Capelle On Golf

First we have the soon to be 49 year old Kenny Perry winning tournaments in droves – five in the last 14 months to be exact. Then Tom Watson, 59, comes within a putt of winning the British Open.

Now in the latest installment of Old Power we have Mark Calcavecchia, 49, setting a new PGA tour record with nine straight birdies in the second round of the Canadian Open. What gives?

While some, including Golf Digest writer Mike Stracha, give credit to the equipment for Watson’s resurgence, a look at the Calc’s scorecard reveals the big reason why he was able to set his birdie record.

The Glenn Abbey course starts out with a par five on the front nine, the second. The next doesn’t come until the 13th hole. Then, oddly enough, two more appear on the final five holes of the back nine. In the High Tech era par 5s are really par 4.5s as the pros feast on them with their super charged weaponry, and Calc was no exception as we’ll see in a moment.

That 10 hole gap between the first and second par 5 would normally have worked against Calcavecchia, but not in this case because he started out on the back nine! He birdied the 12th  (a par 3) to start his streak. Then, over the next eight holes he feasted on four easy playing par 5s, the last three of which are so short (516, 524, 527)   by today’s standards that the nearly 50 year old Calc was able to reach them all in two for easy two putt birdies.

A look at the rating of the holes in his streak is also most revealing: the streak was played on holes rated 9, 15, 1, 13, 16, 14, 18, 7, and 17. That’s an average rating of 12.5. The non streak hole’s average difficulty was 6.0!

One other factor that weighed heavily on the streak was the rain, which turned the course into dartboard, especially in the second round when 37 of the 64 players who completed 72 holes broke 70 and there were 18 rounds of 67 or better.

While the press has had a field day trumpeting the streak, after searching under the hood it is clear that his streak, while it is a fantastic achievement, is not quite as glossy as it appears.

In setting the new record, Calcavecchia, who finished 8t, knocked a gang of six players who had made eight straight into the second spot. But for my money, the owner of the best birdie streak is still Bob Goalby, the original record setter, who made his eight in a row at the 1961 St. Petersburg Open. Goalby’s barrage paved the way to a closing 65 and a victory, making him the only streaker to convert a streak into a win. He did his with wooden woods and I doubt if his was accomplished on such a par 5 rich stretch of holes.