PGA Championship 2013: Webb Simpson's Sizzling 64 a Huge Step to Kick Struggles

When Webb Simpson won the U.S. Open in June of 2012, it was like a breath of fresh air for the game.

A soft-spoken young man with a deeply rooted faith, Simpson personifies what is good about the game and its future.

After that victory on a foggy day in San Francisco, the expectation was that he would win again soon. And then again and maybe again.

However, he’s not won since, and while his play has not been anything close to dreadful, he’s become something of a forgotten major champion. Ok, so that’s not really possible, but he has slipped from the major spotlight and doesn’t come quickly to mind.

He’s had eight top-10 finishes, lost in a playoff to Graeme McDowell in the RBC Heritage and has made a boatload of money since Olympic—hardly the kind of golf that gets a player thinking about how he was going to make next month’s mortgage, but not the kind that puts him on the short list of favorites each time a major rolls around.

But maybe, just maybe, with what happened Friday morning at Oak Hill Country Club near Rochester, N.Y., that’s about to come to an end.

After eight holes in Thursday’s first round, Simpson was five over par thanks to a double bogey on the fifth followed by three straight bogeys. The Wake Forest graduate played the next 28 holes at nine under with just two bogeys.

As has become obvious, Oak Hill is ripe for the picking with all the rain that has fallen this week, but not everybody has been able to put together a record-tying score of 64 like Simpson did on Friday.

“I wish I could have had a victory since then, but you know, we’ve been working hard all year trying to get better and I feel like I’m better,” Simpson said Friday at his post-round press conference(h/t ASAP Sports).

Simpson’s great round Friday, through periods of heavy rain, started a “63 watch” as he got further and further under par. That score is the lowest ever recorded at a major, with Steve Stricker last doing it at the 2011 PGA Championship.

At par-70 Oak Hill, Simpson was right on that mark through 15 holes, but bogeyed his 16th hole of the day and parred in for 64. That was good enough to share the record with Curtis Strange (1980 U.S. Open) and Ben Hogan (1943 Rochester Open).

“I was thinking about it once I birdied six, thinking about the all-time record and I was about 99 percent sure it was 63,” Simpson told the assembled media.

It would seem that Simpson doesn’t have nearly as far to get back as say, Tiger Woods, did. Simpson has played well since that U.S. Open championship, just not well enough.

But I’m not thinking this is the time to crown him as being back. How many times has Tiger won leading up to a major, convincing his fans that he’s back and that he was ready to start running off major wins again, only to have him struggle to make the cut at the next major?

It wasn’t a perfect round by any means for Simpson. His second shot on the 16th was another one of those shanks that have become an occasional visitor to his game. That led to the bogey that ultimately cost him his chance at tying the majors scoring record.

He admitted the two rounds have been crazy, a roller-coaster ride for his mind.

“It was a big swing of emotions,” Simpson told the Golf Channel's Ryan Lavner. “It’ll go down as one of my most special rounds ever.”

The way Simpson has clicked thus far is the way many people expect him to play much more often than he has. Are there any guarantees that will happen?

Absolutely not—just look back a little over a year and see what the expectations were for him then.

The young man is a great guy on and off the course. Him winning more, including another major, would be good for golf.