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Sony Open Preview: Test for the New Guys

January 12, 2011   Mick Elliott   No comments

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Steve StrickerNow, everybody gets to play.

The Sony Open in Hawaii, the PGA Tour’s first full-field event, tees off Thursday at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu. After last week’s winners-only Tournament of Champions got the season started, now everybody gets to play — well, at least a field of 144.

The field has attracted only Steve Stricker (No. 6) and Jim Furyk (No. 7) from the World Golf Ranking’s top 10, but has 22 of the 34 players who competed last week in Kapalua, including winner Jonathan Byrd and defending tournament champ Ryan Palmer.

There’s also Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Davis Love and Zach Johnson, giving the field more than a fair share of glamor names.

The week is also the annual coming-out party for the season’s rookie class. Twenty-six of this year’s 35 rookies will make their debut , 15 of them age 25 or younger.

Jamie Lovemark, 22, will get much of the fresh-face attention. Lovemark, out of the University of Southern Cal, was the youngest-ever winner of the Nationwide Tour Player of the Year last season. He won once and finished runner-up three times to surpass Stewart Cink (1996) and Nick Flanagan (1997), who both turned 23 the year they won the award.

 

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Jonathan Byrd ‘Grateful’ to Open PGA Tour Season With Win

January 09, 2011   Mick Elliott   No comments

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Jonathan Byrd will not get the credit he deserves for Sunday’s PGA Tour season-opening Hyundai Tournament of Champions victory in Kapalua, Hawaii.

Lost in a distant time zone on an NFL playoff weekend, Byrd’s sudden-death victory over Robert Garrigus on the second playoff hole will be very much like a tree that falls in the forest when no one is around to hear.

All the same, a final-round 67 and 24-under-par goes into the record book as Byrd’s fifth career win (second in four months) and sets a high standard for the next 11 months to chase.

“I can’t sit here and not think about where I was toward the end of the season last year, fighting for my (PGA Tour) card,” he said. “I’m just thankful. I’m overwhelmed. I’m grateful, all of the above.”

Obviously, Byrd does some of his finest work in overtime. He earned his invitation to the previous year’s winners-only field by becoming the first player in PGA Tour history to win a playoff with a hole-in-one in Las Vegas back in October. Sunday’s win on the Plantation Course was nowhere near as dramatic — Garrigus missed a 3-foot putt for par on the second playoff hole that would have extended the playoff — but it was every bit as satisfying.

 

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Captain Corey’s Formula Almost Paved Way to Magical Victory

October 04, 2010   David Whitley   No comments

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Corey Pavin and U.S. Ryder Cuppers

NEWPORT, Wales — The U.S. Ryder Cup team came to life on Monday. Somebody please wake up Corey Pavin and congratulate him.

It wasn’t altogether obvious the U.S. captain was with us the past few days. Pavin was so robotic, you’d have thought he was eating Ambien and chips for breakfast every morning.

That made him the perfect fall guy Monday, when the Yanks were supposed to get mud kicked in their face. A funny thing happened on the way to utter humiliation. They almost staged the greatest Ryder Cup comeback of the millennium.

So now how do we feel about Captain Corey?

As the English say, the guy did a lovely job. It’s hard to admit because Pavin has been so churlish and boring that I almost wanted his team to get stomped.

That would have made it easy to call Pavin the worst captain since Edward Smith, who guided the Titanic into that iceberg. But it seems there was a method to his robotic madness.

 

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Pavin’s Ryder Cup Picks Hard to Dispute

September 07, 2010   Mick Elliott   No comments

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Ryder Cup Captain Corey PavinU.S. Ryder Cup team captain Corey Pavin (pictured) on Tuesday explained the logic behind his four wild-card picks with disarming simplicity.

“What was important to me is who I thought could play well in that environment over in Wales on European soil,” Pavin said. “I wanted to find guys that round off the team and make it a team of 12, not 12 individuals that are great players. I wanted 12 players that made up a great team.”

While Pavin will have to wait until the matches against Europe are played in South Wales on Oct. 1-3 to find out if he succeeded, at least, on paper, the captain’s four picks appear difficult to question.

Pavin had just given the roll call, announcing (in order) Stewart Cink, Zach Johnson, Tiger Woods and Rickie Fowler as hand-picked additions to a squad of eight points-system qualifiers.

“The important thing was to match up these four with the eight that are already on the team,” said Pavin.


Interestingly, Pavin made his announcement in New York City at a press conference hosted by the New York Stock Exchange, where speculation and risk are all in another day’s work.

Pavin’s investment capital comes in the form of his eight automatic points-system qualifiers: Phil Mickelson, Hunter Mahan, Bubba Watson, Jim Furyk, Steve Stricker, Dustin Johnson, Jeff Overton and Matt Kuchar. But from that group, only Mickelson (seven), Mahan (one), Furyk (six) and Stricker (one) have past Ryder Cup experience.

 

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Tiger Woods Among Corey Pavin’s Ryder Cup Captain’s Choices

September 07, 2010   Will Brinson   No comments

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Tiger Woods was named by Corey Pavin as one of the four “captain’s choices” for the 2010 Ryder Cup on Tuesday morning.

Stewart Cink, Zach Johnson and Rickie Fowler (the first rookie to ever make the Ryder Cup team) joined Woods as well, and all four men seemed particularly excited about the opportunity.

“It’s really exciting for me, obviously, to be included on the team,” Cink said. “I think this makes my third time getting picked (as a captain’s choice) which is getting close to a record. Which means I must not be that good at qualifying.”

Woods, however, hasn’t exactly had that trouble — he’s typically the first guy locked into the Ryder Cup, but obviously this season was different. Pavin refused, however, to acknowledge that he’d been thinking about Tiger’s inability to qualify on his own.

“Well, what I was trying to do was not form any opinions until almost this weekend,” Pavin said. “I didn’t want to overburden myself so I just waited and waited and waited. Tiger’s one of 12 guys on the team, and everyone’s as important as the other.”

 

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Johnson, Day Share Lead While Woods Struggles at Deutsche Bank

September 03, 2010   FanHouse Newswire   No comments

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Zach JohnsonNORTON, Mass. (AP) — Zach Johnson and Jason Day beat up on the course and beat the weather at the Deutsche Bank Championship.

Johnson (pictured) strengthened his Ryder Cup case Friday by rolling in putts from everywhere in easy scoring conditions ahead of Hurricane Earl, giving him an 8-under 63 to share the early lead with Day.

Geoff Ogilvy, without a top 10 on the PGA Tour since he won the season-opener at Kapalua, was 8 under with three holes to play.

On perhaps the easiest day players will see all week, Tiger Woods made it hard on himself.

Woods put his FedExCup playoffs in jeopardy by making four bogeys through six holes, and he had to fight back in occasional bursts of rain for a 1-over 72. He was nine shots out of the lead, likely to start the second round three shots below the cut line.

If he were to miss the cut, he would not make it to the third round next week outside Chicago.

“I’m going to have to shoot something good tomorrow, hopefully move up a little bit,” Woods said. “Obviously, get off to a better start than I did today.”

 

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Breaking Down Corey Pavin’s Most Likely Ryder Cup Picks

September 03, 2010   Mick Elliott   No comments

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Flick the lights. It’s last call.

Tuesday in New York, one day after this week’s Deutsche Bank Championship is scheduled to be completed, U.S. Ryder Cup team captain Corey Pavin announces his four at-large picks for the October matches in Wales.

Eight players — Phil Mickelson, Hunter Mahan, Bubba Watson, Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk, Jeff Overton, Dustin Johnson, and Matt Kuchar — already have secured spots on the team off a two-year points system.

Now Pavin gets the chance to put his lasting fingerprints on the team that will be a heavy underdog at Celtic Manor.

Only Mickelson (seven), Mahan (one), Stricker (one) and Furyk (six) have Ryder Cup experience.

“I am excited at the mix of youth, experience, aggressiveness and consistency of these players,” Pavin has said.

But the team’s success will inevitably be determined by Pavin’s four captain’s picks.

 

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John Deere Classic Preview

July 07, 2010   FanHouse Staff   No comments

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Steve StrickerWith the AT&T National over and the British Open at St. Andrews just around the corner, the PGA Tour heads to TPC Deere Run in Silvis, Ill. for the John Deere Classic.

At the AT&T National at Aronomink, Justin Rose won his second event in a month, and it could have been his third had he not fumbled away a three-stroke lead in the final round of the Travelers Championship.

As many top players are off or overseas this week to prepare for St. Andrews, defending champion Steve Stricker highlights the field at TPC Deere Run. Before the Tour heads across the pond for the year’s third major, let the FanHouse team give you the scoop of this week’s John Deere Classic.

FLASHBACK TO GREATNESS

Stricker had more staying power than anybody else last year.

Playing a final-day 36 holes because of weather delays, Stricker followed a TPC Deere Run course record-tying 61 in the second round with scores of 68 and 64. He finished 20 under and won by three shots.

The victory was Stricker’s second of three wins he earned last year. “I’ve just given myself a lot of chances to win,” said Stricker. “Some didn’t go my way and some have.”

This one did because he showed the poise and buried enough shots to hold off a tight field. Local favorite Zach Johnson (weekend scores of 64, 66), Brandt Snedeker (68, 65) and Brett Quigley (62, 67) all tied for second at 17 under.

Stricker’s biggest challenge, though, came from Tim Petrovic, who was in his group and was two strokes off the lead heading into the 36th and final hole of the day. But he hit the pond on No. 18 and double-bogeyed the hole, leaving him at 16 under.
– Mick Elliott

 

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Tiger Woods Clinches McCormack Award Despite Wild Season

July 06, 2010   FanHouse Newswire   No comments

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Tiger WoodsNEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa (AP) — Tiger Woods is assured at least one trophy this year.

Even though he tied for 46th at the AT&T National — his first time out of the top 40 in five years among tournaments that he completed — Woods stayed at No. 1 in the world. This being the second week of July, that means he has clinched the Mark H. McCormack Award for the 13th straight season, given to the player atop the world ranking for the most weeks in a calendar year.

So he has that going for him. Halfway through a PGA Tour season like no other, Woods at No. 1 is about the only thing that makes this year seem ordinary. It already has been anything but that.

Woods was only joking Sunday afternoon — early afternoon, it should be noted — when he was leaving the locker room at Aronimink and said over his shoulder, “Go watch some real golfers.”

 

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Zach Johnson Wins Colonial With Tournament-Record Score

May 30, 2010   FanHouse Newswire   No comments

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FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Zach Johnson now has a plaid jacket to go along with his green one.

Johnson shot a closing 6-under 64 Sunday in the final round of the Colonial, winning at Hogan’s Alley with a tournament-record score of 21-under 259. The 2007 Masters champion finished three strokes ahead of Brian Davis, who had a closing 68.

When Johnson drained a 14-foot birdie putt at the 17th hole to take a two-stroke lead, he had a wide smile on his face and emphatically pumped his right fist.

The real celebration had to wait.

Before Johnson teed off for his par at the closing 18th, play was suspended for the second time in less than an hour because of threatening weather. Light rain was falling despite sunny skies after the second delay of 46 minutes, a minute shorter than the first one.

Jeff Overton and Ben Crane both shot 67 to finish tied for third at 17 under. Scott Verplank (65) and Bryce Molder (70), who led after the second and third rounds, were another shot back.

 

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