There were several historic moments in men’s professional
golf in 2018. I’ve chosen a few to
comment on and have given each a corresponding golf score.
Double Bogey: The United States Ryder Cup performance
It’s hard to believe that after taking a 3 - 1 lead in the
first session of fourball, also known as best ball, the United States Ryder Cup
team barely showed up for the rest of the weekend. Tiger Woods went 0 - 4 for
the week and the United States team was blanked 4 - 0 in Friday afternoon
foursomes and lost 3 -1 in Saturday morning foursomes to fall into an almost
insurmountable 8 - 4 deficit. The foursomes format, also known as alternate
shot, has historically been an issue for the Americans, and 2018 was no
exception. Whether it was the home course advantage, more enthusiasm for the
event or collective fatigue on the part of the Americans, it was clear
beginning Friday afternoon that the visitors would leave France without the
Ryder Cup, now in possession of the Europeans. To add more pain to the loss was
the very public, apparent feud between
Patrick Reed and Jordan Spieth.
It was an embarrassing episode for the Americans and probably will carry
over into future team events. My take was that every American on the Ryder Cup
team, except for Spieth, had just finished playing in the FedEx Cup playoffs in
Atlanta five days before. Tiger Woods
ended a five year drought with an incredible and emotional victory at the Tour
Championship, his 80th in his illustrious career, then hopped on a plane to
France. By contrast, only half the players on the European side qualified for
the Tour Championship, giving them a week of rest prior to the Ryder Cup
matches. In the future, I hope the PGA of America and the R & A can
schedule the event to give all players a week off. But still, a team with the
firepower of the Americans should have given the Europeans a better match.
Bogey: Zach Johnson parts ways with longtime caddie Damon
Green
A couple of weeks ago, Zach Johnson decided that he and his
caddie “...need to take a break. It’s
not a firing.” Really? Damon Green said that he
“was shocked.” That sounds like a firing to me. Green had been on Johnson’s
bag since the two-time major champion’s rookie season, with the pair combining
for 11 Tour wins and that pair of majors.
Last season, Johnson finished 58th in the FedEx Cup, only missed two
cuts, but managed just a couple of top tens and 14 top twenty-five finishes in
25 events. He won just short of $2 million. It wasn’t much different than his
results a couple of seasons earlier in 2016. Johnson is 42 years old, the same
age as Tiger Woods. Perhaps Woods’ win makes Johnson feel that he’s
underperforming and maybe Green is the problem. Still, I don’t believe it’s a
good look for a guy who is generally considered one of the nicest player on
Tour. Does Zach Johnson have every right to employ whoever he wants as his
caddie? Absolutely. Do I have the right to criticize him for a bad optic and
how it apparently went down? Of course I do.
Par: The Match
When Phil Mickelson jabbed at Tiger Woods during The Players
tournament in May to play a match for big bucks, apparently plans for The Match
were already underway, so Mickelson was merely priming the pump. The Match
itself was a winner -take-all, $10 million pay-per-view event over Thanksgiving
weekend. What many fans were hoping for were 18 holes of jabbing, side bets and
entertaining byplay between Phil and Tiger. What we got was fairly competitive
golf, with both players reverting to form as Phil tried to engage Tiger in
conversation and Tiger focusing instead on playing golf shots. One of the
reasons that there were less side bets than we wanted is because the PGA Tour
has some rules that limited the amount of betting activity, etc. during the
match. As far as the golf being played, it wasn’t spectacular, but it was
competitive. The positives were how close the match was and getting to see the
two best players of their generation going head to head. The negatives were
that it was a bit more boring than we wanted and the contrived par three
playoff hole where the players teed off from a practice green. I liked that
neither player wanted to win with the other player missing a short second putt
and that it took a good birdie for Phil to walk away with $10 million. I just
wish we’d seen this ten years ago, when both players were in the middle of
major tournament winning seasons.
Birdies: Molinari at The Open Championship and Rose taking
the FedEx Cup
Since the Europeans seem to thrive on the team concept, I
decided to pair these two great golfers together in this piece. With Tiger
Woods breathing down his neck at Carnoustie, Francesco Molinari held it
together down the stretch to become the first Italian major champion. The 36
year old had an incredible month of July, winning the Quicken Loans National
with a closing 62 and finishing second in the John Deere Classic a couple of
weeks later. Then he hopped on a plane for Scotland and left a few days later
with the Claret Jug. The Quicken Loans was his first PGA Tour win to go with a
quintet of European Tour victories.
Molinari has only been playing on the PGA Tour full time since 2015 and
it appears the move has finally paid off. Rose’s win in the season-long FedEx
Cup competition solidified the nine time Tour winner and former U.S. Open champ
as one of the top players in the game. He finished one shot out of finishing
2018 as the number one player in the world rankings, losing out to Brooks
Koepka. Rose’s rise to prominence is interesting as the Englishman crashed into
our consciousness as an 18 year old amateur who contended at the 1998 Open
Championship. He turned pro shortly thereafter, but missed his first 21 cuts.
His perseverance eventually resulted in 12 European and 9 PGA Tour victories. His
FedEx Cup championship was overshadowed by Woods’ win at The Tour Championship,
but it was a hard earned accomplishment.
Eagle: Brooks Koepka’s two majors and second consecutive
U.S. Open
For only the second time in almost 70 years, a golfer won
back to back U.S. Open Championships. Brooks Koepka, who defeated 155 other
golfers and a brutal Shinnecock Hills golf course, was greeted at the 18th hole
by the last one to accomplish the feat, 1988 and 1989 champion Curtis Strange.
Strange was a member of the Fox broadcast team and the only one alive who can
relate to what Koepka was dealing with as he made putt after putt to secure the
win. A couple of months later, he capped off an incredible season by taking the
PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, outlasting Tiger Woods
down the stretch with an awesome display around the greens. Koepka capped off a
great 2018 by winning The CJ Cup @ Nine Bridges, his first start of the
wraparound 2018 - 2019 season. Of his five Tour victories, three are major
championships. It almost seems as if he lacks a pulse, or at least nerves. The
28 year old out of Florida State appears to have a bright future.
Hole-in-One: The return of Tiger Woods
As the gallery swarmed through the ropes on the fairway of
the 18th hole at East Lake Golf Club, a red shirt clad Tiger Woods emerged,
with Rory McIlroy a couple of steps behind. A few minutes later, Woods was
standing over a putt to end his long journey. Less than a year before, as
vice-captain for the victorious American Presidents Cup team, Woods had
reportedly questioned whether he would ever play another round of competitive
golf. His comeback had begun quietly in November of 2017, at his own Hero World
Challenge in the Bahamas. Tiger seemed to be pain free after well documented
knee and back surgeries, the last one a risky fusion operation. His drives were
long, at times outdriving big hitting Justin Thomas, his playing partner in the
first round. He went on to finish in a tie for ninth in the 18 player field. His
world ranking was somewhere in the 900’s, but it was cause for cautious
optimism. Could he stay healthy? By the
time the Masters rolled around in April, the 14 time major winner was coming
off consecutive top five finishes, including a second place at the Valspar
Championship. A tie for 32nd at Augusta was a little disappointing, but the
progress in his game was evident. He was making cuts and slowly moving up the
world rankings and the FedEx Cup standings.His tie for 11th at The Players on a
course that is not well suited to his game caused interest to soar once again.
An ugly start at the U.S. Open doomed him to missing the weekend, but a fourth
place tie at the Quicken Loans sent him into The Open Championship with renewed
confidence. Standing over a greenside chip shot on the 11th hole on Sunday,
Woods had a one shot lead, just seven holes from a 15th major title. But a poor
decision on the shot resulted in a double-bogey and a sixth place result as he
watched Molinari go onto victory. The top-ten finish, however, advanced him to
50th in the world rankings, qualifying him for the World Golf Championship -
Bridgestone Championship a couple of weeks later. He finished in the middle of
the pack and headed to St. Louis for the PGA Championship. As mentioned
previously, he again contended and settled for second behind Koepka. But he’d
done something almost as incredible as his first year on Tour, when he
qualified for one of 30 spots in the Tour Championship in only seven events.
This time, he qualified in 20th place and posted finishes of 40th, 24th and
sixth in the first three playoff events. More importantly, he’d played five out
of six weeks without any adverse physical issues. That he had that two foot
putt to win again had the sports world mesmerized. A few moments later, he was bent over at the
waist, his head in his hands, having just sunk a putt that would give him his
80th career PGA Tour victory. To see him embracing caddie Joey Lacava in
victory was as emotional a scene as I’ve witnessed in sports. The Tour
Championship win ended five winless years for perhaps the best golfer of all
time, marking what could also be the most unlikely comeback in sports history.
Don't forget to check out my new book, "Offsetting Penalties - A PK Frazier Novel" at Amazon.com. Also check out www.thechtonsports.com for our podcasts and live broadcast on Tuesday's at 9:00 pm EST. I can also be reached via email at kevin@pkfrazier.com.
