MONDAY, AUGUST 10 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 D3
was signed before the first game
of the regular season. Now, a fifth
of the way through a pandemic
season, he continues to wait.
“I’m not worried about it.
They’ll take care of it when they
deem themselves ready to take
care of it,” Rizzo said. “I haven’t
given it much thought. My focus
is on winning a championship
here in 2020. That’s going to be
our sole focus going forward.”
That process hit another hitch
once Strasburg was knocked
around in what had been a score-
less game in the fifth. But that
would be the second- or third-
most frustrating part of the day.
The offense did little aside from a
two-run homer by Starlin Castro
in the fifth. Then any comeback
hopes were dashed once the tarp
wouldn’t budge.
As the storm thickened, a doz-
en grounds crew members dug in
and begged the tarp to unfurl.
They pushed. They ran in place.
They backed the tarp onto the
grass and tried to reset, but they
had no luck on their second at-
tempt to shield the infield. They
would spend the rest of the after-
noon covering the soaked dirt in
diamond dry. But their efforts,
however concentrated, could not
rush the field into playable shape.
At the very least, the Nationals
avoided a sweep until further
notice.
“I told the guys, ‘Hey, pack up;
we’re going to New York,’ ” Marti-
nez said. “We’ll get ready to play
tomorrow. That’s all we can do.”
[email protected]have to solve a few pitching issues
on the road this week.
“These pitchers just have to
pitch,” Rizzo said of Doolittle,
though it could have gone for
Strasburg, too. “With the short
spring training 2.0, they haven’t
gotten enough work in to get to
where they want to be usually on
Aug. 9.”
“To be honest, I felt it,” Stras-
burg said of the nerve irritation
flaring up in the fifth. He shook
out his right hand after a pitch
before waving off Martinez and
an athletic trainer. “I don’t know
if it was necessarily fatigue or not
having the stamina build up quite
yet. But it’s something where I
don’t think I’m doing any long-
term harm on it. It does have an
impact on being able to throw the
baseball and being able to
c ommit to pitches.”
Among the pregame procedur-
al questions for Rizzo were a pair
of contracts. Rizzo’s expires at the
end of this season. Martinez has a
club option for 2021 that has yet
to be picked up. When asked
about Martinez’s status, Rizzo
threw his weight behind the man-
ager, suggesting Martinez has
earned an extension as a “great
representative for the Washing-
ton Nationals.”
But when asked about himself,
Rizzo said he and ownership have
not had any recent discussions.
He is no stranger to dragged-out
negotiations, having done this
with the Lerner family through-
out the past decade. In 2018, the
last time he was extended, a dealRizzo expects Scherzer to re-
turn from a tweaked hamstring to
face the Mets in New York on
Tuesday. Strasburg would not
have pitched Sunday if the nerve
irritation in his right hand were
still lingering, Rizzo explained,
but Strasburg later admitted to
feeling it in the fifth. And Rizzo
said Doolittle needs more reps to
come around.
Strasburg, having missed his
first two starts, covered 13 of the
16 outs recorded Sunday. That left
no high-leverage situations for
the bullpen. So the Nationals willwas entirely too late. The grounds
crew worked on it for an hour and
a half, but the game was officially
suspended at 4:47 p.m. It had
begun at 12:36. The delay lasted
longer than the action.
The game will resume Friday at
Camden Yards in Baltimore, with
the Nationals as the home team,
trailing 5-2 in the top of the sixth.
The game was suspended instead
of called because the field was
ruled unplayable because of a
“mechanical error,” not the
weather. The rule book technical-
ity will soon give the Nationals,
still 4-7, a fighting chance to steal
a win.
“For me, honestly, it’s part of
this 2020 season,” Manager Dave
Martinez said of a game derailed
by a short burst of rain. “I mean, it
really is. There are going to be
days when you don’t know what
to expect. This is part of it.”
“Obviously the unevenness of
the schedule doesn’t help with
your routine, your rhythm, on the
mound or at the plate,” Rizzo said
ahead of Sunday’s mess. “But
we’re dealing with it like all the
other 29 teams. So that’s nothing
we can use as an excuse.”
Before the tarp caught in the
roller, leaving the field exposed,
Rizzo ticked through each issue
facing the Nationals. In no more
than 14 minutes, he tried to ease
concerns about Max Scherzer,
Strasburg and Sean Doolittle,
who has been the outlier of an
otherwise functioning bullpen.
NATIONALS FROM D1
Stubborn tarp adds to Nats’ frustration
NATIONALS ON DECKat New York MetsToday7:10 MASN
Tomorrow 7:10 MASNWednesday7:10 MASN
Thursday1:10 MASNat Baltimore OriolesFriday (2)* 7:35 MASN, MASN2
Saturday7:35 MASN, MASN2Sunday1:05 MASN, MASN2at Atlanta BravesAug. 17 7:10 MASN2Aug. 18 7:10 MASN2
Aug. 19 7:10 MASN2, ESPNRadio: WJFK (106.7 FM)
* — completion of suspended game
and regularly scheduled gameBY GENE WANGRose Zhang stood several
p aces to the side as Gabriela
Ruffels leaned over her par putt
attempt at the 38th hole Sunday
afternoon, fully expecting her op-
ponent to sink the four-footer to
extend the championship match
at the 120th U.S. Women’s Ama-
teur at Woodmont Country Club
in Rockville.
Ruffels, the No. 6 seed, has
continually made clutch shots,
both when she won the event last
year and then this week as she
sought to become the event’s first
repeat champion since 2010-11.
Except this time, Ruffels’s bid
at the No. 9 green lipped out,
allowing Zhang, seeded 16th, to
claim the world’s oldest women’s
golf championship despite an ail-
ing wrist that required treatment
after each round and had the
high school senior, at the advice
of her coach, seriously consider-
ing withdrawing several weeks
ago.
Zhang instead hit the center of
the fairway on the decisive hole,
landed her approach 20 feet left
of the pin and had her birdie putt
miss by mere inches.
“It’s crazy, because I was actu-
ally watching her on TV last year,
and I’ve seen her final-round
highlights and everything, and it
just made me think, ‘Wow, she’s
such a great player,’ ” Zhang said
of Ruffels. “It just [made me want
to] work on my game more, and
she inspired me to keep playing
the game that I love.”
Zhang, 17, continued on in the
championship match with an im-
probable recovery at the 36th and
final hole of regulation match
play. She had pulled her drive to
the left of the cart path, with
branches from several trees pre-
venting a clean shot to the green.
So the Stanford commit pulled
a 5-hybrid from her bag and tried
to punch out onto the fairway.
The ball traveled only a few yards,
leaving a tricky pitch from the
rough that she deftly landed in-
side of a foot.
Ruffels, 20, gave Zhang a
thumbs-up as the ball came to
rest, conceding the par putt. Then
the senior at Southern California,
the daughter of former profes-
sional tennis players Anna-Maria
Fernandez and Ray Ruffels, left
her 15-footer for birdie just short,
with Zhang conceding the par
putt.
Zhang and Ruffels, who had
reached the championship match
following two rounds of stroke
play and five subsequent match-
play rounds, then halved the 37th
hole, played at the par-4 8th on
the North Course.
“Rose is definitely one of the
toughest opponents,” said
Ruffels, who received an embrace
and words of encouragement
from her mother after the match.
“She never left the door open, I
feel like. She drives straight down
the middle, hits greens. I mean,
what a good player. Her wedge
game is amazing, putting is
amazing.“Can’t believe she’s only 17.”
Zhang’s resolve under the du-
ress of the most prestigious wom-
en’s amateur tournament this
year surfaced throughout the
week. She rallied on the back nine
from 2 down to eliminate No. 1
seed Rachel Heck during Friday’s
round of 16.
She also rallied to defeat
K aleigh Telfer, 2 up, in Saturday
morning’s quarterfinals before
advancing to the championship
match with a 2-up victory over
Alyaa Abdulghany in Saturday
afternoon’s semifinals.
“This week I really persevered
through, and it really shows my
mentality can overcome my phys-
icality with my wrist,” said Zhang,
who wore black pain-relieving
tape on her forearm. “I’m just
super grateful. Every single event
is different, but it just makes me
realize that I can play out here
with the top amateurs in the
world.”
The drama down the stretch
Sunday began at the 30th hole,
where Ruffels’s approach with a
6-iron from 150 yards landed
beyond the green in the rough at
the par-4. Zhang lofted her ap-
proach within 12 feet of the flag
and left her putt for birdie inches
short of the cup.
Ruffels’s chip went only a few
feet, with the gnarly rough grab-
bing her club face during the
follow-through. Her next chip
settled within four feet, and
Ruffels walked to the next hole,
the par-3 13th, 1 down.
A brilliant tee shot from
Ruffels came to rest six feet from
the pin. Zhang landed her tee
shot short of the green and lagged
to a foot. Ruffels then made her
putt for birdie to square the
match.
Zhang had an opening at the
33rd hole when Ruffels sent her
second shot at the 534-yard par-5
into the left rough, where it
settled on a severe side-hill lie.
Zhang’s second shot landed in the
center of the fairway, and she had
some 90 yards to the flag for an
attempt at birdie.
But Zhang’s approach missed
the green, and Ruffels, despite an
awkward stance that allowed vir-
tually no lower-body movement,
hit to the right of the green for,
remarkably, a reasonable chance
to get up and down.
Ruffels’s putt came up two feet
short and was conceded.
Zhang’s birdie putt rolled four
feet past, and after getting into
her putting stance for her next
attempt, she stepped away at the
advice of her father. Zhang ad-
dressed her ball again moments
later and curled the putt into the
left side of the cup.
“This is actually the first time
I’ve [attempted to defend] a tour-
nament that I’ve won, so I wanted
to see how I deal with the pres-
sure and expectations and stuff,”
Ruffels said. “I feel like I really
stayed mentally strong this week,
and I feel like I can hold my head
high with how I tried to get at my
defense.”
[email protected]Zhang, 17, triumphs at
U.S. Women’s Amateur
JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POSTThe Nationals Park grounds crew struggles to deploy a tangled tarp during a downpour in the sixth inning against the Orioles on Sunday.
fler, Champ, Finau, the oncoming
DeChambeau, a resurgent Day...
all mattered.
At one point, the board bustled
with four guys at 10 under, four at
9 under and four at 8 under, with
eight of the 12 operating from
ages between 21 and 26. “Yeah,
there was a lot of a kind of whip-
lash,” Day said. “Everything was
coming and going.”
Then at another point, seven
led. “I saw [the leader board] at 12,
when we were all having a party at
10 under,” Morikawa said.
Then it all came to the 23-year-
old who led the field during the
week in fairways hit, strokes
gained putting and proximity to
the hole, and who drilled his ap-
proach to No. 18 like somebody
who had frequented majors in-
stead of playing just one, a suit-
able tie for 35th at the 2019 U.S.
Open at Pebble Beach. This whole
constellation of talent at a merci-
less game gave way to somebody
who graduated from a tough busi-
ness curriculum at Cal only 14
months ago, won a tournament
last summer, won another this
summer in a playoff over Justin
Thomas and gained even from
losing a playoff in June in Fort
Worth, where he botched a near-
gimme putt to end a playoff with
Daniel Berger.
An indecipherable day went
clear in that way all sports relish:
a budded star.
“Yeah, I feel very comfortable
in this spot,” Morikawa said.
“When I woke up today, I was like,
‘This was meant to be.’ This is
where I want to be, and I’m not
scared from it.”
Yeah, no kidding.
[email protected]place at 10 under. “... He doesn’t
have a weakness in his game. He
doesn’t have a weakness mental-
ly.”
“Instant maturity was probably
the one thing that stood out,”
Casey said of first encountering
Morikawa, who joined the PGA
Tour only at the Canadian Open in
early June of last year. “I mean,
you’ve heard him talk. Very ma-
ture in the words he chooses, the
way he speaks, the way he plays
golf.”
“Well, first off, he’s an incredi-
ble ball-striker — great human
being, too,” DeChambeau said
from age 26, later adding, “But
he’s clearly an unbelievable ball-
striker, and that’s something that
I envy and hopefully I can get
there one day.”
And on a day filled with
2 0-something golfers playing like
the seasoned, the youngest of
them all, Wolff, who joined that
clot at 10 under, said of Morikawa:
“I think it’s just amateur golf now.
It’s so good. In college I was com-
peting [for Oklahoma State]
against [Morikawa] and Viktor
[Hovland] and Scottie [Scheffler],
Cameron Champ.”
Such specific assessments had
stemmed from such general com-
motion. There had been Brooks
Koepka, the two-time defending
champion and four-time major
winner who rode a wildly unchar-
acteristic day from the thick of
contention to the wheels off at 74.
There had been Johnson, still
straining for that second major
win after so much near-miss ago-
ny, stringing together nine
straight pars at one point to show
his experience. There had been
Casey, so astute and steady. Schef-I really wish there were crowds
right there,” Morikawa said of the
latest event without galleries be-
cause of the novel coronavirus
pandemic.
Somehow, a day with so many
contending golfers and so many
young contenders had produced
that singular story, about one
golfer with outsized pluck and
such a lavish horizon.
“He’s not going anywhere any-
time soon,” said Finau, who
joined a group of five in thirdwind; why go for it? I didn’t think
the pin was going to be where it
was.
“You know, my caddie [J.J. Jak-
ovac], it was like 278 to the front,
and just a good drive for me. It
was going to land just short of
that in this [chilly, damp] weath-
er; it’s going to bounce on up. He
looked at me, he counted off and
asked me what I wanted to do,
and I told him, ‘Let’s hit a good
drive.’ ”
And then: “This is the one timeahead. “Nothing I can do except
tip my hat,” said Casey, the charm-
ing 43-year-old playing his 64th
major tournament who finished
second alongside Johnson. “It
was a phenomenal shot.”
“Yeah, by Wednesday night,”
Morikawa said, “I had no plans for
going for 16 at all. I told [fellow
player] Colt Knost, he saw me
Wednesday afternoon practicing
on there, and he asked me if I was
ever going to go for it. I told him a
quick no. It’s too much into thepar. He’s one with a classical-mu-
sic kind of game who joined Jack
Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Rory
McIlroy as 2 3-year-old winners of
the PGA Championship, one who
has had one lofty summer, one
who saw his number of major
titles in 29 lifetime PGA Tour
events match his number of
missed cuts, and one who will
land at No. 5 in the world once the
rankings computers get done as-
sessing him Monday.
And he’s one who eluded a tie at
10 under he shared with — inhale,
please — 21-year-old Matthew
Wolff, major winner Jason Day,
chronic contender Tony Finau,
major frequenter Paul Casey, ma-
jor winner Dustin Johnson and
24-year-old Scottie Scheffler.
That’s not to mention those who
sometimes graced the logjam, in-
cluding Bryson D eChambeau and
Cameron Champ.
He outdistanced them with a
chip-in that didn’t seem to need a
lot of luck on No. 14, a wow, and a
293-yard drive to the green on the
par-4 No. 16 to arrange a seven-
foot eagle, a larger wow.
For the former, Morikawa over-
came a clunky approach where he
left himself off the green to the
left, 54 yards away, then recovered
with a one-shot parade of confi-
dence d irectly to the cup. “I think
that was a huge turning point,” he
said. “That separated me.”
For the latter, well. Experts and
onlookers both on site and at TVs
figure to recollect it utterly. “It
just fit my eye,” Morikawa said,
and onto the green it bounded
and stopped obediently. One wit-
ness stood at the No. 17 tee just up
PGA FROM D1
Morikawa’s blistering final round gives him a major title in just his second try
JEFF CHIU/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Collin Morikawa closed with a 6-under 64 on Sunday to win the PGA Championship in San Francisco.