Westwood takes advantage of ugly meltdown

Walking in Memphis on a sultry summer afternoon led the PGA Tour into the Twilight Zone yesterday at the St. Jude Classic, producing the weirdest finish of the year. Englishman Lee Westwood birdied the fourth hole of a playoff to edge Swede Robert Karlsson and become the first European to win the event. But it took a series of bizarre events for it to happen.

Played in 110 heat index conditions, the final round appeared ready to produce the tour's eighth first-time winner of the season when Robert Garrigus stepped to the 18th tee with a three-shot lead. Then things turned so strange that what unfolded brought back memories of Jean Van de Velde's collapse in the 1999 British Open at Carnoustie.

Garrigus, a 32-year-old pro from Scottsdale, Ariz., came into this event 377th in the world rankings and had never led a PGA event on the final day. The inexperience showed on the 72nd hole when he experienced a horrific collapse. CBS analyst David Feherty described the gut-wrenching meltdown as watching a psychotic horse galloping into a barn on fire.

Garrigus looked and sounded like Homer Simpson after putting his tee shot into the lake lining the 18th fairway. Then he made matters worse by taking a drop and yanking his next shot into the trees left of the lake before punching out over the lake. He two-putted for triple bogey to make a three-man playoff, but it seemed as if the golf gods had already made up their minds about his fate.

Things stayed in the Twilight Zone for Garrigus when the playoff began with a replay of the 18th hole and his 338-yard tee shot with a 3-wood landed in pine straw behind a tree, leaving him no choice but to punch out back into the fairway. With Westwood and Karlsson parring the fourth-toughest hole, Garrigus needed to sink a 13-footer to save par. The putt just brushed the right edge of the cup for bogey, ending his best chance for a victory in stunning fashion. After outplaying the field for 71 holes, he was left to lick his wounds in a place Elvis wrote a song about: "Heartbreak Hotel." Ouch!

Westwood and Karlsson went par-par-bogey as the playoff neither seemed ready to win continued. Karlsson had a chance to win on the third playoff hole with a par putt from 5 1/2 feet only to miss. Strangely, he didn't seem to watch Westwood miss a similar putt that could have given him a better read, standing off in the distance more intent on cleaning debris from his spikes. Anyway, Karlsson's lost opportunity came back to haunt him when the playoff returned to No. 18 once again. Westwood stuck his approach 6 feet from the pin. Karlsson left his birdie putt from 43 feet away about a foot short.

Then Westwood, who went 17 straight holes between birdies, rolled in the 6-footer for his first PGA win since New Orleans in 1998. He dropped his putter and celebrated with a fist pump. On an entertainment scale of 1 to 5, Oldgolfdawg would throw Westwood's victory 4 dog biscuits, mostly on its weird factor. Train wrecks tend to be mesmerizing, and Garrigus' was one of ugliest ones Oldgolfdawg can remember watching since Van de Velde's debacle.