North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: A Round Pettersson Can Get Excited About
6/24/2006 12:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
June 24, 2006
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH - When you are a successful member of the PGA Tour, with two victories in the last seven months, it's kind of hard to believe that casual round of golf with a bunch of buddies could illicit as big a response as a $1 million paycheck for winning Jack Nicklaus' tournament, the Memorial.
So why was former NC State All-America golfer Carl Pettersson whooping and hollering like a little kid Wednesday afternoon at a Durham, N.C., country club?
Because he had just finished off a career-round of 59.
Pettersson, taking a week off after missing the cut at the U.S. Open, was part of a casual sixsome, with former NC State golfers Mark Slawter and Tag Wylie, along with a pair of Treyburn members, Bret Butters and Terry Butler, and NHL defenseman Sean Hill.
As it turned out, Pettersson was glad he had all the witnesses, because it might have been the best round of the Swedish native's life, as he shaved five strokes off the previous course record of 64. After making pars on the first two holes, Pettersson strung together six straight birdies on the difficult 7,100-yard Tom Fazio layout. Then he made an eagle on the ninth hole, to finish off the front side with a remarkable 28.
That's when Pettersson started thinking about joining an elite group of golfers who could post a legitimate sub-60 score. It's obviously a rare opportunity. The closest Pettersson has ever been before was last fall when he shot an 11-under 61 at the FUNAI Classic at Walt Disney World in Orlando. But, even then, the lowest he believes he could have gotten in the round was a 60.
So after he survived his worst shot of the day - a wedge on the 14th hole that flew long over the flag and left him with a tricky putt that he left three-feet short - Pettersson knew all he had to do to go below 60 was birdie his final four holes.
OK, so that's not exactly easy. But on a day when he never came close to a bogey, Pettersson was aggressive. After making birdies on 15 and 16, he saw that the par-3 17th had a tricky pin, tucked in close to a creek. It was a pin location that was made for hitting to the middle of the green and making two putts for par.
"But you never know if you will have a chance like this again, so I went right at the flag," said Pettersson, who lives north of Raleigh in Wake Forest. "I had about a seven-footer for the birdie."
So he went to the 18th, one of the hardest finishing holes in the state, needing one more 3 to finish off his 59. He crushed a drive on the 475-yard, par-4 hole, then used a wedge to stick his second shot within 10 feet. He got a good read from Wylie, whose ball was just behind him on the green, and knocked his putt right in the middle of the hole.
"We were running around like a bunch of 10-year-olds," said Wylie, a PGA teaching pro at Treyburn for the last four years.
Even for the normally reserved Pettersson - hey, he's a native Scandinavian - it was a round worthy of celebration, with 11 birdies, an eagle and six pars.
"It was awesome," Pettersson said. "I was relaxed, and everything just went my way." Of course, Pettersson's score was a good dose of humility for two of his former Wolfpack playing partners, who also posted rounds under par. "I shot a [1-under] 71 and got beat by 12," said Wylie. "Mark Slawter shot a 69 and got nosed out by 10. It was a great thing to see. It was like watching a perfect game in baseball.
"It was poetry."
Pettersson, who has won almost $4 million on the PGA Tour the last two years and is ranked the No. 31 player in the World Golf Rankings, goes back to work next week, when he plays in the Buick Classic in Hartford, Conn., and then the Cialis Western Open near Chicago. Then he's going to Europe for a four-tournament swing that includes the British and Scottish Opens, with the primary intent of getting Ian Woosnam's attention. Woosnam is the captain of the 2006 European Ryder Cup team, in charge of selecting members of the European team that will play against the Americans Sept. 22-24 in Kildare, Ireland.
"I am just hope to play well in the next couple of weeks," said Pettersson, who got his first career win in Tampa last year at the Chrysler Championship and followed up with his second win at the Memorial in May. "If I can play reasonably well, I think I will have a chance.
"To play on a Ryder Cup team would be a cool thing to do. I am just going to try to play well and see what happens."
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
