PGA Tour etc: Q-Schools etc: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).First Stage Q-School is history, and so are the aspirations of many Europeans, Messrs Karlberg, Lara and Richardson among the most active, either in Europe or the Natioinwide Tour. Second Stage begins in a fortnight, and Mesrs Gronberg, Richard Johnson (times two?) and Owen are expected to be in action. No word yet on overseas visitors.

2).First Stage Champions Tour Q-School is also history. While it was great to see Barry Lane, Miguel-Angel Martin, Mark Mouland and Mike Harwood, among others, advance, it was disappointing, but perhaps predictable?, that veteran European Tour players Forsbrand and Walton came up empty. It is just not realistic for a European Tour player to take many seasons off and then come, untried and untested, to Champions Tour golf and expect to succeed. Far better to hone your skils on the Seniors Tour and recover competitive edge. Then have a go.
Among PGA Tour members of yesteryear who also fell short were Danny Edwards, Fulton Allem, John Morse, TC Chen and Lon Hinkle. Final Stage begins in Arizona on Nov 15th, when Peter Fowler, Lane, Mouland etc will compete for a handful (probably just five) of Fully Exempt Champions Tour memberships. The Field will be published shortly but is certain to include a number of household names who, surprisingly, won't have retained Fully Exempt Status.

3).The Nationwide Tour Championship threw up a PGA Tour old lag as its Champion, the rather portly Ken Duke, but also confirmed 2012 PGA Tour Memberships for Scotland's Russell Knox, Surrey's Gary Christian, and Swedes Daniel Chopra and Jonas Blixt. I'd think they'll all have their work cut out to retain their status in 2012, and anything in the top 100 of the money list should be seen as a great success. Blixt and Knox were groomed in the US Collegiate system followed by mini-tours, and hopefully they'll follow in the footsteps of their countrymen, Laird and Pettersson.

4).It's only three years since the British press was touting Chopra as a European Ryder Cup candidate as he won twice in consecutive tournaments on the PGA Tour. But he is the classic "curate's egg" sort of golfer and mixes in the wildly erratic (usually with his driver) with bursts of short-game brilliance. Tough to keep that up profitably over four rounds and Chopra will struggle again.

5).Gary Christian is an interesting story and, seemingly, an awfully nice bloke. Forty years old, a graduate of College Football powerhouse Auburn University, he embarked on his Nationwide odyssey in 1998, only becoming a regular member in his mid-thirties. 165 tournaments, 99 cuts, 2 wins and $853K in the bank later and he's due to make his first PGA Tour start in Hawaii at the Sony Open. This is already a great story; he seems a bit of a character (in a positive, rather than a Dalyesque, way) and was very amusing when sharing guest commentary responsibilities with Nationwide lifer and very short Aussie Gavin Coles.

6).Others moving to the "show" include: Double heart-transplant survivor Erik Compton, Danny Lee, Aussies Goggin and Coles, Tour millionaires Duke and Mallinger, gaucho Carballo, "recreational drug" casualty Matt Every and one-time US Navy Officer Billy Hurley. Ryder Cupper Wetterich and Presidents Cupper Triplett both fell short.

7).I reckon that Tim Finchem would be apoplectic, real blue-in-the-face stuff, if a dozen among his leading Tour members dissed a US-based World Golf Championship. But HSBC absentees include the nucleus of a pretty good Tournament field: Simpson, Dustin Johnson, Laird, Woodland, Mickelson, Snedeker, Bubba Watson, O'Hair, Kuchar, Jason Day and Fowler. Add Champions Tour star Peter Senior (playing in the Schwab Championship), Luke Donald on paternity leave and Stricker on the sick list, and it's a case for the Americans of who's not there rather than who condescends to show up. No excuse.
Whenever there's a test of US commitment to World Golf, the PGA Tour in general, and Finchem in particular, fails. Nobody puts the w in World Golf Championships quite like Finchem.

8).Should have mentioned last week that the Tour is reviving the idea of a "modified Stableford". Successful for 21 years at one Mountain venue, Castle Pines, in Colorado, "The International" was removed from the Tour schedule following an unseemly spat between Castle Pines owner and tournament promoter, Jack Vickers, and, inevitably, Tim Finchem (with a soupcon of IMG thrown in). But now the "Reno-Tahoe" Open, staged at a gorgeous location in the beautiful Lake Tahoe area on the California / Nevada state line, will adopt the modified Stableford format: 8 points for an albatross, 5 pts for an eagle, 2 pts for a bird, nuffink for par, -1 for bogey, -3 for double bogey or worse. Good luck to them.

9).The Top 30 money winners on the Champions Tour assemble at San Francisco's historic Harding Park this week for the "Charles Schwab Cup Championship". John Cook has won the last two Schwab tournaments, but Tom Lehman is leading the year-long Schwab Cup points system and will be hoping to close out the year with another win. That would bring him Champions Tour Player Of The Year, so becoming the first golfer to win POTY on the Nationwide/PGA/and Champions Tours.
Other non-Americans competing will be Peter Senior (would he rather be at the HSBC Champions??), Nick Price, Langer, Canada's Rod Spittle, David Frost and Chien Soon Lu.
Those who will either ride their luck among alternates next year or compete at Q-School to regain their status are: McNulty, Joe Ozaki, Romero, Jim Rutledge and Kiyoshi Murota. One assumes that Roger Chapman and Sandy Lyle will not be attending Q-School . . . . . .

10).Happy story (on pgatour.com) to end with:
Harding Park has two benches beside a practice green dedicated to four-time club champion and long-time leading San Francisco amateur Ovid Seyler. A fireman by trade he battled such San Francisco amateur legends as Harvie Ward, Ken Venturi and the young Johnny Miller. Apparently he was also a lifetime do-gooder, in the best possible way.
The plaque on one bench reads: In Memory of Ovid Seyler, who eagled EVERY HOLE at Harding Park.
The other reads: In memory of Ovid Seyler, "The Insitution", Harding Park.
So many of our clubs have our own institution, but how many have eagled every hole??!!

I wouldn't have thought it would be too interesting. He'll have handpicked questions because he isn't bright enough to answer questions off the cuff. So expect something to be about as insightful as a media trained thick footballer post match interview such as you get from Steven Gerrard or John Terry.

Sad for Casey - but to me it explains so much of his inconsistent form. Hope he rebounds nicely next year.

I suspect Woods will be smart enough to be stoic in his responses to SW racist remarks a few days ago. You don't have to be a racist to make a racist comment - but being an idiot helps, at Williams showed.