PGA Tour: Time to Take a Break: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).Just a few more rounds beside the seaside on Georgia's Golden Isles this week and the pros can take a seven-week break, eight if they're not Tournament Champions, even longer for those who don't fancy various West Coast events. Most will rest, practice, review the year just gone by with their "team" and plan for the year ahead.
Some will be so exhausted from the exertions of the past season that they'll be globe-trotting for recuperative guaranteed appearance and/or prize money at exotic locations around the world.

2).I really enjoy watching the Mayakoba action, the course seems to improve every year and the field ain't bad either. Patton Kizzire has a southerner's good ole boy, laconic air about him, but no-one really put pressure on him last weekend and he was a deserving winner.
Like his in-form southern compadre, Chesson Hadley, Kizzire could use getting a move on though. No anti-American sentiment here, but both have bizarre names and tortoise-like pace of play, more Henrik or Bernhard, Ken or Nick, than Rickie Fowler, for instance, who looked beyond irritated as he was grouped in the final threesome and seemed to have to wait on every shot.

3).A landmark stat from last week as Alex Cejka followed up his play-off defeat in Las Vegas with a T9 in Mexico and so earned consecutive top ten finishes for the first time in 359 career Tour starts. And, so doing, launches himself to the top of the all-important reshuffle ranking.

4).Mildly promising performances at Mayakoba for Knox and McDowell, each playing a course where they've had success before. Knox earned just his second Top Ten finish all year, while McDowell looked much more confident to my untrained eye, despite a T34 result. Both play again this week, where each has played well in the past. Luke Donald also makes an appearance, just down the coast from his happy hunting ground of Hilton Head Island.

5).Congratulations to Shotrock and his fellow members @ Aronimink in Philadelphia on securing the 2020 LPGA Championship and 2027 PGA Championship. Justin Rose has won twice in Philly but imagine he'll be relaxing his way towards Grayson Murray's irrelevant age by 2027. Mixed thoughts about this Aronimink announcement though, good for them in securing more major championships, but you'd imagine it rather shuts out the Philadelphia market from further PGA Tour events.

6).Presumably the 2027 PGA will be contested in May; the story seemed to be that one reason the PGA was moving to May was to bring the Championship to more southern courses - not so far, although it WILL be at Kiawah in 2020.

7).The finale of the Champions Tour season was rather anticlimactic, with the tournament, and Charles Schwab Cup winner being Kevin Sutherland. Somewhat of a curiosity is that this is the first official stroke-play win of Sutherland's career, though he did lose three PGA Tour play-offs. His solitary Tour win was at the WGC-MatchPlay in 2002 - he shot the first 59 on the Champions Tour, in 2014, on course for a 58 but bogeyed his final hole at Enjoie.
Bernhard Langer will merely have to be content with his seven wins, and $3M in prizemoney, bringing his Champions Tour career earnings to $24.6M - somewhat better than my pension plan and he's still going strong at the age of 60.

8).princedrac noted that this week's RSM Classic only offers 30 owgr points to the winner. Sea Island, Georgia, looks one of the most beautiful areas the PGA Tour visits; there'll be birdies galore but no doubt even more stunning TV images of the area's wildlife.
Those who live in the area have a good record on the 2 x courses (Seaside & Plantation) on Sea Island, including Bill Haas, Webb Simpson, Horschel, Kirk and Kisner among the locals who have won or runnered up and imagine we'll see more of the same this week. Snedeker is back from a 4+ month absence, and Kuchar is also in a field that looks stronger than its official rating. Scott Brown and Charlie Howell are others in form and hopefully Brown can break my dreadful recent trot of form in the crucially important one-and-done game I have fun with.

We'll follow web.com and Champions Tour Q-Schools (Peter Baker, Jamie Kingston & M-A Martin competing in first stage), but this ballwasher has pretty much dried up for the year.
Happy Thanksgiving for next week for all those celebrating in Missouri, Houston, Philadelphia, Cape Cod, Pennsylvania, etc, etc. Stuff the turkey.

And maybe Mike Weir?

Lots of good guesses so far but no-one's hit the jackpot.

Second clue:

Four Majors among the remaining six players.

Nck Price?

Carlos Franco?

Very good pedro, Nick Price is 6th on the list, 483 tournaments played.

1). Veej
2).
3).
4).
5).
6).
7). Pricey

Third clue:
Only one golfer from the northern hemisphere - and it'll be a genius who picks him.

And Franco is a very interesting choice, but not close to the top.

Only one Major amongst the final five.

Coceres? Appleby?

Joe Ozaki?

Bingo for Apples, but Coceres would be quite a long way back.

Apples is 3rd on the list and, along with Vijay, the most likely to add to his total this year. (Not by much tho'!)


Ooh, And not Joe Ozaki.

Cejka and Davis from the Northern hemisphere?

Not Cejka and not Davis, both with about 350+ tournaments played though.

Clue 4).

The Northern Hemisphere golfer played a few events in the 70's also.

Chi Chi Rodriguez?

Or its a Canadian, but not sure who... Barr? Zokol?

Chi Chi played most of his events in the 60's & 70's so falls outside the scope of this question. But I was trying to think of guys that overlapped 1980, as he did, and completely forgot about him.

Now, Disco Dick doesn't make the cut but Dave Barr is a brilliant choice! Leading North American.

He played 526 tournaments in all, 481 from 1980 onwards. GENIUS!

Three easier ones to go.

David Frost?

Well done pedro. Frosty is 4th on the list.
Two to go, still a Major Champion out there.

Next clue:

You've chosen golfers from five different countries so far, and the Secret Seven just come from five countries.
Unlikely to be Canada, Zimbabwe or Fiji, so let's be having you . . . . .

A third Dave(id), Graham?

OHern, Scott (major), Allenby, Pampling?

Rory Sabbattini?

Allenby works.

Graham is about 80 tournaments short.

No to O'Hern and Pampling is a hundred or so short.

One more to go, Major Championship winner and second on the list. Noted cartoonist and antagonist. bumhole some would say.

Bumhole with a major? Elkington? But northern hemisphere? Garcia?

Northern Hemisphere is Dave Barr, Ned-H to take the prize.

But Elkington wraps it up!


More on Friday.

Kwini, if you saw the same list I did, I think it was the most tournaments 1980 to present day. Bubba Watson was #303 and he did not play many tournaments before 2008.

PB made several mistakes in that blog post.

Yup, I checked all the numbers for the pros I mentioned, plus some Americans. Not sure I understand your Bubba reference.
PB's numbers were from a database and the sample I checked all stood up.

PB's article was quite clumsy, but I think the numbers in my note are accurate. Still amazed that Ned remembered Dave Barr, but he's a reminder that perhaps "journeyman pros" had a longer shelf life thirty years ago than they do now, partly due to the relatively recent influence/influx of overseas players with some sort of status who take spots away from the rank and file.

Rory mc to keep his mate on the bag for next season. Probably makes sense to him. Didnt Hatton put a mate on the bag and won 2 in a row.

Rory has also published a relatively demanding early-season schedule:

Abu Dhabi & Dubai
Pebble Beach (why?)
Riviera
Honda
Valspar (why?)
Bay Hill
and, presumably, 2 x WGC's thrown in for good measure. Then Magnolia Drive, if he's still in one piece.

I remember him saying on the NLU podcast, he fancied pebble beach to play with his dad.

kwinigolfer wrote:Rory has also published a relatively demanding early-season schedule:

Abu Dhabi & Dubai
Pebble Beach (why?)
Riviera
Honda
Valspar (why?)
Bay Hill
and, presumably, 2 x WGC's thrown in for good measure. Then Magnolia Drive, if he's still in one piece.

I would imagine that his evil paymasters at Nike are insisting seeming as they are getting such a poor return from their investment.

Pb? Why not?

kwinigolfer wrote:Rory has also published a relatively demanding early-season schedule:

Abu Dhabi & Dubai
Pebble Beach (why?)
Riviera
Honda
Valspar (why?)
Bay Hill
and, presumably, 2 x WGC's thrown in for good measure. Then Magnolia Drive, if he's still in one piece.

Wk 3...Abu Dhabi (Palm Springs on the PGAT)
Wk 4...Dubai (Torrey Pines on the PGAT)

Wk 6...Pebble Beach
Wk 7...Riviera
Wk 8...Honda
Wk 9...WGC_Mexico
Wk 10...Valspar
Wk 11...Bay Hill
Wk 12...WGC-MatchPlay

If he does play the WGC's that will be 7 weeks in a row from Pebble to Matchplay and 9 out of 10 weeks. The only week off is the week of the WMPO, maybe he is planning to attend the Superbowl.

Did he not say a month or so back he was aiming to play 30 events in 2018.

I'd say this is an utterly ridiculous schedule for any athlete whose health & fitness must be in some doubt. And for why?
Bet he de-commits from at least one or two; certainly hope so.

Very sorry to read of Tommy Horton's death, in Jersey at the age of 76.

Not many golfers epitomised the essence of the pre-galactico European Tour, and the European Senior Tour for that matter.
Happy memories of following him many moons ago for 18 holes at Wentworth and spent time walking outside the ropes with him at the Muirfield Village RC; he was one of Tony Jacklin's foot-soldiers keeping Sir Tony (I know he's not, but he should be) abreast of what was happening on the course before employing multiple Assistant Captains was in vogue. "I can do whatever I want mate, no-one here knows me!".

Good man and I hope the European Tour remembers him appropriately.


For those still the other side of the coffin-dodging generation:

http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/news/newsid=338910.html

Our local lad (rapidly approaching middle-age now) in with a 76 - 61 at web.com Q-School. How d'you do that??!! Fingers crossed for the weekend.
Gonzo shot 67 today, so on track to gain web.com status as well as his ET gig.

Barnrat wins in Thailand on the Asian Developmental Tour, that moves him up from #60 to #56.  #55 Fritelli did not do himself any good with his ~T45th in the Joburg

For tournament that should mean very little in the whole scheme of Pro Golf, next week's Indonesian Masters has some interesting (sub) plots.  Justin Rose is the headliner in Indonesia but there are 5 players ranked from #50 to #58 that could crash the Top 50 with a (very) high finish.

#50 Satoshi Kodaira, #51 Snedeker, #55 Fritelli, #56 Aphibarnrat, and #58 Yusaki Miyazato are all playing in Indonesia.

PD has projected Kodaira #48 and Uihlein has the #50 at the end of the year.

Edit. PD just tweeted a new projection which explains the situation much better than me

https://twitter.com/VC606/status/939861317216882688

Got to say that Gonzo's goals weren't very high for Web-com Q-school

https://twitter.com/gfcgolf/status/940024034489544704

That’s half the reason I didn’t understand him playing in the first place... I was pretty sure he had a decent category already. Top 45 would basically bump him up one category from where he is I believe... can only assume his logic was to give himself somewhere guaranteed he could play next summer, if he devoted the first six months to Europe then found himself without an event during the ET busy period with his low category. But that seems like a small reward for the trouble of playing this week.

A bit desperate comment from a player that has essentially derailed his own career.

Mark Hensby was suspended until 10/26/2018 for violating the tour drug policy. He failed to give a drug sample.

Surprise that no one has contacted Hensby yet for his side of the story.

His last OWGR tournament was Sanderson Farms, where he was DQ and did not post a score. He mostly played the Web-com in 2017.

Rotoworld wrote:World No. 1597 Mark Hensby was disqualified following a 6-over-par 41-37=78 in the first round of the Sanderson Farms Championship.

As of press time, there is no reason gleaned as to the reason for the DQ, his second in 186 career TOUR starts spread over 22 years. The 44-year-old, who's made just 18 starts in the last six years, outpaced a lone birdie-3 at 15 with seven squares.

I think we now know the reason for the DQ.

He has made a couple twitter posts since the DQ, but not anything relevant to the DQ or the suspension.

https://twitter.com/HensbyMark

Kenneth Wolstenholme's take on Hensby's career:
"I thought it was all over. It is now."

Berk, the Rio Ferdinand of golf.

kwinigolfer wrote:

Berk, the Rio Ferdinand of golf.

So he’s becoming a pro boxer?

Is it unkind to wish that RF pursues a boxing career?

kwinigolfer wrote:Is it unkind to wish that RF pursues a boxing career?

Probably a good sport for a man as ugly as him. Can't get any less good looking can he?

Kwini 

What have you got against rio?

Nothing against Rio, Mac, if only he'd shut up - hear more from him now than when he was playing.

McLaren wrote:Kwini 

What have you got against rio?

Not as much as I used to Mac. He is undoubtedly ugly though so boxing is the perfect sport for him as he isn't going to harm his looks by getting pummelled.

How about big Carl ?

Carl Pettersson

kwinigolfer wrote:Nothing against Rio, Mac, if only he'd shut up - hear more from him now than when he was playing.

What TV network is he on the US? Over here we get him on BT sport.

Mac,
Fortunately he doesn't appear to be on any US outlet that I'm aware of, so the only time I get to see his nonsensical garbage is on the Beeb's website. Can't imagine why they pander to his rubbish, but they seem to trawl the bottom of the footie ocean.

On the positive side, the commentary teams we get are quite good, on NBCSN anyway, with the exception of the ever-hyperbolising cobblers from a guy called Arlo White who's effing awful.

Arlo White? Rings a bell, did he used to be on 5live?