PGA Tour: Canada Dry: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).What a fantastic weekend of golf, what dominance by Mickelson and Stenson, better ball final round of 58 I believe. Not to mention that they had the day's lowest round on Thursday, Saturday & Sunday - Stenson's 68 tied for lowest on Friday. And Well Done to Troon also - back again soon I hope.

2).Some will say they benefitted a little from the luck of the draw. So who were the (unofficial) leaders from the Thursday morning / Friday afternoon wave?
-5: Stricker
-4: McIlroy
-1: Reed, Woodland
+1: Rose, Westwood, Day, Snedeker, Thongchai

3).Part-timer Stricker now gets to add some events to his schedule if he can drag himself away from hunting camp: The PGA Championship, then the Barclays this year (and then who knows what further FedEx action he'll get?), plus The Masters and Birkdale next year. He'll be a Champions Tour player by then!
JB Holmes also qualifies for The Masters and Birkdale; Hatton, Johnston, Kjeldsen and Haas will receive exemption for Birkdale.

4).A pretty good week too for Darren Clarke as he rolled to a T30 finish. His Ryder Cup Team appears now to have five certainties: Willett, McIlroy, Stenson, Rose & Garcia, plus Rafa C-B who looks almost sure of a place.
Wood's injury w/d is a big miss by him, especially if he is unable to play in next week's PGA. Apparently Clarke has told Wood he needs to prove his fitness regardless. Sullivan and Fitzpatrick round out the "automatic" qualifying places right now but Westwood and Kjeldsen are closing in. Whilst Kaymer flattered only to deceive, as has so often been the case this summer. McDool didn't even flatter.

5).Many of last week's Open contestants will have hitched a ride on a charter jet to Toronto and this week's "RBC Canadian Open" a few miles west of the City at Glen Abbey. But the Canadian Open is another tournament to have suffered collateral damage from the compression of the Tour calendar - this week's field features a handful or two of top players, almost without exception RBC "Ambassadors".
Let's hope the respective Golf Federations & Tours will learn from this year's shambles and devise a schedule that makes sense to all Tours and doesn't unfairly penalise certain tournaments.
Though Sergio's charity gig doesn't seem to have suffered.

6).Neither of last week's Tour winners will be playing, no Stenson understandably, and no Baddeley who continued his Scott Hamilton-inspired resurgence with the Championship trophy at the "Barbasol". He defied the burden of having the worst hair on Tour, apparently combed (or not) with lard, to win for the fourth time. Badds is fun to follow and the Tour is a better place when he's playing well.

7).Badds beat young South Korean Si Woo Kim, the same Kim who first qualified for the PGA Tour, via Q-School, at the age of 17; too young to take his place on Tour! But he graduated via the 2015 web.com Tour and now, a fortnight removed from his 21st birthday, has scored his 10th Top 25 finish of this season, up to 45th in FedEx points.
Good that KJ Choi was out there following the four play-off holes with Mr.Kim, KJ the "coach" of the South Korean Olympic crew and mentor to so many of his young countrymen. Kim could surpass his namesake KT and Ben An as the best young S.Korean - hopefully he'll bring some of KJ Choi's personality to the sport.
Odd to see Baddeley with no sponsor logo on his cap - but his caddie had one, perhaps they'll share the Valspar largesse?

8).At the risk of being totally anal about the Play-Offs, and especially the fact that it's the only way for players to retain their "cards", it's worth noting that last year's points threshold for qualifying for The Barclays was 481 pts. Can't see it being any higher than 475 pts this year, possibly slightly lower.
Those who secured their cards last week include Molinari, a beardless DeLaet, Weekley and Tringale. Greg Owen and Martin Laird wasted good opportunities to pile up some points and each passing week sees their situation become more dire.

9).So, who is playing this week? Defending Champ Jason Day for starters. Furyk, Hoffman, DJ, Kuchar, McDowell, Snedeker, plus tourists Fitzpatrick (could use a good result), Coetzee and KT Kim. Other Europeans include: Blixt, Cejka, Laird, Norlander, Owen, Pettersson and Jon Rahm.

10).The PGA starts at Baltusrol in nine days' time. Early betting seems to reflect US Open performance more than The Open. This is the latest from Paddy Power:
8/1: Rory, Day
9/1: DJ
10/1: Spieth
16/1: Stenson (weren't they watching?)
25/1: Scott (seems to be firing blanks), Phil (2005 PGA winner at Baltusrol), Rose (poor season so far), Bubba, Fowler (Top 4? Yer havin' a larf.)
33/1: Willett (still hungover?), Sergio, Koepka (injury doubt) and Grace (a long way off his 2015 Major form).

One thing you can bet on: Baltusrol won't be ploughed under to make way for condos or luxury homes any time soon. But that still seems to be the destiny for Glen Abbey, which makes it slightly odd that they continue to use it as the go-to venue for the RBC Canadian Open.

McLaren wrote:

Get yourself over to the entrance music thread to get some proper golf chat.

Mac, Super,
No-one choosing Midnight Oil?

No word yet to suggest the injured soldiers who have missed recent tournaments are not at least going to give it a go this week.
Koepka is clearly still in some trouble - only played 4 holes Monday, 9 this morning but seems prepared to give it a whirl, apparently in a bid to save his Ryder Cup automatic qualifying position which he lost last week to Kuchar.
Not the actions of a man who has been told by Mr.Love that his position is secure as a Captain's Choice if he can prove his fitness closer to Hazeltine date.

Nothing either about Berger and Wood; any others "questionable"?

I still dont understand why they are having the USPGA this week, but adding one event in with the olympics, should not have had this impact. Its like the golf year is over by the end of July. Does anyone really care about the fedex cup ? Then the Ryder Cup. It seems really strange.

beninho wrote:I still dont understand why they are having the USPGA this week, but adding one event in with the olympics, should not have had this impact. Its like the golf year is over by the end of July. Does anyone really care about the fedex cup ? Then the Ryder Cup. It seems really strange.

Whilst I don't disagree that the scheduling to accommodate the Olympics has thrown up a strange situation that no-one seems particularly happy with to answer your other question about anyone caring about the FedEx cup the answer is yes....

I do, and I am sure there are many more

ben,
The elephant in the room here is the sponsorship of the FedEx Cup and the fact that neither sponsor nor TV Networks want the Play-Offs to intrude too far into the NFL "Football" season - to hell with the PGA Championship which is not run by the Tour. And obviously the PGA Tour Pros love the FedEx Cup!

As well as Koepka, Fowler and Reed are also outside the eight Ryder Cup qualifying places, and they're off to Rio. As suggested earlier, imagine Love has given both the RC thumbs up, Kuchar too.

Kwin - How do you know -- for a "fact" -- they (sponsor and network) don't want to intrude too far in the NFL season?

Is the PGAT really going to take a meaningful number of viewers from the NFL coverage? Would even Open sunday impact viewer numbers for a match like Man Utd vs Chelsea?

Can you spot John Daly?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BIWAcckjLjL/

Sr,
The only reason I say that is because that was the published rationale behind the bringing forward of the Tour Championship date way back ten years ago. Now, there could have been more hidden agendas like Phil and Tiger touring the world for mega appearance fees, but that has not really been borne out by their subsequent schedules.
Meanwhile, the NFL (which I don't watch) has evidently gone from strength to strength.

Perhaps you have an insider explanation?

pedro wrote:Can you spot John Daly?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BIWAcckjLjL/

Where is Y.E Yang?

Who is next to JD?
And: Who is seated, far left?

Shaun Micheel next to JD and no idea about far left.

Shaun Micheel? Mark Brooks?

Blimey! Completely forgot about Micheel.
Is the bloke on the far left a new-look Hubie Green? Otherwise, not a clue but pretty sure it's not Brooks.

Lanny Wadkins gets fatter by the day.

Micheel is next to Daly. I think it is Wayne Grady on the far left, front row.

Personally, I like the FEX Cup much better than the WGCs.

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The Olympics really messed the 2016 schedule. I think it would have been better if they started the Men's competition on Saturday the 6th rather than Thursday the 11th. Then the PGA could have been played on the 18th.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics starts on July 24th, about two weeks earlier than 2016. The 2020 PGA Championship is in San Francisco so there are no weather constraints, so it might be played in late April to mid May. Which really was not an option for New Jersey.

Or with the Olympics being earlier, the PGA could easily be played in mid to late August.

In 2020 the PGA champs could be played against the French Open.

Maybe it is Grady; imagine he'd be there doing media of some sort. To the annoyance of listeners no doubt.
I also prefer the FedEx Play-Offs to the three stroke-play WGC's, love the original format for the MatchPlay though.

Kwin - Perhaps I can't see "the forest through the trees" ... but every time (twice thus far) I've met with the Fed Ex (advance) team as our club hosts the penultimate event for the Fed Ex Cup in 2018 (I'm on the "Merchandise" committee), and they discuss factors for attendance/viewership, the NFL season has never been brought up.

My observation is that the NFL viewership is such a "given" (not good or bad), that those responsible for promoting the Fed Ex cup are singularly goal focused to build it. And they've done a great job as evidenced by the players that want to compete, gate at events, TV revenue. Business 101.

That's fair enough Shotrock, but I'm just going by the Finchem rhetoric back when they started tweaking the season end and the published rationale.
Of course, Cynicism 101 is never far behind when Finchem is speaking so could just have been his excuse. Who knows? FedEx wouldn't be telling porkies after all.

kwinigolfer wrote:Maybe it is Grady; imagine he'd be there doing media of some sort. To the annoyance of listeners no doubt.
I also prefer the FedEx Play-Offs to the three stroke-play WGC's, love the original format for the MatchPlay though.

Thought Tiger would show up?