ESPN.com - Golf - US OPEN 2003 Columnist

Sunday, June 15

Singh goes south -- in a hurry
By Joe Wojciechowski
ESPN.com

OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. -- The ink was barely dry on the 78 on his Sunday U.S. Open scorecard and Vijay Singh was gone. He breezed past the locker room security guard -- "Didn't even bother to change his shoes," the guard joked -- past the fans waiting behind the clubhouse, walked by the practice range and that was it.


	Vijay Singh wasn't going to stick around to talk about his bad final round, he was gone before you could say double bogey.

No autographs. No interviews. Nothing. He was Keyser Soze in FootJoys.

Of course, that was only his second-best disappearing act. Singh's best work was going from the top of the U.S Open leaderboard midway through Saturday's third round and sinking to tie for 20th after shooting 10-over on his final 27 holes at Olympia Fields, including 8-over on Sunday.

That's what happens when you bogey 17 and 18 on back-to-back days. Or when you post six straight bogeys in a round that featured nine of them, not to mention a double bogey and just three birdies. Shoot, Singh saw more bogeys over the weekend than most pilots do at Top Gun.

It was so bad that he went 90 minutes without a birdie putt. It was so bad that when he joined playing partner Nick Price -- who was having his own struggles on Sunday -- in birdying the 15th hole, the two all but hugged.

"We both had to start laughing," Price said. "I've never seen him play that bad. It was like we just couldn't do anything right out there. He kept hitting good putts and misreading them and slipping them by the hole.

"It was a weird day for us."

Day? It was a weird week for Singh.

Singh was a vocal critic of Annika Sorenstam playing in the Colonial and eventually withdrew from the event. He had to deal with hecklers this week, a roller-coaster ride on the scoreboard and, of course, those pesky stairs down the locker room's back exit.

While Sunday wasn't nearly as bad in the heckler department as Saturday, when a spectator was thrown out after taunting and tossing explicatives at Singh, there were still a few lunkheads in the crowd. So while a topless woman was trying to give Jim Furyk roses on No. 11, there was a fan yelling for Singh's ball to keep sliding down a slope on No. 12. Or the time the fan yelled "bogey" nanoseconds after Singh's par putt slipped past the hole on 18.

Not that Singh paid much attention to them. He acted as though nothing unusual was happening. He smiled after good shots. He shrugged off the bad ones. He casually flipped a Titleist to a shocked Jason Kennada of Evansville, Ind., who was just waiting for Singh and Price to tee off on No. 17.

"Vijay is my favorite golfer now," Kennada said.

And if he wasn't everyone's favorite on Friday, he had to be a favorite to win the tournament after firing his record 63. He was driving well, putting well, playing with confidence.

That's what makes his fall that much more surprising.

After Saturday's 2-over 72, he was still in contention at 5-under heading into Sunday's round. He went to 6-over with a birdie on No. 2, but then he double-bogeyed the par-4 sixth and bogeyed six of the next nine holes.

He wasn't hitting fairways (just eight on Sunday) or greens (nine). And his putting, which was stellar on Friday when he needed just 25 putts, betrayed him on the slicker weekend greens.

There were omens it just wasn't Singh's day on Sunday. A cart carrying two nuns drove by Singh as he teed off on No. 12, but Singh went on to bogey. Or maybe that helped, since the bogey streak finally ended on 14.

Still, he did birdie 15 with Price -- which had Price saying to no one in particular on the walk to the next tee: "You don't know long we waited for those." -- and No. 16, but bogeyed the final two holes to finish 3-over. His 78 was his second-worst round of his career at the Open.

Even his caddie seemed to know it just wasn't meant to be. Even after the consecutive birdies, Dave Renwick walked down the slope on 16 to watch the ball as Singh teed off and just sighed: "Long day. You have to grind it out, I guess."

The marshals just laughed, and joked that Singh's bag must weigh over 80 pounds. Renwick didn't even blink.

"Today it does," he said.