That changed on 16. At 10 under, Wise stood in a virtual tie with Day, who was in the water on 14 at 11 under. Whether Wise knew it or not, a victory had become tangible for the first time. And win or lose, what happened over the next three holes would echo into his future. The former NCAA champion had experienced trial by fire before, but not quite like this—not with so much at stake.

The 21-year-old Wise is a very slight figure, with a face that angles downward (the features a combination of Matt Every and Martin Kaymer), and he holds his tension in his shoulders, which perpetually rise to his ears. He’s quick to smile, quick to laugh, but there’s a seriousness behind the expression. In other words, unreadable—nothing about him, not even the eyes, gave away how he’d fare in the biggest moments of his life.

His tee shot on the par-4 16, the first of Quail Hollow’s final three holes dubbed “The Green Mile,” flew down the long slope and came to rest near the lake running along the left side of the fairway. Waiting for Paul Casey to play, Wise stood beneath a lonely white oak, whose bare trunk rose forty feet to the crown before branching out in bright green leaves—a fiery green torch framed against white clouds, while the whiter planes flying in and out of Charlotte Douglas International split the silence with their distant drone. Before he hit his approach, the scoreboard across the water confirmed that Day had indeed bogeyed the 14th. For the first time in his life, Wise held a share of a PGA Tour lead on Sunday.

Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

A solid approach left him a 19-foot downhill putt, but his birdie putt coasted four feet past, leaving him a more difficult par attempt than he would have wished. In his bright blue shirt and black pants, Wise cut a solitary figure standing against the lake as Casey lined up his own attempt, and somewhere behind him, invisible beyond a rising bank, Jason Day was playing the par-5 15th—his last great shot at a birdie, it seemed, and a hole Wise would have to survive.

Wise made his par putt, exhaled with relief, and muttered something about a “gut feeling” as he walked with his caddie to the 17th tee, slapping five with every kid along the ropes. You got the sense that Wise was obliging not out of a sense of duty, but because the feeling was new to him and he genuinely enjoyed the attention—a contrast with Tiger Woods, who spent his Saturday round avoiding the desperate hands as though they each contained a fatal poison.

He lined up his tee shot on the 223-yard 17th, standing between the miniature red Wells Fargo stagecoaches that CBS seemed compelled to display at least 15 times per hour. Wise had spent his night watching basketball—after a decaf coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts and some Chipotle—and he stayed up long enough to watch LeBron James hit his running bank shot buzzer beater against Toronto. The moment inspired him, and his caddie Brian Dilley invoked the Cleveland superstar as they made the turn—”it’s crunch time, like the second half with LeBron.”

The tee shot came up a little short and a little right, settling off the green, and Wise was talkative with the laconic Dilley as they strode along the water to the green. The fans, seeing his relative anonymity as an invitation to shout at him, made their diverse feelings known:

“You got this, Aaron!”

“I’ll be rooting for you next year, but it’s not your week!”

And from a man with one of those obnoxious voices that pierces just not space, but also, I suspect, time:

“Aaron, this is the shot of your life … but don’t worry about it!”

Wise had a delicate touch shot, and before he took it, the electronic leaderboard confirmed that Day had not made birdie on 15. They were on level footing. Wise’s chip caught the downslope but checked quickly, and the slow greens hindered the ball’s progress. It stopped six feet, seven inches from the hole, and worse, above it. Wise straddled his line, duck-walked three steps forward, straddled it again, backed up, placed his ball, backed up some more, crouched, approached the ball, exhaled, and stroked it in the hole.

Icon Sportswire

On the way to the 18th tee, he touched every hand that offered itself, adults and children alike this time, and he even went back for one he’d missed in an act that bordered on superstitious. Looking out to the fairway, and to the stadium theatre beyond, the world seemed to narrow by gradual degrees, and as it did the density of the fans increased. It was an intimidating panorama for what it said about the future, and maybe that’s what made Wise’s tee shot veer just slightly to the right, where it came to rest on a bed of pine straw just off the fairway, beneath a pine and a cluster of live oaks. Wise let out a “damn,” and bent down to pick up his tee just to throw it down again.

Dilley moved the crowd back by degrees, and when they’d made their decision, he confirmed some specific bit of info with his player: “You’re going to overdo it, right buddy?”

“Yup.”

“Got your numbers all set?”

“Yup.”

And then he exited stage left, and Wise stood over the biggest shot of his life. The low, driving ball clipped one of the live oaks—a small storm of the thin leaves cascaded down in its wake—but it still covered the necessary distance, ending up hole high and off the green, but safe from the water.

Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Then, as he left the woods and moved up the fairway, a pair of leaderboards gave him the news: Day had made birdie on 16, and now led by one.

Wise now faced an enormously difficult up-and-down, the hole 35 yards away and too close to the water for comfort, and even with a par, he’d need help from Day to make a playoff. Opening his clubface, Wise struck what might have been the most brilliant shot of his round, judging the downslope correct and stopping the ball seven feet past the hole—leaving a final uphill putt for par. Even from behind, it was easy to tell from how the shape of Wise’s face changed that he was smiling.

But golf frequently denies us the pleasure of clean drama, and just before Wise took his critical putt, on stage in front of thousands, the video boards above the 10-deep gallery showed Jason Day’s smiling face. His tee shot on 17 hit the pin and stopped three feet away—a distance from which he makes the putt roughly 180 percent of the time.

Wise didn’t know, though, and with the kind of courage that’s rare to rookies in his situation, he buried his third straight testy par putt to finish at 10 under. Day went on to par the 18th for his latest win—the human yo-yo on the rise—but if it’s true that Wise’s first performance in the cauldron of PGA Tour contention will echo into his future, then the resonance will be fine.

The post Aaron Wise’s courageous near-miss at the Wells Fargo appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
If you haven’t noticed by now, Jason Day tends to play his best golf on some of the toughest venues on tour, having earned hard-fought victories at courses like Torrey Pines and TPC Sawgrass. So it’s no surprise that Day rose to the occasion at Quail Hollow Club this week, carding four straight rounds in the 60s, including Sunday’s two-under 69, to claim a two-stroke win at the Wells Fargo Championship.

After extending his lead at the par-4 second with a birdie, it felt like Day might cruise to his second win this season, but that was hardly what transpired the rest of the round. The Aussie made back-to-back bogeys at the fourth and fifth holes before getting those shots back with birdies at the par-5 seventh and par-4 eighth. A birdie at the 10th got him to 12 under, but things nearly turned disastrous a few holes later, when Day bogeyed the 13th and then badly hooked his drive into the water at the 14th. He was able to save a bogey, but found himself tied with PGA Tour rookie Aaron Wise as he made his way to Quail Hollow’s “green mile.”

Related: The clubs Jason Day used to win the Wells Fargo Championship

There, Day slammed the door shut for his 12th career win, making birdie at No. 16 and then nearly holing his tee shot at the par-3 17th, the ball hitting the pin. A kick-in birdie there and a par at the 18th made him the fourth multiple winners on tour this season.

“I had no idea where the ball was going today, especially off the tee,” Day said. “I missed a lot of fairways, missed a lot of greens. My short game stood the test, which was nice. This was probably one of the best wins I’ve ever had just because of how hard everything was today.”

Day hit just six fairways and only eight greens in regulation on Sunday but was still able to pull it out thanks to his incredible putting and short game. For the week, he ranked first in putts per green in regulation, second in scrambling, second in strokes-gained/putting and fourth in strokes-gained/around-the-green. If he can get everything else in order, he’ll surely be a factor at next week’s Players Championship, where he won in 2016.

“I’d like to be able to hit it a little bit straighter,” he said. “To be honest, what I did today was a bit out of the ballpark off the tee. I need to do a lot of work if I want to try and win next week, but I’m obviously coming off a nice win here. I’m confident about my abilities going into next week, but I got to just enjoy tonight, have fun, but really got to focus on next week after tonight.”

Wise, a 21-year-old rookie, impressed with a final-round 68 that featured just one bogey. The former NCAA champion played the back nine in two-under 34, including four straight pars to finish his round and give himself at least a chance at a playoff.

“Really, really proud,” said Wise. “You know, 16, 17 and 18 coming in there such hard holes and I had so much adrenaline going, though I legitimately had a chance to win. On 16 green I was tied with Jason, so it was pretty cool to pull some shots off and play those holes even par and to show myself how much I can do under that kind of pressure.”

The T-2 finish, which came in just his 25th career start, is his best this season, and it comes after back-to-back missed cuts at the Valero Texas Open and Zurich Classic.

Also at 10 under was Nick Watney, who dropped a 58-foot bomb for birdie at the 72nd hole to post a final-round 69 and earn his highest finish since a solo second at the 2015 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Watney, a five-time winner on tour, is finally fully healthy and looking to get back to his winning ways, with his last victory coming at the 2012 Barclays at Bethpage Black.

Bryson DeChambeau finished in solo fourth at eight-under 276, while Phil Mickelson, Paul Casey and Peter Uihlein tied for fifth at seven-under 277.

The post Jason Day earns his second victory of the year at the Wells Fargo Championship appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
No one expected Tiger Woods to flirt with the course record on Sunday at Quail Hollow Club, but another round under par would have been an encouraging sign heading into next week’s Players Championship. That was far from the case for Woods, who dropped two shots on his opening three holes and could never get anything going thereafter as he played the final round of the Wells Fargo Championship. Woods finished with a birdie-less three-over 74 that has him outside the top 50 at two-over 286.

“I didn’t putt well again,” said Woods, who needed 31 putts on Sunday and ranks 136th in strokes-gained/putting on the week. “I felt like I drove it pretty decent today, but I made nothing. The chances I did have, I missed them all. It was just a bad week, and the good news is wiped your hands clean and go on to the next one.”

Indeed, Woods struck the ball fine all week, ranking eighth in strokes-gained/tee-to-green and 12th in approach-the-green. But the balky putter was too much to overcome. On Sunday in Charlotte, N.C., not much of anything went right, as Woods hit just four fairways and 10 greens en route to just his third 74 or worse round of the year. It was Woods’ first birdie-less round on the PGA Tour in a non-major since the 2014 WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral.

Still, he says he feels good as he gets set to return to TPC Sawgrass for the first time since 2015.

“I think I obviously need to do some practice with my putter, work on it just a little bit,” he said. “But I know those greens, I know the putts, but you have to hit the ball well there at the TPC, you can’t get away with hitting it poorly.

“I’ll still be grinding, working on my swing and making sure that’s solid and driving the ball correctly because that golf course does demand everything.”

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By Shane Ryan
Each time Tiger Woods walks even a single hole on the PGA Tour, a small tragedy plays out—thousands of people bear active witness, hoping for even the slightest fleeting bond with the legend in their midst, and Tiger stonewalls them to preserve whatever uncompromised remnants of himself he wishes to keep in isolation at this late stage. They cry out, they reach, they raise their phones to commemorate the mundane, and he strides on—middle of the fairway, middle of the ropeway, seen but not touched. Once in a while, he may nod, but it’s only a reminder of the connection they’re not making. So they shout, and the things they shout are nonsense or worse:

“Tiger!”

“Tiger tracker!”

“Tiger mom!”

If you’re walking along the ropes you’ll hear these exclamations echoed as you walk along.

“Tiger tracker!” a woman will repeat, astonished as if she’s just translated the Rosetta Stone of pure comedy.

Imagine yourself in the aisle of a grocery store, and all eyes are on you. You have to finish out your list, check out, and go home, and so you have to ignore them. But this feigned ignorance arouses something in them, and so they begin to scream your name. “Tim! Tim!” Some of them ask for high fives. Some of them don’t even ask and reach out to slap your shoulder as you walk past. If you’re annoyed, too bad—reacting will make you look bad, not them.

That’s a taste, and it’s what we saw over the back nine Saturday at the Wells Fargo, and it’s what we’ve seen before, and it’s what we’ll see again as long as he continues to play.

The one real possibility of connection—the only time he drops the remoteness and makes himself accessible—is when things are going well on the course. Particularly on the greens. The long putt that falls is the moment of union between man and mob—when the roars engulf him, and he feeds the fire with a fist pump. That’s when we’re joined at last with Tiger, however briefly.

So it seems cruel for both parties when the moment flounders. On the 18th hole, after a strong round, he left himself a 27-footer for birdie. He had left putts on 11, 14 and 17 short, and he watched Brooks Koepka’s own attempt “hit a wall” a moment before, so he sent a screamer at the hole. It missed, to groans, but gave him a long enough comeback par (eight feet) that it opened the chance for another act of player-crowd symbiosis. Par roars are the exception, but Tiger is the exception too. The marshall held up his hands, yelled out “hold please, quiet please!” and only the birds defied him. But Tiger missed, to more groans, and for the thousands packed into the stadium seats, surrounding the green and the murmuring creek, the sensation was of a collective, aborted sneeze.

Tiger left, ignored the screams of the children lining the route to the scoring tent—he’s John Lennon for the children of recreational golfers—and made his media rounds. If you managed to get a glimpse of his face, anytime from the 16th hole on, you would see a weary quality—heavy eyes, and the slightest forward tilt of the shoulders that spoke to a fatigue more mental than physical, but definitely both.

There’s good news, too. Despite the misadventure on 18, Tiger putted well for the first time all week—he made some of the mid-range putts that he couldn’t buy on Thursday and Friday, or really all year. A 13-footer on 5, an eight-footer on 7, another on 8, another on 15. His ball striking remained good enough to produce birdies without any great green feats—an iron stuck to five feet on 13, a drive to the green on the par-4 14th. As he noted afterwards, a few more made putts from the 10-15-foot range, and his Saturday round alone could have been good enough to put him near the top of the leaderboard. Instead, the slow greens fooled him enough to keep the really great round at bay. He sits in 33rd, too far off for anything but a miracle, but gradually inching his way back to the day when he’ll win again.

But that’s only if you believe he’ll recover the putting stroke. Post-round, Tiger sounded iffy on the subject:

“We were kind of trying to figure it out, how could I hit the putts hard enough. I changed my stroke a little bit and went a little more old school, how I used to putt, a little more handsy, a little more wristy, toe moving a lot more, and it worked.”

Later, he was more succinct: “It’s not fun. Trust me, it’s not fun.”

Of course, Tiger is in the phase of his career when he’s not allowing himself much optimism, even after an objectively strong round like his Saturday 68. It’s almost like an act of pre-emptive defence, keeping the hope at bay until the time comes when he can unleash the primal roar again. Until then, it’s the near-miss and the lost sneeze—the distant hero and his dormant masses, waiting to be joined again.

The post Tiger Woods prospers in isolation at Quail Hollow, yet still searching appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
How far does the friendship of Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler stretch? How about letting each other borrow their equipment.

Thomas can partially thank Fowler for making it to the weekend at the Wells Fargo Championship after Rickie let Justin use his backup putter during Friday’s second round at Quail Hollow Club.

Thomas, who you’ll remember won the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow last August, struggled in his return to the course on Thursday, posting a disappointing two-over 73. Specifically, he was upset with his putting (“Join the club” says Tiger Woods) and started experimenting on the practice green with his backup flat stick after the round. That too, however, didn’t feel right so Thomas talked to Fowler, who he was playing with on Thursday and Friday, to see if he had any backup putters he might be willing to share.

“I putted so terribly,” Thomas said. “It was that desperate in terms of how I was feeling over the putter.”

Sure enough, Fowler did, handing over a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 putter with “Rickie Fowler” etched on it. Didn’t matter to Thomas, who put it in play on Friday and shot a two-under 69, helping him easily make the cut.

“I didn’t actually see him until about 10 minutes before our tee time and he said he was going with it,” Fowler said. “I told him after he hit his first tee shot, ‘Well, you’re kind of stuck now.’ ”

Thomas is seven strokes back of 36-hole leader Peter Malnati, so he’s still got a chance in Charlotte, N.C.. Recall that at the WGC-Mexico Championship in March, he was 11 back after 36 holes and shot a 62-64 on the weekend to get into a playoff with Phil Mickelson.

Thomas says he’s going to play with the new putter on the weekend, having gotten the approval from his buddy. Fowler is even OK, apparently, if Thomas keeps it for good.

“Well, he only lives a few hundred yards down the street [in Florida], so it won’t be too far away,” Fowler said. “But if he keeps making putts, I might have to take it back. … If he wants to keep using it, keep using it, but he’s stuck with having my name on the back of it.”

The post Justin Thomas borrows Rickie Fowler’s backup putter on Friday and it’s not coming out of his bag appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
There is a cliché in travel writing, immortalized by Bart Simpson in his report on Libya, that has been overdone to the point of becoming a meme: “The land of contrasts.” If you don’t know enough about a certain subject, or if the scant information you have seems to be at odds, simply resolve your confusion with a turn of phrase. Hence, “Brazil/Iceland/Mozambique is a land of contrasts.” See how easy it is? See how worldly and definitely-not-ignorant you sound?

Which brings me to my point: Rickie Fowler is a land of contrasts.

I first started trying to decode Fowler in 2014, and the quintessential contrast that typified everything I would learn is that among the interviews I did that year, Fowler’s was both the hardest to land and the easiest to conduct. It was a complete pleasure speaking with him one-on-one for 45 minutes, and absolute misery trying to arrange it in the first place (a process Fowler had nothing to do with, by the way). That surprising contradiction was my guiding clue for everything I’ve learned about Fowler and everything I haven’t.

As Fowler prepares to play this week at the Wells Fargo Championship, the first tournament since his one-stroke, runner-up showing at the Masters, and at the site of his first PGA Tour victory at Quail Hollow Club in 2012, I can’t resist the urge to explore the career of a player who has been both enormously successful and mildly underwhelming, and who, at age 29, seems to stand on the precipice of either unprecedented success or crushing disappointment.

Let’s start at the beginning: Rickie Fowler grew up riding dirt bikes, and he loved the colours on the racers’ uniforms. For a shy kid, colour became a way to express himself, and years later he teamed with Puma to profit from that aesthetic in what stands as one of the most fruitful branding exercises in modern sports. Fowler’s bright orange jumpsuits, paired with the flat-billed cap, turned him into a sort of icon, and the transformation happened, arguably, before his accomplishments on the course merited the status. To some extent, it even made him a controversial figure in the sport, as indicated by grumbling from the traditional set and the odd hint of resentment from fellow players who envied his endorsement deals.

It also had the effect, in my opinion, of submerging his true personality behind a manufactured image. It’s hard to think of the most luminous player on the golf course as humble, and even harder to believe that the man behind the kitschy clothes is anything but an eccentric. But Rickie Fowler is humble, to an almost unheard-of degree in professional golf, and he is just about the opposite of eccentric. On the Mickelson Scale, Phil being a 10, he rates about a 1.5, and the supporting evidence is sometimes comical—like how, in college, he was practically a teetotaler and served as a designated driver when his teammates hit the town. As I’ve written before, he’s the only player who I’ve never seen the express true rage on a golf course, and as far as I can tell, he’s genuinely one of the nicest guys on PGA Tour. (Player polls back this up, and he even finished atop a list of “best-mannered people,” per some organization with the word “cotillion” in their name.) Kids love him, and he seems to love them back. There’s an utter lack of pretence to everything he does.

Fowler is a fan favourite among youngsters. (Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

None of these qualities was readily apparent in the face of the clothes, and though his wardrobe has changed significantly in recent years, the superficial definition of Fowler lingers. That’s the contrast at the heart of his image.

It extends to his playing career. Fowler came to the tour with a good deal of hype. He was the No. 1-ranked amateur player for almost a full year, he won the Ben Hogan Award as the best college golfer in the country, and he helped lead the U.S. to two Walker Cup victories. He only needed a season to earn his card for the PGA Tour, and by 2010 he looked poised for big things.

Have those big things panned out? Well … sort of.

If you looked at Fowler’s résumé divorced from his image, and from his name, it’s very good—starting with that 2012 Wells Fargo win (in a playoff against Rory McIlroy), he’s won four times in America, including a FedEx Cup playoff event and the 2015 Players, and twice in Europe. He’s been ranked as high as No. 4 in the world, and at age 29, he’s already played on three Ryder Cup teams. This is a solid résumé, by ordinary standards.

But the combination of Fowler’s amateur reputation, paired with the attention that came his way thanks to Puma, casts this is a somewhat different light. Fair or not, there’s a sense that he should be better, and the argument extends to every part of his professional career. Take his 2014 season, for instance, when he pulled off the rare and difficult feat of finishing inside the top five in all four majors. It’s a much-ballyhooed feat, partly because we don’t entirely know how to digest it. Was that a good thing, proving he had the game to compete with the best of the world with remarkable consistency? Yes, of course. But could it also be a bad thing, proving he lacked the intangible quality required to win?

While finishing a shot shy of Patrick Reed, Fowler walked away from the Masters feeling as if he’s finally prepared to win a major. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

In a similar fashion, it’s tricky to figure out how to evaluate Fowler’s excellent finish at the Masters this year—a Sunday 67, with birdies on four of the final seven holes and six of the last 11 to nearly catch Patrick Reed at the tape. Was it evidence of a player on the verge of summiting the last obstacle, as Fowler himself said, or another indication that he’s destined to play the role of perpetual bridesmaid?

So why isn’t he winning more? Even Fowler’s defenders in these prestige spats have to concede that in the last three years, he’s been outshone by the likes of Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Reed. Each of them has surged past Fowler’s career-win total, and they’re all younger (24, 25 and 27, respectively). Nor is that an unfair comparison; with the possible exception of Spieth, there was more fanfare attending Fowler’s rise to the pro game than any of them.

Even Brooks Koepka has a U.S. Open title now, and Fowler has also had to watch players in similar circumstances to his own, like Dustin Johnson and Jason Day, breakthrough and win their own first majors. If Fowler isn’t necessarily the best player to lack a major title—and I think he is, at least among players 35 and younger—he’s certainly the most famous.

Which is why, in terms of legacy, there’s no player with more at stake in the coming years than Fowler. The contrasts that lay within image and personality may always persist, but there is a simple and emphatic way to end all debate where it matters, beginning this week at Quail Hollow and extending to the coming weeks at Shinnecock Hills, Carnoustie and Bellerive Country Club, sites of the 2018’s remaining majors. Standing on the doorstep of his 30th birthday, Rickie Fowler has everything to gain, and everything to lose.

The post Ready, Set, Rickie! appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

“It’s like a dream,” said Paul Thomas, Justin’s grandfather, who with his wife Phyllis watched every shot on television from their living room couch. Not that that was different from just about any other day of the week.

Paul Thomas holds up a full-page ad of his grandson that appeared in USA Today.

“It’s pretty much all golf all the time around here,” Phyllis said. “The cable company makes you buy 150 channels to get golf. We’d be happy if we just had Golf Channel and nothing else.”

For some insight into the making of Justin Thomas and his quick rise to the upper echelons of golf – not quite as fast as good buddy Jordan Spieth, but fast nevertheless – one need only get to know the man who blazed the trail.

Paul Thomas, or PT to just about everyone he knows, left school at age 17 to become a golf professional. His interest in the game began, like many others in a long-ago era, as a caddie at Avon Fields Golf Course in Cincinnati. A native of Ashland, Ky., Thomas needed a job and simply up and decided he was a golf pro, and he peddled his services to courses in the Cincinnati area, starting at Sharon Woods, where he cleaned clubs, gave lessons, “anything that was needed.”

Paul Thomas watches Arnold Palmer putt during the 1983 Citizens Union Senior Golf Classic on the PGA Tour Champions at Griffin Gate Golf Course in Lexington, Ky. After a third-round 69, Thomas began the final round one stroke behind Palmer. Photo courtesy Paul and Phyllis Thomas

He bounced around to other jobs, from York (Pa.) Country Club to Tequesta (Fla.) Country Club. While at the former, he met Phyllis, who didn’t play golf and wasn’t that impressed at first blush. “I had no idea what a golf pro was,” she said.

Paul and Phyllis Thomas have been married for 62 years.

He tried the tour in 1957 without much success and then moved back to Cincinnati to become an assistant at Western Hills Country Club. After taking time to refine his game, Thomas qualified for the 1960 and ’61 PGA Championships at, respectively, Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, and Olympia Fields near Chicago. A second-round 72 that included an inward 33 on Firestone, tied with Doug Sanders for the low of the day, enabled him to make the cut. “I was a player today,” he told the press at the time. Thomas also competed in the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont after finishing fourth in sectional qualifying in Cincinnati.

His dream was to win one of those two majors. He never came close but competing in them yielded its own measure of satisfaction.

“That meant you were kind of a big deal, just making the field,” he said.

Stuart Franklin

Three of his four sons, including Mike, Justin’s father, were born by the time he landed his first head professional post in 1963 at Zanesville Country Club, about 50 miles east of Columbus. He stayed for 26 years. Of the four boys, Mike displayed the most aptitude, and interest. At 10 years old he offered to caddie for his mom in the club championship after she had taken up the game. She nervously topped a few shots, moving the ball no more than 100 yards in four strokes. Mike put down the bag and walked in. Paul confronted him.

Related: 15 things you need to know about Justin Thomas

“He said, ‘If she can’t do better than that, then I quit,’” Paul remembered. “Mike got to be a really good player. He shot 65 at Zanesville as a young kid. He’d clear a place in the snow to hit balls in winter. He had certain expectations, and Justin was no different.”

But Justin took that to another level while growing up at Harmony Landing Country Club, near Louisville. “You could see the desire in him when he was 7 or 8, and he just got better every year,” Paul said. “It wasn’t long after that his dad and I just looked at each other and said, ‘He’s the real deal.’”

Paul’s favorite memory of a young Justin was watching him play the short course at PGA National in Port St. Lucie, Fla. “The holes were no more than 50-90 yards, and he would just go around and around trying to make a hole-in-one,” PT said. “He was all about making a hole-in-one. He’d hit the tee shot, and if it didn’t go in, he’d pick up and go the next hole. But I think he aced every hole at some point.”

A PGA Master Professional, Mike has been Justin’s only teacher. Paul, a renowned instructor at Zanesville and at his last job at Peek’n Peak Resort in New York before he retired, stayed out of it.

“I just talked to him about the game, about the old timers who played, how they did things,” Thomas said. “The one thing I tried to instill in him was confidence, telling him he could be a good player. I’d tell him, ‘The only guy who can screw this up is you.’ I think we know now that he’s done all right.”

Paul’s other contribution was fashion. “He learned a lot about dressing up from me,” he said with an air of satisfaction. “I was always wearing the best I could get on me, and the same with his dad. He was a little kid, and he’d never wear shorts because he said pros don’t wear shorts.”

Now that Justin has broken through, Paul said the floodgates could open for more major titles. Which would mean even more people wanting to talk to him about his grandson. At age 85, he still plays golf four times a week at Foxfire Golf Club south of the city. Phyllis, 81, also will play the occasional nine holes.

All golf all the time in the Thomas household.

“Oh, my gosh, all year long the whole conversation with the guys has been, ‘What’s Justin shooting today?’ He’s a big shot around here,” Paul said with a chuckle. “The 59 [in January at the Sony Open], making an eagle to shoot 63 in the U.S. Open, that’s some amazing stuff. We have a lot to talk about.”

“Oh, my gosh, all year long the whole conversation with the guys has been, ‘What’s Justin shooting today?’ He’s a big shot around here,” Paul said with a chuckle. “The 59 [in January at the Sony Open], making an eagle to shoot 63 in the U.S. Open, that’s some amazing stuff. We have a lot to talk about.”

PT can still score, too. He has shot his age or better every year since he turned 64. “Of course, now it gets easier, so it’s not as much fun,” he said. “Most of the time, if I can shoot something around 75, I’m usually tickled.”

Thomas said he looks forward to the day he can get together with his grandson and hold the Wanamaker Trophy, the prize he never got close to himself. He and Phyllis saw online that Justin was showing off his PGA hardware with Tiger Woods. They shook their heads in wonder. No. 6 in the world rankings and with four wins this season, Justin is a big shot everywhere.

“That PGA trophy, that’s the big one to win in our eyes,” said PT, who suspects he’ll see his grandson sometime this fall.

Would he like to have a drink out of the Wanamaker Trophy? “Nah,” he replied. “Just seeing Justin bring it in would be enough.”

The post Paul Thomas, Justin’s grandfather pro, relishes a win he could only dream of appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

RELATED: Why Brooks Koepka was the King of the Majors in 2017

According to Classic TV Sports, CBS showed 1.32 shots per minute during its final-round coverage of the year’s final major. That puts it right in line with the 2017 U.S. Open on Fox (1.30) and a shade below this year’s Masters (1.41), which also aired on CBS.

The site didn’t track the stat for the final round of this year’s Open Championship on NBC, however, it has done this for every other major since the start of 2014. And a quick comparison shows that networks have picked it up when it comes to showing more shots per minute in their coverage. Looking back, the average was 1.12 shots per minute in 2014, 1.16 in 2015, and 1.11 in 2016.

That averages out to only 1.14 shots per minutes shown at the majors in that three-year span. But the 1.34 average in 2017 represents an 18-percent increase.

So yes, when you’re watching golf at home, it’s always going to seem like networks should be showing more from the course. But on the bright side, it seems like they’re getting better.

The post This stat concerning TV coverage of this year’s major championships should have golf fans encouraged appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

It all began when Dufner won the PGA at Oak Hills in 2013. As he was greeted by his then wife, Amanda, on the 18th green, Duf gave her a little tap on the bum causing an instant viral moment:

Stick-in-the-muds Rory McIlroy (2014) and Jason Day (2015) weren’t involved in any butt slaps — at least, as far as we know — but Jimmy Walker brought the fun ritual back when he won the Wanamaker Trophy in 2016:

Win a major, give your wife a love tap. Jimmy Walker is a true champion. #PGAChamp https://t.co/ZybKrIh09I

— Carson Cunningham (@KOCOCarson) July 31, 2016

And on Sunday at Quail Hollow, the odd tradition continued — just not how you think. Winner Justin Thomas gave his girlfriend a celebratory kiss and a hug, but that was it. Instead, he got slapped on the butt by his buddy, Jordan Spieth. And Jordan got him pretty good:

Congratulatory butt slap from Spieth pic.twitter.com/tGht912qK9

— Fore Play (@ForePlayPod) August 13, 2017

Boys will be boys, right? Justin tried to walk it off like he didn’t notice, but you know he felt that. And if his buddy wins next year’s PGA to complete his career Grand Slam, JT can return the favour. No matter who wins, though, I think we can all agree this is a custom coincidence that must might continue in 2018 at Bellerive Country Club. Keep your eyes peeled next August.

RELATED: Why Justin Thomas’ girlfriend almost missed his big win

The post Jordan Spieth continues odd PGA Championship tradition with celebratory butt slap of Justin Thomas appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.