By Evin Priest
One of the worst-kept secrets in golf was confirmed Wednesday. Cameron Young was confirmed as the PGA Tour’s 2022 Rookie of the Year by way of fellow Wake Forest alum Webb Simpson walking the Arnold Palmer Trophy into the media centre and interrupting Young’s press conference ahead of the CJ Cup at Congaree Golf Club.

“From one Deacon to another, congratulations Cam,” Simpson said as he handed the bronze trophy to the 25-year-old Young. Like Simpson and Young—and last year’s Rookie of the Year, Will Zalatoris—Palmer attended Wake Forest.

“Well, it’s very special,” Young said. “I know the namesake, Arnold Palmer, was a giant in the game of golf and we have him to thank for a lot of what we do today, what the PGA Tour is. Just to be related to that in some small way is very cool. I know we had a very strong rookie class and I know it’s voted by my peers, so it’s a huge honour to be thought of in that way.”

Sahith Theegala was Young’s only real competition for Rookie of the Year and even Theegala admitted to Golf Digest at the season-ending Tour Championship he had no chance of toppling Young, who collected 94 per cent of the total vote.

New York native Young enjoyed seven top-three results on the PGA Tour last season, including five runner-ups. Of those second places, Young said the standout was finishing second to Cameron Smith at the Open Championship at St. Andrews in July. Young played with Smith for both weekend rounds at the Old Course and put legitimate pressure on Smith on the 72nd hole when he drove the Old Course’s par-4 18th and drained the short eagle putt to edge ahead of Rory McIlroy.

“Probably St. Andrews,” Young said when asked what moment stood out from 2022. “[An Open at St. Andrews] is just a different experience. The Open is about the most fans we see all year, maybe with the exception of Waste Management [Phoenix Open]. They love golf over there [in Scotland]. To walk into town centre to play the 18th hole at St. Andrews is different than anything you find anywhere else. So just knowing the history there and to play well that week was very cool.”

For Young, there’s only one way to make this season better—capture his maiden PGA Tour victory. The milestone eluded him during the many Sundays he was in contention during the 2021-22 campaign.

Winning won’t be any easier to accomplish at the CJ Cup this week, despite a 78-man field and no 36-hole cut. The names in the field at Congaree include World No. 1, Scottie Scheffler, defending CJ Cup champion Rory McIlroy, Tom Kim, Jordan Spieth, Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas, among others.

While Young joked about what a first PGA Tour win would feel like, the fire is clearly there to break through.

“Yeah, that’d be awesome. Anytime you win out here … well, I don’t know, but supposedly it’s very special,” he said through laughter. “Obviously I had my fair share of chances and I would hope one of them is coming at some point. It would be great just to finish out the year on a high note and [Congaree] would be a great place to do it.”

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The post To the surprise of no one, Cameron Young captures the PGA Tour’s top rookie award appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Brian Wacker
Who will be Player of the Year on the PGA Tour? There’s a lot to consider with as many as a half-dozen players vying for the honour in a race that will likely be decided by how each fares at this week’s season ending Tour Championship. Arguments can be made for each of them.

Rookie of the Year? That’s figures to be easier to determine.

The only two rookies to make it to East Lake this year are Viktor Hovland and Scottie Scheffler, which means the final two rounds could go a long way. After 36 holes, Scheffler is tied for 13th following a four-under 66 on Saturday, while Hovland is T-22 after his second-straight 69.

If only comparing their resumes were as simple.

Hovland won in Puerto Rico in February and has missed just three cuts in 20 starts. But he has just three other top 10s. Scheffler, meanwhile, hasn’t won but has a half-dozen top 10s, including a pair of T-4 finishes at the PGA Championship and the Northern Trust, where he shot 59 in the second round at TPC Boston.

So who would Hovland vote for? His answer wasn’t quite as bold as Justin Thomas’ when he was asked about Player of the Year honours.

“Obviously he’s had a great year with his recent 59 and his fourth-place finish at the PGA, so he’s played really, really consistent this year,” Hovland said. “I’d probably put him maybe slightly in front of me. As for this week, If I beat him by one shot, it’s only one shot.

“He’s had more top 10s and top 5s, but it’s not up to me to judge. I’ve had a good year myself, but definitely a lot of things to improve.”

Whoever earns the honour, it’ll likely be the last one for a couple of years. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic there will be no promotion, or relegation, for the 2020-21 season, meaning there won’t be a rookie class.

The post Not even Viktor Hovland is sure he’d vote for himself as Rookie of the Year appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
There appeared to be some karmic justice in Jon Rahm being named the winner this week of the Sir Henry Cotton Award, the prize given to the top rookie on the European Tour.

Despite a victory at the Farmers Insurance Open in February, 11 top-10s in 23 PGA Tour starts and $6.1 million earned in the 2016-’17 campaign, the 23-year-old Spaniard was ineligible for ROY in the U.S. when the award was handed out in early October (Xander Schauffele snatched it up). You see, technically Rahm’s rookie season came in 2016—even though he played just nine events that year and wasn’t a member of the PGA Tour until the last tournament of the regular season. (It’s complicated, but the long story short is Rahm, No. 5 in the World Ranking, has spent his entire first 17 months as a professional playing too well for his own good.)

Yet while what happened on the PGA Tour felt like a raw deal, was the European Tour honor the equivalent of a college basketball make-up call? Yes, Rahm played in 12 officials European Tour events in 2017, claiming one win at the Irish Open and four top-10s while earning €2.8 million to put him fourth in the Race to Dubai entering this week’s season finale. However, of the 12 events, eight were either major championships or WGC tournaments that also counted toward his PGA Tour numbers. Is playing only four regular-season events native to the European Tour enough to be deserving of the honor?

The post Should there be controversy with Jon Rahm claiming the European Tour’s rookie-of-the-year award? appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The 23-year-old boy from Barrika was officially confirmed as the European Tour’s 53rd Rookie-of-the-Year at Jumeirah Golf Estates on Tuesday after being wheeled in for a pre-DP World Tour Championship press conference.

Rahm can’t win the season long Race to Dubai but it seems he can’t lose either whatever his result come Sunday after his first four laps of JGE’s Earth course.

“Never in a million years I would have expected what I’ve done this year, and to accomplish what I’ve accomplished and to be at the position I’m sitting at in every aspect,” said Rahm.

“Top five in the world, fifth in the FedExCup, fourth in The Race to Dubai, third most of the year, Rolex Series champion [at the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open], Torrey Pines [Farmers Insurance Open on the PGA Tour] champion, playing the way I’ve played, I would have never foreseen this at all. Maybe I would have hoped for it but maybe I wouldn’t have believed I would be able to accomplish all this.

“So yeah, I’m really, really proud of what’s happened this year, and hopefully — I know it’s hard to keep it going, but hopefully I can keep it going.”

European Tour supremo Keith Pelley presented Rahm with the Sir Henry Cotton Rookie-of-the-Year trophy, mentioning how his hole out on the 4th hole at Portstewart had promoted a Spanish newspaper to suggest in a headline “That’s the way Seve would have won”. 

“I haven’t checked the names of the people that won this, but I did see Sam Torrance, and I’m guessing a lot of other great names joining.”

For the record, Torrence won rookie honours in 1972. Rahm’s name is now etched in the same illustrations company alongside, among others: Brooks Koepka (2014), Peter Uihlein (2013), Martin Kaymer (2007), Ian Poulter (2000), Sergio Garcia (1999), Thomas Bjørn (1996), Colin Montgomerie (1988), José María Olazábal (1986), Sandy Lyle (1978), Nick Faldo (1977), Mark James (1976), Bernard Gallacher (1968) ad Tony Jacklin (1963).

So what’s the secret?  

Getty Images

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Rahm to laughter from the smaller than usual press corps. “I feel like every star, planet or anything that needs to be aligned for me to accomplish all this has been aligned. I really don’t know why. It’s just, who knows. I’ve got myself in a lot of situations where I could get something done every week, a lot of tournaments, so that’s why I finished a lot of high finishes. I would just say preparation.

“I’ve been getting mentally ready for this for my rookie year for a very long time, and like a few others, I would be able to have a really successful rookie year. I just hope this is not the highlight of my career.”

The way Rahm waxed lyrical about Greg Norman’s 7017-yard, par 72 Earth design, don’t be surprised if there’s another 2017 highlight come Sunday.

It might be his debut at JGE but the Spaniard clearly likes what he sees, comparing the greens to Augusta National in terms of the small targets that need to be hit to get close to pins.

“It’s a golf course I’ve looked at on TV many, many times. With the lines of this golf course, I never understood how they shot so low every single time,” Rahm started.

“I do feel like it’s Augusta-like greens, but it’s kind of a little different. But the fact that they are big greens but they are all small areas. If you hit the shot to the correct area and you have a pretty doable putt, if you hit the wrong place on the green, you’re going to have a hard time making a 2-putt.

“So it’s a great golf course. It really suits me, especially off the tee, because I can free-wheel it a little bit. I can get to the tee and hit it as hard as I can. Those extra yards are always an advantage, but on a course like this where position to the green is very important., it’s a huge advantage and that’s probably why ball-strikers like Rory and Stenson have had huge success here.

“Hopefully I can end the year the same way I started it.”

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Looks can be deceiving in golf. Within one day of each other last week, two players standing no bigger than 5-foot-10 and weighing no more than 170 pounds were announced as PGA Tour Rookie of the Year (Xander Schauffele) and PGA Tour Player of the Year (Justin Thomas).

While confined to their average-size body types, what Schauffele and Thomas have in common to make up for it is incredible clubhead speed of 117-118 miles per hour. Neither will be confused for 6-foot-4, 220-pound Ryan Brehm, whose average club head speed of 128.18 mph led the PGA Tour, and 6-foot-4, 190-pound Dustin Johnson, who hit a 341-yard drive to set up a FedEx Cup playoff win over Jordan Spieth. But Schauffele, 23, and Thomas, 24, have the distance that puts them in the same category as DJ, muscular U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka or the original trendsetter in sports training coming to golf, Tiger Woods.

“Both of us aren’t very big,” Schauffele admitted during a conversation we had last week. “As everybody manages to say on TV, ‘Yeah, he hits it pretty far for a little guy.’ Well thanks. I don’t feel like a little guy, but I guess I am relative to Dustin and Tiger.”

Another commonality of Thomas and Schauffele is both learned under fathers who encouraged their boys to hit the ball as far as they could. Stefan Schauffele was an aspiring decathlete in Germany that taught Xander how to swing a golf club with the same principles he learned to throw the javelin. “Speed comes from the separation of levers one and two, the hip versus the shoulder,” he explained over the weekend. “That’s what we’re doing and it seems to work.”

Stefan pointed out that using his biomechanics, smaller players actually have a better chance at repeating the sequencing he’s adapted from throwing sports in track and field into golf. He pointed out that 5-foot-8 Rory McIlroy was the longest player on the PGA Tour in the 2016-’17 season and not coincidentally is also one of shortest in height. “Rory’s longer than all the big guys,” he says, “because he has tremendous separation of levers.”

Thomas and Schauffele offset their physical size with technique that delivers incredible clubhead speed. (Photo by Getty Images (2))

Thomas’s father, Mike, was a PGA professional in Kentucky who taught his son the conventional fundamentals. “I really never worked on increasing his speed,” said Mike Thomas. “I think most of it came from he was always so small and short he swung hard to make up for it. If you see some video of his swings at 7 or 8 years old, he’s wailing away at it. Once he got bigger and stronger, he didn’t stop swinging hard at it. I never tell a student to slow down. Speed doesn’t harm [a golf swing] as much as what they are doing while at that speed. The rest was a lot of natural ability, flexibility and good fast-twitch muscles. It wasn’t hereditary, I can tell you that. I have never hit it anywhere.”

Justin, who finished eighth in driving distance at 309.7 yards, told me he preferred sitting on the couch over going to the gym until realizing the upside of fitness at the University of Alabama and later on tour. He added 15 pounds before the start of the 2016-’17 season, and believes that going up to 160 pounds helped him finish strong in the PGA Championship and FedEx Cup, overcome the nagging injuries of a long season and avoiding jet lag while traveling (which both he and Schauffele will aim to hope to do after flying this weekend to Malaysia for the upcoming CIMB Classic).

“I don’t think there’s a certain age you would say you have to get started,” Thomas said. “But it is a big deal and I think kids are starting to figure out as they grow up.”

Schauffele ranked 16th at 306.8 per drive, a little over a yard shorter than J.B. Holmes (the driving distance leader in 2011) and 6-foot-2 Gary Woodland, and less than a yard ahead of Jason Day, Jon Rahm and, remarkably enough, Bubba Watson.

“Nobody had Trackman when we were 15 years old,” Schauffele pointed out. “In terms of hitting it far, I’ve always hit it further than anyone else in my age group.” When he was 16, Schauffele was 5-8, 150 and flew it 290-295 yards. He’s now 5-10, 170 and consumed more by his short game than distance. He feels that’s what separates him from the consistency shown by his contemporaries, like Thomas, who have a more complete game.

“I still need to learn how to chip and pitch properly to hang with the big boys,” he told me while packing for his trip to Kuala Lampur. “That’s what I’m worried about right now.”

But all in good time. At least that’s something Schauffele knows he can grow into.

The post Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele and the real secret to how anyone can keep up with the big boys appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.