Todd Montoya entered a St. Jude's charity raffle not expecting to win. Then, while caddying at the Safeway Open, he found out he won a $500,000 home. He ended up having a better week than his golfer, Brian Stuard.
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Lee Wybranski’s logo edition print.
The groupings are out and even with the field reduced to 144, it’s hard not to notice the size of those tee time windows. Times start about 12 minutes after sunrise and barring a shockingly fast pace of play, the last groups out will be playing well past sunset. Friday’s cloudy forecast suggests a Saturday morning finish is possible.
But hey, they’re playing a U.S. “Open” at Winged Foot, so what’s not to love?
Here is the field “by the numbers” for those wondering how many former U.S. Open Champions and how man Pub Links runner-ups made it.
Some themes are discernable but nothing like years past.
Of course, without fans I’m not sure why I’m even highlighting groups worth singling out to watch!
Gary Woodland will begin defense of his U.S. Open title alongside Open champion Shane Lowry and U.S. Amateur winner Andy Ogletree on Thursday at 1:05 p.m. at Winged Foot Golf Club.
Titleist teases their new TSI 2 + 3 Drivers as being played on tour. Plus, Dustin downplays his victory, and we read the best of the worst comments from Most Wanted Speakers.
0:48 – Chris’ Japanese Head Cover Collection3:54 – Dustin Johnson wins the FedEx Cup with a somber celebration7:14 – Titleist TSI 2 + 3 drivers appear on the USGA conforming list15:25 – Best of the Worst: Speaker Review Comments25:46 – Harry’s English Phrase: Double FeatureWatch Now
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The post Titleist TSI: New Drivers On Tour | NPG 57 appeared first on MyGolfSpy.
A par on the final hole of the 2006 U.S. Open would have altered the conversation. Phil Mickelson would have won his first U.S. Open and third consecutive major. Tiger Woods was struggling after his father's death. Instead, Phil had his "idiot" moment.
The Callaway Mack Daddy CB wedge offers a perimeter-weighted cavity-back design. That alone differentiates it from the majority of specialty wedges on the market today.
If you play game-improvement irons and have never felt comfortable with blade-style wedges or you’ve gotten wise to the fact that your set-matching A, G, S or L wedges don’t spin worth a damn, you’re exactly who Callaway is hoping to reach with its new wedges.
Contradictions in the Wedge Market
You may have never considered this but the wedge space is rife with contradictions. They’re mostly of the industry’s own making. The topic has been covered before by Cleveland and Mizuno but the conversation is relevant again with Callaway entering the fray.
It’s indisputable that the majority of golfers plays game-improvement or super game-improvement irons. Equally true is that the overwhelming majority of wedges sold are blade designs like Vokey and Mack Daddy JAWS.
He's the best player in the world. He's on a roll. He's already won this event once. Open-and-shut case? Not all our experts are convinced. They landed on a few other names, too, to win this week at Winged Foot.
Adam Schupak at Golfweek asks all the right questions in part one of this chat with Johnny Miller, who, frankly is missed as analysts increasingly cheer-lead and coddle.
There was this on calling a crappy shot a crappy shot:
GOLFWEEK: Have you become softer and less critical when you watch the PGA Tour now that you’re no longer in the broadcast booth?
JM: I don’t know if the word is critical. I see things that the other guys don’t see. When I see those things, I want to share them with the public. If it’s a crappy shot, it’s a crappy shot, it’s nothing personal. If I say it is a great shot, I want people to think, dang, Johnny, thought that was a great shot.
Like in the 2006 U.S. Open, we saw Phil (Mickelson) make two mental errors. You don’t have to play it like you’re on a white horse prancing up to the green. Poop it up there with a 3-iron, hit a 4-iron somewhere around the green, up and in or worst-case scenario you’re in a playoff. That was the biggest fall apart in that U.S. Open on the last hole in history. Harrington bogeyed the last three holes to lose by two. Furyk bogeyed the last hole. Mickelson made double bogey. Montgomerie got hosed, I thought. He had to wait for like 5 minutes. I thought he got such a bad break there. Then he chili-dipped it short of the green and didn’t get it up and in. Never has the last hole had so many scenarios. It was just incredible. That course is tough. Oakmont and Winged Foot must be the two toughest courses in tournament golf.
Ah…let’s get Johnny on Zoom this week! Or Comcast Business Solutions. Or whatever it takes!
GW: What did you think of NBC reacquiring the U.S. Open broadcast rights?
JM: If I had known that, I might have gone another year. It wasn’t like I had to retire.
I realize the branding folks have taken over so the chance John Bodenhamer issued these exact words is slim. But when a player withdraws from the 2020 U.S. Open due to a positive coronavirus test, is it really necessary to highlight his good USGA stock?
Hopefully Scottie Scheffler and Sam Horsfield never experience symptoms. The condolence quotes on their WD’s announced Sunday and Monday, respectively.
“We are sorry to lose a member of the USGA family in this year’s U.S. Open field,” said John Bodenhamer, USGA senior managing director, Championships. “Scottie has had a phenomenal rookie season and we look forward to welcoming him back to the U.S. Open Championship for many years to come.”
Eh….”sorry”, “losing” and “family” member in 2020 just not a great ring to it.
“Sam has had an excellent year on the European Tour, winning the UK series to earn a spot in this year’s U.S. Open at Winged Foot, and we are disappointed to lose a player of his caliber from the field,” said John Bodenhamer, USGA senior managing director, Championships. “Sam has a wonderful USGA pedigree and we look forward to watching him play in future U.S. Open Championships.”
Suspiciously predictably, Dustin Johnson was voted PGA Tour Player of the Year by his peers.
Vote totals were not available as of this posting, or ever.
Last week the PGA of America’s point system had Johnson a distant fifth in losing Player of the Year to Justin Thomas.
FedExCup Champion Dustin Johnson voted
2020 PGA TOUR Player of the Year
"The Meaning of Winged Foot: The club’s exceptional courses aren’t the only thing that set it apart"
Golf.com’s Michael Bamberger filed a long list of thoughts and memories of Winged Foot. Contributions are shared from Davis Love, Jim Nantz, Dan Hicks, Dave Marr, Sandy Tatum and Dave Anderson, among others, with cameos by Al Espinosa Jackie Pung and Tommy Armour.
From the piece, filed while waiting for his COVID-19 test.
Dave was a peach. Years later, by dint of alphabetical seating in different press boxes, we sat near one another. Dave, who died in 2018 and wrote some mega bestsellers, loved Winged Foot, wrote about it often and would have been just the kind of Winged Foot member Butch was talking about. But Dave was happy playing on his side of the Hudson River, at Knickerbocker, a Donald Ross course in Tenafly, N.J. As a reporter, Dave got stuff nobody else did. In 2006, the last time the U.S. Open was at Winged Foot, Dave captured this little exchange between Tiger Woods and Mike Davis for the benefit of his readers. This is how he wrote it and it’s perfect:
“When are you going to get the greens faster?” Woods said.
Davis wasn’t sure if Woods was serious or joking, but it didn’t matter.
“What you have,” Davis said, “is what you’re going to get.”
I am nearly certain Tiger was joking. That’s how his sense of humor runs. Also, the Winged Foot greens have so much slope. They’re always fast. There are many stories about four-putt greens in events major and minor there. Likely some five-putt greens, too.
Stretched to 504 yards in anticipation of modern agronomy make drives go longer, Winged Foot West’s 17th bends in the opposite direction of the preceding par-4.
In the NBC conference call, lead announcer and member Dan Hicks tapped this as one of the holes he’s most interested in seeing.
But there's a new tee at 17 which is joined along the same teeing ground as 13 East. It’s brand new. It was put into play when they did the restoration on both the East and the West Course, and it plays over 500 yards from back there. 17's a gorgeous hole. That big Christmas tree that sits short right of it off the tee, which used to kind of protect the golfers that were coming up the other way from 12, is gone. So you see the entire hole, the slight dogleg to the right just kind of out in front of you, it's a gorgeous hole. They put some new bunkering down the right side, they added a couple bunkers down there that are going to test the guys from trying to bomb it over that. So that hole sticks out.
The green shape is another beauty and I hope the front right is pinable:
No. 17 at Winged Foot is a 504-yard par 4 with a green that was expanded in the 2016 course restoration by Gil Hanse. In the final round of the 2006 U.S. Open, Geoff Ogilvy chipped in to save par en route to his victory.
In collaboration with @DeloitteUS. pic.twitter.com/8NQYhGD32P
Dustin Johnson was named the PGA Tour's Player of the Year on Monday, while Scottie Scheffler was named the tour's Rookie of the Year.
A Georgia man was sentenced to more than two years in federal prison after pleading guilty to a scheme that used stolen identities to obtain tickets to the Masters.
Sept. 14, 2020
Stellar Pro Field for PURE Insurance Championship
Different Format Due to COVID-19
Pebble Beach Golf Links has a long, storied history and for a handful of professionals entered in the 2020 PURE Insurance Championship, they will be returning to the site of some of their greatest career accomplishments. That is certainly the case for Tom Kite, Mark O’Meara, Davis Love III, and Kirk Triplett when the PGA TOUR Champions event tees off Friday, Sept. 18 at the famed layout overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Kite claimed the lone major of his great career when he captured the 1992 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am has witnessed O’Meara winning no fewer than five times, Love III twice. Triplett’s great memories are recent as he is not only defending champion of the PURE Insurance Championship, defeating Billy Andrade on the first playoff hole in 2019, but he went back-to-back with victories in this tournament in 2012 and 2013.
This year’s PURE Insurance Championship, with a $2.1 million purse, will have a different look from previous years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There will neither be First Tee junior players in the field nor any on-course spectators. Eighty professionals will be joined by 80 amateurs for the 54-hole event and the action can be followed on the Golf Channel, which will air the tournament all three days including Sunday’s final round live from noon to 3 p.m. PDT. Championship co-host Poppy Hills Golf Course also will not be used, with all play being held at Pebble Beach Golf Links.
In addition to the four who have made their mark at Pebble Beach, the field is loaded. Every player ranked in the Top 10 of the Charles Schwab Cup Money List is entered, including No. 1 Bernard Langer, No. 2 Miguel Ángel Jiménez, No. 4 Ernie Els, and No. 8 Fred Couples. Jerry Kelly, ranked No. 7, comes in with a hot hand after winning last month’s Bridgestone Senior Players Championship — the lone major played this season on the Champions Tour.
Michael O'Keefe, who played Danny Noonan in "Caddyshack," returned to the course Monday as a practice- round caddie at the U.S. Open.
After testing positive for COVID-19 following his arrival in New York, Sam Horsfield has withdrawn from the U.S. Open and will be replaced by Rory Sabbatini.
Yahoo Finance’s Melody Hahm shares all sorts of amazing data on the upsurge in golf participation, lessons and sales.
It seems, again, that extra time and the safety of outdoor exercise in a beautiful setting is driving the boom and not any of golf’s PSA-fueled initiatives or the PGA Tour Commissioner’s claim of playing a part. Maybe that data is coming.
In the meantime, Hahm writes:
According to research from the National Golf Foundation, there have been notable increases in participation among juniors and beginners, along with returners, as golf has positioned itself as a healthy way to pass time during this crisis.
“The number of junior golfers (ages 6-17) could increase by as much as 20% this year, a potential COVID-related bump of a half million golfers by year’s end. During a time when many other activities were on hold, including youth sports in many instances, we’ve also seen increases in the number of beginning and returning golfers of about 20% during the first half of 2020,” NGF editorial director Erik Matuszewski told Yahoo Finance.
And this…
Super work by Mike Dougherty tracking down Hale Irwin’s 16-year-old caddie from the 1974 U.S. Open for this Westchester Journal News profile.
Peter McGarey is 62 now and traveling from Scottsdale with his son to volunteer at the 2020 U.S. Open.
McGarey randomly drew Irwin and got the experience of a lifetime watching the eventual three-time winner prevail in the “massacre.”
But they did have one early week issue.
“Hale was very nice, very strict,” McGarey said. “He was disciplined and expected the same from me. There was a set of expectations. I’m sure it was on Monday, I wanted to see Arnold Palmer. You wore those blue jump suits and Hale’s name was pinned to my back. Palmer was coming up to nine green so I was waiting. I had the bag with me and Hale grabbed the back of my jumper. He was not very happy.”
Irwin laughs about it now.
“Who wouldn’t want to watch Arnold Palmer?” he said. “We all did. I got to know Arnie better and better over the years. He was a great man and I don’t blame Peter one bit.”
The 2006 tournament stands as the 50-year-old's most devastating defeat, costing him the only major trophy he still hasn't won. But it also defined his greatness.
