On Saturday, Sergio Garcia was paired with Austin Connelly for the third round of the Italian Open. This wouldn’t be noteworthy if not for their first meeting 18 years before when Garcia was a young pro and Connelly was just a young fan. A very young fan.

Before the two teed off, Connelly’s mom, Bridget, shared this adorable photo taken at the 1999 GTE Byron Nelson Classic. At the time, Sergio Garcia was about to make his first pro start at 19 — he finished T-3 — and Connelly was all of two years old.

18 years later… @Austinconnelly9 is paired with Sergio at The Italian Open. @TaylorMadeGolf @TRAVISMATHEW @clubcorp pic.twitter.com/2wBbGYdtKe

— Bridget Connelly (@AconMom) October 13, 2017

Not surprisingly, the photo drew plenty of reaction on Twitter, including this from 2018 European Ryder Cup captain Thomas Bjorn:

Even the ever young looking @TheSergioGarcia is getting on in age.
He is paired with this guy today!!!
I feel so old ???@EuropeanTour pic.twitter.com/NAgs2kDQaP

— Thomas Bjørn (@thomasbjorngolf) October 14, 2017

Garcia tried to make Bjorn feel better with this tweet:

This picture was only taken 5 years ago, not! ?? Time flies! Wow!! https://t.co/oqSCMZb8xq

— Sergio Garcia (@TheSergioGarcia) October 14, 2017

Neither played particularly well on Saturday with Garcia shooting 70 and Connelly, now 21, carding a 72 as both dropped well out of the top 10 entering the final round. But the two still seemed to enjoy their their reunion nearly two decades in the making:

1999: A kid and his idol
2017: Playing partners #ItalianOpen pic.twitter.com/aCuQEUDrpq

— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) October 14, 2017

And they even recreated that adorable photo from long ago:

Sergio Garcia and Austin Connelly reminisce about their meeting 18 years ago#ItalianOpen pic.twitter.com/1JqAs69Pdm

— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) October 14, 2017

There you go, Mrs. Connelly. That’s another keeper.

The post Sergio Garcia recreates cute photo with tour pro 18 years after posing with him as a young fan appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Two weeks from now at the PGA Championship, Jordan Spieth, who back then had just two career victories and only one of those on the PGA Tour, will have a chance to match McIlroy with a fourth major title and do something the 28-year-old Northern Irishman has yet to do: Complete the career Grand Slam.

“I don’t think anybody thought that he would have done what he has done since then,” said Spieth’s close friend, Ryan Palmer. “Everybody knew Jordan had the potential to be great, but I don’t think anybody would’ve predicted he would’ve won 11 times by now. It shows what we’re watching is pretty special. No one is going to be Tiger Woods, but he’s on a pretty good path.”

Spieth, who turns 24 on Thursday, is the second youngest to win three different majors behind only Jack Nicklaus. Should Spieth win at Quail Hollow, he would be the youngest player to complete the career Slam. Woods slightly more than six months past his 24th birthday when he did it at the 2000 British Open at St. Andrews, and Nicklaus was 26 when he achieved it at the 1966 British Open at Muirfield.

The only other players to complete the career Slam are Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan and Gary Player.

“He does incredible stuff,” Jimmy Walker said via text. “It’s Jordan being Jordan. We see it every day.”

RELATED: Jordan Spieth comes up huge at just the right time

One of the big separators between Spieth and McIlroy, according to a few players, is between the ears. When McIlroy is at his best, he’s seemingly the best player in the game. But golf is as much if not more about managing the bad shots. Spieth’s handling of the 13th hole Sunday at Royal Birkdale is just the latest example, particularly contrasted against sloppy bogeys by McIlroy early in the week.

“A few of us were talking about it and we agreed there’s more drive with Jordan and more determination to be No. 1 and to be the greatest,” said one veteran American player. “Don’t get me wrong, Rory wants to win and wants that green jacket, but his life has changed a little but. He’s married now. He has a different lifestyle now. The same is true of Dustin Johnson, too. There’s a different drive there for Jordan.”

As for McIlroy, 2017 has been a bit disjointed season, between dealing with a rib injury, changing equipment and getting married. He showed signs of progress in his short game at Birkdale, but not managing the misses well is what cost him most.

“One year, one major feels like too long, but these things happen,” McIlroy said of his drought. “It’s a lost opportunity. I said that [Saturday]. I felt like I had a chance to get in a few shots better than I did, and I didn’t. And that would have put me a bit closer to the lead going out [Sunday] and maybe it would have—maybe I would have been able to put a bit of pressure on the guys in front of me. But that’s the way it goes. Just got to wait a couple weeks and try again at Quail Hollow.”

The good news for McIlroy? He’s won there twice before.

Chris Condon
Matt Kuchar poses with the tournament host Jack Nicklaus and the trophy after winning the Memorial Tournament in 2013

On Tuesday, Jack Nicklaus caught up with Matt Kuchar, who is at Glen Abbey for this week’s Canadian Open. Nicklaus is also there at the course he designed in 1976. The British Open loss stung for Kuchar, but Nicklaus tried to remind him of how well he played.

“We talked about how I thought he played an awfully good tournament, did awfully well, and just he ran into a buzzsaw on the last few holes,” Nicklaus said. “If you look at it, what did he lose by, three shots as it turned out, and Jordan holed putts at 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. If he misses three of them, it’s a tie. If he misses four of them, Matt wins.”

Is there anyone better to give Kuchar, a former winner at Nicklaus’ Memorial tournament, a pep talk?

As for his thoughts on Spieth and where he goes from here, it’s “up to him,” Nicklaus said. “He can be pretty good. He’s already pretty good.

“The things that he’s done at a very young age [is] he seems to at times not even hit the ball particularly straight but still figures out a way to manage his way around a golf course, which is maturity at a very young age. That’s pretty special. It’s hard to teach and you have to learn and you have to sort of the discipline of making yourself be able to do that, it’s not easy.”

Stuart Franklin

How times have changed for Danny Willett. Roughly a year ago he was Masters champion and ranked in the top 10 in the world. Last week, he finished 76 that the British Open and fell to No. 43, his lowest ranking since ironically a missed cut at the 2015 Masters. And now it turns out he might need back surgery.

The 29-year-old Englishman saw a specialist and underwent an MRI the week before playing at Royal Birkdale, and the results weren’t good.

“The L5 [disc] and the sacrum were out from the x-ray, which is why it hurts when I rotate on it,” Willett told reporters on Sunday.

The best anecdote from Sunday’s final round? Spieth’s caddie Michael Greller telling him walking off the seventh tee box, “Do you remember that group you were with in Cabo last week. … You belong in that group.” Among those in the group were Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps. Nice company to keep when it comes to drawing inspiration. The Spieth-Greller duo has the feeling of a Phil Mickelson-Jim (Bones) Mackay relationship to it. In other words, one that will prosper for a long, long time. …

ANDY BUCHANAN
Canada’s Austin Connelly on the 18th green during his opening-round 67 on the first day of the 2017 Open Championship

Austin Connelly isn’t going to be a one-hit wonder. He’s scrawny, yes, but the swing and good fundamentals are there. He isn’t lacking in confidence, either. He goes back to the European Tour this week, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him play well in Germany. …

On Tuesday, Jarrod Lyle announced that he was returning to the hospital with the possibility of facing cancer for a third time. Then Wednesday came the news everyone was hoping they wouldn’t hear: that the test are positive again for leukemia. It’s obviously a terrible blow for the 35-year-old, who is one of the truly nice people in the game. He’s in a lot of people’s thoughts.

Coming off a week in which I picked Jordan Spieth to win and Marc Leishman to finish in the top six, I’m feeling pretty good—not that I was exactly going out on a limb with those. With that in mind, Matt Kuchar feels like another safe but good choice. He has three top-10s in his last three trips to Glen Abbey, including a runner-up, and has been incredibly consistent in his last half-dozen starts with four top-10s and a T-16 and a T-12 in the others. From the less obvious category, I like Ben Martin, who has a T-5 and T-6 among his last four starts and has been sharp with his ball-striking.

The post Where Spieth separates himself from McIlroy & peers, Kuchar’s major supporter, and an explanation for Willett’s poor play appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Brian Wacker

The good news for Matt Kuchar, Austin Connelly, Brooks Koepka, Branden Grace and Hideki Matsuyama is that golf history is littered with final-round collapses in major championships.

There was Adam Scott leading by four with four to play in the 2012 Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes only to bogey his way in; Greg Norman blowing a six-shot lead on the final day of the 1996 Masters; and of course who can forget Jean Van de Velde, shoes off and ankle deep in the Barry Burn on the 18th hole at Carnoustie in the 1999 Open Championship to name a few.

Jordan Spieth even had one, last year at Augusta National, where after leading by five with nine holes to play he went bogey-bogey-quad and eventually finished three strokes back.

Unfortunately for Spieth’s closest pursuers, Rae’s Creek is in Georgia. There’s no water in play at Royal Birkdale, so the hopes of Spieth having a Van de Velde moment are close to non-existent.

Can anyone catch the 23-year-old Texan and prevent him from joining Jack Nicklaus as the only other player to win three-quarters of the career Grand Slam before age 24?

AFP/Getty Images

Kuchar, for all his consistency, trails by three and has never won a major.

Connelly, for all his moxie, is playing in his first major. Though, as a good friend of Spieth’s who skipped college to turn pro, he has beaten his fellow Texan a few times at home in the Lone Star State. But he’s six back and his last name isn’t Faldo.

Koepka has the firepower, something that was evident last month at Erin Hills when he won the U.S. Open, but Birkdale isn’t Erin Hills, and he’s also six back.

Grace shot a major-championship record 62 on Saturday, but that was in windless, soft conditions. Sunday, the wind is expected to blow between 15-20 mph, accompanied by showers. He’s also seven back and has never won a major, having when in contention on Sunday at the U.S. Open two years ago hit one onto the train tracks adjacent to the 16th hole at Chambers Bay.

Matsuyama, who also trails by seven, has likewise never won a major championship.

More daunting news: Spieth is 8-for-13 in his career when leading after 54 holes. All eight of those have come in his last nine leads, including in his last start at last month’s Travelers Championship, where he holed a bunker shot for birdie to win on the first hole of sudden death.

Spieth relishes the role of being a closer.

“I think I’m in a position where it can be very advantageous, just everything I’ve gone through, the good, the bad, and everything in the middle,” he said Saturday night. “I understand that leads can be squandered quickly, and I also understand how you can keep on rolling on one.”

He has certainly rolled this week.

Spieth is the only player in the field with three rounds in the 60s this week.

His finish on Saturday was also reminiscent of one two years ago at Augusta National, where he got up and down to save par after short-siding himself on the last. It kept his cushion and the momentum going into Sunday.

Spieth had a similar moment at Royal Birkdale on Saturday, and he birdied the 18th to pad his lead.

“I’m extremely pleased,” Spieth said after his second 65 of the week. “Couldn’t ask for much more.”

At this point, there’s only one thing left. It feels like a matter of not if but by how much.

The post The Open 2017: Let’s forecast who has the best chance to catch Jordan Spieth appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Enter Austin Connelly. He’s one of the youngest players in the field at 20 years old, shares a swing coach with Jordan Spieth, took an unusual and circuitous route to Royal Birkdale and oh, by the way, is just two strokes off the lead of Spieth, Brooks Koepka and Matt Kuchar after an opening-round 67 on Thursday.

Not a bad way to make your major-championship debut.

“With all the people around, it was nice to stick to the game plan and go out and execute,” said Connelly, who had six birdies and just two bogeys. “I think links golf suits my game very well.

“I think it’s something I can do again. It didn’t take anything extraordinary, it just took solid ball-striking with a good game plan.”

So far, his career plan seems to be working out, too, even though it initially raised some eyebrows in amateur golf’s inner circles.

Two years ago, Connelly, who was born in Irving, Texas, grew up in Austin, and has dual citizenship in Canada, where his father was born, decided to forego playing at the University of Arkansas to turn pro.

He was one of the top-ranked junior golfers in the country, won the Jones Cup Invitational and made the cut in two starts on the PGA Tour as a teenager. He had also lost in the first round of the U.S. Amateur in 2015, and is a scrawny 5-foot-7, 150 pounds.

The latter didn’t make much difference to Spieth, who could relate having spent just one year at the University of Texas and had seen plenty from his friend in their offseason matches back in Texas, where Connelly won his fair share against the two-time major champion. Spieth suggested Connelly turn pro if that’s the direction he was leaning.

So he did, spending last year on the Mackenzie Tour in Canada, where he finished seventh on its Order of Merit, just two spots shy of earning partial status on the Web.com Tour.

After then failing to earn full status via the Web.com’s Q school last winter, Connelly, who did earn his way on to the European Tour via its Q school, hit the road with stops in Australia, India, Abu Dhabi, Kenya, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Austria, France, Denmark, Scotland and Italy again. Along the way he picked up a pair of top-10s on the European Tour.

To grab a spot in the field at Royal Birkdale, Connelly drained a 15-foot birdie putt to win a 3-for-1 playoff at Royal Cinque Ports. Once on the grounds along the English coast, he played a practice round with Spieth early in the week, McCormick naturally joining them.

“This is the type of golf where he can really, really make a move and prevail,” Spieth said afterward. “He really works the ball extremely well. He hits his long clubs dead straight. And he’s got kind of a killer instinct on the greens, like nothing really fazes him.”

On Thursday, it looked like it with a steady performance that left only a handful of names above Connelly’s on the leader board.

“Mainly first tee jitters,” he said. “I was pretty calm throughout the round, but it was nice to hold it together.”

And made for a pretty good story, too.

The post Think Austin Connelly is out of place on this Open leader board? Think again appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.