ATLANTA -- John Senden isn't apologizing for being in this week's Tour Championship."Points are points," he said. "If every shot counts, then I'm No. 30.''
He's right. The top 30 golfers on the FedEx Cup points list are at East Lake Golf Club this week, and Senden was the last guy in. It's the way he arrived that makes it interesting.
Two weeks ago at the BMW Championship, where this week's field was settled, Senden bogeyed the 17th hole of his final round and saw his projected finish drop him to 31st on the points list and out of action.
Senden was conceding as much, standing outside the scoring tent at Cog Hill lamenting the close call. But then a strange thing happened.
Brandt Snedeker went to the 18th green and missed a 14-foot putt for par, a three-footer for bogey and a tap-in from 14 inches. He made double bogey. The shaky finish dropped him from 28th on the points list to 32.
Senden got a mulligan.
Thursday the eighth-year Aussie tour pro made good use of it, shooting even-par 70 for a tie for ninth, four shots back of leader Sean O'Hair.
"I come in here with the attitude that this is an opportunity for me, rather than think I'm damn lucky to be here," Senden said. "Everybody is lucky. That's the way golf is. Golf becomes a game of good play and good luck. Everyone needs it to be here.''
Golf Vacation
After three straight weeks of FedEx Cup events, most players were looking forward to the week off before the Tour Championship.
So what did Sean O'Hair do last week to rest?
"I played six days in a row," said Thursday' s first-round leader.And by the sounds of it, O'Hair needed to get back to work.
"Yeah, just played with my buddies," he said. "Did a lot of gambling and lost a lot of money. I lost a lot of money last week."
This is the guy who shot 66 Thursday?
"Yeah, I was giving them too many shots," he said. "They were winning the bets on the first tee."
All the same, while other players were resting for this week, O'Hair was heading to the golf course.
"I just felt like playing," he said. "I didn't go out and beat balls, I didn't go out on the putting green and putt. Really I got in my car, threw my clubs on the cart, and away we went. That was about it. It was a good time. We'd go have lunch afterwards or before we'd play and shoot the breeze a little bit."
Harrington's Turnaround
Two months ago, Padraig Harrington seemed to be in free fall. After winning the British Open and PGA Championship in 2008, the Irishman had missed six cuts in 14 tournaments and did not have a top-10 finish. He was 142nd on the FedEx Cup points list.
Swing changes made to strengthen his game were not yet paying dividends and the season seemed lost.Now he's the only player in this week's Tour Championship field with a top-10 finish in all three precious FedEx Cup events, and after Thursday's opening-round 67, is one shot out of the lead.
"I obviously didn't perform for the first seven months of the year," Harrington said. "My focus was elsewhere. And since the FedEx Cup has started, I've been keen to salvage something out of this year.
"So the FedEx Cup is possibly going to give me that salvation in terms of if I win this week, I'll have a great 2009."
Something clicked for Paddy during the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone in early August and he has been a factor since.
"You know, I went from trying to focus on the technical move that I was trying to sort out, but couldn't get to the bottom of it and couldn't figure out what it was," he said. "And you know, (I) got back into focusing on the right things after that.
"So basically I had some clarity. You know, it's not necessarily that I'm hitting the ball any better or doing anything different, but the clarity that it gave me, that I understood where my bad shots are coming from, that was good for me, and it made it a lot easier to go out there and play since then."
Noteworthy
The first-round leader/co-leader has gone on to win just eight of 39 stroke-play events on the PGA Tour this season, most recently Steve Stricker at the Deutsche Bank Championship. ...
In the 22-year history of the Tour Championship, the first-round leader/co-leader has gone on to win the tournament 10 times, with the last to do so being Bart Bryant in 2005. Bryant and Vijay Singh (2002) are the only players to have achieved this feat at East Lake Golf Club. ...
Hometown favorite and 2009 British Open champion Stewart Cink opened with a 3-under 67, despite connecting on just five of 14 fairways in regulation. Cink entered the week No. 26 in the FedEx Cup standings and is currently projected No. 8. ...
The par-4 13th played the toughest on Thursday with a 4.333 average. The par-5 ninth was the easiest at 4.600.
