.
DeLaet was hitting the ball beautifully, but his putter hadn't warmed up. The greens were soft and receptive from a heavy early morning rain, and he was driving the ball well enough to stay out of the dense rough. His fellow Canadian Mike Weir, the 2003 Masters champion now struggling with his game, had said earlier this year that DeLaet was already one of the 10 best ball-strikers on the PGA Tour. He was showing that, but needed to finish off holes by making more birdie putts.
It's a tricky living, this business of travelling the world to get a ball in a hole in as few shots as possible. DeLaet's wife Ruby, mother Marilyn and father Norm were following him, and they were all too aware that he had missed six cuts this year by a single shot. Still, he was on the Canadian Tour last year and here he is, a rookie on the PGA Tour who posted a tie for third place at the Shell Houston Open last April.
DeLaet had room to make a move in his country's national championship.
He was still even for the tournament when he teed it up on the par-three, 213-yard 13th hole. The cup was cut in the back right of the green.
DeLaet short-sided himself in the rough - hardly an easy up and down.
But he took a big, soft, slow swing and the ball flew sharply up in the air as if he were throwing an underhand pitch to a batter. The ball alighted on the fringe of the green only 30 feet away, and rolled so slowly to the hole it seemed possible to read the printing on its surface. The ball stopped three feet above the hole.
DeLaet was in that precarious position where most putts were must-makes. He and his caddy Basil van Rooyen examined the putt. Van Rooyen stepped away to DeLaet's right. DeLaet made the putt and then bombed his drive on the 480-yard 14th hole down to the flat area of the fairway. He was tied for 82nd place, outside the cut line. The low 70 golfers and ties would qualify for the last two rounds.
DeLaet had 152 yards to the hole. He looked up at the treetops to assess the wind. It was blowing at a decent clip. But the grass clippings that van Rooyen tossed in the air came right down. Confusion, confusion.
DeLaet had lifted, cleaned and placed his ball back in the fairway according to the rules of the day after the rain had led to the possibility of muddied golf balls. Some St. George's members were bemoaning the PGA Tour's order to cut the rough from 4 1/2 inches to four inches Wednesday night. But the course really wasn't playing that easy. It's really a par 68 for the tour pros, given that many were hitting mid-irons to the (supposedly) par-five ninth and 11th holes.
DeLaet settled on his club and swung. The ball landed and stuck like a dart on the soft green, 15 feet right of the hole. He walked confidently to the green, and soon made his classic arms and shoulders stroke. But his ball was always just left of the hole. DeLaet, who is 114th on the PGA Tour's money list with $564,040 (U.S.), needs to stay inside the top 125 to retain his full playing privileges for next year. Making putts helps.
Next up was the 570-yard par-five where the green finishes in the clouds. Arjun Atwal and Chris Stroud, with whom DeLaet was playing, laid up on their second shots within 110 yards of the hole. DeLaet ripped a 3-wood from 300 yards out and came within 50 yards of the green. His little feel shot was over the top of the hole and finished seven feet above it.
That didn't go down and a bogey on the 16th after a missed green, and a birdie on the 17th where DeLaet made a 15-footer left him needing to birdie the final hole to have a chance of making the cut. He drove into the rough but managed to rip a 6-iron 186 yards to the hole. He was left with an eight-footer to get to one-under par.
The putt stayed left and so DeLaet had shot 70 to finish at even-par 140 and miss the cut. He walked to the scoring trailer and before he got there he stopped for a minute. "Ruby," he said, and his wife joined him. He put his arm around her and she put hers around his.
DeLaet went into the trailer at almost the precise moment that Weir emerged to meet the media. Nobody asked for DeLaet until Weir was finished.
But before that happened, DeLaet stopped just inside the clubhouse to chat for a moment. He was his usual accommodating self.
"I hit it awesome for two straight days," he said. "I'm more than disappointed with my putting, though. I lacked in speed the first round and started losing confidence."
A moment later DeLaet said it was more disappointing to miss the cut at the Canadian Open for him than at any other tournament. To observe him hitting shots and conducting himself on the course, though, was to realize how much game he has, and that he is likely to win on the PGA Tour, and more than once. He, like Weir has done, will in time demonstrate his ability at this highest level of the game: the PGA Tour.
Weir has won eight times and will work hard to find his game again - there's never been any quit in him and there isn't now. He is defiant and determined. DeLaet has similar qualities. There's every reason to believe that he will one day contend at this tournament that is so important to him and his fellow Canadian golfers. One missed cut at the Canadian Open is a dent, not a destroyer.
Beverley Smith: Hadwin leads Canadian contingent into the weekend
Also read: Weir misses Canadian Open cut
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and, most recently, he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 11 books, including The Natural Golf Swing, with George Knudson (1988); Links: An Insider's Tour Through the World of Golf (1990); The Swing, with Nick Price (1997); The Fundamentals of Hogan, with David Leadbetter (2000); A Season in Dornoch: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands (2001); Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); and his latest, This Round's on Me (2009). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca.