Doyel: The story was the golf, until the story was Stella
CARMEL — The story was the golf, until the golf stopped being the story. And the golf was good. Roberto Castro has brought monstrously long Crooked Stick Golf Club to its soggy knees, shooting his second consecutive 65 on Friday and walking off the 18th green with a lead of four strokes. He doesn’t hit the ball terribly long or putt it particularly well, and he’s never won on tour, but he’s making a mockery of one of the biggest, baddest courses in America.
Pretty good story, until he sat behind the podium Friday and looked past the media toward the back of the room. He smiled and winked and waved at somebody. And there she was, sitting on the floor with a white ribbon in her hair and a smile on her face that said what she cannot:
Daddy!
The story’s name is Stella, and she’s Roberto Castro’s 7-month-old daughter. “My Valentine,” he calls her, because she was born nearly a month premature on Jan. 28. Castro was in San Diego on Jan. 27, a Wednesday night, about to get some sleep for Round 1 of the Farmers Insurance Open the next day, when he got the call that it was time to come home to Atlanta: His wife, Katie, was going into labor.
Castro caught the first thing smoking out of San Diego on Jan. 28 and made it to the hospital in time for the delivery. He skipped two events before flying back to the West Coast for the AT&T Pebble Beach (Calif.) Pro-Am. He finished 10th on Valentine’s Day, then took a red-eye home that night to be with Katie and Stella.
That’s the story, or it should be, that angelic little girl with the white ribbon in her hair, sitting in the middle of the floor as Daddy smiles at her and talks into the microphones.
But the golf. It does get in the way. And Roberto Castro is having his way with this golf course, making it look so easy that his playing partners are finding it a little bit irritating. On the 14th hole Castro watched his tee shot soar into the steel-gray sky before disappearing, maybe left of the fairway, maybe not. Nobody was clapping, not down the fairway and not near the tee box.
Castro looked at one of his playing partners, Daniel Summerhays.
“We good there?”
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Summerhays, 17 strokes behind at that moment, nodded grimly. It was a silly question. You good there? Man, this week you’re good everywhere.
The best week of Castro’s PGA Tour career continued Friday with his second consecutive 65 at the BMW Championship, good at one point for that aforementioned four-shot lead until Dustin Johnson scorched through his final 10 in 7-under par. And all that did was pull Johnson, ranked No. 2 in the world, into a tie for the lead with Castro.
Who exactly is this Roberto Castro fellow? Well, for one, he’s ranked No. 101 in the world. Which means he’s not supposed to be doing this to Crooked Stick, and to one of the 2016 PGA season’s most elite fields. This is the best of the PGA’s best, only the top 70 players in the FedEx Cup standings qualify for the BMW Championship, and Castro is lapping most of the field. Just four players are within seven shots of one of the shortest hitters on tour, Castro ranking 156th in driving distance. He’s also a below-average putter, ranking 129th in putts per round.
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But he’s absurdly accurate, seventh in fairways hit and 14th in greens in regulation, and he’s playing this week like he has nothing to lose. And basically he does not. There’s no cut this week, but it’s more than that. Only the top 30 in the FedEx Cup standings advance to the Tour Championship in Atlanta in two weeks, and seeing how he entered the BMW Championship at No. 53 — and given his math acumen, considering he was a two-time Academic All-American as an engineering major at Georgia Tech — Castro knows what he needs to do here to get into the Top 30.
“It’s pretty simple for me,” he was saying Friday between winks and nods at Stella. “I have to basically win the tournament.”
Basically have to win, huh? This is a guy who has never won on the PGA Tour, finished in the top 10 just nine times in 125 starts, and missed the cut 40 times. Castro has never won in 52 starts on the lesser Web.com Tour, either, missing the cut in nearly one-third (16) of those starts. He had to finish 10th on the 2015 Web.com Tour to get his 2016 PGA Tour card.
But here he is, being out-driven by 30 yards by playing partners Summerhays and Brendan Steele but hitting nearly every fairway and green, and chipping to within tap-in range when he doesn’t. That’s his game, dinking and dunking and safely managing his way around the course, but Castro also has been bombing in long putts — draining a pair of 30-footers Friday after sinking the longest putt Thursday, a 54-footer on No. 4.
Nothing to lose, see. That’s his mindset.
“If you play that way all the time, when you do play well, you kind of push yourself to the top of the leaderboard,” Castro said.
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He has found himself a comfortable playing rhythm, stalking the course well ahead of his playing partners and even his caddie, walking alone as he drinks from a water bottle or eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. His caddie, Rusty Stark, has been left to walk the course with either Summerhays or Steele and their caddie. All of them, like everyone but Dustin Johnson, find themselves well behind Roberto Castro.
As for Johnson, well, he’s not afraid of Castro. But he says Castro should be afraid of him.
“I would be,” Johnson said, when asked if Castro should be nervous. “For sure.”
Castro? He doesn’t look nervous. Looks kind of carefree, if you want to know the truth. Katie and Stella join him for about half his tournaments, including this one, and they’re all staying in the JW Marriott. Stella sleeps 11 hours a night these days, which means everyone in the Castro family is sleeping like a baby in Indianapolis.
The last time I saw him on Friday, Roberto Castro was leaving the media center for the clubhouse. A BMW official had come for him with a golf cart, and Castro directed Katie and Stella into the front seat, next to the driver. Castro hopped on the back and rode to the clubhouse, standing with spikes, in that area where golf bags go.
He was leading the tournament by four shots at the moment, but fans at Crooked Stick didn’t notice him. They were too busy smiling at the sweet little thing in the front seat, the baby with the white ribbon in her hair.
Stella’s the story, see. Roberto Castro? He’s just along for the ride.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.
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BMW Championship
Where: Crooked Stick Golf Club, 1964 Burning Tree Lane, Carmel.
When: Gates open at 10 a.m. Play begins at 11 a.m.
TV: Noon-3:30 p.m. on NBC, 3:30-6 p.m. on the Golf Channel
Tickets: $78 per day.
Weather: High of 76, 50 percent chance of rain according to weather.com on Friday night.
Parking: Parking will be at 11815 N. Pennsylvania Street in Carmel. Shuttles begin at 9:30 a.m.
Information: BMWChampionship.com; @BMWChamps on Twitter.