PGA Tour: Opportunity Knocks: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).Opportunity has already knocked for Jordan Spieth; that discussion about Player Of The Year lasted less than one week.
And Opportunity knocked in the form of FedEx moolah; quite apart from the $6figures banked for performance at the Tour Championship, FedEx bonus pool money included:
$3M for Stenson (that 50-footer on his 72nd green was worth a million bucks over:
$2M: Day
$1.5M: Fowler
$1M: Watson
$600K: Rose
$280K: Casey
$250K: McIlroy
etc.

2).And Sangmoon Bae collected $195K in bonus money, but that's almost certainly the last we see of him for 21 months as he's off to South Korea for Presidents Cup duty and then for the local version of National Service. He doesn't even get to enjoy defending his Fry's title later this month.

3).Lots on this board as to why Stenson has trouble closing out tournaments this year, especially given his outstanding ball-striking stats. Certainly his putting sometimes seems suspect in the heat of battle, but two self-inflicted "logistical" flaws were exaggerated last weekend:
~The course was soaked and the distance given up off the tee in driving with 3-wood (or iron) is magnified when there's no roll. Spieth is long but not Bubba-long yet he enjoyed at least a club advantage on most second shots.
~Play more quickly! He obviously gets out of sync when he's put on the clock, he certainly did at Bay Hill, even though it was his playing partner at fault; just the same w/Spieth. Spieth was not only on the clock earlier in the week but had a bad time too, so Henrik must have known his own leisurely dawdle and deliberations would look even worse when paired with Spieth.
Still, Stenson earned $2.6M in the Play-Offs plus his bonus swag of $3M, a decent five week's work in most peoples' book.

4).Lots in the press about Paul Casey's imminent meeting with European Tour chief Keith Pelley. Casey is lobbying for his European Tour obligation to be reduced from 13 tournaments to 11. Casey has an immense talent that was wasted during the years (early/mid thirties) most golf pros consider their prime, but enjoyed a renaissance 2015 on the PGA Tour. But one suspects he's trying to grind more than one axe here:
"I think I could make a massive contribution to the European Team, but I didn't get picked in 2010 when I was in the World's Top Ten, so who's to say I'd make it even if I did rejoin."
Exactly Paul, so do you want a guaranteed Ryder Cup place as a downpayment for rejoining the European Tour? Not going to happen. You may be p1ssed off with Colin Montgomerie but that doesn't mean the rules should be modified just to accomodate the chip on Paul's shoulder.
Ooh, and by the way, Europe have done OK without you since you last played, for Faldo in 2008.
4 x Majors + 4 x WGC's and you only have to find five events Paul; I'm sure you can do that.

5).No PGA Tour event this week, and Presidents Cup action next week in South Korea. Still no word yet as to whether Furyk and Oosthuizen will be good to go, but imagine standbys have been summoned. Holmes and An??

6).The latest on Anthony Kim's odyssey was posted on last week's thread, but here's another look:

http://www.golfchannel.com/news/doug-ferguson/anthony-kim-speaks-golf-only-fond-memory-mine/

(Isn't it ironic that it was Robert Allenby at the 2009 Presidents Cup who called Anthony Kim a boozing party animal after reports emerged of a wee-hours sighting? And that was the same weekend that Kim thumped Allenby in "Singles". Rumours that Kim was in Hawaii during January's Sony Open cannot be confirmed . . . . )

7).And so to Opportunity Knocking, and the final event of the web.com Tour Finals: the web.com Tour Championship at the Dye's Valley course, at TPC Sawgrass, in Florida.
Several golfers emerged from the WTF's last year and reached the FedEx Play-Offs.
Reached BMW Championship: Zac Blair, David Lingmerth, Sean O'Hair
DeutscheBank: Herman, Pinckney, JJ Henry, Greg Owen, Swafford
Barclays: Nick Taylor, Knost, Peterson, Chad Collins.
In contrast, Richard Sterne qualified comfortably and promptly went into a 12-month funk. You never know.

8).Among pros who can be a little mercurial, and we've already mentioned the talents of Casey and Kim, can be counted Andres Romero. He's back from using the hole-marker as a punching bag in Reno and has one tournament to qualify for the PGA Tour where his talents undoubtedly belong. Hope he's fit.

9).European Tour players Grillo and Lahiri have already qualified, as has Sweden's Norlander; Brian Davis needs a Top 30 finish to be sure of joining them, but Thomas Aiken and Marcel Siem need a miracle.
And what about Gonzalo F'dez? After playing "decent", certainly not great, thru three rounds last week he was d/q'd for not signing his card. Now he's put himself in a deep hole that only a Top Ten finish this week will get him out of. If he fails, and you'd have to say he's been accident-prone all year, what next for Gonzo?

10).Lastly, First Stage of Q-School begins this week; no longer does it offer a direct route to the PGA Tour, but merely access to the web.com. And Justin Thomas, Tony Finau and Daniel Berger proved this season that Opportunity is only delayed one year for the right man. We'll try to keep track of any Europeans competing, but don't imagine there'll be any "notables".

Kwini
With the Web.com playoffs finished, roughly how may players will have a tour card for next year?
I made a guess and came up with about 250. (FedEx 125, then those who are top 125 money leaders not in FedEx 125, 50 from Web.com tour, and then those who have tournament winning exemptions from previous years, money and medical exemptions)
I appreciate they don't all play at the same week, as tournaments "Categorise" them, but just curious to know what the potential field could be in terms of numbers.
INW

Hah! That's a tricky one!!

Trickier as I can't seem to link the "Player Exemptions" Player Eligibility Ranking page from the Tour website.

The approximate number is 170 - 175 Full Membership cards, plus 48 from the web.com season and Finals which are regarded as conditional.
Other conditional categories include, in order of priority:
~126th - 150th in previous season's moneylist if not otherwise exempt - that amounted to 12 last year.
~Special Temporary Memberships (like Grace, Cameron Smith, Patrick Rodgers, Willett): Just those four last season, I think.
~Past Champions plus Veteran Members (those who have 150 made cuts, Snakey Chalmers is one): another 20 of them.
And then there are another 25-odd who have some status but are pretty much considered inactive.

But remember, when fields are being filled, sponsors exemptions and, in most events, top tenners not otherwise eligible, from the prior week's tournament, local qualifying, prior winners of the tournament all take priority over "conditional" members.

When the 15/16 exemptions are publioshed I'll link them if I can. Otherwise, go to pgatour.com, use the menu option immediately to the right of "PGA TOUR" and click "players", then Player Exemptions. They're all there!

Thanks Kwini. Forgot about top tenners and sponsor exemptions.
I do look at the exemption list for a tournament occassionally. Can be difficult for those at the bottom to see if they get to play or not.
I'm obliged.

kwinigolfer wrote:Reports from S.Korea suggest Adam Scott has turned up with a short putter and ligament strain in a finger. Just what Nick Price wants to see. Times two.

Apparantly short putters ain't his thing?

What to learn from this off-season (politician-style) interview:

A) McIlroys sponsor is more desperate than those doing product placement in James Bond. Does it really take an app to tell young Rory he's travelling quite a bit?

B) The minimum tournament requirement for ET membership will soon change

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/golf/rory-mcilroy/11912062/Rory-McIlroy-I-thought-about-quitting-European-Tour.html

Trouble is, Rory's really playing on three Tours:
~European
~PGA
~Sponsors/Appearance Fees

There needs to be some recognition of the third before either of the first two compromises, either for Rory or anyone else.
No sympathy for Casey, he's just trying to have his proverbial Pollyanna-ish cake - and of course he wants to eat it too.

Good call Kwini re three tours. It would be really easy to say he (and his ilk - i.e. the highly marketable super stars) should stop chasing the money and stick to the tours, but of course that ignores the drag along benefits their status, earnings and public recognition provides for golf in general and the tours in particular.

You say there needs to be some recognition, but I think that exists, there now needs to be some action to make it work. I could see a model where your requirement to play x events is spread and measured over a couple of seasons once you've been on the tour two or three years in a row. And/or winning a major counts for attending an event or two in the following season. To me those kind of rules would balance the need to have the top players play regular tour events, whilst recognising that the demands on their time are greater than the average pro.

The recognition is there bob. It's called $$$. Noone forces Rory to sign a $100M deal with Nike. Players should know that these kinds of endorsements require something from the players as well. And don't tell me Rory does it out of altruism to his colleagues / the tour / golf in general. It's just "money for nothing and your European Tour card for free" mentality.

pedro wrote:The recognition is there bob. It's called $$$. Noone forces Rory to sign a $100M deal with Nike. Players should know that these kinds of endorsements require something from the players as well. And don't tell me Rory does it out of altruism to his colleagues / the tour / golf in general. It's just "money for nothing and your European Tour card for free" mentality.

Somewhat missed my point.  And by somewhat I mean completely

I'm agreeing with you - just saying the tours need to recongnise the top players will follow the $$$ (which they do recognise and admit) but THEN DO SOMETHING about it.  Making a case by case special circumstance, or finding a loophole in the current rules looks weak to me.  They can't compete with the money, so embrace it that top pros are going to need a different strata of rules or they risk loosing them from the tour.

The rock and a hard place that the tour (mostly the European tour) faces is that they want to keep the top pros AND support some of the lesser tournaments.  The main issue the top pros have is not enough time/travel cycles (given they are indeed chasing the $$$ and who blames them for that)... so create three tiers of tournaments on the ET.  Mandate that anyone in the top 10 in Europe at the start of the season doesn't need to do 13 events, but they must do say 5 tier1, 4 tier2 and 2 tier3 events.  Mandate that 2 of the top ten must be at each event and then let them sort it out.  It gives the Euro players an even greater incentive to get into the top 10 as it eases their playing requirements, but spreads the support to the the entire base of tournaments.

It's just an idea and probably a rubbish one, but it seems better than doing nothing.  In reality I suspect the ET are urgently modelling lots of ideas and have some plans in the formation - Rory hints at as much following his chat with Keith Pelley in the article on the BBC website.  However, it always seems to me that the ET are reacting rather than actively managing.  This has the knock on effect of it always seeming like it's the players concerns/moaning that is driving the strategy and whilst of course the player input is always going to be at the heart of any Tour's strategy, it would be nice to see them get ahead of the curve and be predicting the requirements and innovating, rather than the seemingly weaker position of following and reacting.

When has someone ranked 12th in the World not made a presidents cup team, absolutely farcical.

Koepka should have been picked over Holmes at the very least.

For comparison between both!
https://twitter.com/NoLayingUp/status/649995124982837248

Dunno, but Casey was 8th in the owgr when Montgomerie dissed him for Celtic Manor, chose some Irish bloke who was 22nd instead.

The tweet is also moronic because it doesn't show the qualifying table in which JB finished 12th and Koepka wasn't even in the top 15.

Suspect Haas made his decision on first reserve to stand by after Furyk came up lame at the BMW.
Koepka's Play Off record was Cut, Cut, 49th, 18th (of 30)
Holmes: 58th, 44th, 4th, 8th.

Furthermore, four team members are lower in the owgr rankings than Holmes, incl both other "Captain's" picks.

Koepka may have a bigger upside than Holmes, but ridiculous, "farcical" even, to suggest that Holmes was undeserving.

When has someone ranked 12th in the World not made a presidents cup team, absolutely farcical. 

Koepka should have been picked over Holmes at the very least.

Koepka was not ranked 12th when the PC picks were made, he was ranked 17th and just missed two cuts in a row, the last one was where 75% of the field made the cut.

When Holmes was picked over Koepka last week, Koepka was still not yet 12th in the OWGR and well back at the Dunhill.  Holmes had just finished 4th and 8th (ahead of Koepka) in the BMW and TCHamp.  

Personally, I would have picked Koepka because I am more of fan, but there is no way the pick was "farcical".

I do think Koepka was not doing himself any favors by playing in Scotland after playing 7 of the previous 8 weeks, and 10 of the last 12 weeks.

JB has more OWGR points than Koepka in 2015 as well.

187 vs 179

True regarding Koepka moving up the rankings in the last week....He would have been higher in the Presidents Cup standings if his results started counting last year instead of this year, right?


Koepka also had a far superior year major wise

I agree I shouldn't have singled out Holmes...It must be said Mickelson has done nothing at all this year to deserve a pick but politics dictate right?

Yes, Koepka missed out on 589 points from last year.  I still think he would have behind Holmes in the standings.

It's always OK to single out Holmes.

sirbenson wrote:I agree I shouldn't have singled out Holmes...It must be said Mickelson has done nothing at all this year to deserve a pick but politics dictate right?

IMO, the Mickelson pick was a combination of  the "None of the above" pick and a Lifetime Achievement Pick.  

No one from 11-20 in the standings did anything to merit a pick in the last two tournaments in going into the Captains picks.  Holmes, Snedeker, Na, Koekpa, ...none of them.

If Koepka had done anything in the Barclays and/or Deutchebank, he might have been selected.  But he missed the cut in both a 125 man and 100 player field.  A 70 player cut.  98 players were in the D-Bank field, and 74 players made the cut.  And Koepka was not one of them.

None one of the bubble boys screamed "PICK ME" in the Barclays and D-Bank.

pedro wrote:It's always OK to single out Holmes.

Almost elementary...

Maybe he just texted Haas the most.

Nah, That was Webb Simpson - fat lot of good it did him. Good thing.