Augusta native Howell in danger of seeing Masters streak come to an end
ORLANDO -- When your career body of work consists of winning two professional golf tournaments, the idea that you will capture one of the next two does not seem very likely.
But that is what Charles Howell III faces if he wants to return to his hometown major championship in two weeks.
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Charles Howell III will be spending Masters week watching the year's first major outside the ropes unless he can pull off some impressive golf over the next two weeks.
The Augusta, Ga., native who now lives in Orlando has not secured an invitation for his favorite tournament, the Masters, after seven straight appearances.
A great opportunity was missed Sunday at the Transitions Championship, where Howell bogeyed two of the last four holes to finish second by one stroke to winner Retief Goosen.
It was Howell's 11th career runner-up finish, to go with his two PGA Tour victories, but nonetheless boosted him back into the top 100 in the Official World Golf Rankings at 97th after he had fallen to a career-worst 145th earlier this month.
This is the same guy who came to the PGA Tour with so much fanfare out of Oklahoma State and was named the top player in the world age 25 and younger in a 2005 Sports Illustrated poll, beating out such golfers as Adam Scott and Sergio Garcia.
Howell, 29, is not held in such high esteem today, and Sunday's near-miss only heightened the anxiety as a victory would have meant an automatic invitation to the Masters.
"The golf tournament means more to me than anything," said Howell, whose best finish at Augusta is a tie for 13th in 2004. "That's maybe why I haven't played as well as I would have liked to. But frankly, it's just hard to get that out of your head; that it is Augusta. So everybody's nervous there. Everybody's on edge. The golf course can make you look great or look like an absolute idiot, but I love it. And I think everybody in golf loves it.
"I don't think there's a professional golfer in the world that wouldn't like to play that golf tournament."
Howell finds himself in this predicament because he had a so-so year in 2008; he missed the cut in three of the four major championships, failed to qualify for the Tour Championship and was not among the top 50 in the world at the end of the year. The latter two would have punched a ticket to the Masters.
Short of being among the top 50 by Monday -- the cutoff for the world ranking -- the only thing left for Howell to do is win this week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational or at next week's Shell Houston Open.
And that's what makes Sunday's finish so tough. Howell had fought his way into contention on the back nine at Innisbrook with birdies on the 11th, 12th and 14th holes to tie Goosen. The four finishing holes are among the toughest on tour, and there is no shame in bogeying any of them. But Howell laments the par-3 15th, where he missed the green with a 7-iron and made a bogey. He bogeyed the next hole, too, but so did Goosen.
The week prior in Puerto Rico -- Howell was not eligible for the World Golf Championship event at Doral -- he was in contention heading into the third round but shot 78. "That was a quiet night in the hotel room there," said Howell, who rebounded with a 66 the next day, then played the Tavistock Cup exhibition, where the second day he was Tiger Woods' partner.
"It was just kind of nice to pick myself back up from that day in Puerto Rico where I did not play well at all," he said.
Now he's got two chances left to get to Augusta and nothing short of a victory will get it done.
"That's probably my biggest disappointment is not being in that tournament," Howell said. "I've given it a run. I've played a lot of tournaments. I've played a lot of golf this year. I'm going to play the next two and work my tail off to try to do it."
And if he doesn't make it?
"I'll watch every second of it, because I think it's great," he said. "I wouldn't miss it."
Getting to a higher level
It is somewhat taken for granted around these parts, especially at the Bay Hill Club & Lodge, where on the restaurant menu can be found a beverage simply called the "Arnold Palmer." Since the golf icon owns the place, it seems to make sense.
But the concoction of lemonade and iced tea goes beyond Bay Hill bounds. A company that markets Arizona Tea, the AriZona Beverage Company, sells the Arnold Palmer drink in single serving containers. And it is something that impressed Padraig Harrington when he discovered it two weeks ago while in Miami.
Harrington had been asked a question on Tuesday at Bay Hill about getting to another level in the game. And that triggered his memory.
"You're thinking about the next level?" said Harrington, who was eating dinner at the bar of an Italian restaurant in Miami.
"A guy came up to the bar and he ordered an Arnold Palmer and the barman knew what that drink was," said the Irishman, who has won the past two major championships and three overall. "Now that's getting to another level.
"Think about it. You don't go up there and order a Tiger Woods at the bar. You can go up there and order an Arnold Palmer at a bar in this country and the barman -- he was a young man, 25 years of age, he knew what the drink was. That's getting to another level totally. That's in a league of your own.
"I thought you could [order] it in a golf club, but he ordered it in a random bar, and the guy who probably wouldn't know one end of a club from the other knew what it was."
A look at this week's venue
The Bay Hill Club has been home to what is now known as the Arnold Palmer Invitational since 1979, when the Orlando-based PGA Tour event moved across town from Rio Pinar Country Club.
Palmer had won the Florida Citrus Open at Rio Pinar in 1971 and in the late 1960s bought the Bay Hill Club, where he had winter residence. The course was originally designed by Dick Wilson and Joe Lee in 1961, with Palmer himself doing an overhaul in 1989. Over the years, Arnie has tweaked the layout, and in 2007 the 7,137-yard course was converted from a par-72 to a par-70. This year it will play to 7,239 yards.
Last year, Bay Hill ranked as the 18th-most difficult on the PGA Tour, with the par-4 fourth ranking as the toughest on the course. The 460-yard hole, which in 2007 was converted from a par-5 to a par-4, yielded just 19 birdies for the week.
Bob Harig covers golf for ESPN.com. He can be reached at BobHarig@gmail.com.
Birdies and bogeys
Birdies:
1. Retief Goosen. The South African made only one birdie (and an eagle) Sunday but it was enough to capture the Transitions Championship, his first victory on the PGA Tour in more than three years.
2. Estanislao Goya. Who? The Argentine just won the European Tour event in Portugal a week after contending through three rounds at the PGA Tour's Puerto Rican Open. And he's only 21 years old.
3. Nick Watney. A week after battling Phil Mickelson to the final hole at Doral, Watney might have been excused if he packed it in. But he got into contention at the Transitions before finishing tied for 12th and now has six top-25 finishes, including a first and a second, in seven tournaments this year.
Bogeys:
1. Tom Lehman. It would have been some story if he could have pulled off a victory Sunday, because 50-year-old golfers rarely do. Had Lehman come through, he would have joined Craig Stadler and Fred Funk as the only players 50 or older in the past 35 years to win on the tour. (And both of their victories were at opposite events.)
2. Steve Stricker. It's hard to knock a guy who keeps contending, but Stricker has had three pretty good chances to win on a Sunday -- at the Bob Hope, the Northern Trust and the Transitions -- and failed each time, although he's got a lot of money to show for it.
3. Adam Scott. What's up with one of the world's best? A missed cut at the Transitions was not part of his Masters preparation.
Masters on their minds
This is the last week that players not already qualified for the Masters can get into the field via the Official World Golf Ranking. Players who are ranked among the top 50 in the world as of Monday will get an invitation. Spain's Alvaro Quiros, for example, is a lock as he has moved into the top 25.
But Davis Love (47), South Africa's Louis Oosthuizen (48th), Australia's Matthew Goggin (49) and Thailand's Prayad Marksaeng (50th) will all sweat it out this week. Love, Oosthuizen and Goggin are all playing at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and will risk falling out of the top 50 if they miss the cut.
Marksaeng -- who was given a special invitation to the Masters last year but withdrew after one round with an injury -- is playing an Asian Tour event, the Black Mountain Masters, this week in his hometown.
Players 51 through 54 -- Richard Sterne, Stuart Appleby, Hunter Mahan and Soren Kjeldsen -- are already qualified.
Others outside of the top 50 who are not in the field can still get to the Masters by winning this week's tournament in Orlando or by winning next week at the Shell Houston Open.
Notables
• Tiger Woods on Wednesday more or less deflected a question about the controversy surrounding him accepting a $3 million appearance fee from the Australian government for playing in the Australian Masters in November. "Most of the guys get appearance fees to play around the world," Woods said. "Obviously I know there's some controversy behind it, but I'm really looking forward to getting down there and playing and competing."
• Woods did disclose that he is likely to play the HSBC Champions event in China the week prior to playing in Australia. That tournament is Nov. 5-8.
• Talk of the HSBC becoming the fourth World Golf Championship is becoming more than just that, as it is likely to become official soon. That would mean one of the four WGC events is played outside of the United States. However, the tournament would not count as official money on the PGA Tour, only on the European Tour.
• He had to be talked into it, but Arnold Palmer played in his own pro-am Wednesday on the eve of the tournament. Among his amateur partners was NHL Hall of Famer Bobby Orr.
• U.S. Amateur champion Danny Lee of New Zealand had been offered a sponsor exemption to Palmer's tournament but ended up turning it down. Lee plans to turn pro after the Masters and is allowed up to seven sponsor exemptions. He wants to use them as a pro and hopes to earn enough money in those starts to avoid the PGA Tour Q-school. Lee, however, will have status in Europe by virtue of his victory at the Johnnie Walker Classic last month in Australia.
• Anthony Kim, who was slated to tee it up Thursday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, withdrew due to illness.
• For the first time this year, the LPGA Tour is playing an event in the continental U.S. After starting in Hawaii and then going to Thailand, Singapore and Mexico, the tour is in Phoenix this week before the first major of the year, next week's Kraft Nabisco.
• Colin Montgomerie is playing in his 500th European Tour event as a pro this week at the Open de Andalucia in Spain. The Scotsman has won a British record 31 European Tour titles and will become the 18th player to compete in a minimum of 500 events. Monty has made 421 cuts out of 499 starts and has 182 top 10s.
Catching up with last year's champ
It's been a year of firsts for Tiger Woods. The Accenture Match Play was his first tournament after an eight-month absence due to knee surgery. The CA Championship was his first stroke play event. And this week's Arnold Palmer Invitational is his first event with a pro-am. Okay, so that's a bit of a stretch, but it is the first time Woods has played golf in public with amateurs -- since last year's tournament at Bay Hill.
Woods, who is the defending champion and won last year's event with a dramatic final-hole birdie, said Wednesday that he continues to progress.
"I feel like I'm back where I can just go out and play golf and that's fun," he said. "There were so many question marks going into the Match Play and even into Doral ... I hadn't done it. Those are two very positive tournaments. Now I feel like I can just go play golf."
Quotable
"A buddy called me and said, 'If you deal drugs long enough, you're going to get caught, and if you get into position long enough, you're going to win.' That's all I'm trying to do."
-- Brett Quigley, after his second straight second-place finish on the PGA Tour at the Transitions Championship. Quigley has never won on the PGA Tour in 342 starts.
Arnold Palmer Invitational picks
Horse for the Course. Vijay Singh. Although he took last week off to nurse his surgically repaired knee, Bay Hill has been good to Singh, who has four straight top-10 finishes, including a victory in 2007.
Birdie Buster. Nick Watney. The winner of the Buick Invitational finished second to Phil Mickelson two weeks ago at Doral and was in contention last week at the Transitions Championship before tying for 12th.
Super Sleeper. Charles Howell III. In 28 rounds at Bay Hill, Howell has shot just two in the 60s and his best finish is a tie for eighth in 2005. But he needs a victory to make the Masters field.
Winner. Tiger Woods. It's been feast or famine at Bay Hill for Woods, who won four straight from 2000 to 2003, then finished no better then tied for 20th for four years before winning last year. But in his third start since knee surgery, he gets prepped for the Masters with a victory.