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

First topic message reminder :

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.

super_realist wrote:

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.

I think Westwood tried both of those methods recently to improve his putting...

I did however notice that the Lord didn't help Zach's ball walk on water...

Kwini

As the open is an official pga tour event will you be doing a ballwasher for it?

Hoping kwini does the Open ballwasher. I'll be travelling from Wed for the rest of this week, so I can't contribute with anything on the ET side or otherwise, apart from the odd comment in the evenings maybe...

Hi Mac, pd,

Was going to leave The Open to others; sure there'll be volunteers!
I shall reserve my ballwasher for the Mississippi thingy. Sort of.

Should say that I thought Troy Matteson played really well with the lead over the weekend - a brain fart on 15 and another on 19 cost him the title.

Another decent finish from Gary Christian, but he really needed to capitalise better on his first and second rounds. Perhaps he can prosper in Mississippi, but the Play-offs are looking less likely by the week. Russell Knox really struggling now and it looks like web.com duty for him next year.

Well, I might suggest that it goes something like "Jacklin blah blah Seve blah car park blah blah what the hell happened to Duval after he won..." and perhaps a comment that none of the top ranked players seem to have been at their best form in most recent outings ("... could call it The Wide Open blah blah...").

Hopefully, we'll have some eyewitness accounts to share over the event too.

Anyone heard from sportsville lately, by the way?

I'm heading over to Lytham on Friday so will try and post something up on Saturday mornign when I get home.