PGA Tour: John Deere Tractor Boys: Notes from the Ballwasher

1).The good(?) people at The Greenbrier tried to hold a top-class PGA Tour event and a web.com tournament turned up. All the appearance fees in the world weren't enough to stop the thoroughly eccentric Ted Potter from earning his first seven-figure cheque on the PGA Tour before he's won a six-figure payday.

2).Meanwhile, play-off mate Troy Kelly earned his biggest cheque on Tour (by $640K). Both Potter and Kelly will be brushing off their passports for a trip to England and The Open Championship. And reports suggest Marc Leishman is having better luck with the U.S. Immigration people than I ever did and he may be able to join them.

3).Scotland's Russell Knox seems an all-round good guy judging by his Twitter account and this is what he had to say about Mr.Potter:
"1 year ago I said Ted Potter was the best player I'd ever played with. Potter who, they said??? Today I was proved correct."
"You know why Potter is so good? 'Cause he doesn't try and be someone he's not."

May sound a hair-brained thing to say, but that attitude could take Potter a long way at Lytham.

4)."Appearance fees" you ask? The golfing media over here is full of the $1.5M Tiger is alleged to have received, and the $1M given to Phil, for signing up for The Greenbrier. It's not clear what the source of all these reports is, but No Comment has emanated from the PGA Tour who vainly try to convince us that appearance fees don't exist on the PGA Tour.

5).As things turned out, Tiger didn't bother to turn up to see The Old White course for the first time until Wednesday and then bleated about not getting the speed of the greens as he drifted towards a weekend off with a cool half-mil-a-day in his pocket. Phil played last year (not sure his fee for that) but only succeeded in missing the cut for the second year running.

6).It's all very well saying one is against appearance fees, which I've always done, but if they're hidden in plain sight like this it's about time there was full disclosure. Not sure if The Greenbrier honchos felt they received full value for their largesse - intrigued by what might or might not be considered bang for the buck, I had a very superficial glance at the appearances of the Americans ranked in the owgr Top 100 to see if their trips to the European Tour were successful after presumably getting paid large sums for turning up. For tournaments played in Europe (excluding The Open) and the Middle East since January 2011, there have been approximately sixteen appearances by the top Americans (excluding Curtis, Day and others who have taken some degree of ET membership).

7).Messrs Woods, Watson, Kuchar, Mahan, Stricker, Dustin, Bradley, Snedeker, Mickelson, Moore and Palmer have mustered a 3rd place finish, a 5th, 2x6th's, a 10th, and 3 more top 20's between them. There have been three missed cuts and the rest have been back in the pack. Ironically, the only American tourist with two top tens in this time was Brendan Steele, with his two 7th place finishes en France.

8).The Steve Stricker benefit, sometimes known as the "John Deere Classic", begins Thursday at TPC Deere Run, one of the most attractive looking TPC's situated in the Quad Cities area of Illinois/Iowa. Par (71) invariably takes a battering and Open Championship entrants may cash in on a chartered flight to England on Sunday night. The field is of the usual mixed quality, headlined of course by Stricker and local boy Zach Johnson.

Europe is represented by Brian Davis (aren't you knackered, Brian?), Gary Christian, Knox, Chopra, Pettersson and the globe-trotting duo of Cejka and Richard Johnson.

9).Course specialists will be popular choices this week, the obvious ones being Johnson and Stricker. But Tim Clark should be an attractive price, while Senden and O'Hair return to the site of their first win. Nick Watney will be looking to earn some much needed Ryder Cup points but his form is consistently average right now, and Jeff Overton should be a more motivated participant needing a decent finish to cement his PGA Championship exemption. Decent form recently and has played well here in the past.
My e.w. fancies are Clark and Overton.

10).Finally, the US Senior Open gets underway Thursday in Michigan. Not very "Open" as it happens; as far as I can see, Langer, Barry Lane, Oldcorn, Wolstenholme and Mikael Hogberg are the only Europeans. Plus Roger Chapman, who presumably only made the field because he grasped his opportunity with both hands to win the Senior PGA recently.
Thank goodness the R&A make their Senior Open Championship "open" to Americans. For senior golf at least, there's a metaphor there somewhere.

Kwin - Nice write up.

Appearance fees? Well, they've hardly vaulted the European Tour to heights unknown, but perhaps things would be worse if they didn't have them. Your guess is as good as mine. I personally have no problem with them, but can also understand why so many of the blue blazers want to present a different image. Just silly.

No real pressure, pretty slim field, courses for horses ... this is right up Steve Stricker's alley.

Thanks, kwini

I saw that GC.com are even talking about 1.8 million bucks that Tiger got for the two forgetable rounds of golf he played in WV... That's about the same as the Greenbrier and J. Deere winners put together... that can't be right!

Hard to look beyond SStricker at John Deere, but at 125/1, could be worth putting a euro or two on John Daly...

Hi kwini, great article again and thanks for putting it together for us.


If 48 points (or at least the quality of field that determines this) is a buy.com event, then most weeks on the european tour - average of barely 33 - they must be holding nothing more than a cat c monthly medal.

Not to go over old ground but tiger and phil must be bargains at $1.5 and $1.0 mill. I would imagine Mr Potter would pay a large part of his winnings for the extra OWGR points he hoovered up thanks to phil and tiger. What the clearly don't do is provide massive incentive to play well in the actual event.

I take it Brian davies wont be playing the open?

Thanks chaps!
Mac, Davis didn't qualify.

I think you make a valid point that appearance fees just for showing up have the knock-on effect of artificially raising the value of the currency upon which so much (all Majors and WGC's for starters) is now based, the owgr points. Not likely to happen in this case, but in Dubai or New Orleans, for instance, the impact could be considerable. The Paper Tiger syndrome?

Interestingly, the latest snippet of information from the PGA Tour about Tour qualifying suggests that all money lists on the PGA Tour are likely to be superseded by FedEx points, moneylists as we know them will be things of the past.

Spectre raised of FedEx points vs owgr points? A long way off? Maybe, but who'd've thunk six years ago that something as contrived as FedEx points would take over from the almighty dollar?

Kwini

Looking at the FedEx schedule it seems the points are pre allocated before events are held – or in fact the quality of the field determined - as follows;

Major 600
Wgc 550
Regular 500
Alternate 250

This is very different from the OWGR system where the points are based on who turns up. With a caveat for the BMW pga (and masters??) where the field never manages to fulfil a predetermined points allocation

I actually thought there was a lot more variation in the level of points offered based on the quality of the field that the event attracted. Although once a regular season event is discounted in terms of importance to final standings compared to a play off event it may be of little consequence. Again showing that the system is rather contrived when the quality of the field you beat matters not.

Hi Kwini, great write up as always!

Interesting with the fed-ex points. I suppose it would also help hide any change in prize money in the next few years?

Garrigus and Hoffman to flirt with the lead again for me this week.

Cheers Lairdy, Very interested to see how your namesake fares at Castle Stuart this week!

Mac,
I was only being facetious regarding the FedEx vs owgr points - still, it's interesting that the importance of The Players Championship, and to a lesser extent the Majors, is diminished by going with FedEx points rather than money! Imagine other interested bodies will focus on the moneylist rather than FedEx points.


Should be a delightful four days in the Quad Cities for the John Deere Classic - very warm but not roasting, and no significant weather system on the horizon. Bad news for John Deere's customers, but great for Golf and scoring will doubtless be low.
Messrs Christian, Davis and Knox all have afternoon tee-times.

Lee Jansen!? Harry Potter still has the magic, only one behind...

Lee Janzen?

Nice tweet by SI's Alan Shipnuck during the foreplay for the US Open:

"At (the US Open) trophy ceremony, USGA suit introduces (Billy) Casper and (Jack) Fleck but says (Lee) Janzen 'couldn't be here'. No shizz, you didn't give him an invitation!"

Quite right Shipnuck, travesty that Janzen didn't receive a special invitation to Olympic Club.


I've got a lot of time for guys like Janzen whose game leaves them and they're prepared to return, as he has done, to the web.com circuit when necessary to try and resurrect his career.

Lousy start today by Brian Davis; he must be fried, might just as well w/d and take a fortnight off.
Surprised to see O'Hair struggle also, good form recently, but not today.

Troy Matteson doing my fantasy team no end of good... must be one of the streakiest guys around?

Streaky bad mostly!
Started the season with five straight misses, then five straight cuts made.
One of his misses included a round of 65!
No $50K cheques yet this year, but maybe his luck is turning!

Another good start by Martin Flores . . . .

Big week for Alex Cejka. 148 career cuts made, and 150 will give him "Veteran Status" - though not sure what veteran status will earn you with the nouveau qualifying routine.

David Duval -2 with three holes to go.....I still hope he can make a comeback would be a great sporting story, he threatened for a short while but he has gone back to barely making cuts.

Cut likely to be -4 in Scotland, and -3 in the Quad Cities.

Brian Davis and Russell Knox will need to morph into Steve Stricker to make the weekend, but Gary Christian doing just fine so far following a first round 65 (six under). Good year from the Carshalton ex-pat, and good weeks here, in Reno and Canada will go a long way towards earning a spot in The Barclays play-off event.

Chance of showers, hopefully no lightning, in the next couple of hours which will make the TPC Deere Run course even friendlier.

Winning score in the minus twenties?

Two PGA Tour caddies going well in the US Senior (not so) Open:
Lance Ten Broeck (Jesper Parnevik etc) in 2nd place with a 66 (-4).

Damon Green (Zach Johnson) in 10th following a 68.

Tom Kite leading after a 28 on his first nine holes..

Kwini do you know where I can find a list of alternates for the OPEN?

Stricker starting to chew into Troy's lead... Not a lot of difference scoring wise between Scotland and Illinois. Is the cut going to go down to -4 there as well...?

Hi benson,
Not sure that I do unless it's specifically listed on The Open website.

But I DO know that Ben Crane is 1st alternate - two things I'm not completely sure of:
1).The date that the owgr for alternates is taken.
2).Exactly how many players are currently in the field which, last I heard, was oversubscribed, i.e. more than 156 which is when alternates will kick in. Last year Ricky Barnes was on the beach in the Santa Cruz area when he found that he was rocketing up the alternate list. Ended up flying over, getting in and having a good Open, all without a practice round!

pd,
Looks a very good chance that the -3's will miss out on the John Deere cut. Imagine the pros welcome a relatively straightforward challenge before a Major - last thing they'd want is a long grind where par is king.

I see red at the top of the shottracker LB, time's up for Troy...?

I think the Open Championship alternate list is as of May 20th OWGR rankings.

Some early morning rain (where'd that come from?) should have softened the Deere Run course even more; they're going out two-by-two starting shortly and, trite as it is to say it, anyone going really low today is still in this with a realistic chance.
The leaders stalled a bit yesterday, but every sign that there are plenty of low 60-somethings out there.

Terrible field in prospect for Mississippi's heat next week, an insult to tournament directors everywhere but Mississippi in July was never going to be popular.

Meanwhile, Lance Ten Broeck leads the US Senior Open; all European combatants made the cut - good job the USGA made sure no-one else from Europe got in then. Roger Chapman third, but Barry Lane disappointingly back in 54th.

Lovemark is 2nd and Cauley is dead last today... so, which one of these youngsters has a brighter future?

Bernhard Langer seems to have got out of bed on the right side this morning. Leading the US Senior Open by 5 as I type.

Roger Chapman unfortunately not moving upwards though.

Langer is one mentally tough player! Nice to see him go low.

Lots players look to be burned out right now, princed, Bud Cauley seems to be one of them, been at it just about non-stop for fourteen months and an intense college season before that.

Ironic that Lovemark's best tournament so far was ended in defeat a play-off, won by Troy Matteson!

Good finish by Roger Chapman and his three birds in four holes has him up to 2nd; Langer with a double bogey and a closing bogey and still leads by four in the US Senior Closed.


Matteson is dead last in driving accuracy and first in putting! Can that last? I'd bet against it and look for the field to catch him up on Sunday. Stricker might win his fourth in a row but no surprise here if Zach beats him to it.

Leading contenders for the flight to England for The Open, those needing the highest top five finish of those not otherwise qualified:

Matteson (1st)
Harman (3rd)
Henry (5th)
Hurley (5th)
Lovemark (8th) (Lovemark also is in the final event of his Major Medical Exemption and needs a win today to keep his card)
Piercy (8th)
DiMarco (8th)
Gates (8th)
Christian (8th)

Will Troy Matteson become the first wire-to-wire winner on the PGA Tour since Rory won the US Open thirteen months ago?
Hanging on by his finger nails right now, just one shot ahead of Stricker with the chase group two shots further back, led by just-turned-pro Luke Guthrie.

Luke Guthrie doesn't even have a profile on the PGA website except a photo. Who in the world is he? Related to Woody and Arlo?

Leff,
He just finished at Illinois (where Stricker went). Finished 19th at Memphis in his only other start this year.

Langer +2 for the day so far, Chapman -2... Tied at the top!!!

Thanks, Kwini. You are a wonderful resource.

Stricker may win another PGA event today. Among those never to have won a major, is he the one winning the most prize money? I am guessing he made more than Sergio and Luke.

Leff wrote:I am guessing he made more than Sergio and Luke.

guess again

despite being 10 years younger and some of his career being on the less profitable european tour luke is a good $10m better off in career earnings

PGA Tour career earnings thru last week:
8th: Stricker: $33.580M
12th: Garcia: $28.874M
13th: Donald: $27.648M

Not sure about European Tour earnings, etc, as there's some double-dipping in there, WGC's etc.

i t hought we were talking about career earnings not just the pga money fest

according to wiki luke has another $14m on the euro tour - it doesn't say how much stricker has won outside of usa but i doubt its another $8m

Slow,
But some of that is double-counted, all WGC earnings for example.

Donald's WGC Match Play win counted on both lists,for instance, Stricker's just on the PGA Tour list.

PS: Roger Chapman now has a one shot lead in the US Senior Open.

Make that 2!!!

Go Roger!!!

Slowride wrote:i t hought we were talking about career earnings not just the pga money fest

according to wiki luke has another $14m on the euro tour - it doesn't say how much stricker has won outside of usa but i doubt its another $8m

Yes, I meant career winnings everywhere. Even if Luke double-dipped with his WGA winnings, he must be way ahead of Stricker then.

I looked up Sergio's career winnings on the European tour. He has made $3.7 million more than Luke.

http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/stats/career/index.html

Sergio's total earnings come to about $46 million (29+17).

So, Sergio must be the one with most career winnings never to have won a major.

I hope Zach Johnson doesn't win again. It's been that kind of a year with Bubba, Zach, Fowler, Kuchar, and Webb.

It looks like an English Chappie has done the double!!!

When I grow older, I WANNA BE LIKE ROGER CHAPMAN!!!

Fantastic performance, George Will must be toasting Roger Chapman from above.

Chapman now exempt for this year's PGA Championship AND the 2013 US Open.
Not many Europeans can say that.

Matteson vs Zach & God

god's not helping either of them right now.
I thought the Scottish Job was the battle of the unwilling, but this is ridiculous. Reminds me of Kenny Perry's win here when the play-off protaganists pretty much did the exact same thing. Except they didn't drop on tees.

As expected, Johnson didn't miss the opportunity to credit the Lord, and his savior, Jesus Christ, for guiding him through...

CBS was quick to stop it there and pull the microphone away.

Jesus has made so much money this year on the PGA tour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuqTE8xwhow

Where is Boo Weekley these days?

I would rather watch his interview than Zach's.

I hate these guys, why don't they denounce their fictitious deity when they miss the cut?

Total bloody hypocrites. Even if there was a god, do you think he'd be concerned about helping some inbred red-neck put a ball in a hole? These people ought to be sectioned. If religion wasn't so prevalaent by society, it would be seen as a sign of madness.

Leff wrote:As expected, Johnson didn't miss the opportunity to credit the Lord, and his savior, Jesus Christ, for guiding him through...

I wonder how Matteson feels, apparently not being on God's shortlist?

Small minded to suggest the likes of Johnson is so small minded in thinking God actually helped blow his ball towards the hole... or some other devine intervention. The guy is just thanking his belief as part of his upbringing.

Anyway... what a shot from the bunker 2nd time round! Just stunning. Never sure what to make of Johnson. I do like watching him play, by god is he a good putter , but admittedly his off course personality doesn't endear me that much.

What was surprising was the amount of mental mistakes - Stricker on the driveable par 4, Matteson's driver on 18 - twice, the shots into the water etc. Always reassuring for the watching amateur! Striking similarities on both sides of the pond yesterday.

Lairdy wrote:Small minded to suggest the likes of Johnson is so small minded in thinking God actually helped blow his ball towards the hole... or some other devine intervention. The guy is just thanking his belief as part of his upbringing.

Anyway... what a shot from the bunker 2nd time round! Just stunning. Never sure what to make of Johnson. I do like watching him play, by god is he a good putter , but admittedly his off course personality doesn't endear me that much.

What was surprising was the amount of mental mistakes - Stricker on the driveable par 4, Matteson's driver on 18 - twice, the shots into the water etc. Always reassuring for the watching amateur! Striking similarities on both sides of the pond yesterday.

Yet, if someone thanked the fairies at the bottom of the garden or the wishing well for their success they'd be branded as mad men.

I don't see the difference really.