By Christopher Powers
Playing the coulda-shoulda-woulda game is about as futile as it gets in golf, especially at the Masters. However, Harry Higgs might allow himself to play it over one shot from Sunday, because he coulda-shoulda-woulda earned an invitation into the 2023 Masters had that one shot gone differently.

Of course, Higgs hit 71 shots on Sunday, 290 for the week, so he could coulda-shoulda-woulda’d all of them, too. Like we said, a futile effort.

But this one has to be particularly painful. In the final round at Augusta National, Higgs almost pulled off something only Louis Oosthuizen can say he’s pulled off in Masters history — make an albatross at the par-5 second. Oosthuizen accomplished the incredible feat in 2012, propelling him into a sudden-death playoff later that day with Bubba Watson, which he lost. Here’s how close Higgs came to history:

Harry Higgs was THIS close to an albatross pic.twitter.com/xOOcgKhFHX

— GolfBet (@GolfBet) April 10, 2022

Man, what could have been. We’re not saying Higgs may have removed his shirt, but given how lenient Augusta National has (seemingly) gotten in some areas, we’re not ruling it out, either.

Of much greater importance, though, was Higgs’ final-round 71, which, again, would have been 70 had this albatross dropped. Had that been the case, Higgs would have tied for 12th as opposed to 14th. Why does that matter? The top 12 finishers including ties receive an invitation into next year’s Masters. Higgs came about a half-inch from securing another one of those glorious envelopes. Brutal.

That said, he could have avoided double bogey at the first hole and secured an invite for 2023, too. Again, coulda-shoulda-woulda gets us nowhere, but it still has to hurt. The good news is Higgs can still gain entry into next year’s field in a variety of ways based off his play, which is clearly pretty good right now. That T-14 finish gives him two top-15s in two career major starts, the other a T-4 at the 2021 PGA Championship, which got him into the 2022 Masters field. The big rig is quietly becoming a force in the majors.

One other silver, er, crystal lining — Higgs’ eagle earned him a pair of crystal highball glasses with the Masters logo on them, so he won’t be leaving the property empty-handed.

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By Daniel Rapaport
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — A practice-round tee time with Phil Mickelson has long been one of the more sought-after invites on tour. There are the tall tales of eye-popping wagers and his classic one-liners. And in his later years, the game’s ultimate short-game wizard has been an open book of advice for the youngins. If Phil wants to play with you, you’re officially a somebody.

Which made Tuesday’s stroll around Liberty National an unforgettable experience for 29-year-old Harry Higgs. It all began a few weeks ago on Twitter, as most things do these days. Higgs was “on a long flight and bored,” so he sought submissions for a Q&A session.

“Who would you want to partner with to take on @PhilMickelson and @TomBrady in the next ‘The Match’? Would be a huge step up in production to have your commentary!”

Who would you want to partner with to take on @PhilMickelson and @TomBrady in the next “The Match”? Would be a huge step up in production to have your commentary!

— Cameron Binder (@camerontrbinder) July 26, 2021

“I’ll play with anyone,” Higgs replied. “And I don’t think @PhilMickelson is ready for my trash talk.”

That caught the attention of Mr. Mickelson, who’s spending quite a bit of time online these days.

“I might not be ready for your trash talk,” the six-time major winner wrote, “but I AM READY for you.”

Mickelson invited Higgs to a match on Tuesday before the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, but there was one problem: Higgs didn’t qualify for the event, so it’d have to wait two extra weeks. Higgs tagged Keith Mitchell as his partner, while Mickelson recruited Joel Dahmen—who, back in May, had his own memorable back-and-forth with Lefty. After the two were paired together for the first two rounds at the Wells Fargo Championship, Dahmen took to Twitter to express his excitement: “Tomorrow I get to check off another bucket list item by playing with @PhilMickelson. I’ve been trying to get a game with him for 6 months, but I think he’s scared of my hellacious seeds. See you on the tee, Phil!”

Mickelson responded to the call-out with a seven-under 64 on Thursday to lead the tournament by two. This, then would be his second opportunity to silence a mouthy upstart who dared to come at the king.

The trash talk began on the very first tee, where Higgs and Mitchell arrived a good five minutes before Mickelson and the bucket-hatted Dahmen. That, of course, was some tried-and-true gamesmanship. Mitchell made it clear that he had a hard stop at 2:30 p.m., four-and-a-half hours after their tee time, as he was set to attend the closing of the New York Stock Exchange just across the river at 4:30. Mickelson assured everyone they’d be done by 16 so it wouldn’t be an issue. He then announced that he’d be playing a Callaway with a logo of himself on it.

“It’s from when I won the Masters. What are you guys using?”

The team of Higgs/Mitchell played first. Mitchell pulled his tee shot into a water hazard left but Higgs found the center with a sweetly-struck 3-wood. “One down,” Higgs proclaimed—clairvoyantly, it turned out, as he stuffed his approach and poured in the birdie to go one up.

On the third, after Mitchell pulled his tee shot left, Mickelson had a question for Higgs: “Do you want Keith as your partner, or par?” In the bubble of professional golf, this is quite the insult—suggesting a guy who does this for a living couldn’t even beat Old Man Par.

Mickelson had pulled his tee shot into a bunker down the right side and fatted his approach well short of the green. Mitchell and Higgs both found the putting surface, giving themselves good looks below the hole. Dahmen hit a baby fade to three feet, which is when Higgs punched back.

“So, do you want par as a partner, or Phil?”

Up by the green, Mickelson jumped at the opportunity to weaponize the rules in his favour. He instructed Dahmen to putt out first despite being closest to the hole; Higgs, who has not played in a million Ryder/Presidents Cups like Mickelson, couldn’t figure out what was happening. Finally, it clicked. Oooohhh. It’s because Phil’s away.

“Are you just learning the rules now?” Mickelson asked. Dahmen rammed his putt home. “The tendency now is for these guys to miss high, when you have to make a putt so you ram it. Let’s see if they fall victim to that.”

Higgs did indeed miss high, but Keith—who Mickelson referred to all day as Kevin—canned his to remain 1 up. The underdogs stretched their lead to 2 up when Higgs jarred a 30-footer for birdie on 4. We could go through a hole-by-hole breakdown … or you could simply check Mickelson’s Twitter feed, as the 51-year-old spent the walk between greens typing away on his iPhone, providing the masses with updates. Long gone are the days when these type of money games remained a hush-hush taboo topic.

We’ll rejoin the action at the par-4 16th, where Higgs drove the green and Dahmen cosied a chip up to 2 feet for a tying birdie.

“I don’t even know what to say that was so f***in’ good,” said the greatest short-game artist of his generation. Higgs and Mitchell were now dormie, and Phil informed them that in his normal game, a press—essentially a new bet—begins whenever the losing team is dormie. Bryson DeChambeau stopped by to watch the tee shots, and Mickelson updated his pal on the action.

“We’re two-up, so we’re just chilling.” He found himself walking next to Mitchell on the fairway.

“I can see how being two-up through four, that’s tough because you have your hopes up, and you’re like, we might actually do this. That’s tough.”

Dahmen holed a 20-footer for birdie on 17 to close the match up 3 and 1—right after Mickelson gave Higgs, a similarly gregarious player, some quasi-serious advice.

“There are times when I don’t want anybody around, but I usually enjoy people being around and being able to show off,” Higgs said. “It gets me into a good state of mind. It’s when I’m absolute best. But there are times when yo’ure not swinging it great, or there’s not enough certainty in your game, where it gets hard to do it at this stage. He was saying, there are times when you need to harness it and use it, and there are times when you need to decipher what to use and what not to use. Maybe don’t use it at all.”

Mickelson had nothing but glowing praise for Higgs, who enters this week ranked 80th in the FedEx Cup standings.

“Harry Higgs is such a funny guy and has such great energy, and is fun to be around. He’s a heck of a player,” he said.

A heck of a player, but just not quite good to beat a man old enough to be his dad. At least on this day.

The post Phil Mickelson and Harry Higgs finally had their match, and it was an absolute masterclass in trash talk appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
PONTE VEDRA BEACH — It’s Wednesday morning at the Players Championship, annually a morning reserved for the event’s first-timers. There are 17 of them in 2021, and they’re all made available to the media in 30-minute increments. Not surprisingly, Will Zalatoris, the PGA Tour’s clear rising star, received the bulk of the attention.

The star of the show, however, was Harry Higgs, who rolled in with his three-buttons down, just-happy-to-be-here look. This was evident in the way he held court, first answering a number of pop-quiz questions for a GOLFTV segment, then happily fielding questions from media members. Not once did he look to a tour official looking to pull the plug, as if he was prepared to kick back and hang all day. All that was missing was the standup mic.

This comedy routine of sorts is precisely the reason Higgs has become such a huge fan favourite. This, despite the fact he has never truly contended in an event with a lot of eyeballs on it. He does have a pair of runner-up finishes on tour in the last year, but one came in an opposite-field event (the 2020 Bermuda Championship) and the other came in this past fall’s Safeway Open, which didn’t break any television ratings records going up against the NFL and college football.

Still, Higgs has become the apple of Golf Twitter’s eye, not only because of his obvious, laid-back vibe, but because of how hard he leans into it. The people dig Higgs, and Higgs digs the people, mostly because they are one in the same, as he puts it.

“It’s partly because I look more like them [the fans],” said Higgs on why he’s become a fan favorite. “I don’t feel like I act much different than any other PGA Tour player. But I do, I guess, struggle in a way to say no to media, or just going and meeting people. I’ve always been good at that. So, I guess for a confluence of reasons, but I’d say mainly because I look like them and I look different than others.”

Higgs, a teammate of Bryson DeChambeau’s at SMU, is right. He could not look any less like the world’s best, DeChambeau included. He doesn’t act like them either, and he doesn’t apologize for it. In a video that no longer lives on the Internet, Higgs teaches a class on how to make his signature drink: Tito’s and water (it’s a very easy class). The screenshots still exist, and the one of Higgs guzzling out of his styrofoam cup and saying “it’s good” is one of the many reasons he’s so beloved.

The 29-year-old Texan has starred in a number of other viral videos, too, most notably the “Dreams Challenge,” which featured Higgs lip-syncing Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” while swigging from a bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice. It was viewed more than 820,000 times. To put that in perspective, that’s nearly 200,000 more views than DeChambeau’s winning putt at Bay Hill received on Twitter last Sunday.

As for on-course highlights, Higgs has those too. During the second round of the Safeway Open in September, Higgs holed out for an albatross on his final hole of the day, the par-5 ninth, punctuating a career-low 10-under 62. Somehow, his “Gladiator”-inspired reaction was even better than the shot itself.

Higgs’ goal is to make those moments the norm, and to make them happen on a much bigger stage. Outside of the majors, there is no bigger stage than the Players Championship. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Higgs goes “mainstream” this week, something he’d welcome with open arms.

“You hear that with first-time major winners, or even first-time tour winners. And the push and the pull, this interview, that interview,” said Higgs. “I admire the top players in the world. … All I had to do this week was this on Wednesday, right? My Monday and Tuesday were clear. This is in the morning, and I can go out and do all my work Wednesday. They have something to do every day that’s about an hour of their time and they plan around that. I’m a horrible planner, so I’m guessing when I win a big event it is going to be a little bit more difficult and I struggle to say no, just because I like to talk and I like to make fun of myself.

“You want to get to the point where you have to manage your time a little better and you have to still prepare while taking care of your obligations. I want to get to that point. … I mean, if I win this week and people want to talk to me at the Honda next week? Sure, that’s fine, because if I win this week I probably won’t show up until the Pro-Am on Wednesday anyway.”

The fans, who are already out in full force this week, would love to see Higgs get to that point, too. As good as the George Costanza impressions and the TikTok challenge are, the true way into the golf fan’s heart would be to put on a show on the weekend at TPC Sawgrass. It’s been a while since a player has had the “People’s golfer” nickname bestowed upon them. For Higgs, that title is there for the taking.

The post Harry Higgs, in rare form as always, perfectly summed up why he’s become a fan favourite appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Tod Leonard
The PGA Tour announced overnight that Harry Higgs has become the 14th player to test positive for COVID-19, and the 28-year-old from Camden, N.J., withdrew from this week’s Vivint Houston Open.

“While I am disappointed to have to withdraw this week, I am grateful that I drove to Houston by myself and was alone as I awaited my pre-tournament screening results,” said Higgs. “I look forward to returning to competition when it is safe to do so.”

Higgs, who is not an invitee to next week’s Masters, last played in the Zozo Championship two weeks ago in Thousand Oaks, Calif. The SMU product began the current season by finishing second to Stewart Cink in the Safeway Open. He missed the cut in the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, tied for 21st in the CJ Cup and tied for 54th in the Zozo.

RELATED: Catriona Matthew and two others test positive for COVID-19 on LET

The most recent player to test positive before Higgs was Adam Scott, who withdrew before the start of the Zozo.

The Houston Open will be the second tour event since the start of the coronavirus pandemic to allow fans in attendance after last week’s Bermuda Championship. The tour has said 2,000 fans will be allowed on-site each day.

The post Harry Higgs withdraws from Houston Open after testing positive for COVID-19 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Dave Shedloski
This day, this win, like his last one more than 11 years ago, didn’t belong solely and totally to Stewart Cink. This win, Sunday at the Safeway Open, at age 47, he still had to share. And he didn’t mind one bit.

But then, he didn’t mind sharing the spotlight more than a decade ago at Turnberry, either, when he cradled the claret jug while standing next to the man he vanquished, the man who nearly pulled off one of the most epic victories not just in golf but in all of sport.

Tom Watson came so achingly close to capturing the 2009 Open Championship at the inconceivable age of 59 until fate and Cink intervened. The Georgia resident was too good—and too much younger than a worn-out Watson—in the playoff and won easily, but so much of what is remembered about that day boils down to what could have been.

Finally finding the winner’s circle again, well-earned after a 65-65 weekend and the tournament record in relation to par, Cink deserved to take a bow alone after his two-stroke victory over Harry Higgs at Silverado Resort & Spa in Napa, Calif. Only he couldn’t. He wouldn’t let himself. Not when he had his son, Reagan, on the bag. Not when his wife, Lisa, a champion in her own right after fighting off cancer, was following every step of the way.

“I’ve got to share it with Reagan this time,” said Cink, who gave his son loads of credit for saying or doing the right things at the right time while caddieing for his dad for just the fourth time.

RELATED: The clubs Stewart Cink used to win the Safeway Open

Early in the final round, when Cink started two strokes behind leaders Cameron Percy, Brian Stuard and James Hahn, Reagan had an epiphany and said, “Dad, you know what, your tangibles are really, really good right now,” referring to the Ping clubs the elder Cink had dialed in during a visit to the equipment manufacturer’s headquarters in Arizona two weeks ago. He’s talking about the clubs. “Let’s just take care of the intangibles today.”

“That was great advice,” the father admitted.

Lisa did her part earlier in the day, too, reminding her husband of 27 years how good he can be, how good he still is. She had a feeling about the week. “One thing I always get from my wife,” Cink said, “is she always has this like … she will grab me by the shirt and say like, ‘Do you know how good you are?’ Sometimes it takes somebody around me who’s really close … to remind me like, oh, yeah, I’m pretty good, because I tend to wander away from that belief. So she has a good way of doing that and she did that a little bit this week. She did that this morning.”

David Cannon
Stewart Cink glances at the claret jug he won over Tom Watson in 2009.

As he walked off the 14th green, Stewart approached Lisa as she hovered near the ropes. He grabbed her arm and whispered to her. She has been such an inspiration to him, the way she battled and overcame breast cancer. Stewart took a leave of absence from the tour in 2016 to support her. “I just told her how grateful I was at that moment,” said Cink, a man of strong faith who underwent surgery on his nose in 2018 for skin cancer. “I just was feeling this great sense of gratitude.”

That feeling likely only got stronger when he birdied three of his last four holes after that to offset a three-putt bogey at the par-4 17th, just his second bogey of the week. He finished at 21-under 267 to register his seventh career PGA Tour title and end a winless drought of 4,074 days.

Long before capturing the season opener, which will keep him exempt on tour until he turns 50, Cink had come to terms with the possibility that he might never win again after that surreal day in Scotland, and that, “maybe age might have caught up with me.”

There’s some irony for you.

But, he added, “I wasn’t ready to concede that.”

Jed Jacobsohn
Cink walks on the eighth hole during the final round of the Safeway Open.

RELATED: Stewart Cink’s most special victory yet and three other Sunday takeaways

Cink got the sense that he wasn’t just around to make a decent check and that he could win the thing after the events at the 11th hole. He missed the green short at the par-3 but found his ball, “on the most beautiful, perfect lie. Perfect lie,” he said. “The chip basically became so simple that all I had to do was treat it like a putt and catch it on the clubface somewhere.”

Which he did so well that the ball went straight into the cup. “It was a little bit of an omen,” Cink conceded. “I just felt like that was a really big moment there that propelled me into like a real like lockdown type of focus.”

Cink, who fought his emotions during the round and lost that battle after when standing between Reagan and Lisa during a Golf Channel interview, felt compelled to share the credit for that, too. He gave a nod to his instructor James Sieckmann, his swing coach, who also has been helping him in recent weeks with the mental side of the game.

Geez, that spotlight is getting kind of crowded.

But that’s Cink, who said on Sunday that, “I don’t want winning to be something that I have to do to, like, fulfill myself.”

Sean M. Haffey Stewart Cink celebrates after his birdie on the 18th to finish -21 in the final round and win the Safeway Open.

Which is why, on that sunny day 11 years, one month and 25 days ago, he couldn’t begrudge anyone making such a big deal about the quality of golf that Watson produced over those four mystical days. Cink found it inspring. Why shouldn’t everyone else?

“I always felt that Tom deserved every bit of the accolades that he got from his performance that week,” Cink said. “People ask me this all the time. I feel like I won the Open Championship that year. I don’t feel like I took it out of Tom’s hands or I disappointed the world. I don’t care what they all think about that, and I don’t think Tom would ever think that either. I don’t mind sharing the spotlight with him for that.

“This week, yeah, it is special because I got to share it with Reagan, but if I had to share it with another player or if there was another person in the spotlight this week that was part of the story, too, I wouldn’t care at all.”

But, no, Cink deserves kudos alone. He proved to himself that he could still hit the shots under pressure, that he could keep his nerve. Forty-seven isn’t 59, but Cink, who had just one top-10 finish last season and missed the FedEx Cup Playoffs, persevered against competition that seems to get younger by the hour. He is the oldest winner on the PGA Tour since Phil Mickelson won last year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at 48.

Cink seemed ready to at least give himself a little credit. He talked about being clear-headed and calm down the stretch. “It just felt like the right place for me to be up near the top of the leader board,” he said before reverting to type. “Then when it came time for me to kind of wrestle the bull to the ground, we were able to keep our composure, me and Reagan both—at least it looked like it on the outside—and get the job done.”

Sure, they got it done. The Cinks, together. But just like at Turnberry, the story of the Safeway Open might have many characters deserving of mention, but only one man’s name is going on the trophy.

The post What made Stewart Cink’s unlikely Safeway Open win special is who was there to share it appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
Heading into the weekend at the Safeway Open, the tournament seemed primed for a young breakthrough winner. Stewart Cink, 47, had other ideas.

Much like a dad at a college frat party, Cink barged through the front door at Silverado Resort in Napa, Calif., without telling anyone who he knew and made himself at home. His lights-out, 65-65 weekend earned him a stunning, two-shot victory, his first since the 2009 Open Championship at Turnberry. He may be three years away from the geezers tour, but on Sunday he proved some geezers can still get it done on the big tour.

Here are our takeaways from Sunday at the Safeway Open.

Stewart Cink’s still got it
Just an insane sentence to type. Then again, it’s 2020, so it’s very on brand.

But seriously, where did this come from? In his last two seasons on the PGA Tour (30 total starts), Cink had one top 10 … ONE. He did sprinkle in a few surprisingly good results elsewhere (T-20 at 2019 Open Championship; T-9 at the 2019 Houston Open), but for the most part it was a whole lot of T-45s and missed cuts. Like many of us, Cink wondered if his time had passed.

“When you get to 47 like I am, you just don’t really know if you’re ever going to be able to close the door on another one,” said Cink, whose last top-five finish, a T-2, came at the 2018 Travelers Championship. “At times I’ve been in position to get it done and haven’t, but this was just a really special week where I had a lot of good things going with my golf.”

The golf was very good from Cink, who backed up a Saturday 65 with another 65 on Sunday to slam the door. A gutsy, 20-foot right-to-left birdie conversion from off the green at the 15th kickstarted an epic finish that included two more birdies at 16 and 18, which proved to be the winning strokes.

It also helped that his son Reagan, 23, was on the bag this week (more on that in a second). Cink’s wife, Lisa, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016, causing Stewart to take a leave of absence from the tour at the time, was also on site, and the two shared a nice moment after Cink made par on the 14th. The vibes all aligned nicely for him, and he was able to turn back the clock and win for the seventh time on the PGA Tour. It’s seems silly to say this one was as special as his Turnberry win over 59-year-old Tom Watson, but with Reagan and Lisa by his side during his post-round interview, Cink put the two wins in the same conversation.

“I didn’t know if there’d be a more special moment than that, but there might be a new one now.”

Is Reagan Cink the next great caddie?

If you can’t tell, we’re kind of joking. We’re not in the business of predicting who the next all-time great caddie is going to be, nor is anyone in the golf media. If anything, Cink’s win is further proof that these guys can win with just about anybody lugging their bag around.

RELATED: The clubs Stewart Cink used to win the Safeway Open

But man, that was a pretty great performance from Reagan Cink! The 23-year-old was a perfectly calming presence for his dad all week, and how about this word of advice he gave to pops on Sunday?

“Reagan said walking out on No. 2 today, he said ‘Dad, your tangibles are really, really good right now. The set of clubs, the ball, the tangibles are good. You just take care of the intangibles today,’” Cink said. “That’s like, great advice for a kid who is 23 years old and only caddying in his fourth PGA Tour event.”

Sage wisdom from the kid. More importantly, it sounds like he and his dad had a blast, which is all that matters, win or lose.

“Reagan’s a great kid to be around, he knows his way around like he’s a PGA Tour pro himself. He did a great job of keeping me positive and keeping me loose out there. We just had a really great time all week.

“I can’t overstate how important he was out there. He understands golf at the highest level.”

High praise. Maybe having the right caddie does matter more than we think.

Sean M. Haffey

That was a highly entertaining solo second from Harry Higgs
We won’t go too long on Higgs, mainly for fear of hardo Golf Twitter saying that he’s their property. But like I wrote Friday evening, everyone—avid golf fans, casual golf fans, “I-just-watch-the-Masters” golf fans—should be allowed to enjoy this guy. The full lip of tobacco, the unbuttoned shirt, the heavy groans after bad shots, the incredible hook into 16 that led to an eagle, the hard F-bomb after the missed birdie putt on 17, etc., etc. The dude is an incredible presence out there. We need more Harry Higgs.

We are scary close to a Doc Redman victory
Thanks to a Sunday 62, Doc Redman locked up a T-3 in Napa. That’s his second T-3 in his last three starts, and the third finish inside the top three in his young career. The former U.S. Amateur winner is going to become a PGA Tour winner very soon. He’s an elite iron player, a solid driver of the golf ball and an above-average putter. One of these weeks it’s going to all come together and we’ll have another early 20s star to be excited about, as if we didn’t have enough already.

The post Stewart Cink’s most special victory yet and three other Sunday takeaways from Napa appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By E. Michael Johnson
When Stewart Cink won the 2009 Open Championship, along with being remembered for Tom Watson’s amazing run at the title at age 59, it also marked Cink’s first major championship. Unfortunately for Cink, it also was his last PGA Tour victory until he captured the 2020-21 season-opening Safeway Open in Napa, Calif.

Cink shot back-to-back rounds of 65 to hold off Harry Higgs and a plethora of others for his first PGA Tour win in 4,074 days.

On the front nine Cink converted four short birdie putts before rolling in a 20-footer on No. 11. Despite being 47 years old, Cink was able to average 315.6 yards off the tee and took a lot of pressure off by hitting 61 of 72 greens in regulation for an 84.72 percent clip.

Cink’s driver is Ping’s G410 LST, the company’s low-spinning version of its G410 driver family. Cink also uses Ping’s i210 irons with the interesting configuration of the set running all the way to his gap wedge, something common to everyday golfers but rarely seen on the PGA Tour. In another nod to the everyman, Cink also carries a 20.5-degree Ping G410 7-wood to go with a 13.5-degree G410 3-wood.

It’s unclear whether Cink hit the 3-wood or the 7-wood into the 72nd hole from 254 yards out (although judging by the height of the shot, it would be difficult to elevate a 13.5-degree club that much), but it helped deliver a crucial shot in deciding the tournament in setting up a finishing birdie—even if it was a long time coming.

What Stewart Cink had in the bag at the 2020 Safeway Open:

Ball: Titleist Pro V1x
Driver: Ping G410 LST (Graphite Design Tour AD XC), 10.5 degrees
3-wood: Ping G410, 13.5 degrees
7-wood: Ping G410, 20.5 degrees
Irons (4-iron through gap wedge): Ping i210
Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM8 (58, 60 degrees)
Putter: Ping Vault 2.0 Ketsch

The post The clubs Stewart Cink used to win the 2020 Safeway Open appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
As the PGA Tour eyes a June restart for 2019-’20 season in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, a handful of tour pros anxious to compete again will reportedly get that opportunity much sooner.

According to GolfChannel.com, officials at Maridoe Golf Club outside Dallas are organizing a 54-hole fundraiser that will be played next week and include the likes of Viktor Hovland, Scottie Scheffler, Harry Higgs and, possibly, Jordan Spieth.

The event, set for April 28-30, is expected to have a 72-player members-only field. However, members at the nearly three-year-old private facility in Carrollton, Texas, include the aforementioned tour pros, along with former Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo and former NBA guard Deron Williams, who are both expected to compete.

Tony Romo
Jonathan Devich/Getty Images

The tournament will include three flights based on handicaps, according to GolfChannel.com, with the elite flight consisting of 51 pros and amateurs competing from nearly 7,900 yards. There’s a $250 entry fee per person with proceeds going in part to the club’s full-time caddies who haven’t been able to work during the pandemic.

Spieth hopes to be a late addition to the field, according to the report, but has a PGA Tour Players Advisory Council meeting on Tuesday that might conflict with the first round. Also playing are a handful of high profile college golfers, including recently named All-Americans Quade Cummins (Oklahoma), Cooper Dossey (Baylor), Pierceson Coody (Texas) and Austin Eckroat (Oklahoma State).

Maridoe owner Albert Huddleston told GolfChannel.com that the event will embrace social-distancing guidelines. Carts and caddies will be prohibited and no bunker rakes will be out on the course (a walking scorer with each group will stay on the cart path and rake bunkers when needed). Each participant can only have one guest, can arrive no earlier than 30 minutes before tee times and is asked to avoid coming within six feet of fellow competitors. The club’s range will be converted into a par-3 course and available for players to warm up quickly before their rounds.

Since its opening in 2017, Maridoe has aspired to host national and regional competitions. The course is scheduled to host the Southern Amateur in July, a college event in the fall being televised by Golf Channel and the 2021 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship.

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