   
| O'Hair in zone at PLAYERS, looking to make splash this weekend  PGATOUR.com Correspondent PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- How good is Sean O'Hair playing this week?  (Condon/PGATOUR/WireImage)
You could, of course, look at the leaderboard. See the opening 72 and the 69 that followed Friday morning. The rounds that left him two shots off the mid-day lead at THE PLAYERS Championship. Or you could look deeper. Like yesterday's round when he burned some 3-irons under the wind. Three feet off the ground low. Under the gusts. From 210. Or Friday when he made par from the trees at 10. Had 195 to the pin and stuck it 12 feet for birdie. "I called him trashcan after that,'' said father-in-law Steve Lucas, who also doubles as O'Hair's caddie. Yes, O'Hair is dialed in. He flipped an 8-iron into the second hole at the THE PLAYERS Stadium CourseThursday, a 6-iron up there in the second. Boom. A pair of eagles. "That's like a par-3 for me,'' he said. Can you say zone? O'Hair's been in one for a while now. No wins, but four top-15s and one top-25 before he withdrew after one round at Wachovia. His allergies were killing him. A ton of antibiotics and some rest later, the 24-year-old from West Chester, Pa., is back on track. On one of the toughest layouts of the year. "The harder the golf course, the better he plays,'' Lucas said. "He gets excited playing here.'' This is only his second PLAYERS, but he's in the mix going into the weekend. "I feel like the last couple days I've played very steady,'' said O'Hair , who finished tied for 58th last year. "You know, I've had a few bogeys here and there, but on this type of golf course, under these conditions, you're going to have that. You're not going to have the bogey?free rounds very much. So I feel like I'm playing very well.'' O'Hair wasn't even born when THE PLAYERS moved to this course in 1982. His mom was in her third trimester. Now, just this side of 25 -- his birthday is in June -- he's traveling the world with his wife and two children, the youngest not even three months old. And, no, it's not a burden for one of golf's young guns. "You just deal with it,'' O'Hair said. "I look at my family as a support group, so I almost feel like I'm better off having them than being out here alone. You know, I mean, it's nice to have company because I'm not the type of guy that's (if he were single) going to go out and try and find a girlfriend or whatever. You know, I'd be ?? if I wasn't married, I'd still be in the hotel room watching TV.'' O'Hair is grounded. He turned pro at 17, but didn't make a big splash. He started at the Leadbetter Academy and worked his way up through the mini-tours. And it's a combination of those two things, plus surviving and finally breaking away from a turbulent and acrimonious relationship with his dad Marc. It's behind him now and the future is bright. He won the 2005 John Deere as a rookie and he followed up with a decent sophomore season. Which brings us to 2007. And his game. He's hitting shots like those low 3-irons and those irons into two. "I just think that as a kid, I was taught to hit those shot,'' he said. "You know, I think that's one thing that you don't really see today is you see the kids always working an their swing. They're not out there hitting low shots, they're not hitting cuts. "I remember at the Leadbetter Academy, they made us hit 7?irons to a green that was 70 yards in front of us and try to stop it on the green. How do you do it? Just figure it out. That's one thing that I think you see with Tiger. I mean, Tiger is just an artist with that stuff. It's almost like an artist painting a picture. It's just ?? it takes talent, it takes vision, it takes imagination.''
Which is what he's had for two days here. And then there was that birdie at the 10th. "It was really good, especially with that drive, kind of flailed it out to the right there and caught a really good lie, had a perfect line to the green and just hit one of those great shots,'' he said. "I had the wind working for me, so it was easy to hold the green and just pull off a great shot and made the putt.'' So Lucas dubbed him Trashcan. Growing up, O'Hair said, this was one of "the" tournaments to watch. He remembers Hal Sutton's "Be the right club today," Tiger Woods' putt in '01 on 17 and Craig Perks down the stretch on the last three holes. And he admits to wondering , as a kid, how the players stayed in the fairway. But, you know, it's actually ?? like some courses you watch on TV, -- not that easy. "You're like, how in the world do those guys hit the fairway?' '' he said. "It being that tight? And then you play it and it's not that bad. But here it's just brutal.'' Brutal or not, one-handed or not, O'Hair is ready to step up this weekend. |
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