PGA Tour: CIMB Classic: Notes from the Ballwasher

1).CIMB Classic? What on earth does that mean??
It's nothing more than a limited-field tournament of convenience really, with a huge payday ($1.26M) to the winner, a Kuala Lumpur pit-stop on the way to Shanghai for some, and a minimum $13K cheque for ticking off a tournament towards the PGA Tour minimum. Casey, Donald, Garcia, Grace, Lahiri, Scott and Stenson among those who'll be happy to get a tournament under their belt.

2).Last year saw Ryan Moore win for the second year running, with Woodland a runner up (with Sergio and Na - sound familiar?) also for the second year on the trot. That two-timing 1st/2nd punch hardly ever happens. One other golfer playing CIMB is David Lingmerth who is taking European Tour membership this year in an effort to play the Ryder Cup.

3).In light of the interesting discussion about the merits or otherwise about playing two Tours, I wonder what the optimum number of tournaments is for Pros to play competitively?
Out of interest, the following are the busiest golfers in the owgr Top 200 as measured over the past two years, and in full knowledge that some of the busiest have taken a lot of weekends off:
71 tournaments played: Dawie van der Walt
70: Ishikawa
69: Bowditch
69: deJonge
62: Danny Lee
61: Brian Harman
Mixed success among that lot with breakout years from Bowditch and Lee, and arguably van der Walt, and varying degrees of career stagnation/regression among the rest.
The Top 7 Golfers certainly play less, but not necessarily as much as one might expect:
Day: 39 (several stretches off due to injury, but always keeps a skinny schedule)
Spieth: 56
McIlroy: 45 (probably about three missed due to injury)
Watson: 45 (about typical for Bubba)
Fowler: 54
Rose: 54
Stenson: 51

4).Justin Ray of the Golf Channel provides quirky statistical tweets and here are a few recent efforts:
Rookies winning first two PGA Tour events hasn't happened since at least 1960.
"At 18, Lydia Ko has 10 LPGA wins. According to the LPGA record book, everyone else in Tour history has 9 - combined - before turning 19."
"Ryan Moore 1st, Gary Woodland 2nd last two years at CIMB Classic. In PGA Tour history, that has never happened 3 straight years at an event."
"PGA Tour season has(d) started with 2 1st-time winners in 1st 2 full field events only once since 1960 (happened in 1980)." (In 1980 the winners were Stadler and the long-forgotten Jeff Mitchell.)
"Most runner-up finishes on PGA Tour last 3 seasons: Spieth 6, Watson 6, Na 5, Garcia 5."

5).The Champions Tour plays the Toshiba Classic in lovely Newport Beach, California. This will be the final event before the 30-man-field Charles Schwab Cup Championship; 66 points cover the first three, Montgomerie, Maggert and Langer, and they're approx 1,700 pts ahead of fourth place!
How will Langer fare next year, without his "anchor"? He's found a way to overcome adversity all his career, but imagine the end of his Champions Tour dominance is nigh. Let's hope he caps it off with an unprecedented third "Cup" - Irwin, Watson, Haas, Roberts and Lehman all have two.

Fine writeup ... as usual Kwin.

What Lydia Ko has done at age 18 is remarkable. All peaks and no valleys. I'm guessing she could call it quits now.

I think Langer will overcome his anchor and I look for he and Monty to stay in front of the field with the short but straight hitting Jeff Maggert slowing down. Just a hunch.

Nice write up Kwini

I agree, Lydia Ko's achievements so far are unreal. If she were a make golfer the hype would match that of the chosen one (Spieth).

Mac, if she was American, she'd be hyped up, regardless of gender.

Well, Spieth has "chosen" to win two Majors, two ahead of Lydia Ko.

Question: RE the Euro-Asian Tour... merger.... or whatever they're calling it.

Have any specifics come out on that yet? Or are they still in the behind closed doors talking about it stage...

Cheers Kwini

Interesting to see Spieth leading the pack of notables in terms of tournaments played - I wonder will that continue now he's reached the top or will he slacken/manage the pace a bit?

Cheers Bob,
Imagine Spieth will ratchet down a tournament or two per year, but as long as he's single and, so far as we know, childless, why would he do much more than that?
Most of the guys with young families play less, whether PGA Tourists or Europeans.
Mac harps on about the difficulty of playing two Tours but those least able to succeed doing that are those with young families, the Pollyanna effect. "Now, come on Paul, we've got millions, time to stop all that travelling, time to stay home and help with the baby."

I wonder what the optimum number of events for Rory is? Probably about 25 a year under normal circumstances and Spieth will probably get down to that level soon enough.

Kaymer is something of an exception, but perhaps he just prefers to play in Europe? Can't blame him for that.

As I see it there are three drivers. Firstly playing enough to stay sharp but not so much that you mentally or physically flag. Secondly is the tour schedules, how they combine and the implication of the travelling. Third is the ambition/appetite, which can of course be heavily influenced by family/home life.

It's easy to sit as an outsider and think "look at the money Rory/Jason/Jordan/Tiger etc etc have made already - why don't they just wind back, coast a little and enjoy life?" The answer is, the drive that got them to the top is in their nature and doesn't switch off that easily. I actually think of the ones I named, Rory is the most likely to coast from time to time. I think compared to the others, his rise has been more natural talent driven, and I'm not sure his ambition/appetite is just as voracious as the others.

Bob_the_Job wrote:As I see it there are three drivers.  Firstly playing enough to stay sharp but not so much that you mentally or physically flag.  Secondly is the tour schedules, how they combine and the implication of the travelling.  Third is the ambition/appetite, which can of course be heavily influenced by family/home life.

It's easy to sit as an outsider and think "look at the money Rory/Jason/Jordan/Tiger etc etc have made already - why don't they just wind back, coast a little and enjoy life?"  The answer is, the drive that got them to the top is in their nature and doesn't switch off that easily.  I actually think of the ones I named, Rory is the most likely to coast from time to time.  I think compared to the others, his rise has been more natural talent driven, and I'm not sure his ambition/appetite is just as voracious as the others.

I think you nailed it in all respects with that post

Agree Bob - though would say Tiger was at a mentally driven level far ahead of anyone else, perhaps only Vijay came close in such single-minded compulsion to win.


A week late and a few dollars short - I really fancied Scott Piercy last week in Las Vegas, but a T25 finish was not what I had in mind. Opened the CIMB with a 62.
Luke Donald crashed down the leaderboard with two double bogeys in his final few holes. Hopeless.

Just had a quick butcher's at the fields for five Stage 2 web.com Q-School, to be played in November.
No European Tour players, just a handful of Europeans who seem to live over here, plus the inevitable Daniel Chopra who, rumour has it, will sport a different colour barnet every day.
At least a dozen Aussies and plenty of Tour winners, even a couple of Ryder Cuppers (Riley & Wetterich). And Ollie the Schneiderjans.

Got to think if Kevin Na keeps this form up he will be a certainty for the Ryder Cup. His consistency over the last year/year and a half has been very impressive, just needs to learn how to win!

This will be Paddy's last start of the season, will be having knee surgery in the off season!

Surgeons must be busy this autumn/winter, Harrington joins Stenson in the sick room. Sure to be more?

sirbenson wrote:Got to think if Kevin Na keeps this form up he will be a certainty for the Ryder Cup. His consistency over the last year/year and a half has been very impressive, just needs to learn how to win!

What is his actual nationality? Ive seen his name under both the US flag and S Korean flag. Born in Seoul, I wonder how well he'd go down in a 'Murcan team.

I've only ever heard him talked about as American - I think he became a naturalised citizen a long time ago (2003/4?). He has a clear American accent - don't know how popular he is among the other players.

Imagine playing him and Bradley - Twitch Central!

Is there enough light in the day in October for the likes of Bradley and Na to be on the same team?

Ridiculous scoring at the Kuala Lumpur pitch and putt; nine scores of seven-under-par 65 or better. Only makes sense that Luke Donald rolled in with a 73 - even if he improves by ten shots a round on the weekend, he'll still struggle to reach the Top 20. What's wrong with his game?
Not much chance of competing in any of the flagship tournaments next year if he carries on at this rate.

It might be that it's soft in KL - not sure that suits Donald as he doesn't carry it far in the air and will get no run on soft fairways. Doubt that explains it all - he's just not in good form (and arguably hasn't been for a couple of years).

ANOTHER back surgery for Tiger. Someone tweeted that he has had more knives in his back than Julius Caesar.

One of the tenets of quality: Do it right the first time.
Difficult to believe Tiger keeps on going back to the guy who's apparently made a horlicks of it twice already.

Imagine a princedrac extrapolation will be published shortly projecting an owgr of about 550 by the time he gets his plasters off and back to work. Happy 40th.

Doubtful Tiger makes before next summer or is it soon to be making presumptions like that?

Who knows? Seems just a week ago he was talking about beating Nicklaus's Majors record - he must've known he was off for more surgery. Trick or treat with Tiger.

Harrington off to a better start at the KL p&p.

Great news. Hope he never comes back. There's a new guard now, and 9C the hasbeen is miles away.

Is that what's called back-to-back surgeries? Hope he'll make the cut for a change...

I'll get my coat.

I don't look for Tiger to miss any cuts anytime soon. I expect him to miss a lot of starts, however.

But, speaking of former and never-to-be-again World #1s, Lukey not playing much better.

Well done Justin Thomas with his first win, but still not convinced he's the world-beater deserving of all the hoopla he receives.
Continued signs of life from Adam Scott - a big time of year for him with his "Fifth Major" coming up in three weeks.

Pathetic European challenge, and GB effort in Turkey today is not much better.

Great to see from Justin Thomas. Is Stevie Williams now back to being Scott's full time caddy?

The 20-somethings continue to win on the PGATour. There hasn't been a 30 something or 40 something win a regular event since Zach won at St Andrews. Nearly 3 months.

DLIII (Wyndham) is a 50 something and JJ Henry won the opposite field event in Reno.

Will be on supers nighttable soon...

http://www.golfchannel.com/news/golf-central-blog/williams-rips-woods-excerpt-new-book/

pedro wrote:Is that what's called back-to-back surgeries? Hope he'll make the cut for a change...

I'll get my coat.

At last 9C is getting lots of reps in now.

No Tiger reps this week.
But Lee Westwood will play his 53rd WGC, more than a season's worth more than Els and two season's worth more than 3rd place Woods.
He's going to hit the WGC buffers pretty soon though, unless he starts to play a little (OK, a lot) better.

It seems HSBC have announced a five-year extension to their sponsorship contracts for the WGC-Champions and for Abu Dhabi.

That's a bit of a turnaround from the expectation in that article. I hesitate to say it's good news though, change is as good as a rest and all that.

True enough, SJ. They've finally posted this on the European Tour web-site:

http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2015/tournamentid=2015086/news/newsid=276658.html#isb9pEq9K38YYIWz.97

I wonder whether there's something unsaid in this announcement?

If BMW are withdrawing sponsorship of the BMW Masters, it would seem the "Champions" would benefit from having another Far East event to replace it. Perhaps upgrade the Hong Kong tournament?

The wheels of progress may turn slowly, but here's more evidence that at least they're turning:

http://www.golfchannel.com/news/doug-ferguson/notes-european-tour-contemplating-membership-change/

'Course, the players could also tell Pelley to buck up his idea to attract more sponsors, preferably in Europe.

Regardless, it seems Pelley's listening and wants to move forward. Encouraging news.

Robert Karlsson Monday Qualified for the Sanderson Farms Opposite Field event.

I'm just wondering whether that's the former Swedish great, or his namesake . . . . . . .