PGA Tour: Fall Series Chapter 2: Notes from the Ballwasher

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1).Overdue win for Ryan Moore in his hometown of Las Vegas. Now second, having leapfrogged McIlroy, in career moneywinnings for those under 30 years old, some way behind Dustin Johnson.
And a runner-up finish for Brendon de Jonge, a consensus choice among the best Tour members still without a win. Brian Davis also on that list of course.
de Jonge is apparently freshly inspired as his compadre and mentor Nick Price is captaining the RotW Presidents Cup Team and has brought on board fellow Zimbabweans McNulty and Tony Johnstone (and Smiling Shigeki Maruyama) as vice captains.

2).Summary of last weekend's fun for the Europeans:
~Fine 3rd place effort from Jonas Blixt: In contention throughout and now is almost certain of a top 70 finish on the moneylist which means he's assured of exemption into next year's "Invitational" tournaments, Bay Hill, Memorial, Colonial, etc.. Pretty good considering he missed ten weeks of his rookie year.

~Good, career-best, tournament but disappointing finish for Russell Knox; terrific ball-striking week, but squandered four shots to par on his final 8 holes (and that'll be about $100K he could ill afford as he strives for his card - $500K short of keeping his card, probably about $250K from the almost equally crucial top 150).

~What to make of Robert Karlsson - like Knox he's well outside the top 125 mponey-winners, still needing about $400K to keep his card? Four under par for his opening eight holes on Sunday, five over the rest of the way. Cost against par: about $30K and, like Knox, is still outside the top 150 and can't be throwing hard-earned cash away.

~Gary Christian began the week well but folded at the weekend. At #122 now and desperately needs to bank another $100K+.

~Daniel Chopra: Just about to lose his card - Stage 2 Q-School for Danny Boy.

3).And congratulations to Sweden's David Lingmerth who won last week's web.com event and has secured his card for the 2013 PGA Tour.

4).Good week here for Europeans as Bernhard Langer was sufficiently inspired by Martin Kaymer's Ryder Cup winning putt to take the Champions Tour event and he now has the lead in the year-long Charles Schwab Cup, which comes with a $1M to the winner. Langer is now almost at the $10M Champions Tour career money mark.

5).Talking of the Ryder Cup, there seems little agreement here about why Team USA capitulated except, reluctantly, that Europe played better on the crucial 17th and 18th holes, not just on Sunday but starting with Luke Donald's tee shot on #17 on Saturday. Luuuuuke!
Presidents Cup action starts next October and, interestingly, the Top 15 in Team USA qualifying includes all the Medinah combatants, plus Mahan, Watney and Bill Haas.
The Rest Of The World leaders are:
Scott, Oosthuizen, Els, Day, Schwartzel, Grace, Senden, Choi, Ogilvy, Bae, Baddeley, Chalmers.

Who seriously thinks the RotW has any realistic chance?

6).European golfers already confirmed for Qualifying School Stage 1 include Gary Boyd, Dinwiddie, Oliver Fisher, Dougherty, McGowan and Romain Wattel (who I'd consider a real loss to Europe if he qualified for the PGA Tour).
There are two weeks of Stage 1 qualies and we'll update with notables signed up for Week 2 when fields are confirmed.
Sons of famous fathers are also in the field: Cabrera, Sindelar, Tway, Wadkins and Wiebe among them.

7).The Fall Series travels 550 miles north-ish to the Bay Area (just outside San Jose, California), and the Robert Trent Jones' Jr design: CordeValle Golf Club. The course, with its two Redan-like par 3's, seems well liked by the players and once again has attracted a fair field by Fall Series standards, led by Ernie Els and the first US reappearance by a Ryder Cupper in Nicolas Colsaerts.
At stake for those in the field, along with the $900K first prize, continues to be:
~Top thirty money placing and a trip to the 2013 Masters: Bud Cauley.
~Top 125 moneywinners and job security for 2013: Brian Gay, Weekley, Appleby, Jerry Kelly, Herron and Justin Leonard (each of whom have career money exemptions available), John 63-86 Daly, DiMarco, O'Hern, Villegas and, of course, Christian, Karlsson and Knox.

8).A couple of other European PGA Tour members are on the threshhold of slipping out of the owgr Top 50 and 2013 Majors exemption. Martin Laird is not playing this week but Freddie Jacobson is on a swift descent and needs a top finish fast. As they used to say about South of England trainers sending a racehorse to, say, Catterick or Redcar, neither Brian Davis nor Freddie Jac are going to see their relations in California and I fancy both to have a good week.
Edit: Update on Jacobson: Seems he's withdrawn. maybe he has gone to see his relations.

9).Lots of eyes on Nicolas Colsaerts this week - needless to say, if (big IF) he can keep it in the fairway and putt anything like he did when propping up Westwood a couple of Friday afternoons ago, he'll more than make the $100K+ he requires to qualify for PGA Tour membership in 2013 (along with Hanson and Ishikawa).

(One Ryder Cup star of the past, Henrik Stenson, has only played 13 tournaments and, unless he shows up at the final two stops of the year will visit the Tour's doghouse - potentially a senseless end to his lack-lustre flirtation with the PGA Tour.)

10).Last, but by no means least, congrat's to Ken Venturi for finally making it to the World Golf Hall Of Fame after last week's popularity contest electing (barely) Fred Couples once again passed Venturi over. Any International inductee still to be announced, but would expect Colin Montgomerie to go close.

So, 8th Swedish golfer to win on the PGA Tour. How many nations can beat that? (and btw, can you name those 8?)

Jonas Blixt, Jesper Parnevik, Henrik Stenson, Carl Pettersson, Daniel Chopra, Freddie Jacobson, Richard S Johnson & Gabriel Hjertstedt. I wonder where Hjertstedt is now?

Google by any chance Tinmar? I would hazard a guess Hjertstedt isn't even a famous name in his own household.

Interesting that Karlsson is not on that list... maybe there's a message there for him?
There are also 28 Swedish winners on the ET...

But then there's the other side of Swedish top golfers... ZERO majors and if you exclude Stenson, no WGCs either!

Dissapointed to see Nicolas fading away yesterday, in the end he didn't get owgr points either... Maybe heavy schedule caught up with him and needs to take some much deserved rest, don't know...

I actually remembered Hjertstedt although I did have to check the spelling. He was the first Swede to win in the US and won twice overall. Richard S Johnson was the one who slipped my mind until I looked at Wikipedia.

Karlsson only played on the PGA Tour two-three seasons. Last year he was in a playoff with Westy for St. Jude, which is his best result. But he has been marred by injuries (eye injury I think) which basically set his career in reverse. Too bad, as he has/had the potential for a major win (had several top 10's).

Parnevik has been pretty close to winning the British Open a few times, with 1 or 2 runner ups as far as I remember.

Hjertstedt was the first with two, as well as one!
Only 9 top tens in his PGA Tour career, only top threes were his two wins: Which is the same as Charlie Howell, for instance, who has twenty other top 3's!

Yeah Charles Howell. Was seen as the next big thing 10 years ago, but dissappeared completely. Shame. Wonder what happened. Decent result this week though.

pedro wrote:Karlsson only played on the PGA Tour two-three seasons. Last year he was in a playoff with Westy for St. Jude, which is his best result. But he has been marred by injuries (eye injury I think) which basically set his career in reverse. Too bad, as he has/had the potential for a major win (had several top 10's).

Parnevik has been pretty close to winning the British Open a few times, with 1 or 2 runner ups as far as I remember.

interesting read on Karlsson. he certainly seems to battle the demons.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1026775/1/index.htm

hend0,

Some of what one reads about Karlsson (remember, this article is nine-ish years old) makes Parnevik seem normal. Hope he can bury those demons for long enough to secure top finishes at McGladreys and Disney.

pedro wrote:So, 8th Swedish golfer to win on the PGA Tour. How many nations can beat that? (and btw, can you name those 8?)

In the modern PGAT (since 1970) I think only Australia and South Africa can beat Sweden. I think England can only match 8 different golfers)

Australia (Graham, Baddeley, Norman, Ogilvy, Leishman, Allenby, Appleby, Elkington, Grady...etc)
South Africa (Player, Els, Oosty, Schwartzel, Sabbo, Immelman, Allem, Goosen, Frost...etc)

England (Jacklin, Oosterhuis, Faldo, Donald, Westwood, Rose, Casey, Poulter)

I checked the wiki list of English Golfers and I could come up with only 8 players who have won since 1970

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English_golfers

I

A bit naughty of wiki to include Ken Brown as Scottish . . . . .

kwinigolfer wrote:A bit naughty of wiki to include Ken Brown as Scottish . . . . .

England gets to claim Justin Rose!

Oops,
See Snedeker is missing from the McGladrey's as his wife just gave birth to Austin Jones - wonder why they didn't choose a Christian name or use Sneds as a surname?

Its probably "Austin Jones Snedeker". My guess that Mrs Sneds' maiden name is Jones.

My mother only had sisters and their eldest sons middle name was the maiden name.

Did Mrs Sneds drive an Austin? Maybe some parking going on??

I'm guessing this may be a common thing in the states (at least from my experience) ... Eldest child given mother's maiden name as middle name.

Regardless, the kid likely has some good putting genes!

Must admit I'm surprised that England has only 8 players to win on the PGA tour since 1970. A few multi-winnners in their group to be sure.

Brian Davis came pretty close earlier this year...

Greg Owen choked a couple of times too!

Do you think Blixt has what it takes to become a great player?

Jonas Blixt?
Too early to tell, but he has a brilliant short game, leads the Tour in their primary putting stat, 1st in bunker play, 19th in scrambling and has gone 243 holes since he last 3-putted!
He hits it far enough and would surely have been in the Tour Championship if he hadn't missed ten weeks thru injury; hopefully he'll have another good week and qualify for Augusta.

Would think the sky's the limit for him, but there are a ton of guys with potential . . . . . .

I hope Blixt hangs round long enough so I can see the Blixt's Sisters in Bikinis no less. Blixt Bikini Sis's.

GPB,
Agree that pgatour.com is cumbersome to navigate regarding Q-School.
(It also seems the performance of the site hasn't been up to snuff these past few weeks - exasperating to say the least.)

Gary Boyd appears to have a heavy schedule this week, what with confirmed tee times in Perth and at Q-School. Good for frequent flyer miles but not for the golf game.

Could there be two players named Gary Boyd?

I guess no one could add to my eight names of English golfers winning on the PGAT. I Figured if anyone could, people on this site would.

GPB, I'm pretty sure that's about it if you're looking after 1970.
Unless you want to count the Ryder Cups as well, like TimmyF...

As far as golfing legacy is concerned, where a golfer learned the game is more important than where they were born, so Ken Brown and Sandy Lyle (both born in England) would be definites, even Woosie was born in England and represented Shropshire (in the same team as Lyle) in amateur golf.
The Shropshire Lads, as AE Housman would presumably say.

super_realist wrote:I can actually see Harrington being overlooked. Majors don't appear to be a pre-requisite of success for players or Captains.

What is obvious is that anyone up for consideration has had a decent career and therefore a so-called big name, so conceivably it could be loads of people. Harrington isn't a shoe in at all, and if he comes up against Donald/Clarke/Westwood/Poulter/Garcia/Jiminez etc I'm pretty sure he'll be overlooked.

My guess on the the next 10 European Ryder Cup captains and their ages (aprox) when they would captain…
2014 McGinley (48)
2016 Clarke (48)
2018 Harrington (47)
2020 Westwood (47)
2022 Donald (45)
2024 Poulter (48)
2026 McDowell (47)
2028 Rose (48)
2030 Kaymer (46)
2032 Rory (43) <= a bit early for the kid, maybe push this back 4 years..

Close but no Cigars
Jimenez, Bjorn, Casey, Lawrie, Molinari.

Anyone else I missed out on that is likely to be a contender?

Garcia!

Bjorn will get the nod, presumably in 2018, Harrington and Westwood will make it when 49, not 47! Sergio!!
Can't help feeling someone will come out of the woodwork and upset this applecart.

Just looked at the PGAT Stage I qualifier in Mississippi.

Romain Wattel from France started well with a 5 under par 65. Tied 2nd

Gary Boyd was DQ.

=============

Given the # of Swedish players that have actually won on the PGAT versus England since 2000 (8 players to 5 players), no Swedes are in the rotation for RC Captain?

Jesper? Henrik? Karlsson? Hanson? (maybe a little disillusioned)

I don't think he will ever be a Captain, but I was kind of hoping Costantino Rocca would be an assistant Captain this year especially after Frankie clinched a spot.

GPB,
They've had Forsbrand and Haageman as vice captains, maybe one or two others.
Would think Jesper and Stenson have no chance, but Karlsson seems highly respected - you never know, but would think Bjorn will be the first Scandinavian (sort of).

Would think the better part of Hanson's career might lie in front of him, you never know!

hend085 wrote:Garcia!

Doh! I could have sworn he was on my list! My apologies Sergio.

kwinigolfer wrote:Bjorn will get the nod, presumably in 2018, Harrington and Westwood will make it when 49, not 47! Sergio!!
Can't help feeling someone will come out of the woodwork and upset this applecart.

With the likes of Harrington Westwood and Donald I think a lot depends on how well thay are playing... If they still think that can make the team they are sure to pass on captaincy 'till later in their careers. So yes maybe Bjorn could get in in 2018. And if Harrington Westwood and Donald them do not make the team they will probably get to be Assistant captains, then captains in the Seve Trophy and RC Captain the following year...

One question is will the European tour have a problem making a player captain if they play prodominatly on the PGA tour? More so in the case of Donald who has lived in Chicago for 15 ish years.

I think Clarke will get it in 2014, he has the advantage over McGinley in being a Major winner, having a better RC career and a better overall career

2016/18/20 will be from Jiminez/Bjorn/Harrington/Westwood........impossible to say at this stage to say who/in what order

No point pertending they are looking for the "best" captain each time, if that was the case it would be Langer every year...................

Romain Wattel good start in Texas has got me wondering.

Has a Frenchman ever had a PGATour Card?

Thomas Levet certainly did about ten years ago (guessing 2003). Spent most of the year not quite fit, having problems with vertigo among other things. Think he still has some digs in South Florida.

But Wattel seems to have all the tools to succeed as the best French golfer of "modern history", the past thirty years at least.Also see Gregory Bourdy is shown as having withdrawn - strange as he didn't appear in the original field information.

Jean Van de Velde?

Sky,
VdV looks like a good call - can't remember anything about that part of his career. Don't think he met with much success.
Coincidentally, his compatriot Marc Farry played his Round 1 in "Champions Tour Q-School: Stage 1" in Florida yesterday - shot 76, like Mark Mouland, sadly not on pace with the leaders.

Come to think of it, there's an outside chance that one of the Frenchmen might disrupt the RC captain predictions. Possible that one or more of them could be VC prior to but more likely in Paris - which might if successful then lead to full honour? Still unlikely I would have thought given relative weakness of overall CVs (RC playing career, tour wins, majors) compared to other candidates - captaining continental Europe in Seve trophy probably doesn't count for much here!

It would be funny if Van de Velde was RC Captain when it is in Paris.