Golf Course Digest

Kenny Perry is coming home.

Perry shot a 6-under 66 on Sunday to win the Buick Open by a stroke at 19 under, likely locking up a spot on the Ryder Cup team that will face Europe at Valhalla about 40 miles from his birthplace.

“I’m ecstatic,” he said. “It really won’t sink in until I’m actually putting on the red, white and blue.”

Perry was amazed he won at Warwick Hills for a second time because Woody Austin closed with consecutive bogeys to blow the tournament and Bubba Watson just missed a 12-footer that would’ve forced a playoff.While Perry was on the driving range, he backed into earning $900,000.

“I still can’t believe I won,” he said. “I feel like I need to go make a birdie out there to win.”

Austin and Watson shot 68s.

The 47-year-old Perry joined Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson s the only multiple winners this year on the PGA Tour, became the oldest player to win at Warwick Hills and joined a short list of multiple champions in the event. (more…)

His picture is on folders, notebooks, media guides, posters, billboards and even the ticket you would buy to see, well, him.

But Tiger Woods is home with an injured knee, and the Buick Open, like the rest of the PGA Tour as well as golf’s majors, will have to limp along without him for a while.

And limp it will, but not to the point of falling.

Sure, his very presence in professional golf has doubled ratings, purses and interest, but golf is fine at least for a year. The Buick Open is fine. The promised purse is in hand, the pro-am sold, the sponsors are on board and here it goes.

This is the 50th anniversary of the Buick Open, which means it has pulled off an event 42 times without Woods here at Warwick Hills Golf and Country Club. It will pull off another, and honestly, there are reasons to venture here this week, or at least watch on television.

One of the four primary reasons is the lack of Tiger. Not kidding.

Here’s the list:
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Rocco Mediate was told a story about how a father and his 3-year-old daughter were riveted to the U.S. Open, walking from “Dora the Explorer” to watch the 72nd hole when Tiger Woods made a putt to force a playoff.

“I think that’s so cool,” Mediate said.

Before playing in the first round of the Buick Open on Thursday, Mediate took a look back at his memorable matchup with Woods that attracted millions of viewers from coast to coast.

“The ama
zing thing is how many people said, ‘My mother or my father who never watches golf couldn’t take his eyes off the television,’” he said. “Obviously wasn’t because of me, it was because of Tiger. But it was because of the match it turned into.
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His face adorns a banner at the Detroit airport promoting the Buick Open. He’s in a published-too-early promo in this week’s GolfWorld trumpeting his presence on the Golf Channel at the Buick Open and next week’s AT&T Classic. There he is again, on the side of several Buick Enclaves, a courtesy car for the tournament.

You can’t miss Tiger Woods, even though he is nowhere to be found.

Life without Tiger on the PGA Tour begins in earnest this week in Michigan, where the folks at Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club have become accustomed to seeing the game’s No. 1 attraction. Although Woods did not play last year — the tournament was the week after the birth of his daughter, Sam — he did win it in 2006 and has played the event eight times, with two victories, six top-five finishes and nothing worse than a tie for 11th.

Buick officials were among the legions of golf fans stunned by the news last week that not only did Woods win the U.S. Open on a bad knee, but that he was playing with two stress fractures in his tibia. He announced two days after his win in a playoff that he would have reconstructive surgery on his left knee and would be shutting it down for the year.

Woods had planned to do a clinic for Buick at Comerica Park on Tuesday and had told officials he “intended” to play the tournament for the ninth time in his career.
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