Stricker’s 33 under is not a mirage

People long have reported really weird visions in deserts, so at this particular Bob Hope Chrysler Classic it’s important to keep reminding oneself that this is not a hallucination.

That’s really a 33-under-par score up there belonging to the world’s No. 16 player, Steve Stricker, after four of the five rounds, and that looks kooky only because nobody on the PGA Tour ever visited it before in 72 holes.

The 61-62 sitting up there denoting Stricker’s third and fourth rounds would be, yes, ironclad-accurate, even though for millions of golfers it looks either like some daffy daydream or some score fudged through a whole bevy of cheating. If it looks just wrong, it’s probably because it’s the best two straight days anybody on tour ever played.

That 30-under belonging to Pat Perez looks plenty garish, given it would be the second-best 72-hole score in PGA Tour history behind Ernie Els’ 31-under in Hawaii six Januarys ago . . . if it weren’t for the fact that it holds down second place here.

And yes, next to Jesper Parnevik’s 61 from Saturday, that would be the word “CUT,” and next to James Nitties’ 62 from Saturday, that also would be the word “CUT.” Out here, in birdieland, those guys just couldn’t afford their horrendous 72s and 73s from earlier in the week.

“I don’t know what to say,” Stricker kept saying because, really, the first man at 33 under after 72 holes wouldn’t.

He did say something to Joe Durant on the airplane from Hawaii before this tournament, shortly after he had inquired about Durant’s record winning score at the Hope in 2001, and Durant had told him it had been 36 under. “That’s unbelievable,” Stricker said to Durant. “It almost seems like you can’t reach that goal.’”

On Saturday, Stricker said, “But here we are.”

Even before Stricker led by three over Perez and by seven over Robert Garrigus, Vaughn Taylor and Bubba Watson and by eight over John Merrick, Garrigus reckoned he’d “have to shoot 58 tomorrow to finish second,” and Watson said he’d “want a 59 to beat him.”

And to think he meant Perez, who’d led all week after starting with your everyday 61-63, and who still led Stricker as Watson spoke.

Then Stricker, 41, wound up playing the first 72 holes in 12 shots better than he’d ever played any of his 338 other tournaments, whereupon he flat-out maintained the general oddness by branding himself among the populous Least Likely To Reach 33 Under.

“I think it’s just, you got to have a different mentality here,” he said, “and that’s one reason why I usually don’t play here, is I don’t have that mentality of shooting low a lot of times.”

Indeed, he hadn’t played the Bob Hope since 2004, and he’d never played the Nicklaus and SilverRock courses, yet not even the haunting “New York Stock Exchange” logo on his golf shirt could put the whammy on his closing birdie barrage on Nicklaus.

Count ‘em, savor ‘em: six birdies in the last seven holes, four in a row to close.

The 15-footer at No. 15 let him catch the rabbit Perez. The chip to one foot on the par-five 16th let him catch Els six years after Els said it might be “a nice thing to tell Samantha and Ben [his children] one day if it holds up.” The 195-yard five-iron to 15 feet and ensuing putt on No. 17 pushed Stricker ahead of Els.

The three-wood, six-iron and 15-footer on No. 18 ushered him further into a palm-treed paradise no golfer had visited.

“Well, it’s been, uh, it’s been, good,” Stricker said in Wisconsin deadpan. Then: “I don’t know what else to say.”

He might say that of all peculiarities, hitting golf balls all winter in Madison from a three-sided mobile home with heat pumped in, out into snowdrifts and zero-degree windchill, can pay off down the line someday when the weather’s flawless somewhere.

That’s how Stricker resuscitated his swing by shortening it in winter 2005-06, and after three successful comeback seasons, that’s what he rated No. 1 in his 61-62 bliss -- “my ball-striking, to tell you the truth.” Long a maestro around the greens and a phenomenal putter upon them, he became a guy who could spend a day missing one fairway.

It all rearranged today’s fifth round, which all week promised a test of Perez’s innards after 26 top-10 finishes without a victory and few turns at real contention. Asked to recount a prior near-miss while he still led, Perez declined and said, “It isn’t even worth talking about,” a possible sign of front-running tension until Stricker blew by him like some, well, hallucination.

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chuck.culpepper@yahoo.com