Jim Furyk Archives - Golf Digest Middle East

Four greens vandalised at Timuquana Country Club the night before Jim Furyk’s PGA Tour Champions event

Golf Digest Middle East — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 06:49:01 +0000

There’s a special circle of sports hell for people who vandalise golf courses. We hope these sadists and sociopaths are doomed to a life of watching their teams lose in overtime and Paul Azinger narrating their every activity. And hopefully the warden downstairs is cooking up something extra special for the clown who wrecked four greens (the 10th, 12th, 16th and 17th) at Timuquana Country Club on Wednesday night, mere hours before Jim Furyk’s PGA Tour Champions tournament, Constellation Furyk and Friends, was set to hold its pro-am. Check it out.

I’m hearing that four greens were destroyed overnight at Timuquana CC in Jacksonville. Unclear as to how or why.

Jim Furyk’s Champions Tour event at Timuquana begins tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/79tLgqrt6O

— Casey Bannon (@CaseyFBannon) October 5, 2023

Awful stuff. Furyk and Friends has become one of the most vibrant stops on the senior circuit, bringing celebrities, music, local food and, of course, golf together for truly great weekend. Better yet, all proceeds from the event go to Northeast Florida charities via the Jim & Tabitha Furyk Foundation. Unfortunately 12 hours before tip some joker went and wrecked the whole thing for everybody. It’s one thing if you don’t like golf. It’s entirely another to take money out of the pockets of the needy because you don’t like golf.

Anyway, here’s hoping the grounds crew can get things patched up in short order and the event can continue as planned, because we’d hate to see one bad apple ruin the orchard for everybody.

I’m hearing that four greens were destroyed overnight at Timuquana CC in Jacksonville. Unclear as to how or why.

Jim Furyk’s Champions Tour event at Timuquana begins tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/79tLgqrt6O

— Casey Bannon (@CaseyFBannon) October 5, 2023

UPDATE: All credit to the grounds crew at Timuquana for working hard to get everything in order ahead of Friday’s first round. “They got right to work on the damage, called in some help from TPC [Sawgrass] and the agronomy team with the PGA Tour, and also from the Cure at Golf, a construction company that did a renovation here at Timuquana,” Furyk said on Thursday afternoon. “So, we’ve got all hands on deck.”

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This tour pro’s golfer’s tan rivals Stewart Cink’s legendary hat tan

Clarkwin — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 12:33:54 +0000

Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images

The summer is officially heating up, and we don’t mean that in a cliche way. It’s literally scorching hot, with Monday, July 3 being reported as the hottest day ever recorded globally. And it’s only going to get hotter, according to the “experts.”

For hardcore golfers, this means two things: 1. you’re about to go through a LOT of golf gloves in a short period of time, and 2. your golf tan is about to be in peak form. We’re talking about Stewart Cink black-and-white cookie head form:

Stewart Cink is tied for 4th but will remain undefeated as the holder of 'Golf's Worst Tan' award…. pic.twitter.com/oV3gZTupPI

— Your Golf Travel (@yourgolftravel) August 12, 2018

It’s unavoidable this time of year. Even if you load up on sunscreen (which you absolutely always should), it’s still going to be impossible to combat the goofy-ass golf tan look. A simple beach or pool day will quickly turn into a comedy hour with everyone pointing out that your feet are insanely white in comparison to your legs, and that your torso is blinding everyone. Put your shirt back on you freakshow.

Those of us brave enough to show off the golf tan in public cannot be shamed, however. Some of us wear it with pride. People like Si Woo Kim. Heroes:

Me & Si Woo…we’re just alike. pic.twitter.com/0g1K3KHTdc

— Tour Junkies (@Tour_Junkies) July 5, 2023

Oh yeah, that’s the good stuff. If you just zoomed on on Si Woo’s bicep, you’d probably automatically assume it was Stewart Cink’s dome. That’s how you know this is one of the greats. Not to be outdone by Patrick Reed:

Let us celebrate the Patrick Reed tan-line forehead. cc: @ByTheMinGolf @Adam_Sarson @NoLayingUp pic.twitter.com/LuTyyhkp57

— Consolidated News (@ConsolidatedNws) January 13, 2015

Or Jim Furyk:

Jim Furyk's hat tan line is out of control!

The tan spot from the cutout above where you adjust hat size—that's just next level stuff. pic.twitter.com/ma32faNjif

— Dan Rapaport (@Daniel_Rapaport) March 15, 2019

And there you have it, your Mount Rushmore of tour pro golfer tans: Stewart Cink, Si Woo Kim, Patrick Reed, Jim Furyk. That’s a group you can go to war with. A group that should probably mix in one shirtless beach day every now and then just to mitigate things, although that would mean we wouldn’t get these legendary photos. On second thought, keep doing what you’re doing, boys.

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LOOK: The $700m LIV Golf offered Tiger Woods does not seem so outrageous when you see the PGA Tour’s projected earnings plan

Golf Digest Middle East — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 10:22:26 +0000

By Dan Rapaport
Perhaps you’ve seen the comparison: Tiger Woods has made roughly $121 million in on-course earnings on the PGA Tour, and LIV Golf reportedly offered him somewhere between $700 million and $800 million to join the new league. It’s not exactly apples-to-apples, for you wouldn’t compare the $230 million NFL deal Kyler Murray just signed with the Arizona Cardinals to the $20 million one John Elway signed with the Denver Broncos in 1997. As such, the PGA Tour is urging its players to think about the future when it comes to dollars and cents — to focus not on what they’ve accumulated in the past, but what they can earn moving forward on the PGA Tour.

Tour officials have begun circulating a document, which was obtained by Golf Digest, that outlines projected earnings for a sample of players if they started their career in the 2022-23 season. When asked about the document, a PGA Tour executive confirmed its legitimacy and explained that the calculations are based loosely on a 4 per cent year-over-year growth in total comprehensive earnings, with continued added investment in its three bonus programmes: the FedEx Cup, the Comcast Business Tour Top 10 and the Player Impact Programme.

The tour claims that if Jim Furyk was a rookie in 2022-23 and had the same 28-year career that he had, in which he made $71.5 million in on-course earnings, his total compensation from the tour would exceed $620 million. To sample a few others:
Rory McIlroy would be at $373 million (from $65.7 million)
Jordan Spieth at $240 million (from $52.5 million)
Brandt Snedeker at $180 million
Ryan Palmer at $100 million
Keegan Bradley at $97 million
Jason Gore at $21 million

The tour projects McIlroy would earn $238 million over his first 10 years on tour had his career started today.

Each player’s projected earnings are broken down by year and by seven categories: official prize money; unofficial prize money (for events like the PNC Challenge or the CVS Health Charity Challenge); the Comcast Business Tour Top 10, a bonus awarded to the top 10 finishers in the regular-season FedEx Cup standings; FedEx Cup bonus money, determined by the final FedEx Cup standings after the Tour Championship; the cuts plan, a pension players accumulate based on how many cuts they make in a particular season; the Player Impact Programme, enacted in 2021 to reward players for the attention they bring to golf; and additional benefits, which include workplace benefits like child care, health care and disability.

Based on these projections, the Player Impact Programme will increase from $50 million to $70 million in 2025, $80 million in 2030, $90 million in 2035 and $100 million in 2040. The Comcast Business Tour Top 10 payout is projected to increase by roughly 6.5 per cent year-over-year, and official prize money is projected to increase annually by roughly 3.5 per cent.

Jim Furyk

“We wanted to give our players, particularly our young players who are starting out, a better idea of how much money they will be able to earn by playing on the PGA Tour — which does not include the player’s endorsements or other off-course earnings,” the PGA Tour executive said. “Our bonus payments have outpaced our prize money in growth in the past few years, and we have focused our efforts on boosting those.”

To calculate a specific player’s projected future payouts, the PGA Tour applied modern payment structures to past earnings. For example: Had Jim Furyk’s 17th season on the PGA Tour happened in 2039, rather than 2006, the PGA Tour projects he would have earned roughly $70 million between increased prize money and bonus payments that didn’t exist during his prime. The breakdown of that $70 million includes $19 million from official prize money — a significant increase on the $7.2 million he earned on-course in 2006 — $714,000 from unofficial money, $6 million from the Comcast Business Tour Top 10, $35 million in FedEx Cup bonus, $234,000 from the cuts plan, $9 million from the Player Impact Programme and $75,000 in additional benefits. Rather than project where exactly Furyk might have finished in the not-yet-existing PIP in 2006 and convert that specific position to 2036 dollars, the $9 million represents the average share for the 10 PIP winners in 2036.

“We started hearing about all these increases years ago,” Furyk says. “A lot of people think this came out of nowhere given the recent happenings in golf, but we’ve known for a while that the money was going to go up considerably.

“Look, the last thing I want to sound like is bitter that I’m not 23 years old right now. The purses are going to continue to rise, the younger guys are going to continue to make more money and the FedEx Cup is going to continue to grow. I think that’s wonderful.”

Here’s how Jim Furyk’s career earnings of $71.5 million get projected to $620 million with the PGA Tour’s new purses and incentive plans.

With four wins and three seconds during the 2021-22 tour slate, Scottie Scheffler has already surpassed the record for on-course earnings in a single season with $13.176 million — which does not include the $4 million he earned for winning the Comcast Business Tour Top 10 or the FedEx Cup bonus he will receive after the Tour Championship.

The tour believes its projections are on the conservative side, particularly given recent increases in overall total comprehensive earnings — with the tour’s new nine-year, $7 billion media-rights deal kicking in, the tour increased its overall total comprehensive earnings package by 19 per cent from 2021 to 2022, with another 17 per cent increase forecast for 2023. The tour executive also expressed confidence in long-standing corporate partnerships going forward and did not agree that the emergence of LIV Golf would negatively impact the PGA Tour’s bottom line.

Here are the projected earnings for other PGA Tour pros.

It is, however, hard to view the document outside the context of LIV, which has reset the market for professional golfers with its offers of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in guaranteed money to its players. The deal Phil Mickelson signed with LIV Golf is rumoured to be worth $200 million over less than five years, with Dustin Johnson reportedly agreeing to $150 million and Bryson DeChambeau fetching north of $100 million — all in guarantees, not including additional prize money up for grabs in LIV’s events.

The PGA Tour, however, does not include any guaranteed money in its projections. “All of this money we’re projecting will be earned on a competitive basis,” the PGA Tour executive said, “and that’s a hallmark of the PGA Tour. Even the PIP programme, there are different components, but you’ve earned those based on how you’ve competed.”

As for Woods, the tour opted against using him as a data point because not many players can realistically hope to replicate his career. But it’s entirely possible that Woods would’ve won the Player Impact Programme every single year from 1997 through 2021, the year he won it despite not hitting a single shot in a PGA Tour event, and all those first-place prizes would’ve added up to hundreds of millions of dollars in bonus money — not including on-course earnings and Comcast Business Tour Top 10 earnings. All of a sudden, that $700 million figure thrown around by LIV Golf doesn’t look so outrageous.

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US Open 2022: Can you guess the 10 golfers who’ve made the most money in their US Open careers?

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 09:26:59 +0000

David Cannon

By Ryan Herrington
There’s a saying that winning a major championship is priceless. And we get what’s meant when it’s said. The true currency that comes with victory in one of golf’s biggest events isn’t something you deposit in a bank account. It’s spent when you step on to a tee box and are forever referred to as a major champion.

However …

They do actually pay money to the winner of a major. A lot of money. This week, Matt Fitzpatrick took home $3.15 million, the largest individual prize money payout for any winner of a major championship.

Of course, the spoils have been far larger in recent years — and the conversation about money in golf has been amplified with the rise of LIV Golf and the debate over players earning guaranteed paydays in no-cut events. But it’s interesting to contrast what’s going on now with the past.

Consider that Jack Nicklaus played in 44 US Open during his historic career, won a record tying four times and earned a grand total of $363,955. That’s slightly more than the player who finishes in 12th place will earn at Brookline. Arnold Palmer, in 32 US Open starts, made $112,119.50. Finish 31st in the 2022 championship and you’ve made more. Ben Hogan’s career US Open earnings ($32,651.66) get beat by the last-place finisher among the pros this year, Stewart Hagestad.

So the list of the top 10 all-time money winners in US Open history will naturally be skewed to those who played — and likely won — in recent years. But before looking at the list below, it is interesting to note that you don’t have to have won the event to have banked some big bucks in the USGA event.

So, can you guess the 10 tour pros who’ll be named below? Probably, but we bet there will be a few surprises, too. (All stats are through the 2021 US Open at Torrey Pines.)

Rory McIlroy. David Cannon

10. Rory McIlroy, $2,845,052
Starts: 13 Wins: 1 Top-10s: 6 Missed Cuts: 5
Average earnings/start: $218,850.15

McIlroy made a fourth straight top-10 finish in the US Open at The Country Club after having won the title back in 2011 at Congressional.

Jon Rahm. Sean M. Haffey

9. Jon Rahm, $2,933,669
Starts: 6 Wins: 1 Top-10s: 2 Missed Cuts: 2
Average earnings/start: $488,944.83

Rahm’s win at Torrey Pines vaulted him into the top 10.

Justin Rose. Getty Images

8. Justin Rose, $2,939,203
Starts: 16 Wins: 1 Top-10s: 5 Missed Cuts: 7
Average earnings/start: $183,700.19

Rose’s win in 2013 at Merion has allowed him to play the rest of his career without the burden of chasing an elusive major that’s followed fellow Englishman Ian Poulter, Paul Casey and Lee Westwood in their careers.

Ernie Els. Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

7. Ernie Els, $3,049,309.92
Starts: 27 Wins: 2 Top-10s: 10 Missed Cuts: 7
Average earnings/start: $112,937.33

Els’ US Open record is even better than the two wins would lead you to believe. From 1993 to 2013, he had seven top-fives and 10 top-10s.

Louis Oosthuizen. David Berding

6. Louis Oothuizen, $4,038,535.33
Starts: 12 Wins: 0 Top-10s: 5 Missed Cuts: 2 (1 WD)
Average earnings/start: $336,544.611

The South African nabbed his second runner-up finish in the event at Torrey Pines in 2021.

Jim Furyk. Warren Little

5. Jim Furyk, $4,191,423.93
Starts: 25 Wins: 1 Top-10s: 7 Missed Cuts: 3
Average earnings/start: $167,656.84

Furyk’s career milestone win was a US Open at Olympia Fields in 2003, but what is underappreciated is his consistency in the championship, with seven top-10s and just three missed cuts in 25 starts.

Phil Mickelson. Icon Sportswire

4. Phil Mickelson, $4,350,759.08
Starts: 30 Wins: 0 Top-10s: 10 Missed Cuts: 4
Average earnings/start: $145,025.30

Mickelson was in the news this week at The Country Club for reasons other than trying to finally clinch the career Grand Slam.

Dustin Johnson. Getty Images

3. Dustin Johnson, $4,762,664
Starts: 14 Wins: 1 Top-10s: 6 Missed Cuts: 2
Average earnings/start: $340,188.86

DJ’s sneaky good U.S. Open record includes five top-six finishes in the last eight years.

Tiger Woods. Richard Hartog/Getty Images

2. Tiger Woods, $5,773,917.60
Starts: 22 Wins: 3 Top-10s: 8 Missed Cuts: 4
Average earnings/start: $262,450.72

If only Woods’ three victories came more recently than 22, 20 and 14 years ago, he’d hold the top spot.

Brooks Koepka. Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

1. Brooks Koepka, $6,788,470
Starts: 8 Wins: 2 Top-10s: 5 Missed Cuts: 1
Average earnings/start: $848,558.75

Interestingly enough, Koepka is the only player to ever earn more than $1 million in three consecutive US Opens, thanks to his wins in 2017 and 2018 and a runner-up showing in 2019.

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Where does Jordan Spieth’s RBC Heritage win take him in the PGA Tour career earnings standings?

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 10:23:44 +0000

Jordan Spieth and caddie Michael Greller pose with the trophy with their families after winning the RBC Heritage. Jared C. Tilton

Spieth earned $1.44m, which turns out to be a bigger deal than you might think, pushing him past $50 million

By Jay Coffin
Jordan Spieth had already tapped in for par on the 18th hole, the first of a sudden-death playoff against Patrick Cantlay Sunday at the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town. He watched as Cantlay’s par attempt sped past the hole and it hit him that he had won his 13th PGA Tour title.

“The whole thing took me by surprise because I legitimately thought Patrick was going to make it from 35 feet,” Spieth said afterward, while wearing the tartan jacket that historically is presented to the winner.

Spieth’s wife, Annie, came running out, holding 5-month-old son Sammy, and the family celebrated the victory. This was the second consecutive year that Spieth won on Easter Sunday. Last year he won the Valero Texas Open.

With the victory, Spieth earned $1,440,000, which turns out to be a bigger deal than you might think. The first-place prize money payout pushed Spieth past $50 million in career earnings, lifting him to $50,578,855.

Just 10 other tour pros have broken the $50 million barrier. Spieth now is No. 11 on the all-time list, less than $4 million behind 10th-place Sergio Garcia. Matt Kuchar, who earned $330,857 for a third-place tie at the RBC Heritage, jumped past Garcia and moved into ninth on the list with $54.5 million.

Tiger Woods tops the list with more than $120 million in career earnings. Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson are second and third, respectively.

Here is an updated look at the PGA Tour’s career money:
1: Tiger Woods, $120,895,206
2: Phil Mickelson, $94,955,060
3: Dustin Johnson, $74,256,508
4: Jim Furyk, $71,507,269
5: Vijay Singh, $71,236,216
6: Rory McIlroy, $61,526,095
7: Adam Scott, $58,312,649
8: Justin Rose, $56,373,923
9: Matt Kuchar, $54,506,297
10: Sergio Garcia, $54,302,770
11: Jordan Spieth, $50,578,855
12: Jason Day, $49,578,815
13: Ernie Els, $49,339,400

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Scottie Scheffler continues the ride of his life

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How a few big names who don’t like losing are making the PGA Tour Champions competitive again

Golf Digest Middle East — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 20:55:07 +0000

By John Feinstein
It was a remarkable final leaderboard. Four-time major champion and World Golf Hall of Fame member Ernie Els had slammed home a 40-foot putt on the 18th green to win the tournament. He had held off Colin Montgomerie, also a Hall-of-Famer, by one shot. Two shots behind Els in third place was yet another Hall-of-Famer, three-time major winner Vijay Singh.

Wow.

There was more: Jim Furyk, a past U.S. Open champion and a sure-fire future Hall-of-Famer finished in a tie for eighth. Darren Clarke, David Toms and Mike Weir, all major winners, were also sprinkled among the leaders, not to mention 63-year-old Bernhard Langer, a two-time major champion, and another Hall-of-Famer, who had a rare off-day, shooting a two-over-par 74 to drop from a tie for fourth going into Sunday to a tie for 14th.

Welcome to the SAS Championship, which dramatically concluded Sunday afternoon at Prestonwood Country Club in Cary, N.C., a tony suburb of Raleigh.

All those names are now regulars on what is known these days as PGA Tour Champions, the tour’s latest marketing attempt to convince golf fans that the old guys, the over-50 set, can still play.

Guess what? They can.

Since it was launched in 1980, the senior circuit has always been about nostalgia and big names. It was started by then-PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman largely to give Arnold Palmer a place to continue competing. Until then, the only significant senior event was the Senior PGA Championship, run by the PGA of America. Beman recast the age requirement in order to be considered a “senior” from 55 to 50 so that Palmer, who had turned 50 in September 1979 could compete in the tour’s new events. At the same time, the USGA established the U.S. Senior Open, and a movement had begun.

Led by Palmer and, a few years later by Lee Trevino (who won 29 times) and Chi Chi Rodriguez (who had 22 victories), the tour was a success early on. The old guys seemed to be having more fun than the young guys—the “flat bellies” as Trevino called them—and they still had game. Jack Nicklaus was dragged kicking and screaming to play, but showed up enough to win 10 times, including eight senior majors.

Eventually, though, the novelty wore off, especially when Palmer and Nicklaus stopped playing and people began to notice that the low scores the seniors were shooting had a lot to do with playing shortened golf courses that frequently had member-guest-like pin positions.

Yet now, with a new batch of notable names turning the magic number, there appears to be an opportunity to make the 50-and-older tour matter again to more than friends and family.

The tour heads to Richmond this weekend to begin what is normally its season-ending three-week playoff run, but there are no playoffs this fall due to the pandemic. Like with the Korn Ferry Tour, officials are taking tournaments that did get played in 2020 and joining them with events in 2021 for one large wrap-around season.

Teeing it up on Friday is Phil Mickelson. It will be his second appearance among the 50-and-older set. The first came in August after Mickelson missed the cut outside Boston at the Northern Trust, leaving him 75th in the FedEx Cup standings and without a spot in the next week’s BMW Championships.

Not a problem. Mickelson jumped on a plane and flew to Missouri to play in the Charles Schwab Series at Ozark National—his first foray into senior golf since he turned 50 in June. His first-round produced a stunning 61 and he cruised from there, shooting 64-66 to finish at 191—a ridiculous 22 under par. He beat Tim Petrovic by four shots.

Though Mickelson isn’t going to give up on playing regular tour events, he clearly is planning to play in PGA Tour Champions tournaments along the way since he’s still long enough to dominate on the shorter senior golf courses in ways he can no longer dominate on the regular tour.

Brett Carlsen
How much Mickelson will play on the PGA Tour Champions is still unclear, but he seemed to enjoy the camaraderie during his first start in August.

Historically, that’s what happens to top players. Nicklaus was the first to vow to continue playing against the best for as long as he believed he could compete. Even though he managed to finish T-6 at the Masters in 1998 at 58, competing clearly became more and more difficult. After turning 50, Nicklaus never finished in the top 20 in any major other than the Masters—a sixth in 1990 and the T-6 eight years later.

That’s why he played a limited senior schedule—but did play. He won two senior majors in 1990.

Nicklaus was no different than any great competitor: He wanted to tee it up thinking he had a chance to win. The 50-and-older tour gives guys who can no longer consistently have a chance to win on the regular tour, the chance to do that. Davis Love III, who still plays PGA Tour events at 56, did win in Greensboro five years ago at 51. Now, Love admits he isn’t long enough anymore to manhandle tour courses the way he did when he was younger.

Furyk wasn’t sure a year ago how much he would play with the seniors when he turned 50—which he did this past May. “I think I’ll see where I stand on the regular tour at the end of 2020 and then decide,” he said.

COVID-19 cancelled enough tournaments to make it tough for Furyk to make that decision. But he decided to tee it up at the Ally Championship at Warwick Hills (a former PGA Tour venue) and won. Then he went to Pebble Beach—a current PGA Tour venue—and won the Pure Insurance Championship. His T-8 at Prestonwood no doubt felt like a huge letdown.

Rey Del Rio

For the top players, the ones who can bring sponsorships to the tour and help TV ratings, money is not the main incentive. Els won $315,000 for his victory last week—exactly 25 percent of what Martin Laird made for winning in Las Vegas that same day. That’s fairly typical. Of course, the old guys get to play in carts most weeks and most tournaments are 54 holes with no cut. Shooting in the 60s is fairly commonplace. Els’ winning score of 12 under par was much higher than most weeks when the winner will often shoot close to 20 under par for three rounds.

Truth is what seems to be driving these players is the competition. Simply put, they love to compete, and they also enjoy being treated like stars at tournament sites. Unlike athletes in other sports, they can still bask in the glow of VIP treatment well past their peak playing days.

With Mickelson, Furyk, Els and Weir now on the senior tour and with Singh, a now-healthy Montgomerie and Love probably playing more often, there’s a chance to get more people to take a serious look at what Billy Andrade, who has had a good deal of success since turning 50 six years ago, calls, “the fun tour.”

A few tweaks might help. The tour should make the setups more difficult week-to-week. These guys can play. Challenge them to prove it more often. Get rid of one of the five majors. The senior majors are played in such-rapid fire manner in the spring and summer that it’s difficult to know what is a major and what isn’t a major. There should be four senior majors—The U.S. Open, the British Open, the PGA and the Players—the last if only to fulfill the tour’s dream of making one version of the Players a major. A senior Masters, played a Pebble Beach or Shinnecock, would be better.

On Dec. 30, 2025, Tiger Woods will turn 50. Woods will no doubt want to compete in the real majors for as long as he can possibly compete. But don’t bet against him not joining the “fun tour.” He’s a golfer. And golfers live to play golf.

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Jim Furyk wins in a playoff, while Ernie Els’ Pebble Beach disappointments mount

Golf Digest Middle East — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:20:49 +0000

Jed Jacobsohn

By John Strege
The game never really owes anyone, though Ernie Els would be forgiven had he thought Pebble Beach was indebted to him. Once more, he left the Monterey Peninsula in disappointment.

For the record, Jim Furyk won the PURE Insurance Championship with a birdie on the first playoff hole, the iconic 18th at Pebble Beach, on Sunday, defeating Jerry Kelly for his second PGA Tour Champions victory in his only two starts.

Furyk, who turned 50 in May, joins Arnold Palmer and Bruce Fleisher as the only players to win their first two senior starts.

“I feel very fortunate,” Furyk said. “It means a lot. When I won at [the] Ally [Championship], I hadn’t won in over five years. It’s why we play the game, it’s why you work so hard, it’s to have this feeling.

“I feel honoured to be mentioned with AP. I look at the hard work I put in a lot of this year, through our break. I wasn’t really seeing a lot of results on the PGA Tour, but kind of kept plugging away, working hard and now I’ve seen some results out here.”

Furyk has not fully committed to playing the senior tour, unlike Els, who has played nine senior events this year, winning once and finishing in the top 10 in seven of them.

But he let this one slip away. The 36-hole leader and still tied for the lead going to the par-5 18th, Els made a mess of the hole, ultimately missing a three-foot par putt to join the playoff.

“I just missed the putt,” Els said. “Kind of misread it. You know, I battled hard, I didn’t quite have my swing.”

Adding, he might have noted, to his history of disappointment at Pebble Beach. Twenty years ago, Els played well enough to win a U.S. Open, only to have been steamrollered by Tiger Woods, who won by 15 shots. Els tied for second. Ten years later, Els finished third in the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and last year he missed the cut in the Open there.

Els and Furyk were tied for the lead for most of the back nine, with Kelly joining the tie with an 18th-hole birdie to get to 12-under par 276. Kelly had the best round of the day, a seven-under 65.

Furyk, playing behind Kelly, shot a five-under 67, but was unable to make a birdie after the sixth hole. Els, in the group following Furyk, shot a 70.

On the playoff hole, Furyk hit an excellent third shot, his ball spinning back to four feet below the hole. After Kelly missed his own birdie attempt, Furyk holed his.

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10 remarkable season-ending stats from a strange year on the PGA Tour

Golf Digest Middle East — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 22:43:43 +0000

By Shane Ryan
The 2019-’20 PGA Tour season, complete with the big interruption and the semi-miraculous resuscitation, officially came to an end on Monday at the Tour Championship. It seems strange to say, considering we still have two more majors on the 2020 calendar, but they are part of the 2020-’21 “super season” that begins Thursday with the Safeway Open. The quick turnaround provides a brief moment to look back at the statistical feats and anomalies of the past wrap-around year and pick out the most intriguing numbers of the bunch. The huge caveat, of course, is that our sample size is smaller than usual because of the three months lopped off by COVID-19. That affects all stats, but it affects the non-cumulative ones, like strokes gained, the least.

With that, let’s look at the most remarkable statistical feats of the 2019-’20 season, from the impressive to the heartbreaking to the weird.

1. Jon Rahm wins the strokes-gained crown in a down year

Jon Rahm’s average strokes gained against the field, in 57 measured rounds, was a very solid 1.823, nosing ahead of Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Webb Simpson and Bryson DeChambeau. But what’s interesting about Rahm’s total is that it’s the lowest winning number since Steve Stricker was No. 1 in 2010 with 1.818. Only twice in the last 10 years has the strokes gained/total leader won with a number lower than 2 (the average for the last 10 winners, including Rahm, is 2.22). It’s hard to know exactly why this happened; perhaps the tournaments that were cancelled due to COVID-19 trended a bit easier. In any case, it’s Rahm’s first overall SG crown, and it adds a subtle reason his fellow tour pros might consider him for PGA Tour Player of the Year.

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2. Bud Cauley makes the “2/3” sand-save club

It’s one of the oddities about sports that for certain feats, there are seemingly arbitrary numbers that turn out to be useful cutoffs for separating the good and the great—like, for instance, a .300 batting average. For sand saves, it turns out that anyone who averages better than 66.67 percent, i.e. someone who makes better than two out of every three sand saves, has attained an elusive level of excellence. That’s what Bud Cauley accomplished in 2020, going 69/103 from the sand for a 66.99-percent rate. Before him, the list of those who had beaten the “2/3” mark this millennium is short: Rickie Fowler (2017), K.J. Choi (2013), Tim Clark (2007), Franklin Langham (2001) and Fred Couples (2000).

Matt Sullivan

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3. Martin Trainer and the year of the hellish approach

Since the PGA Tour started keeping SG/approach stats in 2004, no player has ever averaged more than two strokes lost (as in -2) per round for a whole season. Until 2020, that is. Martin Trainer, who was dead last on the 2019 list, too, lost 82.502 strokes to the field in 39 measured rounds, for an abysmal -2.115 average. It’s a big reason why he missed the cut in 19 of 21 starts, and it makes his 2019 win at the Puerto Rico Open look even more anomalous. This is a year he’ll be eager to forget, but as Brendon Todd has shown us, twice, you’re never truly dead in the game of golf.

• • •

4. Bryson DeChambeau hits the sixth-longest putt since 2003

DeChambeau made a ton of news this year, but not much of it for his putting. Still, on the 18th hole Saturday in the PGA Championship, he did this:

Bryson DeChambeau…FROM 95 FEET?!?! pic.twitter.com/MQB1DgneMp

— Golf on CBS (@GolfonCBS) August 8, 2020

The PGA Tour has longest-putt stats going back to 2003, and only five people have made a longer putt than DeChambeau’s 95 feet, five inches. The longest was Craig Barlow at the Buick Open in 2008, and it remains tragic to me that no footage of this exists. For what it’s worth, Bryson missed the top five by two inches—Nick Watney made a 95 foot, seven incher in 2017.

• • •

5. Jason Kokrak is the four-foot prince of the millennium

Every year, there are a group of players who make every single putt from three feet—this year, there were 20, including Phil Mickelson, who went 419-for-419—but once you move back to four feet, perfection is a tantalizing impossibility. Every year since 2003, when Shotlink distances were first measured, no player has made every four-foot putt in a season. The top guys always come close, missing just one or two, but nobody runs the table. This season, Jason Kokrak led all comers, hitting 101 of 102 four-footers, for a 99.02 percentage. As it turns out, that’s the second-best number ever, trailing only Jim Furyk’s 99.12 (113-for-114) from 2011. This is one spot where the COVID stoppage may have kept him from all-time glory—a few more putts, and he would have nudged ahead of Furyk.

• • •

Michael Reaves

6. Beau Hossler is the three-putt avoidance prince of the millennium

This season, Hossler three-putted just 16 times over 1,206 total holes, for a 1.33 percent three-putt rate. Like Kokrak and his four-footers, that was nearly enough to secure the best rate of the 2000s. And like Kokrak, he only fell short of a 2011 performance, in this case Luke Donald and his 15 three-putts in the exact same number of holes. Just one fewer three-putt, and Hossler would have shared the crown.

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7. Jim Furyk tops the GIR list at age 50

Time has clearly not taken hampered Furyk’s maddening consistency, as he proved this season with his tour-leading 74.22 percent greens-in-regulation rate. To find a better percentage, you have to go back to 2001, when Tom Lehman averaged 74.53 percent. Now, going back to sample size, we have to note that Furyk only had 39 rounds, which is about half as many attempts as the typically leader in this category would post. Then again, when you’re twice the age of some of your competitors, maybe you should be allowed to make your point in half the time.

Tom Pennington

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8. Bryson DeChambeau joins an elite driving group

The big man again! Since 2004, when the PGA Tour first began keeping strokes-gained stats, there have been only four men who have averaged more than one stroke gained against the field off the tee for a full season. Three of them are obvious: Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson. The fourth is Sergio Garcia, who squeaked in with a 1.003 SG/off-the-tee number in 2005. This year, Bryson DeChambeau became the fifth in the +1 Drivers Club, with 64.417 strokes gained over 62 measured rounds, for an average of 1.039 per round. Clearly, at least off the tee, his bulking routine paid dividends. Interestingly, Cam Champ came up just shy, with an average of .999.

• • •

9. Webb Simpson wins the scoring average title

In beating Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas for the best scoring average for the season, Webb Simpson did so by dipping (albeit just barely) into 68 territory with a 68.978 average through 52 rounds. That puts him in pretty exclusive company. In the last decade, only Luke Donald, Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker, Sergio Garcia, and Jordan Spieth have maintained a sub-69 average in a single season. McIlroy had the lowest average in 2014, and if you’re wondering if anyone has ever beaten 68, the answer is yes—it’s Tiger, of course, in 2000 (67.749) and 2007 (67.794).

Christian Petersen

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10. Denny McCarthy repeats as SG/putting champ, puts up second-best mark ever

As with the other strokes-gained stats we’ve looked at so far, the PGA Tour’s SG/putting rankings only go back to 2004. In that time, only one man has averaged better than one stroke gained against the field for a full season, and that was Jason Day in 2016. This year, Denny McCarthy got awfully close, averaging .988 per round in another brilliant season, second all-time. He also became just the third repeat winner since the stat was kept, joining Luke Donald (2009-2011) and Ben Crane (2005-2006). Interestingly, those gaudy numbers from McCarthy were only good for four top-10 finishes this season, highlighting his struggles elsewhere. For two years, McCarthy has been the tour’s equivalent of a one-trick pony, but he’s very good at that one trick.

The post 10 remarkable season-ending stats from a strange year on the PGA Tour appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Jim Furyk wins in his PGA Tour Champions debut as seniors resume season after COVID-19 break

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 02:50:39 +0000

Rey Del Rio
Jim Furyk became the 19th player to win in his PGA Tour Champions debut.

By John Strege
Jim Furyk needed no introduction, of course, but he emphatically made his presence known anyway by winning his PGA Tour Champions debut in the tour’s return from a five-month COVID-19 hiatus.

Nearly three months after turning 50, Furyk shot a four-under-par 68 at Warwick Hills C.C. in Grand Blanc, Mich., on Sunday to win the Ally Challenge by two. His 54-hole total of 14-under-par 202 was two better than another senior rookie, Brett Quigley, and Retief Goosen.

Furyk became the 19th player in tour history to win in his debut and the first since Miguel Angel Jimenez in 2014. He also became the third rookie to win in 2020, joining Quigley and Ernie Els, and forming a potentially dominant nucleus of newcomers to the senior circuit.

It was a surprise to no one that Furyk prevailed, principally because he remains competitive on the PGA Tour from which he likely has forged a World Golf Hall of Fame career. He came into the Ally Challenge 92nd in the World Ranking. The senior closest to him in the ranking was Els at 477th.

Furyk, who won 17 times on the PGA Tour, has made the cut in three of his last five PGA Tour starts, most recently at the Memorial, where he tied for 48th. He is only 16 months removed from finishing second in the Players Championship, and he is in the field at the PGA Championship at the TPC Harding Park in San Francisco this week.

He began play on Sunday in second place, trailing Quigley by a stroke, a deficit that grew to two on the front nine. But he pulled even on the 10th hole with a birdie to Quigley’s bogey.

Goosen, with birdies on Nos. 14, 16 and 17, joined the duo atop the leader board, but bogeyed 18.

Furyk and Quigley arrived at the 17th hole tied for the lead, but the latter bogeyed the final two holes by missing the greens in each instance. Furyk, meanwhile, missed only one of 18 greens in regulation and hit 13 of 14 fairways.

No doubt, his fellow senior competitors are wishing Fuyrk only the best of luck at the PGA at Harding Park. With a good finish, they can only hope, perhaps he won’t feel the need to come back and visit them any time soon.

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The complete list of PGA Tour 2K21’s playable pros is here (including Jim Furyk!)

Golf Digest Middle East — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 04:36:55 +0000

By Coleman Bentley
Late last week, we introduced you to video game Bryson—a svelte companion to the muscle-bound beast that was making mince meat (it’s high in protein!) of Colonial during the opening round of the Charles Schwab Challenge. Following cover star Justin Thomas and Matt “you don’t have to tip virtual caddies” Kuchar, “The Scientist” was the third playable PGA Tour pro unveiled for golf’s much-anticipated return to modern consoles, ‘PGA Tour 2K21’. Over the course of the weekend, 2K Games slowly trickled out all nine remaining names, concluding during the final round on Sunday with the 2017 Masters champ, Sergio Garcia. The end result is the solid (minus some obvious big names) 12-man roster you see below. Choose your fighter.

Justin Thomas

Matt Kuchar

Bryson DeChambeau

Kevin Kisner

Cam Champ

Tony Finau

Ian Poulter

Gary Woodland

Billy Horschel

Patrick Cantlay

Sergio Garcia

Jim Furyk

Yes. We said Jim Furyk. Go ahead. Run around your living room pulling your own hair while screaming like Kevin McAllister. Get it out of your system.

Future Hall of Famer @jimfuryk has decades of experience and 17 @PGATOUR victories on you. Are YOU ready to meet Mr. 58 on the course? pic.twitter.com/qLj2sGUtWW

— #PGATOUR2K23 (@PGATOUR2K) June 13, 2020

The most noticeable absentees are guys that were always going to be impossible to get. This isn’t Tiger Woods’ PGA Tour anymore, literally or digitally. It would have been nice to see the likes of Koepka, Fleetwood and Matthew Wolff involved, but the motion-capture guys probably had their hands full with Furyk’s swing anyway.

There is the glaring lack of a great villain, however. ‘Mortal Kombat’ had Scorpion. ‘Resident Evil’ had Nemesis. On paper at least, ‘PGA Tour 2K21’ seems to be missing that integral element, but let’s just wait and see. Maybe, just maybe Patrick Reed will make a cameo as the final boss.

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