|
By Ben Alberstadt
November 19, 2020
Good Thursday morning, golf fans.
|
|
1. Tiger’s predicament, motivation
ESPN’s Bob Harig…”Woods is caught between the need to play more tournament rounds and the knowledge that if he overdoes it, he will be ineffective. Same for practice. He needs to work on his game. Hitting too many balls, however, becomes a physical issue for which he would then pay a price.”
- “In the aftermath of his finish Sunday, in a situation where such a question is awkward, I attempted to ask Woods about his motivation at this point, given his body of work and the struggles he faces.”
- “Well, there are days when mentally I just — it’s hard to push than others just because physically it’s just — my body has moments where it just doesn’t work like it used to,” he said. “No matter how hard I try, things just don’t work the way they used to, and no matter how much I push and ask of this body, it just doesn’t work at times.
- “Yes, it is more difficult than others to be motivated at times. Because things just ache and have to deal with things that I’ve never had to deal with before.”
|
|
2. No. 1 back in action
Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols…”Jin Young Ko is back on tour and looking for the nearest Korean market. The World No. 1 learned to cook during her prolonged break from the LPGA and is in need of several spices to whip up evening meals. The inaugural Pelican Women’s Championship marks Ko’s first start on the LPGA in 2020. She played in six events on the Korean LPGA this season, carding four top 10s.”
- “I had been (to) cooking class and meditation, work out, practice a lot,” said Ko of her time off. “I have to cook more Korean food in U.S., so I went to the cooking class, and then I got a lot of things like menus, Korean menus, so I (cooked) this morning, last night too.”
|
|
3. Tiger & Andy
Golf.com’s Nick Piastowski…“Before I teed off, he kind of came up and embraced me and said, ‘Let’s go do this thing,’’’ Ogletree said Sunday. “I think that’s one thing I’ll never forget. I was pretty nervous on the 1st hole. I didn’t really know what I was going to say to him. He just came up, smiling, laughing, whatever, and that just kind of settled me down.”
- …”The thought of playing with Woods had made him nervous. The actual playing with Woods took it away. Ogletree had watched Tiger Woods on TV, he had watched the Masters on TV, and he had watched Tiger Woods at the Masters on TV. And yet, here Woods was, wanting to know what it was like spending Wednesday night in the Crow’s Nest at Augusta National, a privilege given to just the amateurs…”
|
|
4. Earnings GOAT
Golf.com’s Zephyr Melton… “Tiger Woods has been among the most successful athletes of all-time. And with that success has come money — a lot of it.
- “According to Forbes, since Tiger turned pro in 1996, he’s made around $1.5 billion in endorsements, appearance fees and course design fees. Add to that the more than $120 million he’s made on the course and we can estimate that Tiger has earned somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.6 billion in his career.”
- “And though Tiger has entered the twilight of his golf career, there is still plenty of cash left to be made for the 44-year-old. In fact, according to a recent report from New York-based financial firm Duff and Phelps, Tiger’s projected future earnings ranks higher than all but two golfers.”
|
|
5. Like riding a bike: Robert Damron to tee it up again
Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch…”The last round Robert Damron played on the PGA Tour came at the Sanderson Farms Championship in July 2013, a 75 that led to a missed cut. A month later, he played his last competitive round anywhere. That was in the Kentucky Open, when his driver yips finally became too much to bear. “The first drive I hit was a horrible yip out to the right. The second hole was a pull hook into the weeds,” Damron recalled. “After that round I called my wife and said, ‘I’m done. I’m never competing again. We’ll find something else to do.’”
- “That something else eventually led to television. After a 15-year Tour career—during which he won the 2001 Byron Nelson Classic, lost a playoff in the same event three years later to Sergio Garcia, and banked more than $6 million—Damron is now an analyst on Golf Channel’s Morning Drive and a course reporter for PGA Tour Live. This week, the 48-year-old plays his first tournament since quitting in Kentucky seven years ago when he competes at the TaylorMade Pebble Beach Invitational, which draws pros from the PGA, LPGA and senior tours. And Damron admits he’s frightened about what might happen.”
|
|
One for the Memory Banks is part Final Rounds, part Dewsweepers, part To the Linksland, and part Rick Reilly—and 100% one of the best golf books you’ll ever read! This hilarious and heartfelt travelogue features stories of golf and friendship. If you’ve played golf in the UK, One for the Memory Banks will connect with you on so many levels—if you haven’t, this book will have you calling your travel agent!
|
|
GolfWRX may earn a commission on sales of “GolfWRX Recommends” products.
|
|
6. Breaking Augusta? It didn’t exactly happen for Bryson…
Golf Channel’s Ryan Lavner…”For all the breathless speculation about whether Bryson would break Augusta, he couldn’t even beat the oldest and shortest-hitting player in the field. Despite giving up an average of nearly 65 yards off the tee, Bernhard Langer not only handled DeChambeau in their head-to-head final-round matchup (71-73), but he clipped him by a shot where it mattered most: on the final leaderboard. The 63-year-old Langer tied for 29th.”
- “Even though I’m bombing it by him, he’s still playing better than me,” DeChambeau said. “It doesn’t matter. That’s the cool part about the golf of golf. You can shoot a score whatever way you want.”
- “By the end of the week DeChambeau looked exhausted, not just because he was feeling unwell but in part because of the intense pressure of the pre-Masters buildup. (Some of that stress was no doubt self-inflicted, after boasting, as the pre-tournament favorite, that Augusta was a par-67 for him. If true, he shot 18 over.)”
|
|
7. Musings from the Masters
Terry Koehler for GolfWRX with some observations on the action from Augusta National…”Bunkers are too easy for these guys. The best example of that was DJ on the second hole. Faced with a delicate pitch over a bunker from a tight lie, he chunks it in the bunker. Then he blasts out to two feet or so to save par. These guys are amazing from the bunkers, hitting it close more often than not it seems. Maybe it’s time to remove rakes or something to make bunkers the hazards architects designed them to be, before the invention of the sand wedge.”
- “But they are amazing short game wizards. Watching the best players in the world get up and down from nowhere, time and again, is impressive. The chip that Sungjae Im hit from behind the green on 15 was brilliant. But we saw it time and again from the entire field. The key is that they are all skilled enough to hit a vast array of shots with just the right trajectory and spin, and land the ball very close to the exact spot required. Maybe we should all spend the vast majority of our practice time hitting chips and pitches of all kinds…”
- “Long and middle iron play is almost a relic of a bygone era. You just do not see these guys hitting those clubs very often. Even “Par 5s” are often reached with a short iron nowadays. We are long past the days of Hogan’s famous 1-iron at Merion or Johnny Miller’s precise dismantling of Oakmont in 1973, when he hit 5-iron or longer to at least 13 or 14 greens, and only let the ball get above the hole twice.”
|
|
8. Sea Island pros having success under Parsons
PGATour.com’s Sean Martin with the profile…”Justin Parsons was a teenager living in Northern Ireland when he took a test offered in the book, “Eight Traits of a Champion Golfer.” This questionnaire promised to recommend a career based on Parsons’ strengths and passions. Parsons, like many young men, had aspirations of playing professional golf. The examination recommended a different path.”
- “It said, ‘You really enjoy the idea of movement and how movement works, and you would be a much better coach than you ever would be a player,” Parsons recalled recently. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, this is kind of dampening my aspirations.’ But at the same time, I’ve always enjoyed people, trying to figure out how people tick and how to get the best out of them.”
- “He’s done that this year, helping several PGA TOUR players either reach new heights or find success after several tough seasons. He’s had a quick impact since arriving at the Sea Island Resort, host of this week’s The RSM Classic, last year. Before that, he spent several years teaching in Dubai and on the European Tour. His current stable of students includes Gary Woodland, Louis Oosthuizen and Will Gordon, as well as Sea Island residents Harris English, Michael Thompson and Brian Harman.”
|
|
9. Two more pros positive for COVID-19
Golf Digest’s Brian Wacker…”Two more players have tested positive for COVID-19 at this week’s RSM Classic at Sea Island Golf Club in St. Simons Island, Ga.”
“The PGA Tour announced on Wednesday that Henrik Norlander and Kramer Hickok both received a positive test result for the coronavirus during pre-tournament screening and have withdrawn from the tournament.”
|
|
|
|
|
19th Hole2 weeks ago
