PGA Tour: Listing Towards Season's End at Greensboro: Notes from the Ballwasher

First topic message reminder :

1).Well done Justin Thomas! Lucky sod many times during your round, but the birdie on #17 was worthy of the Championship, especially with just about everyone else stumbling. So, another twenty-something wins a Major, and the World Top Ten is dominated by pros in their 20's. With multiple wins this season by Thomas, Spieth and Hideki, I imagine some bright spark will produce a stat to show the average age of Tour winners is a record low, early Tiger notwithstanding (pun not intended). Although 2000 might be close.

2).Thomas is probably the first Tour pro to win his first four events away from the mainland U.S.. I've always been a Thomas Doubter, largely because of the number of times his putter seemed to fail him when in contention. But his putting, and chipping in, and squirrels, held his round together on Sunday when he was spraying it off the tee.

3).Just a thought about this generation of young Americans: Is it that they're that good or that their predecessors, those pros following Tiger, underachieved?
Only Dustin Johnson (15) among American pros currently in their thirties has won more than Bubba's 9 PGA tournaments, whereas Spieth has already chalked up 11 (and Rory 13, Scott 13, Day and Sergio 10 apiece).
Other US 30+ year olds with at least 5 wins are: Sneds (8), Kuchar (7), Haas 6), Mahan (6), Walker (6), Byrd (5), Moore (5), Watney (5), only Jimmy Walker's PGA being a Major. Not surprising they routinely got duffed up at Ryder Cup time.

4).Very happy to see Molinari plod his way to a T2, and Louis complete his Major runner-up Grand Slam.
And shocked to see Patrick Reed enjoy by far his best event of the year in his 9th straight week of work, incl three in Europe. He must be knackered and is playing at home this week whilst the Tour travels 90 odd miles down Interstate 85 towards Tobacco Road and Greensboro's Sedgefield CC, a Donald Ross classic where the young Reed beat a younger Spieth in a play-off for his first win.
But here's an opportunity for another list. Pros that Louis joined with the Major runner-up Grand Slam are:
Nicklaus, Norman, Craig Wood, Watson, Palmer, Mickelson.

5).Quail Hollow's re-do seemed to receive mixed reviews with the Par-3 fourth hole in for widespread criticism. I don't understand why the PGA thought it was a good idea to co-commission a redesign with brand new greens that had to be completed in 15 months. They sexed up #16 a few years ago - no idea why they wouldn't have done the rest of their redesign and tweaks then. As it was they had hard, lightning fast greens until rain softened them up, and lowered the scores which seemed overall to help the bombers.

6).Brooks Koepka won the year-long, unofficial "major" championship (sponsored by sportform?), posting -21, one shot better than Kuchar & Matsuyama. Fowler shot -16, Spieth -10, Casey -9, Hoffman -3. Others who played all 16 rounds but in over-par golf were Leishman, Stricker (not a bad swansong), Holmes, Henley, Kisner & Westwood.

7).Whilst Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson were the T13 in reaching the 100 Majors played threshhold. Nicklaus (164) leads the list from Player, Watson, Palmer, Floyd, Snead, Crenshaw, Sarazen, Kite, O'Meara (didn't expect that), Langer and Faldo. Others will join them soon by virtue of past champion status: Love (99), Couples (98) and Singh (93). Next most as far as I can see is Furyk with 87 appearances - and he needs a career renaissance to play any more unless he receives a sentimental invite next year.

8).Lots of aggro in these (dis)United States recently; if there was to be a statue toppled this week, albeit metaphorically, it would be that of the rotund self-styled "Red Neck Swede", Carl Pettersson. Carl has been as instrumental as anyone in keeping the old GGO in Greensboro, a great "community" tournament. But Carl is having a shockingly poor season and, at the relatively early age of 40, this could be his last event as a fully exempt Tour Member.
Unfortunately, his efforts, and those of sponsor Wyndham and the local community, are rewarded by a weak field, even recent winners here like Sergio & Reed choosing to stay away. The owgr points for Sunday's winner will be 32 or 34, whereas last year SiWoo Kim earned 46 points - that's a lot of Top 50 defectors and disgraceful that Kim is not here to defend. What goes around comes around SiWoo.
Since winning The Players, he has 2 w/d's (as well as withdrawn commitments), four missed cuts, a T13 at Erin Hills where presumably he tried and a T50.

9).To Play-Offs or Not To Play-Offs, that is the question. The Wyndham Championship is the last chance to find the answer. "Notables" at risk of not reaching the Tour's estimate of 363 FedEx Points include:
Ogilvy (125th)
Ryan Palmer (128th)
McDowell (131st) - Exempt 2017/18
Badds (133rd) - Exempt 17/18
Smylie (135th) - Exempt 17/18
Lowry (145th) - Exempt 17/18
Kjeldsen (154th)
Furyk (156th) - Exempt 17/18
Ishikawa (175th)
Mahan (197th)
Harrington (199th) - Exempt 17/18

And it's also the last chance to keep one's Fully Exempt Tour Membership. In additions to those listed:
120th: Blair
121st: Hearn
122nd: Werenski
123rd: Seamus Power
124th: Summerhays (how many chances of securing his status has he blown since his tee shot on Memorial's 72nd hole?)
126th: Tringale
127th: Saunders
136th: Greg Owen (kinda tough to have 2 x Runner Up finishes on Tour in one season and lose your card - if anyone's going to pull that trick, you'd bet on Owen).
138th: Varner
etc, etc. Of course, these would be eligible for web.com Final action if they miss out this week.

10). No Fantasy Game this week but if the Grumpy Casino was open I'd bet on:
A).Kis, Haas, Moore - interested to see which Henrik Stenson shows up)
B).Glover, Streelman, Murray (wash my mouth out, but reckon he's a decent bet this week, might pay for his front tooth)
C).Varner, Kaufman, Ben Martin

Last year's leaderboard included SiWoo Kim, Matsuyama, Sneds, McDool, Donald, Rafa C-B, Billy Ho, Furyk and Kisner - safe to say we won't see quality like that contending this week. Sadly.

AFAIK, Bowdo has only past Champions status.

His 2014 VTO win exempted him through 2015-16 season
His 2015 Nelson win exempted him another season, through the 2016-17 season

He cannot even play the WTF. IIRC, He is exempt into 2nd stage of Webbie Q-school.

Whats surprising is that he apparently was never suspended for Conduct Unbecoming. He played about every week he was eligible.

Leading OWGR points earners this calendar ytd give a pretty accurate assessment of the year so far in golf:
330: Dustin
317: Spieth
275: Hideki
261: Thomas
251: Jon Rahm
228: Rickie
225: Tommy Fleetwood
203: Sergio
188: Koepka
183: Kooch - loads of points for someone who hasn't won

Still awaiting confirmation of final commitments for this week's Northern Trust event; we know that Scott and Snedeker are non-starters, still waiting for word on Martin Laird and one or two others.

Rob Bolton tweeted that Sergio, Sneds, Piercy, Scott and Bozzelli are not playing Northern Trust.

Sneds and Piercy are injured
Scott on paternity leave
Sergio (honeymoon?)
Bozzelli....Must be an injury, he is #115 on the FEX list. Can't imagine a healthy Bozzelli missing a lucrative playoff event.

Ooh yes, forgot about Piercy; and not surprised about Sergio.
No idea about Bozzelli, and see that Bolton also makes a good point about Armour getting into Safeway on the back of his excellent adventure in G'boro.
Still await news on Laird.

Walker Cup teams named today; is it just my ignorance or do we have a pretty good looking team? Two from Hampshire helps of course, and glad that R.O. is well represented.
If LP is reading, I spoke to a friend of mine from Sundridge Park, seems he was invited to Birkdale with Alfie Plant. Quite the experience for them both!

Good US team too, but surprised that Sam Burns has been left out.

3 from Hants if you go by postcode Kwini! Pinnacle of am careers for these fellas. Really pleased to see local lads make it.

For those interested in celestial things, my town was about 100 miles from Solar Eclipse Totality. We had about 99% totality at CHEZ GPB.

Got dark enough where you would need headlights to drive.

Oddly CHEZ GPB is in the path of another solar eclipse in a few years.

Not quite that blackout here ... but the crickets came out. Very cool.

kwinigolfer wrote:Walker Cup teams named today; is it just my ignorance or do we have a pretty good looking team? Two from Hampshire helps of course, and glad that R.O. is well represented.
If LP is reading, I spoke to a friend of mine from Sundridge Park, seems he was invited to Birkdale with Alfie Plant. Quite the experience for them both!

Good US team too, but surprised that Sam Burns has been left out.

I see the American Captain has a stupid name "Spider".

OK if his last name is Webb.

No eclipse-ing to speak of here, except from Rooney.

Shotrock wrote:Not quite that blackout here ... but the crickets came out. Very cool.

The Exodus is up next?

super_realist wrote:

kwinigolfer wrote:Walker Cup teams named today; is it just my ignorance or do we have a pretty good looking team? Two from Hampshire helps of course, and glad that R.O. is well represented.
If LP is reading, I spoke to a friend of mine from Sundridge Park, seems he was invited to Birkdale with Alfie Plant. Quite the experience for them both!

Good US team too, but surprised that Sam Burns has been left out.

I see the American Captain has a stupid name "Spider".

That sounded unbelievable, so I checked, and it is, his name is John, with Spider a nickname he had when he was a kid that has stuck. You really need to learn the difference between a name and a nickname.

beninho wrote: You really need to learn the difference between a name and a nickname.

Gee, ya think?

What's more, Spider is a perfectly acceptable name.

(Wish you guys would check with me first.)

beninho wrote:

super_realist wrote:

kwinigolfer wrote:Walker Cup teams named today; is it just my ignorance or do we have a pretty good looking team? Two from Hampshire helps of course, and glad that R.O. is well represented.
If LP is reading, I spoke to a friend of mine from Sundridge Park, seems he was invited to Birkdale with Alfie Plant. Quite the experience for them both!

Good US team too, but surprised that Sam Burns has been left out.

I see the American Captain has a stupid name "Spider".

That sounded unbelievable, so I checked, and it is, his name is John, with Spider a nickname he had when he was a kid that has stuck. You really need to learn the difference between a name and a nickname.

Well you can never tell with an American can you? What are you on about anyway? You had to check, so you didn't know whether it was a genuine name either.

I always thought super was a pretty stupid first name

Davie wrote:I always thought super was a pretty stupid first name

Not if you're hyper..

Super

Why are you so bothered by people adopting non traditional names? You are like a god worrying about what other people get up to in their bedroom. Just accept that not everyone needs an established British name.

McLaren wrote:Super

Why are you so bothered by people adopting non traditional names?   You are like a god worrying about what other people get up to in their bedroom.  Just accept that not everyone needs an established British name.

Kind of ironic, given your query on Kwini's current thread, don't you think?

I'll watch anything.

McLaren wrote:Super

Why are you so bothered by people adopting non traditional names?   You are like a god worrying about what other people get up to in their bedroom.  Just accept that not everyone needs an established British name.

I'm not bothered Mac, I'm just pointing out they sound and look utterly preposterous. I'm not even saying they should have a British name, but Tiger, Boo, Smylie, Webb, Spider, Skip, Banjo, Spunk etc are just plain stupid.

By the way, I might have seen you hoofing your clubs to the bus stop the other week.

super_realist wrote:

I'm not bothered Mac, I'm just pointing out they sound and look utterly preposterous. I'm not even saying they should have a British name, but Tiger, Boo, Smylie, Webb, Super, Skip, Banjo, Spunk etc are just plain stupid.

There I fixed it for you

What about Maverick?
McNealy turning pro.
Can't tell whether or not he's going to be the real thing. Not convinced so far.