US PGA Championship / Paul Krishnamurty / 04 August 2008 /

Paul Krishnamurty reflects on the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and digests its implications for the Oakland Hills major...

Whenever there are two elite events in successive weeks, there's a large element of doubt as to whether those players that prosper in the first will retain their form for the second.

A good recent example is the Scottish and British Opens, played consecutively in July. In those two the follow-up record is awful, with nobody yet achieving the double and few Scottish Open champions even getting competitive in the following major.

Though the WGC-Bridgestone and USPGA are always back-to-back, such trends have never been an issue here. There is, however, an obvious explanation as to why both events have been won by the same player four times in the last nine years - that man is Tiger Woods.

Perhaps we needed the temporary absence of Tiger to remind us of the other great champions in our midst. Its hard to put into words just how much respect I have for Vijay Singh. His rags-to-riches story, from banned Asian Tour also-ran to mulitiple major champion, is inspirational. And now, only four years away from being a golfing senior and being widely written off, he's won his first World Golf Championship.

Can Vijay win back-to-back, taking a third PGA title in the process? He certainly can, but I doubt he will. That Firestone performance came out of the blue, and to be honest, I never fancied him in-running. His long game at times looked awesome, at others a struggle. His short-putting remains poor. Again, its a testimony to his temperament that he won despite so many mistakes. Inevitably his price has collapsed, from a high of [60.0] to the current [22.0], which looks very skinny to me.

Phil Mickelson's reputation took a dive over Sunday's closing holes, but the world no.2 retains clear favouritism for Oakland Hills at [11.5]. Not for the first time in 2008, the putter was his nemesis. Leading on -11 with five holes to go, had he held any one of three short birdie-putts then I suspect his position would have been unassailable. Nevertheless, such back-nine embarrassments are hardly new to Mickelson, and overall he'll be happy enough with his form going into the year's final major.

There was much for Europeans to cheer at Firestone too. Lee Westwood continues to knock on the door, finishing second after staying in strong contention throughout. I've heard some critics suggest that Lee's lost his bottle, no doubt talking through their pockets after several close shaves in a winless season (to date). I feel the same about this as I did after Torrey Pines though. Sure, he made some mistakes, but this is the nature of golf. Besides those few mistakes, he drove and putted well under pressure. If he keeps playing like that, a 30th worldwide win will come.

Will it be this week? Perhaps, if he retains that superb long game performance, (the best of anyone at Firestone in my view), but as far as betting is concerned the shrewdies may have snapped up the best value. Westwood was [48.0] for the USPGA on Friday, now he's just [27.0].

Equally impressive was Paul Casey, whose excellent final round prompted a charge from [95.0] down to [60.0]. Casey's eighth-placed finish was some achievement considering he triple-bogeyed his very first hole. Hypothetically, take that disastrous start away and he finished second. This is the second superb comeback from Casey in two events. At The Open, he looked certain to miss the cut before rallying to make the top-10, his best ever finish in that major. This week he's looking to improve a miserable USPGA record, but at least there are no concerns on the recent form front.

As far as negatives are concerned, several leading candidates did little to advertise their Oakland Hills claims. Jim Furyk played way below the usual level he produces at Firestone, a course where his previous record was outstanding. His PGA price drifted from [21.0] to [25.0] as a consequence. Fellow American Kenny Perry bombed against the top stars after running up a hat-trick of PGA Tour victories, and is now back out to a more realistic [42.0].

Other drifters this morning include Open champion Padraig Harrington and Sergio Garcia. Neither set Firestone alight, but I'm not reading too much into it. Harrington has never performed at the Michigan course, and tends to focus all his attentions on preparing for majors. He will take encouragement from a 68/67 weekend. As for Sergio, his position looks worse because of a poor final round but his fans will know full well that the Spaniard is a bit of a 'non-trier' when out of contention. At [26.0], the European with the best overall PGA record is drifting to the type of price that interests me.

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