|
1. 1 PGA Tour Champions start, 1 PGA Tour Champions win
AP report…”Phil Mickelson chose to make his PGA Tour Champions debut at Ozarks National this week so he could avoid a two-week break right in the middle of his preparations for the U.S. Open at Winged Foot.”
- “If he was going to show up, Mickelson thought, he might as well win…He closed with a 5-under 66 on Wednesday to reach 22 under, leaving him three shots clear of Tim Petrovic. The wire-to-wire victory made Mickelson the 20th player to win on the 50-and-over-tour in his debut, not to mention gave him some much-needed confidence after a missed cut at The Northern Trust knocked him from the FedEx Cup Playoffs.”
2. TW’s Tour Championship prospects look bleak
Steve DiMeglio for Golfweek…“The onerous task at hand for Tiger Woods is two-fold.”
- “One, he likely needs to finish fourth or better this week in the BMW Championship to advance to next week’s Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta for the FedEx Cup Playoffs finale.”
- “And two, he’ll have to do so at Olympia Fields Country Club, which is primed to tee up U.S. Open conditions.”
3. Tiger on fan-less Masters
Golf Channel’s Ryan Lavner with Woods’ remarks...”It’s going to make a big difference to all of us,” Woods said Wednesday at the BMW Championship. “It has out here week-in and week-out. We just don’t have the same type of energy and the distractions.
- “There at Augusta National, you just have all those roars that would go up if somebody did something, somewhere, and then scoreboard watching and trying to figure out what’s going on, there aren’t a lot of big leaderboards out there, so that will be very different.”
- “Augusta National announced earlier this month that the Masters, now rescheduled for Nov. 12-15, would be played without patrons for the first time. Woods said when he first went to Augusta to play a practice round in 1995, it was “eye-opening” just how much room there was on the course when it wasn’t lined with 40,000 spectators.”
- “When you put 40,000 people on such a small piece of property – I know there’s no rough, but it gets confined,” he said. “But this will be very different. This will be a fun Masters, and I’m looking forward to defending.”
4. Bryson returns to Olympia Fields
PGATour.com’s Ben Everill with a few morsels relating to Bryson DeChambeau’s dominant 2015 U.S. Am victory at Olympia Fields…“DeChambeau started that week with a 70 on the South Course, which is hosting this week’s BMW Championship. He inadvertently turned up late to his second-round tee time on the North Course and was penalized two strokes. He didn’t believe the penalty was justified, however, and he set out to state his case.”
- “He sprinted to retrieve a piece of paper that proved he’d been provided with an incorrect tee time, one he was not late for. He started his round not exactly sure where he stood on the leaderboard before being advised the penalty would be rescinded.”
- “I just sprinted and said, ‘Guys, I’m telling you, this is not correct. ‘They must have been going, ‘What is Bryson doing?’ So I came back and showed him the piece of paper, and he goes, ‘Well, that’s interesting.’ So that’s when he took the piece of paper to the committee, and they told me that they’d be out in a little bit. It was an hour later. They came up with a conclusion that I was fine,” DeChambeau told reporters at the time.”
- “DeChambeau signed for another even-par 70 on the South Course to easily qualify for the U.S. Amateur’s match-play portion. That’s where he put on a historic performance en route to hoisting the Havemeyer Trophy.”
5. Jason Day gets a lesson from…Tiger Woods
Again, Ben Everill for PGATour.com, this time quoting Jason Day from an interesting report on the Australian leaning on Tiger Woods for tips on how to modify his golf swing to accommodate his ailing back…”Obviously I’m still playing against Tiger, but he’s very open to me about the golf swing because of the specific questions that I’ve tried to ask him … I’ve asked questions and he’s willing to answer them, and I’m trying to make changes right now in my swing. I want to just slowly improve my swing to not only help the playing feel but also help my back along, too.”
- “Part of those changes is dialing back a little from when he was his most successful in 2015 and 2016…”
- …”I definitely don’t swing it as hard as I had in the past. I still can. I can get the club speed up to 120 and the ball speed can get up to 180 easy if I want to, but I just don’t try and do that anymore because, A, I don’t think it’s great on my back going that hard, especially with the way I’m swinging it right now, and B, I’m putting more of a premium on trying to hit the fairways,” he said”
- “I’ve been working a lot more on feel shots, quarter, half shot, three-quarter shots. I don’t hit a lot of full swing shots really typically anymore with my irons because I feel like I lose a little bit of control there and then that can obviously put a little bit of added pressure on my back.”
6. Tiger, Rory to feature in Ryder Cup-style charity match at Big Cedar Lodge
Golf Channel’s Brentley Romine…”…with the Ryder Cup postponed, Tiger Woods and three other former world No. 1’s are stepping up to fill the void.”
- “Woods will team up with Justin Thomas to take on Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose in the Payne’s Valley Cup, an 18-hole, Ryder Cup-style charity match at Big Cedar Lodge’s Payne’s Valley Course, Woods’ first public design set to open next month in Ridgedale, Mo. The event will be played on Sept. 22, three days before the biennial matches were originally scheduled to take place at Whistling Straits, and will feature four-ball, foursomes and singles formats.”
- “Payne’s Valley is the first public golf course that I have designed. I couldn’t be prouder of how it turned out,” Woods said. “It was an honor for me and my TGR Design team to work with Johnny Morris and Big Cedar Lodge on this spectacular golf course. I am thrilled that it will be featured during the Payne’s Valley Cup.”
7. Huggan: Rory is right
“I was struck by how profound Rory’s comments [at last week’s Northern Trust] were,” writes John Huggan.
“Sometimes I come off a green and make a birdie, and I’m sort of-you know, you’re sort of laughing coming off a hole that you’ve just messed up, and you make a birdie and it’s sort of almost a more negative emotion in some ways,” explained McIlroy, the reigning FedEx Cup champion who enters this week’s penultimate playoff event in Chicago at 12th in the standings. “It’s weird. It’s very strange. I want to get an intensity and some sort of fire, but I just haven’t been able to. That’s partly to do with the atmosphere and partly to do with how I’m playing. I’m not inspiring myself, and I’m trying to get inspiration from outside sources to get something going.”
“Indeed, all of that is difficult to achieve when almost no one is watching live. Like every golfer, Rory owns a certain kind of privacy no one else knows anything about. Because we only see the result of his shots. But he knows when the shot is better than the result. And knows when the result is better than the shot. It is one of the best aspects of the game, something the big players surely understand perfectly. If Tiger Woods was listening as Rory spoke, I bet he was nodding his head.”
“But that’s the thing about Rory. He isn’t currying anyone’s favor. He’s not trying to tell anyone something they want to hear. Instead, he thinks out loud. Understandably, he is dismayed by the weird world in which he is currently spending his professional life. He is dismayed by the lack of atmosphere and spectators. He was the one person in the field prepared to say that what they have all been doing for the last few weeks isn’t really professional golf. It’s just not. It’s the golf people play at their clubs. It’s the monthly medal. And he was brave enough to say so for all the world to hear.”
8. 56!
Katherine Underwood of 10Boston…”A Massachusetts man has the golf world buzzing after shooting a 56…”
- “For some perspective, 58 is the lowest score carded on the PGA tour. Nick Maccario got two strokes better than that.”
- “It was foggy on Sunday morning, so Maccario said he wasn’t expecting much when he hit the links with his buddies.”
- “After birdying 12, 13, 14, 15 in a row, I knew that if I just pared last three holes, I’d shoot a 59,” Maccario told NBC10 Boston Wednesday.
- “The competitive amateur golfer grew up playing at Bradford Country Club in Haverhill but said he’s never played like this.”
9. Phil Mickelson’s Charles Schwab Challenge winning WITB
Driver: Callaway Mavrik Sub Zero (9 degrees)
Shaft: KBS TD 70 C5 TX
Fairway woods: Callaway Mavrik Sub Zero (13.5 degrees)
Shaft: KBS TD 80 C5 TX
Irons: Callaway X Forged Utility (2), Callaway Epic Forged (4-6), Callaway Apex Pro (7), Callaway Apex MB (8-PW)
Shafts: KBS Tour V 125 S+ (4-PW)
Wedges: Callaway PM Grind ’19 “Raw” (54-14, 60-12, 64-10)
Shafts: KBS Tour-V 125 S+
Putter: Odyssey WHXG Blade “Phil Mickelson”
Grip: SuperStroke Pistol GT Tour
Ball: Callaway Chrome Soft X (with Triple Track)
Grips: Golf Pride MCC (White/Black)
|
19th Hole2 weeks ago
19th Hole2 weeks ago
