By Ryan Herrington
The two previous times a player has shot 63 in a PGA Championship contested at Southern Hills — Raymond Floyd in 1982 and Tiger Woods in 2007 — he eventually has gone home with the Wanamaker Trophy. Bubba Watson would love to keep that tradition going.

But that’s getting ahead of things. For now, the 43-year-old lefty will revel in the delight of matching the lowest 18-hole score in PGA Championship history. “It’s an honour to be able to shoot 63 on any golf course,” Watson said. “I mean, I’ll take it.”

Ya think!?!

The scary part? It could have been lower. Watson’s 63 — the 18th shot in PGA Championship history and the 38th overall in a men’s major — somehow included two bogeys, on the third and 14th holes. And while finishing on Southern Hills’ monster 18th hole, Watson left himself a 22-footer for yet another birdie that would have let him write down a 62 on his scorecard. That score would have equalled Branden Grace’s all-time major championship record set during the third round of the 2017 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, but Watson just missed on the low side.

“I gave it a chance but at the same time I didn’t want to three putt,” Watson said with a wry smile.

Suffice it to say, Watson’s 63 moved him well up the leaderboard, leaving him at five-under for the championship and in solo fourth place. He’ll start Saturday’s third round four shots back of leader Will Zalatoris, playing in the penultimate group with Justin Thomas.

It’s a place that Watson hasn’t been at in quite some time in this major. The two-time Masters champ’s record at the PGA has been lacklustre since losing a playoff at Whistling Straits in 2010. In 11 starts since then, he’s missed four cuts and had a best finish of T-21. His previous low in the championship is a 68.

But he seemed to find something on Friday at Southern Hills he hopes he can ride on the weekend.

“Forget the golf course, it’s about trusting yourself,” Watson said. “If you don’t trust yourself out there, it doesn’t matter if you have the perfect yardage, the perfect club. It doesn’t matter. … So yeah, today was just — I trusted it. I was focused. I was focused on what I had to do, and it worked out.”

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The post PGA Championship 2022: Bubba Watson’s response to shooting a record-tying 63 at Southern Hills was priceless appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

He wouldn’t have liked the temporary locker room built for the players in order to keep the ancient clubhouse available exclusively for Shinnecock members and USGA executive committee members.

He would have been appalled by the nightmare stories about traffic coming in from the west.

And he certainly wouldn’t have liked the abundant sunshine. Years ago, walking around Turnberry on one of those rare beautiful Scottish summer days, I turned to him and said, “This is the kind of day that makes life worth living.”

“Aaah bull—-,” Hannigan replied.

THAT was Hannigan.

He never found a silver lining in any cloud because he didn’t look for one. The darker the cloud, the happier Hannigan was.

He is also the person most responsible for the U.S. Open being at Shinnecock this week.

The way Hannigan told the story, it was Harry Easterly, then his boss at the USGA, who first wondered aloud if it might be possible to take the Open to Shinnecock, which had hosted the second Open in 1896 but had never been seriously considered again as a host because of logistics.

Frank Hannigan in 2014

“Harry Easterly had trouble putting one foot in front of the other, much less getting anything actually done,” Hannigan once said—not an atypical Hannigan comment. “But when he brought up Shinnecock, I thought it was worth finding out if it was possible.”

Hannigan assigned two of his top lieutenants: David Fay and Tony Zirpoli to find out what the challenges would be of going to Shinnecock. One was obvious: Shinnecock was a seasonal club, meaning there wasn’t a 12-month membership or staff to run the event outside the ropes. That had been the Open’s tradition—the USGA ran everything inside the ropes; the host club ran everything else.

Fay reported back that if the USGA wanted to go to Shinnecock, it would have to take over almost all of the championship’s logistics, which would be a major financial gamble.

“My report was 18 pages,” Fay remembered. “The first sentence said, ‘Unless we’re prepared to take over running the Open outside the ropes, there’s no need to read any further.’ ”

Hannigan kept reading. Then he sent Zirpoli to find out where people might be able to park and to negotiate with the Shinnecock Indians, who had a lot of lands that could be used for that purpose.

He also had to negotiate with politicians from Suffolk County to get a temporary bridge built that would allow fans to cross Montauk Highway, the road that runs in front of the club.

Once Zirpoli reported back that he’d convinced the pols to build the bridge—it’s known to this day among longtime USGA employees as “Tony’s Bridge”—Hannigan had to decide whether to recommend to Easterly that the USGA approach Shinnecock about hosting in 1986.

“I decided it was worth trying,” Hannigan said, years later. “It was such a great golf course. We had to be careful though. We had to cap attendance at 25,000 max. And, we had a lot of work to do in-house to put on the championship. We’d never done that before.”

The ’86 Open—won by Raymond Floyd—was a huge success in every possible way. The logistics were difficult but worked. The golf course got rave reviews. And the USGA discovered a new business model that has helped the association become insanely wealthy in the last 30 years.

Shinnecock hosted the Open in 1995 and again in 2004. The only reason for the 14-year gap since then was the Sunday debacle in ‘04 when the USGA allowed the course to get away, taking “firm and fast,” to a level where one of the greatest venues in golf played like a roller-coaster ride.

Now though, Shinnecock and the USGA have already agreed to bring the event back here in 2026.

Hannigan became the USGA’s senior executive director in 1983 and left to go to work for ABC as a rules expert in 1989. In 1995, he returned to Shinnecock—after ABC had lost the Open TV rights to NBC—as a guest of Fay, his successor.

“This was the best thing I did at the USGA,” Hannigan said, walking around the golf course the first day he arrived. “You would have thought that they’d have made me an honorary member by now.”

Hannigan would never have fit in at Shinnecock—or any other big money club. He was a believer that anyone on a pedestal—ANYONE—should be a target.

Even Arnold Palmer.

In 1994, the USGA awarded Palmer a special exemption to play in the Open at Oakmont. It made sense. Palmer, who had grown up in nearby Latrobe, played his first Open in 1953 as an amateur. He lost a dramatic playoff there to a 22-year-old Jack Nicklaus in 1962 and had his last real chance to win an Open there in 1973 before Johnny Miller blew past everyone with his final round 63.

J.D. Cuban

Hannigan thought giving Palmer an exemption was outrageous and said so in a Golf Digest column, saying that Palmer, at 64, had no chance to compete and was taking a spot away from someone who might have a chance to at least make the cut.

Palmer shot 77-81, but his final round was one of the most emotional and dramatic anyone there had ever witnessed. He broke down in the media tent trying to explain how lucky he felt to have played the game for so long and got a standing ovation from everyone in the room—all of them breaking the ‘no cheering in the press box,’ rule with no regrets.

As I walked out of the room, I ran into Hannigan, standing in the back.

“Still think he shouldn’t have gotten an exemption?” I asked.

“He missed the cut by 11 shots!” Hannigan roared. “Of course he shouldn’t have gotten an exemption.”

I was fortunate enough to be on a short list of people Hannigan considered worthy of his wisdom. Unsolicited, I received constant critiques of my work—and others. They were funny, profane and unflinching.

“You did well … ” he would start an e-mail. And then go on from there to tell me 100 things I could do better.

One of his other proteges was Mark Loomis, who is now the executive producer of Fox’s U.S. Open coverage. Hannigan first knew Loomis as a young ABC producer and decided he was good enough to merit receiving his e-mail critiques.

Loomis still has the last e-mail Hannigan sent him shortly before he died in 2014. He had just been named Fox’s No. 1 golf producer after the network acquired the Open rights beginning in 2015.

“If you regard yourself as a ‘partner,’ of the USGA, you will blow your chance to go down in sports history as anything other than a producer with exceptional organizational and personal skills,” Hannigan wrote.

In other words: Tell it like it is, not as the USGA—or anyone else—wants you to tell it. Loomis keeps a print out of the e-mail above his desk.

He will no doubt think about Hannigan this week, remembering that the Open is here in large part because of Hannigan’s guts and chutzpah. I’ll think about him too, especially when the sun is shining.

Frank was right, though, about one thing for sure: Shinnecock should have made him an honorary member long ago.

The post U.S. Open 2018: How did we get here? Thank Frank Hannigan appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Seriously, what a fun and efficient way to navigate a golf course. Being able to zip out to your golf ball and hit your next shot is the definition of ready golf. And even if you’re not playing well, you’ll still feel like Marty McFly on that hoverboard in Back To The Future, Part II. OK, so there were a couple of close calls with parked cars in a parking lot test run, but by the third ninth hole, you start to get (somewhat) comfortable. And talk about a great way to get kids into the game. If you get a chance to use a GolfBoard, go for it. In the meantime, here’s what else is going on in golf.

WE’RE BUYING

Justin Thomas: So much for any PGA Tour Player of the Year drama. Maybe his buddy Jordan Spieth can run the table at the final two events, but we’re penciling in JT for POY after picking up a fifth victory of the season at the Dell Technologies Championship to go with the first major he won at last month’s PGA. And just look at the heady company the youngster now finds himself in:

5 wins including a major in a season before age 25, since 1960:

63 Jack
99 Tiger
00 Tiger
15 @JordanSpieth
17 @JustinThomas34

— Justin Ray (@JustinRayGolf) September 4, 2017

With his three-shot win over Spieth, Thomas ascended to No. 4 in the Official World Golf Ranking. Next year’s #SB2K18 might have a stronger field than some tour events.

Stacy Lewis: The native Houstonian gave us one of the year’s best stories in any sport when she pledged to donate last week’s check from her LPGA start to Hurricane Harvey relief efforts — and then made it a winner’s check by claiming victory at the Cambia Portland Classic. She got a surprise victory embrace from her husband, Gerrod Chadwell, who is the University of Houston women’s golf coach and spent some time last week kayaking to his team’s facility to save some equipment.

What made it an even more storybook result was the fact that Lewis hadn’t won in more than three years despite finishing runner-up a remarkable 12 times during that span. Sports are a heckuva a thing, aren’t they?

Peter Uihlein: With a win in the first Web.com Tour Finals event, Uihlein locked up his PGA Tour card for next season. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because golf fans have been hearing it for a long time. Uihlein is the son of Titleist CEO Wally Uihlein and he won the 2010 U.S. Amateur before taking his game to Europe a la Brooks Koepka. Anyway, congrats, Peter, but what took you so long? Kidding! Sort of.

Tiger Woods: He’s BACK! To pitching and chipping, that is. Woods put the golf world in a frenzy with a quick video of him hitting a single shot while showing off some serious pipes in a tank top. And this time, it wasn’t even a full shot.

Dr. gave me the ok to start pitching pic.twitter.com/tboq1L3Xdn

— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) August 31, 2017

Baby steps, Tiger. Baby steps.

WE’RE SELLING

People complaining about Thomas and Jordan Spieth being too friendly: Seriously, how is this bad for golf/sports/humanity?

#respect @JordanSpieth greets @DellTechChamp winner @JustinThomas34. #pgatour pic.twitter.com/BEKEFkxhRk

— PGA TOUR Communications (@PGATOURComms) September 4, 2017

U.S. Presidents Cup bubble boys: Congrats to Kevin Chappell moving into 10th and final automatic spot — by less than a single point — and a pre-emptive congrats to Charley Hoffman, who at No. 11, will likely join Chappell on a first Presidents Cup squad. Everyone else below No. 10 in the standings? You’re out of luck following Phil Mickelson’s T-6 that virtually guarantees he’ll be the final captain’s pick by Steve Stricker. And for No. 12 Brian Harman and No. 13 Jason Dufner, there’s no one to blame but themselves after both failed to crack the top 60 at TPC Boston.

Raymond Floyd’s house: As in, the World Golf Hall of Famer has put his Hamptons house up for sale. For $25 MILLION:

But before you scoff at the price tag, keep in mind it’s 14,000 square feet of living space (there’s a main and guest house) and it’s just a seven-minute drive from . . . Shinnecock Hills! If we all pool our money together, maybe we can buy it. The guest house, that is.

ON TAP

The PGA Tour takes a rare week off before the final two legs of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, but there’s still some exciting golf to watch. The LPGA is playing in Indianapolis for the inaugural Indy Women in Tech Championship, and you can get a glimpse of some future PGA Tour stars at the Walker Cup, an event Justin Thomas played in just four years ago:

Michael Cohen

Random tournament fact: The U.S. leads the all-time series against Great Britain & Ireland, 35 to 9, but each side has won the biennial event seven times since the 1989. And Justin Thomas or his buddy Jordan Spieth (Did you know they are buddies?) won’t be playing this year.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Jonathan Ferrey

Stacy Lewis’ victory leap into her caddie’s arms showed how much she wanted to win — for herself and Houston.

VIRAL VIDEO OF THE WEEK (NOT INVOLVING TIGER WOODS)

Check out an NBC cameraman’s nifty footwork to avoid being hit by a Marc Leishman shank on the final hole of the Dell Technologies Championship:

This camera guy deserves a big raise. pic.twitter.com/dxCiosO7K7

— Skratch (@Skratch) September 4, 2017

And Leishman was thankful for this unexpected display of agility:

I definitely owe him a beer, saved me a shot there for sure!

— Marc Leishman (@marcleish) September 5, 2017

THIS WEEK IN CELEBRITY GOLFERS

Supposedly, this is the wedge of Maury Povich, who happens to be a scratch golfer:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYeeYgSDAy7/

Classic.

THIS WEEK IN BUBBA BEING BUBBA

Bubba Watson had a day that Boston sports fans can only dream of, first, hitting a “home run” over the Fenway Park’s Green Monster:

Home run from top of green monster @fenwaypark!!! @SCTopTen #SCtop10 #Fenway pic.twitter.com/BKJylkYzxY

— bubba watson (@bubbawatson) August 31, 2017

And then hanging with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady on the sidelines of a New England Patriots pre-season game:

I love this guy!! #12 pic.twitter.com/n65imsbL0I

— bubba watson (@bubbawatson) August 31, 2017

Speaking of Brady, Jordan Spieth said he tried the legendary quarterback’s diet recently. “Tried” being the operative word. Not surprisingly, a diet of no sugar/gluten/caffeine/dairy/flour/basically anything didn’t stick with the young Texan.

THIS WEEK IN PHIL BEING PHIL

Check out this adorable/funny interaction between Phil Mickelson and a young fan at TPC Boston:

Phil asked this youngster a question.

And got an honest answer. ?@DellTechChamp pic.twitter.com/u4RamP2CLW

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) September 5, 2017

Good stuff, Phil. Although, you really miss chatting with Bones, don’t you?

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Just what we’re going to be able to do, we’re going to be able to help me rebuild houses and get their homes back. That’s more important than anything.” — Stacy Lewis #Perspective

THIS WEEK IN DUSTIN JOHNSON-PAULINA GRETZKY PETER UIHLEIN-CHELSEA GATES PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYmTbtVB6Gn/

With Uihlein earning his PGA Tour card for the first time, that means golf fans have a new PGA Tour WAG to get to know. Everyone say hi to Chelsea, a TV sports reporter and yoga instructor:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BHdtYoXDxhP/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BSXMbBJhdON/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYHVjQkBB09/

THIS AND THAT

Jake Olson, the blind long snapper who warmed hearts with a successful PAT during USC’s season opener, is also a very good golfer. That is one talented — and inspiring — college kid. … NBA superstar Kevin Durant admitted to playing the video game Rory McIlroy PGA Tour “seven or eight hours a day sometimes.” We’re guessing Golden State head coach and avid golfer Steve Kerr would rather KD use that time to play 36 real holes a day. … A South Korean woman allegedly cut off her husband’s penis in part because he spent too much time and money on his golf habit. I did not tell my wife about this story. … And finally, congrats to co-worker Mike Johnson’s son Shawn on making his first hole-in-one:

Honestly, was too excited to post this last night. My boy, Shawn, jarred the tee shot on Rock Ridge CC's par-3 ninth for an ace! #proudpapa pic.twitter.com/dEygnmooJk

— Mike Johnson (@EMichaelGW) September 2, 2017

Of course, this now means that not only do all of my colleagues have an ace before me, but all of their kids will beat me to it, too.

RANDOM QUESTIONS TO PONDER

Why don’t more golf courses have GolfBoards?

How many hours of Tiger Woods PGA Tour did I play in college?

Did you remember to re-order the NFL RedZone channel before Sunday?

The post Stacy Lewis’ charitable win, Justin Thomas’ impressive playoff push, and introducing the newest PGA Tour WAG appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.