Allenby stays within shot of the lead despite putting woes
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday June 15, 2009
ROBERT ALLENBY missed the 10th green to the left. Cursed. His ball nestled among the pine straw and a rock. A miracle was required to salvage par. He opened his stance, splayed the face of his lob wedge to a ridiculous degree, swung, made contact, phoomp. The ball lobbed onto the green, took three bounces, rolled and stopped pin-high. Not even Allenby's misbehaving putter could miss from there. Miracle.Allenby's US Open warm-up at the St Jude Classic in Memphis, Tennessee, has been a cocktail of superb ball striking and errant work with the flat stick. A few more drained putts would have given him the lead going into today's final round at the TPC Southwind. Instead, he was 11-under, three shots behind Brian Gay and two adrift of Bryce Molder, the three of them playing in the final group because of forecasts for violent weather."Believe it or not, I do practise it when I'm leading up to Augusta," Allenby told reporters of his off-the-straw shot after his third round of two-under 68."I practise a lot of shots like that off the pine straw, but I haven't practised it since Augusta, so it was a hell of a shot. I had a massive rock behind it. Yeah. I didn't have much. I just tried to play an explosion shot as if I had a bad lie in a bunker. Kind of came out perfect. I just need to get the putter fired up a little bit. The first two days I putted really nicely. Maybe I tried a bit too hard today. I didn't feel like I did, but maybe tomorrow they might go in for me."Previously, Allenby had expressed a desire to sleep with his putter. Not any more. "My wife is here this week, so I'll sleep with her," he said. "Be much better. I might give my putter to the kids. I'll probably break it."Allenby is one of nine Australians heading for New York for the US Open this week. He'll make an early exit from Memphis today because his shoot-out alongside Gay and Molder began at the uncustomarily early time of 9am. Winning his first US PGA Tour event in eight years would be the perfect pre-major tonic."It's golf," he said of his putting. "You're going to make some and miss some, and you just, you've got to take the good and the bad. I know I'm hitting the ball well ..."
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald