By Tod Leonard
Kirk Triplett was driving with his wife to Phoenix Country Club on Friday morning when the question occurred to hIm: How long had it been since he’d played in a pairing with Phil Mickelson?

“It’s probably at least 15 years ago,” Triplett said. “I’ve been out here 10 years [on the PGA Tour Champions], I hate to say it, and I haven’t played any golf on the regular tour since I came out here.”

Triplett, best recognized for his bucket hat, and Mickelson’s on-course paths rarely crossed, it seems, because the former was among the journeymen who rarely got paired early in the week with the tour’s stars. Triplett, 59, had an impressive run of keeping his card, but he only managed three PGA Tour victories, the last coming in 2006. Mickelson has won 45 times.

Triplett has had much more success among the seniors, with eight victories, and he has a good shot at his first triumph since 2019, holding a two-shot lead over Steven Alker and a three-shot margin over Mickelson and Jim Furyk heading into the weekend of the Charles Schwab Cup Championship.

Triplett put on a fine display in front of Mickelson on Friday, draining seven birdies in a seven-under round of 64. Mickelson, who hit the ball sharply but didn’t make any putts of consequence, carded a 65.

Kirk Triplett and Phil Mickelson chat during the final round of the 2004 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. Scott Halleran

“It was great to play with him, but he’s always been like that,” Triplett said of Mickelson. “He’s great to his fellow pros, very talkative, very chatty, grinding away on every shot, whether it’s going his way or not. He’s got so much firepower when you’re watching him play; it’s just fun to be out with him, with a Hall of Famer.”

Triplett was so appreciative of the experience that he might have even stunned Mickelson as they stood on a tee during their front nine. “I said, ‘Thank you.’” Triplett recalled. “He said, ‘For what?’ I said, ‘Thanks for bringing all these people out.’” We get nice crowds here at Phoenix every year, but we’ve got more people than we usually do and he’s the reason.”

Mickelson, of course, is a draw in every tournament he plays, but he’s especially popular in Phoenix, where he went to college at Arizona State. With three wins already among the seniors, Lefty has brought the tour more attention than it’s had in years.

The pairing with Mickelson came at a time when Triplett is feeling a rush of competitive juices. With five top-10s in 34 starts in this extended Champions Tour season, he was battling for the last few starts to get into the top 36 who are competing this week in the year’s finale.

“I’ve been the guy on the bubble, No. 36, for at least a month,” Triplett said. “I’ve been playing like I’m winning every single week, like every shot matters. I think that probably has something to do with my good play these last two days.”

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By Ryan Herrington
A new year brings the chance for tour pros to set new goals. Many will likely have subjective ones (stay in the process, improve mental outlook, etc.) that essentially are a means to an end (more cuts made, more top 10s, more wins, etc.). When pros like Justin Thomas list out their objective goals, you’ll find concrete things such as improving their scoring average or hitting more greens in regulation or some other statistical output that is, similarly, a means to an end.

However, at least for the players below, might we suggest something a little more old school? How about throwing up a few financial goals to reach for (it’s the end itself for many)? We’ve identified a few intriguing if not unusual monetary marks that could be achieved, with various degrees of effort, in 2021—and outline what it will take to accomplish them.

1. Cristie Kerr: Become the LPGA Tour’s all-time leading money winner

Chris Keane

Kerr made headlines at the end of the 2020 LPGA season for competing at the U.S. Women’s Open and the CME Group Tour Championship despite having three dislocated ribs caused by a golf cart accident. The 43-year-old and 20-time tour winner still managed to finish T-23 and T-10, respectively, in those two tournaments, earning a combined $92,688. That prize money quietly pushed her past the $20 million mark in career earnings, making her just the third player in LPGA history to break that threshold.

With $20,008,567 on her ledger, Kerr trails the No. 2 all-time money leader, Karrie Webb, by roughly $262,000. Chasing down the Aussie is easily within Kerr’s reach in 2021.

The question then is can Kerr catch up to the No. 1 all-time money leader on tour, Annika Sorenstam, who sits at $22,573,192? It’s a long shot to be accomplished in 2021 as Kerr would have to earn more than $2.56 million for the year. Ten times in her career she’s made more than $1 million in a single season but never more than $1.6 million in 2010.

2. Dustin Johnson: Surpass $75 million in career PGA Tour earnings
Overshadowed by winning his long-sought second major title at the Masters in November, the $2.07 million payday pushed DJ past the $70 million mark in career earnings, only the fifth player to accomplish this feat. He’s 36 but his career certainly doesn’t appear to have reached its peak. He ranks fifth on the all-time money list currently, and should easily jump No. 4 Vijay Singh ($71.236 million) and No. 3 Jim Furyk ($71.313 million) in the next 12 months. The question then is how high can he climb, both in 2021 and beyond. The $75 million barrier seems very doable for some time in the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, if DJ wants to lock in on a target, he’ll be looking up at No. 2 in all-time PGA Tour money-earned, Phil Mickelson, with $92.169 million. It might be a somewhat reasonable goal in the next few years, but Lefty is still adding to his total. Meanwhile, Tiger stands at No. 1 with $120.8 million. Good luck with that DJ.

3. Justin Thomas: Surpass $40 million in career PGA Tour earnings
It’s not a matter of if but when the 27-year-old clicks the odometer number on this financial mark. The 13-time tour winner sits at $39,444,827 in career earnings entering 2021. If he defends his title next week at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, he earns $1.3 million, which would do the trick. Solo second gets him $782,000 and even a two-way share of runner-up honours would be enough. By doing it, he would become the 21st player in PGA Tour history to cross the $40 million mark in on-course earnings. If he gets off to a slow start, however, he might just be the 22nd to do it because …

4. Rickie Fowler: Surpass $40 million in career PGA Tour earnings

Rob Carr

Indeed, there’s another marquee player on the verge of breaking this career mark. Fowler starts 2021 with $39,078,744 in all-time earnings. Like Thomas, it’s only a matter of time before Fowler accomplishes the feat, but how quickly it happens is more of a question given the disappointing 2020 season Fowler experienced. For the first time since earning full status on the PGA Tour in 2010, Fowler failed to win $1 million in a season, and last month he fell out of the top 50 in the World Ranking for the first time since February 2014.

At just 32, there’s plenty of time for Fowler to turn things around and return to prominence, but it’s interesting to compare Thomas and Fowler as they both approach the $40 million milestone. Thomas has gotten to this point with 160 career starts. In contrast, Fowler has played in 256 events.

5. Lee Westwood or Rory McIlroy could become the first European Tour golfer to surpass €40 million in career earnings
With a 2020 campaign where he banked €2.27 million and an out-of-nowhere Race to Dubai title, 47-year-old Lee Westwood remained the all-time-leading European Tour money leader at €37.990 million. If Westwood can keep the magic going in 2021, he has a chance to become the first European Tour pro to break €40 million in career earnings.

Patrick Smith

However, there’s a good shot that another golfer just might beat him to it. Rory McIlroy is second in all-time European Tour earnings at €36.223 million. While it’s unclear how much McIlroy will play on the European Tour early in 2021, any money he earns at the majors and WGC events counts toward his European Tour earnings (as it does for Westwood and all Euro Tour members), so he could sneak past Westwood with some good early performances in key events.

6. A 200th player will break $10 million in PGA Tour career earnings
Right now, 198 golfers have made eight figures in career earnings on the PGA Tour, with Tommy Fleetwood only $765 away from becoming No. 199. Who will be next to do it, and become the historic 200th golfer to achieve the feat is unclear. Nos. 200-205 on the money list are all retired players. The active golfers next on that list are: Sung Kang ($9,549,730, No. 206), Troy Merritt ($9,434,868, No. 211), Branden Grace ($9,409,095, No. 212) and Ben An (9,235,350, No. 215). And the player swooping in from the outside who might pass them all? How about Tyrrell Hatton, at $9,177,481.

7. A 25th player will surpass $10 million in PGA Tour Champions career earnings
In a similar fashion to the PGA Tour, the chance for a player to break this round-number financial milestone is likely in 2021. Right now, David Frost has earned $9,981,733 on the senior circuit. The 61-year-old didn’t play great in 2020, making only $71,303 in 14 starts, but with no cuts to worry about, he presumably will can earn the roughly $18K needed to top $20M. If Frost starts slow, watch for Kirk Triplett, who is No. 28 on the all-time money list at $9,610,797. At only 58, the eight-time winner is still very active—and very competitive.

Jed Jacobsohn

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By Joel Beall
Kirk Triplett felt compelled to do something. He just wasn’t sure what.

“I’m certainly not a guy with solutions,” says Triplett, a three-time PGA Tour winner. “But it begins with talking about it. And right now, golf isn’t talking about it, and I wasn’t sure if it would.”

Triplett is referring to the ongoing protests against racial injustice in America. It is a subject he is well versed. Triplett and his wife, Cathi, are the parents to four children, two of whom are adopted minorities. The youngest child, Kobe, 18, is a Black American. Triplett said race has always been a topic in the household. They are not easy discussions.

“You want things to be better, but you also have to tell them how things are,” Triplett says. “I have to explain to my son that things are going to be different for him because of his skin colour.”

Throughout this summer of civil unrest, Triplett, 58, has contemplated what he could do. What he had to do. He talked with his family, and he researched ways to help out. He wanted to make a statement but also not just make a statement for statement’s sake.

Which is why Triplett, when arriving at this week’s Senior Players Championship at Firestone C.C., in Akron, Ohio, decided to put a sticker on his golf bag. A sticker that read “BLACK LIVES MATTER.”

In doing so, Triplett became the first player on a PGA Tour circuit to publicly endorse the movement. “I wasn’t trying to make a stand,” Triplett says. “I was just trying to put a question, an idea out there.”

A social-media person from the tour saw the bag earlier this week and asked Triplett if he would comment on it. The video, and Triplett’s remarks, garnered more than 130,000 views on Twitter in less than a day.

For @realcaptainkirk, Black Lives Matter is personal.

His youngest son is African-American. pic.twitter.com/kH5jL7E8oz

— PGA TOUR Champions (@ChampionsTour) August 11, 2020

“The video went up and kind of exploded,” Triplett says. “I talked to my wife last night and we both realized this had become a thing.”

Going viral hasn’t made Triplett reconsider his decision. Especially given his feelings against the sport’s lack of action on the matter. “Look, golfers are great with charity, and on the whole are socially conscious,” he says. “But the game never crosses the line into some of the more uncomfortable stuff.

“Well, this is an uncomfortable time, and we can’t ignore it.”

The PGA Tour Champions veteran felt galvanized by the idea that there are many others like him that wanted to say something but didn’t know if it was there place, or how to deliver the message. “I can say these things because I have a Black son,” Triplett says. “That perspective does help. But there is a group of guys out here who believe in the movement. They just don’t want to come off as showboats.”

That sentiment, that this is all for attention, weighed on Triplett. Worse, he feared it could come off as hollow, inadvertently hurting the message. He also knew there could be backlash. “Yeah, my wife told me, ‘Whatever you do, don’t go online. It’s not pretty,’” Triplett said.

Yet he felt like Black Lives Matter wasn’t being acknowledged by golf, and a conversation needed to be had. If he was the one who had to start that conversation, so be it.

“Listen, it’s not easy,” Triplett says. “The makeup of our game—be it social, economical, people—is drastically different from other sports. But we can’t use that as an excuse to not do something.”

Triplett said the decision was entirely his own, that he didn’t talk it over with his son. “He’s a teenager. If he could, he’d take an invisible pill,” Triplett says. But being a father means showing your son what it takes to be a man, he says. And that means doing what you believe is right.

“I can’t possibly have the same connection to Black Lives Matters as LeBron James or other athletes promoting the message,” he said. “But I can understand why it’s important, and why I need to do my part.”

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By John Strege
Kirk Triplett has frequented Pebble Beach over the years, and he also has frequented the top of the leader board in the annual PGA Tour Champions event there.

Triplett on Sunday won the PURE Insurance Championship, as it is now called, by holing a 10-foot birdie putt to defeat Billy Andrade on the first playoff hole, the iconic 18th at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

It was Triplett’s third victory in the tournament, the first two coming 2012 and 2013 when it was known as the Nature Valley First Tee Open at Pebble Beach.

“I’ve been coming here a long time,” said Triplett, a West Coast native who grew up in Pullman, Wash., and played collegiately at the University of Nevada in Reno. “I’ve played probably 60 professional golf tournaments here. I come here in the winter for the Pebble Beach Invitational. I’ve played the U.S. Open. I’ve played the First Tee events, the AT&T. I just enjoy this kind of golf. It’s a beautiful place. I like restaurants, staying here at the hotel. And the course gets better every year.”

Triplett, 57, entered the final round tied for fifth and was playing well ahead of the final group of Andrade and Steve Flesch. He shot a five-under-par 67 to complete 54 holes in nine-under 206.

But he still trailed Andrade by two. Then Andrade bogeyed the par-5 14th hole and the par-4 16th to fall one behind Triplett. He rebounded with a birdie at the par-5 18th hole to force a playoff.

Andrade laid up with his second shot at the 18th in the playoff, then left his third 15 feet below the hole. Triplett, from 57 yards, hit his third shot to 10 feet left of the hole. After Andrade left his birdie attempt short, Triplett, one of the tour’s best putters, holed his left-to-right putt in the heart.

The victory was his second of the season and eighth of his PGA Tour Champions career.

Flesch, the 36-hole leader, shot a 75 and tied for ninth.

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By John Strege
Kirk Triplett is not a Hall of Famer, but he rode a Hall of Fame swing to a playoff victory over Woody Austin in the Hoag Classic on Sunday.

Playing the par-5 18th hole at Newport Beach (Calif.) Country Club for the third time on Sunday, Triplett finally hit the 3-wood second shot he intended, then holed an 18-foot eagle putt for his seventh PGA Tour Champions victory.

The left-to-right putt was similar to one he holed on the 18th hole in regulation to get into a playoff with Austin.

Each of the players parred the 18th on the first playoff hole. Playing it again on the second extra hole, Triplett drove it in the fairway, while Austin flared his tee shot right and missed the green well right with his second.

Triplett then hit a 3-wood from 252 yards that just carried a bunker left of the green and rolled out to 18 feet of the hole.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Triplett said when asked his thought process on that shot. “Like any good baseball player, I’m one out of three. I’d be in the Hall of Fame, right?

“I’ve been trying to hit the centre of the green every single time. That one I thought would go in the bunker, but it covered.”

Austin squandered two opportunities to win, by failing to get up and down for birdie from the fringe at 18 in regulation, then hitting a poor bunker shot at 18 on the first playoff hole, leaving him a long birdie putt that he missed.

Triplett is off to a torrid start to his 2019 campaign. Only a week before, he tied for second in the Cologuard Classic and finished in the top 20 in two of his other three starts.

He finished with a three-under par 68, as did Austin. Fran Quinn, who took a three-stroke lead into the final round, made only a single birdie on Sunday, posted a three-over par 74 and tied for fifth, two shots back.

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By Ryan Herrington
Kirk Triplett felt like the odd man out for much of the final round at the Bass Pro Shops Legends of Golf at Big Cedar Lodge. Teamed with Paul Broadhurst in the PGA Tour Champions event, Triplett couldn’t seem to get a birdie putt to fall while playing four-balls on the Par-3 Top of the Rock course. Instead, he relied on his partner to do much of the work during a six-under 48 that tied for first at the end of regulation.

“I was the glue guy all week, just trying to make pars,” Triplett said. “Paul was playing such beautiful golf.”

In a playoff against Bernhard Langer and Tom Lehman, Triplett was frustrated again when his tee shot found a bunker on the 168-yard 18th hole, while the other three players were safely on the green.

But the 56-year-old got the last laugh when he holed the bunker shot for birdie, then watched Langer and Lehman miss from 12 and 10 feet, respectively.

“I was just so dejected after hitting such a poor shot,” Triplett said. “Coming down [to the green], I was like, Hang in there, hang in there, get it out there where you can make a par.”

ICYMI: Kirk Triplett holed out from the bunker on the first playoff hole, which proved to be the deciding shot for him and teammate Paul Broadhurst over Bernhard Langer and Tom Lehman.@BassProLegends pic.twitter.com/uLkc08RkLe

— PGA TOUR Champions (@ChampionsTour) April 22, 2018

Broadhurst and Triplett, not making a bogey over the course of the event, split the $342,000 first prize and each gets to add a victory to their PGA Tour Champions win total—Broadhurst now with three and Triplett with six. It was the first win for either since 2016.

The oldest event on the senior tour always appeared bound for a playoff under overcast skies at at the Lake of the Ozarks. In the final hour, nine teams were tied or within three shots of the lead. Arguably the biggest surprise was overnight leaders and defending champions Carlos Franco and Vijay Singh making four pars on the final four holes to miss the playoff by one stroke.

Conversely, Langer and Lehman, winners of the event in 2009, looked like they were out of it until making five birdies over the last seven holes to finish the day with a seven-under 47.

But it was all for naught after Triplett’s heroics.

“As soon as it came out I knew it had a hell of a chance,” Broadhurst said.

“You know that saying, the blind squirrel,” Triplett said. “I found a nut right there, right, at the right time.”

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By John Strege

The wind came up at Salem Country Club on Saturday, giving the U.S. Senior Open the edge it lacked in the first two rounds, but records continued to fall.

Kirk Triplett, the first-round leader and second-round co-leader, shot a four-under-par 66 to take a one-stroke lead over Kenny Perry, while establishing a Senior Open scoring record for 54 holes.

Triplett finished at 15-under-par 195, eclipsing Olin Browne’s record by three shots while also equaling Browne’s 54-hole record in relation to par. This came after he tied a Senior Open record with a 62 in the first round and, along with Perry, set a 36-hole record for low score (129) and equaled the mark for score in relation to par (11 under).

Triplett and Perry, meanwhile, have turned the Senior Open into a match race. Perry, a past champion, shot a three-under 67, and the two are six and five strokes clear of the man in third place, Brandt Jobe.

“Kirk is down the middle, very controlled, doesn’t get flustered, is pretty easy going,” Perry said. “He’s going to be a tough guy to beat tomorrow. And you all see his chipping ability.”

Triplett holed out two shots from off the green, a bunker shot at six and a chip at nine.

“I’ve got my work cut out tomorrow, I’ve got to get a little bit better,” Perry said. “I’ve got to keep making bombs. It felt a little bit like match play. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be a battle.”

Triplett discounted the match-play aspect, at least in the third round. “You don’t want to get caught up in that on Saturday,” he said. “But what we both did want to do was distance ourselves a little bit from the pack. So when we both made some birdies early I think we both felt more comfortable as the day went on, having a little more cushion.”

As for Jobe, he played himself if not into contention at least in contention for third place with his round of eight-under 62, equaling the Senior Open record.

“It was kind of one of those things,” he said. “The last couple of days I didn’t give myself a lot of chances. Today was one of those days where I had nothing to lose. Got out there, it wasn’t as windy. Played a little easier. The wind obviously picked up on the back nine.”

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