AT&T Classic round four: Villegas lets one slip

The person I felt sorriest for Sunday wasn’t Ryuji Imada. His “moment of madness” on the playoff hole puts him up with the best of them (cue either Phil Mickelson or Colin Montgomerie at Winged Foot). At least he now knows for sure he can mix it with the best.

But Camilo Villegas had this well within his grasp until he threw it away with his own moment of madness on the tenth. It looked for all the world like he was going to trash TPC Sugarloaf as he began the easier back nine until his tee shot sailed into the unknown. I’m impressed that, after that double bogey and the following bogey, he was still able to rip it up and finish third - snatching top spot for putting from Imada in the process. But Camilo knows he should at least have been in the playoff.

He’ll likely make it some day, as will Imada. They’ll do it when they learn to play the percentage game as well as Zach Johnson.

Perseverance and patience was the name he gave to his game: knowing when to attack and when to lay up, especially on such an exhausting course where the walk is more than eight miles. I had my head in my hands after Johnson bogeyed the par 5 fourth and thought he might also rue the missed 6-footer on the 13th. He just stuck with the game plan and waited for the others to blow up around him. Imada simply left it a bit late.

Johnson’s interview afterwards was illuminating - and not a single mention of You Know Who. Instead he credited his mental coach Morris Pickens for teaching him to stop worrying about where the ball lands and concentrate instead on how the shot is executed. “Now my focus is more or less the process and the routine of each shot rather than the outcome. … I really don’t care where it goes.” (He is of course talking about after he has actually decided where he wants it to go.)

It still only counts as a modest victory given the opposition: a stronger field would surely have punished Zach more severely for Saturday’s flat performance. To put it in perspective, sitting in sixth place is the unfamiliar figure of Chris Tidland, another product of the Nationwide, but one with no win to call his own. Previously on the PGA Tour this season Tidland has missed the cut five times and come 75th in the one he survived. Yet all of a sudden he’s more than $180,000 better off!

PS: Might be worth keeping an eye on Bob Estes, who punched in some decent stats on the way to sixth place and his third top ten of the season.