Senior Players Championship Archives - Golf Digest Middle East

After calming message from cancer-suffering wife, Jerry Kelly captures Senior Players for second time in 3 years

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 11:43:38 +0000

Jerry Kelly. Sam Greenwood

By Dave Shedloski
The Senior Players trophy is going back to Wisconsin. Again.

Thanks to three birdies in his final six holes on Sunday at Firestone Country Club, Jerry Kelly pulled away from playing partner Steve Stricker and Schwab Cup leader Steven Alker to capture his second Bridgestone Senior Players Championship in three years. Kelly, 55, won for the 10th time on the PGA Tour Champions and now has finished 1-2-1 in the last three years at Firestone’s South Course.

“It feels great. The first major is awesome, but the second one, even more validation,” said Kelly, who beat fellow Madison resident and close friend Stricker — the defending champion — by two strokes after closing with a two-under 68. His 11-under 269 total was four strokes better than any previous aggregate total at Firestone and eight strokes lower than his winning score in 2020.

Alker finished three back after a bogey at 18 to tie for third with Ernie Els at eight-under 272, marking the Kiwi’s seventh top-three finish in his last eight starts, including a victory in the Senior PGA Championship. Alker shot 69 while Els had a 68 before leaving for the Open Championship at St Andrews.

MORE: The top 100 players at St Andrews rated

Kelly, who shared the 54-hole lead with Alex Cejka, didn’t make a birdie on Sunday until he converted a four-footer at the par-4 13th after hitting what he called “one of the best shots of my life”. From behind trees in the right rough, Kelly sliced a 3-iron utility from 214 yards that he thought was coming in too hot, but the ball hit into the hill and checked up near the hole.

“That kind of opened the door. That was the turning point for me,” Kelly said. “Any tournament you just see, oh, there it was, there’s the break or there’s the shot or there’s the putt. There’s always something that separates. You’ve just got to feed off of it.”

Equally important was that Stricker, who had forged into the lead by going three-under in his first 11 holes, bogeyed the 13th from the greenside bunker for a two-shot swing. Kelly then sank a 15-footer from the front fringe at the 16th to break a tie with Alker after Stricker missed from a similar line. A 10-footer for birdie at the 17th sealed Kelly’s second win in his last four starts.

Stricker also closed with a 68. Cejka had a 73 to end up T-5.

Tracy Wilcox

The victory was especially satisfying for Kelly for several reasons. First, he earned a berth in the Players, one of his favorite events. “That was a big piece of the desire in winning this tournament,” he admitted.

Second, and more importantly, it came with his wife Carol in the gallery even as she continues to undergo treatments for kidney cancer. She also offered her husband some sage advice as they arrived at the course Sunday that enabled him to remain patient.

“Just the fact that she’s here this week,” Kelly said. “The golf course is that special and she’s like, ‘You know what, I want to be there for you. I love that golf course, it’s really cool just to be out there.’

“This is a different world once you step inside these gates over here. It’s an awesome spot,” added Kelly, who is comfortable at Firestone, saying it reminds him Maple Bluff Country Club, his home course in Wisconsin. “I love it that she can appreciate that and that she wanted to come here. She gave me the words stepping out of the car, she just said it doesn’t matter what happens, I want to see the attitude up the entire time. The lid was on the hole for a long time, and I was rolling my eyes, but I was doing it with a smile on my face. That was keeping me in a positive frame of mind knowing that it would come to me because of that. That was all her with that attitude.

“To come out on top is pretty cool.”

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Tiger Woods fizzles in Firestone finale, and heads to the PGA Championship a bit flat

Golf Digest Middle East — Sun, 05 Aug 2018 21:31:45 +0000

Sam Greenwood/Getty Images

By Dave Shedloski
AKRON, Ohio — His day at Firestone Country Club—and quite possibly his career here—ended at 3:12 p.m. EDT Sunday with one last birdie and with the chants of “Thank you, Tiger!” from an appreciative throng ringing in his ears.

It seemed like an appropriate sendoff for Tiger Woods, who all but owned the South Course with eight wins in the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in his first 13 starts but couldn’t summon the same command in his final appearance. A second straight three-over-par 73, equaling his highest score since a 77 in the final round in 2010, left Woods at even-par 280 for the week, tied for 31st place and a bit tied up in knots with the PGA Championship immediately on the horizon.

With nothing to lose, Woods, 42, tried to go on offense on another sweltering day, but his swing and his putting stroke balked. In the end, it was only the third time he did not finish under par at Firestone South, site of the last of his 79 PGA Tour titles back in 2013.

“Today I was just trying to be as aggressive as possible and fire at everything,” he explained. “It was either going to be 62 or 63 or something in the mid-70s. I was just going to be aggressive and see what happens. I was so far back that I had to play a great round just to get in the top 10. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.”

There was little mystery why it didn’t this time. He had his worst driving day, hitting only five of 14 fairways, and he found just 10 greens in regulation. He did convert six birdies, but they were offset by five bogeys and two double bogeys, both on the inward nine and the second one at the famed par-5 16th when he went for the green in two but struck a “terrible golf shot” with a 4-iron from 238 yards that found the front pond.

“I didn’t hit the ball as clean as I wanted to,” he said. “I only putted well the first day. I struggled hitting the putts hard enough this week. It looked faster than they were putting for me, and I just struggled making that adjustment. Things could have certainly gone better, but it is what it is and on to next week.”

Before he could think about next week, he had one final hole to play. His drive on the par-4 18th found the right side of the fairway, a blast of 358 yards. It wasn’t far from the spot where he struck the “shot in the dark,” the 8-iron approach that landed two feet from the pin to put an exclamation point on his 11-stroke victory in 2000. Lo and behold, the cup was in the same location Sunday. He dropped his approach 12 feet behind the hole and sank the putt. He raised his putter more as a salute to the cheering crowd than to the converted stroke.

Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

“Yeah, how about that, huh?” he responded, when asked if he recognized that hole location. “I’ve made a few birdies there. It was a good way to end it, at least for another eight more years.”

He’s referring to an appearance when he turns 50 in the PGA Tour Champions event, the Senior Players Championship, that moves into Firestone next year. Until then, he’ll just have to settle for the eight wins he’s collected here.

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Vijay Singh finally wins a senior major, the Constellation Senior Players Championship, in a playoff

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 05:59:23 +0000

HIGHLAND PARK, IL – JULY 15: Vijay Singh plays a tee shot on the ninth hole during the final round of the PGA TOUR Champions Constellation SENIOR PLAYERS Championship at Exmoor Country Club on July 15, 2018, in Highland Park, Illinois. (Photo by Stan Badz/PGA TOUR)

By John Strege
Vijay Singh has aged well, clearly, but his success on the PGA Tour in his 40s has not been replicated on the PGA Tour Champions in his 50s.

But he showed on Sunday that that is a chapter of his career with which he is not finished. Singh, 55, won the Constellation Senior Players Championship on Sunday, defeating Jeff Maggert on the second playoff hole at Exmoor Country Club in Highland Park, Ill.

The victory was only his second in an individual competition and his first major on the senior circuit, in contrast to 22 of his 34 PGA Tour victories and one of his three majors coming in his 40s.

“I don’t know if I was running out of patience,” Singh said of his struggles in senior majors. “I think I just wasn’t playing to my standard. I had good chances. This week was a different story. This golf course was not difficult tee to green. You just had to make a lot of putts.

“I told my caddie when the week started, I said, ‘five under is par.’ If you shoot five under every day, 20 under is going to be close. Afterwards, it was in a playoff.”

Indeed, Singh, who began the final round one shot back, posted a five-under par 67 on Sunday and finished at 20-under par 268.

Meanwhile, Maggert, who shared the 54-hole lead, needed a par at 18 in regulation to win but, from the middle of the fairway, pushed his approach, the ball clipping a tree and leaving him a 60-yard shot from the rough to the hole. A strong third shot left him with a 15-foot birdie putt to win and he missed it, allowing Singh to tie and force a playoff.

On the first playoff hole, Maggert missed another 12-footer to win, this one for a birdie, while Singh two-putted from 30 feet for par, sending it to a second playoff hole.

This time, Singh spun a wedge shot back to tap-in range for birdie, the winning combination after Maggert pulled his second shot and missed a 25-foot birdie putt.

“It just seemed like I was putting from 15, 20 feet all day and just never really had a lot of close putts for birdie,” Maggert said. “I had an opportunity on 18 there [the first playoff hole]. I hit it in there pretty close and just pulled the putt a little bit.”

Singh has been attempting to split time between the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions, with mixed results. He has played nine events on the former tour, 11 on the latter this year. Maggert, perhaps to his and others’ detriment, suggested it’s time for Singh to focus on the seniors.

“We all have an ego to compete,” Maggert said. “I was fortunate to be competitive in my late 40s. I actually had dual status when I turned 50, so I was going back and forth between the two tours. But you have to commit to one tour or the other, I think, to play well.

“If you try to do both, you’ll wind up splitting your schedule. I think eventually guys get in their mid-50s, it’s tough to compete on the other tour, obviously. The young guys hit it a mile. Vijay still hits it a long way, probably not as far as he used to. But it’s time to move on.”

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