Did the Web.com Tour Finals work? Maybe, but it was certainly misnamed.

It is all over. Tour school or Web.com Tour Finals or whatever you want to call it is over and its now time to allow the dust to settle.

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Did it work? Did you understand it? Did you even care enough to try to understand it? These are questions thePGATour needs to address.

It really should not have been called the Web.com Tour Finals because half of the field was from thePGATour in the first place. I believe that the Web.Com company via paying thePGATour some $10 Million annually for the umbrella sponsorship demanded that their name be on this 4 tournament package of events, even if it was misnamed.

The Tour was not going to displace this $10 million sponsor and upset the first year of a 12 year sponsorship to make sure the fans understood the events. No way, but now that it is over and one year is under everyone’s belt, they need to tweak it to the point that only Web.Com players participate, or simply come up with a marketable name to enhance the events going forward.

Like when they changed the Senior Tour to call it the Champions Tour. That sounds better.

Come up with a better name, make it tour qualifying school only and it will work and be understandable going forward.

Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year awards 2013

Today, the Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year awards were given out and frankly, there weren’t any surprises. Five-time tour champion in 2013, Tiger Woods, came away with his 11th P.O.Y. award. Tiger won the Arnold Palmer money title, The Vardon Trophy, for the lowest adjusted scoring average and the five titles was the most by any player on tour. He did not win a major but no one who won a major won more than 3 titles (Phil Mickelson) so the Tiger dominance of this award continues. The Jack Nicklaus award for the Player of the Year goes to the great Tiger Woods.

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The rookie of the year award went to Jordan Spieth who started the year with no status at all and finished the year with a victory and a President’s Cup team member, which, of course, will be contested next week. Spieth became the youngest man to win a title in over 82 years—at age 19 just before turning 20. There were other rookies of distinction, Russell Henley, Derek Ernst, and David Lingmerth of note but what Spieth did was nothing short of breathtaking. He went from 810th in the world in January to now 21st in the world golf rankings. This is a meteoric rise of epic proportions and I for one can’t wait to see him perform next week in the President’s Cup.

Jim Furyk joins a very exclusive club

This past Friday we saw PGATour great Jim Furyk fire a magnificent 59 in the second round of the BMW Championship at Conway Farms outside of Chicago.  That is a fact.  What is also a fact is that this was only the 6th such 59 ever inPGA Tour history.

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ThePGATour estimates that there have been somewhere just north of 1 million total rounds in its history.  That makes this round about a 175,000 to 1 happening.  Remarkable and further in all 6 of them the final hole has either been a birdie or an eagle to complete the mighty task.

The 6 are Al Geiberger, Chip Beck, David Duval, Paul Goydos, Stuart Appleby, and now, Jim Furyk.  Not too much of a common thread.  Geiberger, Duval and Furyk all have won majors, Goydos, Beck and Duval have gone from top level golfers to the bottom of the barrel, with Appleby not too far behind in that category.  But, they do have one thread they all on at least one day outperformed what even they might have thought was possible.

The list is missing Tiger, Jack, Arnie, Hogan, Snead, Sarazen, Player, etc. You get the point.  This accomplishment is fantastic no question about it.  It is also a snap shot, not a full-length movie.

The other point I want to make here is Jim Furyk is one of the true gentlemen on the Tour.  It could not have happened to a nicer man.

The Champions Tour has become golf’s mulligan for the not-so-great and it is OK

I find the Champions Tour—the over the hill 50 plus guys still loving to play and loving to get PGA Tour paychecks just OK—not great, not overly exciting just pretty darn OK and that’s well, that’s pretty darn OK with me.

The overall packaging of the tour is different than the regular PGA Tour.  They usually play 3 rounds instead of 4, and that gives the players an additional day for more pro-ams, and that gives more people a chance to experience playing and watching the champions in a relaxed mode.  One other major factor that makes this tour so worthwhile is the charities that benefit from its existence.  Never forget for one minute that charity is always the biggest property the tours have. The total amount of money raised by all the PGA Tours combined is fast approaching $2 billion.  It literally changes lives and that is way more than OK.

A couple of weeks ago John Riegger won an event on the Champions Tour—he just turned 50 in June and went to Q school last fall got his card and is set to go—Riegger never won on the PGA Tour—so he got his mulligan and took full advantage of it right away.  Good for him.  Yesterday Esteban Toledo won his second champions Tour event defeating Kenny Perry in a 3 hole playoff in Montreal, Canada—Toledo had never won in a long PGA Tour career—yes, indeed it is more than O.K. with me.

 

These are just two stories of the Champions Tour.

Web.com/PGA Tour Q School confusion galore!

I have yet to talk to anyone who completely understands the Web.Com Tour finals and its connection with the PGA Tour Q school.  It was very loosely defined by so-called experts and now that it is here—well, it is still a bit of a tough learning experience for us all.

My problem is that you could, at first glance, think that the web.com tour finals equates to web.com tour cards for next year—this is not the case.  The web.com tour season was cut dramatically short this year because of the PGA Tour changeover from a January season start to the new October start. Therefore, these four tournaments beginning this past week with the Hotel Fitness Championship are PGA Tour Q School and at the same time the last four events on the web.com tour.

O.K. now that we have settled that—or at least explained that it is way more interesting than the old Q school that we have become accustomed to the last 40 plus years. The guys have 4 tournaments instead of 6 rounds.  It is a more complete examination of talent. It allows you to have a bad week or two and still get your card.  I like it better than the old way, but it will need to be adjusted because it is part of the web.com tour and really should be separated and have its own identity.

Congratulations to Trevor Immelman winner of the Hotel Fitness Championship at 20 under par by one stroke over 23 year old Patrick Cantlay.  This assures Trevor of his full PGA Tour status for next year.

Interesting to me, is the fact that Trevor came into this pressure packed 4 weeks with a great attitude—this is a guy who won the Masters 5 years ago and was flirting with losing his card for 2014—he took it as a challenge and advances—great stuff. Your approach to adversity tells a lot about your character.  Now they move along to Davidson, North Carolina, for the Chiquitta Classic.  Then it’s the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Classic in Columbus, Ohio before a week off and the Tour championship on the Dye course near Jacksonville, Florida—its does promise to be an explosive race for the 25 cards.

Bob’s top 10 women golfers of all time – #1

Annika Sorenstam

 

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Annika Sorenstam—The Swedish superstar is our number one female golfer of all-time. She came to the U.S. to play college golf at the University of Arizona and it was quite clear as to her immense talent. She won the NCAA Championship as a freshman a feat never accomplished before or since.

Annika turned professional after two years at Arizona and promptly went out and won the 1995 U.S. Open as her first tour win. She amassed 72 LPGA tour wins including 10 majors.  She is the first woman to surpass 20 million in prize money and has been voted LPGA player of the year a record 8 times.. Sorenstam is also the only woman ever to break 60—firing a 59 in the 2001 Standard Register Ping event in Phoenix; forevermore she is called “Ms.59”.

In 2003 she accepted an invitation to play in the Bank of America Colonial Invitational in Ft. Worth,Texas.  She missed the cut but was heralded for her efforts to play against the men in a PGA Tour event.  She retired from competition in 2008 to start a family and direct her efforts into her golf academy, golf course design, to assorted  business interests and  many charitable causes.  Annika Sorenstam is our number 1 female golfer of all-time.

Bob’s top 10 women golfers continues…

Bob’s top 10 female golfers of all time continues with numbers 4, 3, and 2.

4. Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias—We will get to the Babe’s golf exploits in a moment, but to discuss this amazing lady without first mentioning her world-class athletic background would be a great injustice. This Texan is considered by most experts to be the single greatest female athlete of all time—she won 2 golds and one silver in the 1932 L.A. Olympic Games. The gold medals came in the 80 meter hurdles and the javelin throw the silver was in the high jump.  This showed her amazing athletic versatility.

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Then came her AAU basketball career, her outstanding abilities in bowling, roller skating, softball, baseball, diving, pocket billiards and for extra measure she was renown for her sewing—making all of her own golf outfits.

 When Babe was introduced to golf it was like a walk in the park for her—a natural. She was a founder of the modern ladies golf tour and proceeded to dominate on the links—winning 41 events including all of the majors of the time-10 in total. She won all of the majors in the same year, 1950. She was voted a record 6 times women athlete of the year by the Associated Press. Her career came to a tragic end when cancer struck Babe in the middle 1950’s and she passed away at the age of 45 in 1956. She was an athlete we simply have not seen before or since the great Babe Didrikson Zaharias comes in 4th.

3. Patty Berg—This Minnesota native was a natural golfer from the age of 13. She attended the University of Minnesota following a runner-up finish in the 1935 U.S. Amateur at the age of 17. It was a natural progression for patty to turn professional right after college. She was one of the first women teaching pros having conducted over 16,000 clinics promoting the game she loved to an estimated ½ million golfers. Patty was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1951.

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Her golf exploits went into overdrive with the formation of the LPGA Tour that she founded with fellow pros Babe Zaharias and Louise Suggs. Berg went on to win 60 tournaments including 15 majors—a record number of majors that still stands today as the most ever won by a woman. Patty Berg comes in as a solid # 3 on my list.

2. Mickey Wright. This San Diego product had a relatively short professional career starting out at the age of 19, and ending some 15 years later due to foot problems, but those 15 years were so dynamic she vaults into second place.

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Mickey won a staggering 82 events including 13 majors during that short span including 4 consecutive years winning at least 10 titles in each year. Along with Kathy Whitworth, they combined to win almost ½ of the events contested during the decade of the 1960’s. The true testimony of her greatness came from none other than the legendary Ben Hogan who said of Wright’s swing that it was simply the greatest swing he had ever seen man or woman! She was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1964. Mickey Wright #2.

Bob’s top 10 golfers of all time – #2

2. Tiger Woods (featured in this post)

An oldie, but a good one. http://www.nj.com/golf/index.ssf/2009/07/tiger_woods_claims_title_at_at.html

The best closer/door slammer of all time no one even comes close—having won over 90% of the tournaments he has lead going into the last round. When everyone is choking, he is thriving! Still, to this point, a career in the making, as he could catch Jack and become the most prolific major champion of all time.  There is no doubt that he will catch Sam Snead with the most wins to boot but he is still number 2—like Avis, he tries harder, and I do believe he eventually will become the number one golfer ever to play this great game.

 

The PGA Championship

The final major of the year is here and it promises to deliver a super show.  It carries significant favor for me since it takes place at the legendary Oak Hill Country Club in my home town of Rochester, New York.  I grew up about 10 minutes from Oak Hill, and although I never played the course, I did caddy twice there as a 15-year-old.

I remember two things distinctly: the players in the groups were making a lot of double bogeys and I was very tired after the rounds—they don’t call it Oak Hill for nothing.  It is hilly and tight.

The 1968 U.S. Open took place at Oak Hill and I was a kid in a candy factory—seeing my heroes up close was certainly a thrill—Nicklaus, Palmer, Player, Weiskopf, Littler, Casper—the list is almost endless.  I remember going to the practice tee for a while and just marveling at how well these men hit the ball. It sounds almost ridiculous, of course. They hit the ball wonderfully, but to see the greatest players on earth hit the ball the way they did it was a thrill in itself.  I actually remember seeing Bob Goalby, who had won the Masters just two months earlier, hitting mid-irons to a pin and every one was directly on target and he was carrying on a conversation with someone, at the same time—what an exhibition of ball striking!  More on the ’68  Open in a moment but first:

My two favorite holes at Oak Hill are back to back–#’s 13 and 14.  Thirteen is the only hole in major championship golf that has not been reached ever in 2. It is not that long, measuring around 596.  What is tricky and is why no one has reached it is because of a creek that runs through the fairway around 300 yards from the tee.  To carry the water you must hit your drive about 310 yards on the fly, and up to this point, the risk has not been worth the reward.  This year, however we could see it reached by Bubba, Dustin, Woodland, Garrigus or someone else—I do look for it to happen.  The 14th is the opposite –  the shortest par 4 on the course measuring around 320.  Reachable by the long hitter, but a shallow green and serious trouble over the green will make this a true risk/reward par 4.  Most players will use a longish iron off the tee and attempt to get close with a wedge.  Two great holes in major championship golf just happen to be back-to-back!

Back to the “68 Open, Lee Trevino, The Merry Mex won that Open breaking 70 all 4 days and winning in a breeze over Nicklaus by 3.  It was a week I will never forget.  For the above mentioned reasons, and just simply having a major sporting event come to my home town, an otherwise minor league sports city, hosting this great event and having such a memorable winner.  Trevino won $30,000 for his efforts that week and a lifetime exemption to play on the PGA Tour.  My, oh my have things changed. The winner this week receives just short of 1.5 million—that’s some inflation in 45 years!

Time for my picks—here goes—by the way I did pick the last two majors correctly so stick to my picks and you can’t go wrong, ha, ha, ha!

I like Matt Kuchar—I picked him early in the year to win a major and this is the one—he hits the ball so straight and at Oak Hill that is a must—he also is brilliant on the greens.  Oak Hill’s greens are tough to master as they undulate and have peeks and valleys.  I think the committee will not make the place unplayable by putting the pin positions in impossible places but turning the token over, they will not make this target practice either—so Kuchar is my first pick.

My second pick is Jason Dufner—having played very well this past week at Firestone and having lost a PGA playoff two years ago to Keegan Bradley at The Atlanta Athletic Club, Dufner is my second choice.  He comes in with momentum and I like that very much.

Third pick is Zach Johnson—who has picked up his pace the last 4 or 5 weeks and comes in with a ton of confidence.  The course fits his game—you do not have to be a “bomber” at Oak Hill ball placement and short game will provide us the winner this year—take Zach at number 3.

My last pick—out of the blue is Bo Van Pelt.  Hi best finish at the PGA was last year coming in T18.  I have no rhyme or reason to pick Van Pelt except to say that often the PGA winner comes out of the blue! He is a long time tour veteran and that does bode well in finishing a major on Sunday.

That’s the way I see it.  This 1924 Donald Ross gem is set to have 156 of the world’s greatest players descend upon its fairways and greens (they hope). I am pumped for this great major. I love seeing my old home town shine brightly in the sporting world and this year the “old Lady” should do just fine, thank you!

Send me your picks, I’d love to hear from you—good luck!

Gary Player – #5 in Bob’s top 10 golfers of all time

Gary Player

 

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Player is one of 5 men to win the grand slam.  9 times a major champion and golf’s first world traveler—coming from South Africa and before jet travel was the norm –  he came to America and simply won! He won over 165 tournaments worldwide believed to be the most ever won by any man or woman ever.

Player revolutionized fitness in the sport of golf where nearly all great players in today’s game spend time in the gym.  He was a “gym rat” before anyone believed in it. He is a true pioneer and champion.

Did you know Gary uses Twitter?

Who are your top 10 players?