PGA Tour: When does the Tour Season Really Start?: Notes from the Ballwasher

1).Depending upon one's point of view, you could say this week is the 3rd start of the 2017/18 season, following the October opener in Napa at the Safeway, or the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Maui.
CBS TV would doubtless reckon it begins next week at Torrey Pines when Major TV Network coverage begins.
And some would dismiss the first third of the season entirely and say it really starts when the Florida Swing kicks off.
And many in the Northern United States would say that the season proper doesn't mean a thing until The Masters in April. Which, in reality, is the first event of the second half of the Tour season.

2).That is a long way of noting that the first quarter of this season concludes when the CareerBuilder Challenge has built the career of their champion.
Give or take an irregularity at the counting house, the CareerBuilder is the 10th event that pros can play, Houston the 20th, Memphis the 30th, and Greensboro the 40th and final tournament week before the Play-Offs.
And some guys haven't even played yet!

3).For instance:
Woods & McIlroy haven't played at all (except in presidential company) and nor have Sergio & Shane (too bad they weren't invited), Kaymer or Oosthuizen.
Justin Rose is played one, won one.
And Others just have one event: Stenson, Hatton, Fleetwood, Fisher, Molinari, Noren, Snedeker (been injured, plays this week), Harrington among them.
While these have two: Dustin, Fowler, Koepka, Day, Spieth, Horschel, Poulter, Kuchar, Hoffman, Scott, Donald, JB Holmes  while Jon Rahm, Ogilvy, Bubba & Phil play their third this week.

Obviously, many of these have exemptions which will mean they won't need to make the Play Offs. But I'd guarantee that some of the above will rue the decision to stick two fingers up at the first 10 (or more) tournaments and find themselves scrambling to:
~Qualify for the FedEx Play Offs.
~Get their 15 events in.
~Escape Mac's censure for double-dipping.

4).Meanwhile, Patton Kizzire's hot streak continued with the play-off win in Honolulu when all but James Hahn of the leaders stumbled over the final few Waialae holes leaving Kizzire & Hahn to contest the Play Off.
Russell Knox was never quite going to win but ruined the chances of a Top 3 by (effectively) bogeying 3 of the last 4 holes. Still, 2 x Top Tens is a decent start for him.

5).News from North of the Border concerns Graham DeLaet who has endured similar (don't ask me how similar) back issues and surgeries as Tiger Woods. He's now undergoing some stem cell treatment in an effort to find the remedy he needs to continue playing at a high level. The career of a wonderful ball-striker is looking in increasing jeopardy.

6).Hudson Swafford won last year's CareerBuilder, but this year's tournament looks wide open with Brian Harman and Kizzire hoping their good play works for another week. The European challenge is thin on the ground, Jon Rahm leading the way and Knox, Laird (decent record in the California desert) and Seamus Power the only GB&I pros competing.

7).Brian Harman was uncharacteristically (I would've thought) forthright last week about his disappointment at not making Stricker's Presidents Cup Team and his ambition to qualify for Furyk's Ryder Cup squad. One surprise was that he's played more tournaments than anyone else over the past 6+ years and he reckons he'll need to refine his schedule.
Wouldn't have figured him as the Tour's "Iron Man", but he's playing more consistently well than ever, up to #20 in the owgr charts and will be in all the Majors & WGC's. Something will have to give.  

8).Whenever the season starts, I'm looking forward to the next four weeks, with Torrey Pines, Phoenix, Pebble Beach and Riviera to come.

Kwini

The lack of an off season does pose a bit of a conundrum, especially for those playing in the play offs.

In order to get to the play offs it would make sense to play quite a few events in the 1st quarter of the season but then you commit to playing without any break in your schedule. The problem is magnified for those playing the R2D.

I suspect you might counter that some appearance fee hunting could be cut out but do we have much evidence of players getting much appearance money these days?

Whatever the case the likes of shane really need to reconsider just what the early season could offer them.

Oosthuizen has one tournament under his belt on the Euro Tour, (and Asian Tour and Sunshine Tours)

AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open, played in week 48 of 2017.

Not sure if he is still a member of the EuroTour. He only played one un-co-sanctioned ET event last year. SuperSixes in Australia.

Mac,
Agree with most of the above, but two things:
~If it's going to present a real problem for any particular player, he shouldn't try to play both Tours.
~If you're qualified for a limited PGA Tour field event, especially for those whose exemption might be at risk, for gawd's sake PLAY it! Shane!!

Don't think many Europeans have handled their commitments better than Molinari, but even for him every year will be a challenge, at least until he wins.

Which is no issue for Jon Rahm and he's out front building his career in California, -5 after 6 holes. He's good!

Most of the leading scores early in Round 1 are at La Quinta - where Hadwin had a 59 last year. Repeat this year?

Why is Rahm not in the UAE? Seems strange to be playing this funny event. The camera work looks terrible.

Ben, probably for some of the reasons mentioned above. With this being surprisingly far into the season rahm maybe thinks it is important to rack up some events.

He's already played a couple of events, and will play farmers open, so will miss dubai. Thought it would be good for him to play a big desert event.

beninho wrote:Why is Rahm not in the UAE? Seems strange to be playing this funny event. The camera work looks terrible.

ben,
Rahm defends his San Diego title next week - imagine that has something to do with it.
Poor camera work likely due to replacement workers standing in for union technicians. Probably get worse before it gets better.

Career Builder and Farmers have twice the purses of their EuroT counterparts. That a hour flight vs 24 hour flight is good reason to stay in Southern California for Rahm.

Yes, Rahmbo could have scored some extra guaranteed sugar by traveling.

Incidentally, LaGardere Sports Management Company runs the Careerbuilder tournament.

Jon Rahm (and Phil Mickelson) happen to be their clients.

Staying local(ish) in preparation for a title defence makes much more sense to me from a playing, recuperating and PR for the sponsors that paid him last year perspective. A tick in Rahm's "sensible" box for me. Shame for the ET perspective as he's already a pretty big name, but I still think a scheduling plus for a European player (Shane!!!).

owgr update from princedrac:

If Rahm finishes in a two-way tie for 6th, or better, he'll move ahead of Spieth into owgr #2. But he's also played 39 tournaments in the past 24 months, San Diego will be number 40. So his tournament divisor (once it rises above 40) will slowly start to rise which will slow his rate of ascent - though if he keeps on racking up podium finishes it won't much matter.


Still no further news on the striking TV technicians . . . . . . .

Makes absolute sense for me that Rahm’s playing California. He’s not gonna lose playing rights on either tour unless he misses the minimum start number. And his season’s aims after the majors will be to make both Tour Championships. The PGA Tour is stricter on start requirements, and East Lake is harder to get to than Dubai. So logic says play more in the US and less in Europe.

Pavin WDs from CareerBuilder.

Ken Duke who asked for a Sponsors invite, and didn't get one will replace him for the Pro-Am portion of the tournament.

And Yes, Kwini, you are correct about Rahm with the increasing divisor albatross hanging around his neck.

Rahm oldest tournament on his 24 month resume is the 2016 US Open. Every tournament Rahm plays after San Diego is going to increase his divisor. He is basically going to have to Top 8 every tournament to not lose ground in the OWGR and Top 4 to significantly increase his average.

He has to play extremely well to gain ground on DJ, and very well to stay ahead of Spieth and Thomas. I think Spieth (and perhaps Thomas) will be back ahead of Rahm by the time the Tour leaves California.

Spieth is 201st in SG: Putting, BTW. He leads the tour in GIR %.

Neither Spieth nor Thomas playing in San Diego next week, but remember their points lost per week are currently at a higher rate than Thomas and, especially, Spieth whose pts are decrementing (is that a word?) almost double Rahm's rate.

Looks as if Harrington, Lowry, Molinari & Noren will tee it up next week, whilst Justin Rose is also "committed" - a bit of a surprise; perhaps he'll drop out now he's squeezed into the Abu Dhabi weekend action.

EDIT: All (Europeans) above now confirmed for the Farmer's fun in San Diego.

I think "depreciating" is applicable word. At least the one that I used.

And yes, Spieth is losing points at approx twice the rate of Rahm right now. But this is where a larger divisor is advantageous. Spieth is currently losing 0.164 pts per week in attrition. Rahm is losing 0.104 pts per week attrition.

and FWIW, Spieth is losing a tournament in his divisor in the next couple weeks.

One OWGR that I sometimes track is the ratio of Net Points to Gross Points.

For every player that plays between 20-26 tournaments per year, the long term trend ratio is 56.25%. If a player's ratio is higher than 56.25% his OWGR average is rich (over-stated), and if under 56.25%, his OWGR average is poor (under-stated).

Dustin is at 53%
Jordan is at 60%
Rahm is at 75%
Thomas is at 68%
Rory is 41%

If Rahm averages what he has been averaging for the last 19 months, his average will go down to 6.86. Thomas's average will go down to 6.95. Rory's will go up to 7.35. Spieth's avg will go down a little and Johnson's will go up a little.

Nice rounds from Knox (-8) and Power (-6) today, dismal from Laird (ev) who'll need something like a 64 on Saturday to make the cut.


Golf Channel reporting that Koepka will be out for at least 8 weeks as his wrist heals. Hopefully for him in time for Augusta.

Pity I mentioned Martin Laird's "decent record", quickly got to -4 on Thursday and seemed to pull the proverbial hamstring after that.

Knox slipped a bit yesterday but Seamus Power is right in this, Jon Rahm too of course.
Very big day for Power as he can improve his "reshuffle" status considerably with a top ten finish or better. Good luck to him. Power is in next week's field then, presumably a week off for Phoenix, Pebble, possibly miss Riviera then hopefully in a strong position to play Honda & Valspar, plus the DR.

The first tournament of the Champions Tour season concluded last night; Montgomerie clearly enjoyed his Christmas at the family trough.
But even carrying overweight he should have won, one-stroke lead over Jerry Kelly on the 18th tee but a bonehead club selection saw him hit driver into a fairway bunker and birdie vs bogey thereafter saw Kelly finish his fortnight in Hawaii in style - following his T14 at Sony last week.

Kwini’s old favourite Lawrence Donegan has gone into meltdown mode on twitter over the success of No Laying Up. Quite entertaining.

I'm laying up on that one, Ned.

Don't look to be any fireworks in the first 2 or 3 hours of Round 4 at the Bob Hope (OK CareerBuilder), Jon Rahm & Seamus Power among those stuck in neutral as the leaders also seem to be stalled. Should be a back nine shoot out.

Looks like 25% of the likely European RC Team won this weekend.
Good week for Seamus but Knox has disappointed with a lousy (double bogey on 72nd hole) finish for the second week running.

I like Andrew Landry, secured his card and can't believe he won't win on Tour.

kwinigolfer wrote:Looks like 25% of the likely European RC Team won this weekend.

Real important in January!

Got to start somewhere . . . . . sign of things to come, hopefully.

Julian Suri in this week's San Diego field, looking forward to seeing how he fares; Uihlein going well so far too.

Regardless of whatever inanities Zach Johnson and one or two others might come up with, it's difficult to doubt that the "European" (world) experience is not healthy for good golfers, from whatever nation they come.

IMO, its not World Experience that helped Americans Koepka (and perhaps Uihlein) become World Class Elite Golfers.

Its talent and hard work.

For every Koepka you can name, I can probably name numerous Americans that have played abroad and have yet to make it.

Anthony Kang
Brinson Paolini
John Hahn

and Web-commers who have gone on to become (recent) Tour winners.

Austin Cook
Wes Bryan
Grayson Murray
Xander Schauffele

Yes, more than one way to skin a cat, but IMO, the common denominators are Talent and Hard Work.

GPB wrote:

kwinigolfer wrote:Looks like 25% of the likely European RC Team won this weekend.

Real important in January!

Yet, it was about 6 months ago the Yanks were talking up their chances in the Ryder Cup

If things stay the same, it's going to be a good one.

GPB wrote:IMO, its not World Experience that helped Americans Koepka (and perhaps Uihlein) become World Class Elite Golfers.

Its talent and hard work.

For every Koepka you can name, I can probably name numerous Americans that have played abroad and have yet to make it.

Anthony Kang
Brinson Paolini
John Hahn

and Web-commers who have gone on to become (recent) Tour winners.

Austin Cook
Wes Bryan
Grayson Murray
Xander Schauffele

Yes, more than one way to skin a cat, but IMO, the common denominators are Talent and Hard Work.

Talent and hard work is of course the most important part, but gaining experience of different courses around the world in different conditions with different players and different crowds can't do you any harm can it?
Denying that is a bit like saying Yanks don't need to travel because they've got it all at home. A tad insular, and I'm sure that top players like Koepka and Uihlein have gained a great deal personally from playing abroad so much that the likes of Grayson Murray and his like simply can't fathom, not least endearing themselves to foreign crowds. Better to be liked than not? Makes the game a bit easier.

Exactly super.


Not much interest this year, think these notes have run their course.

Justin Thomas has done pretty well w/o playing much around the world.

As far as I can see, he has played one pro tournament that wasn't either a Webbie Tournament or a PGATour event. He played the Dunlop Phoenix a couple of year ago.

He has never played a EuroTour un-co-sanctioned event.

I think the difference is maybe in how quickly a player is ready for the global level. Like GPB says there are plenty of examples of American players who have started overseas and not kicked on, or have even drifted out of Europe or Asia altogether. And the traditional route hasn’t done DJ, Spieth and JT any harm either. Those guys certainly turned pro more or less ready for the courses they’d grown up on, but perhaps needed a bit of time to adapt to playing golf overseas. You could argue the same works in reverse, looking at Rahm and Pieters who look equally at home on either tour, after coming through both European and college amateur systems. Then you have Hatton who didn’t go stateside, and Fitzpatrick who dropped out, and both arguably have taken a bit longer to adapt themselves to playing on all styles of courses.

Plenty of appetite still for these posts here Kwini! The new Wednesday topic is my midweek golf appetiser for the Thursday-Sunday tournaments. The lack of interest is more likely down to the mid-January tournaments.....

You beat me to the JT example GPB!

kwinigolfer wrote:Exactly super.


Not much interest this year, think these notes have run their course.

Not from my perspective. I have precious little knowledge of or comment to make on PGA tour golf so only rarely have much of value to add, but the notes remain just about the best thing I read weekly combining a knack for appealing writing, knowledge, opinion (and foibles!), humour, relevance and an almost unique slant on happenings. You ain't always right, but your notes are always interesting.

Pieters played horribly in the two PGATour events in Asia this past fall.

BTW...Rahm will become #1, if he wins Torrey Pines, assuming no key WDs that will hurt the SoF.

Yeah fair point. I was thinking more of how he seemed at ease straight away in US-based events. He was very much just the first name I thought of as a second example.

I read the notes with interest too. But the events so far aren’t that interesting tbh.

I’d probably be as interested in watching the Sunday-Wednesday web.com events as the last couple of PGA tournaments.... shame no one seems to have Picked up the rights over here.

GolfChannel dot com will be live streaming the Webbie event, if that is available in your area.

GPB wrote:Justin Thomas has done pretty well w/o playing much around the world.

As far as I can see, he has played one pro tournament that wasn't either a Webbie Tournament or a PGATour event.  He played the Dunlop Phoenix a couple of year ago.

He has never played a EuroTour un-co-sanctioned event.

No one is saying you have to, people are saying it doesn't do you any harm to start your career out doing a bit of globetrotting.

Wonder who'll draw the Tiger straw in tee times for Rounds 1 & 2 of the Farmers?
Snedeker & Rahm??
Sponsors anxiously await.

They'll probably stick him with Thomas and Spieth.

super_realist wrote:
No one is saying you have to, people are saying it doesn't do you any harm to start your career out doing a bit of globetrotting.

If you scroll up, I think you see that I opined that there are multiple ways to skin a cat. 

There are success stories from both sides of the argument and also failures from both sides

I can tell you that Woods will not be playing with Spieth and Thomas this week.  Neither are in the field.

kwinigolfer wrote:

Not much interest this year, think these notes have run their course.

I know the comments can be a little slow at this time of year before the Majors and WGC's have started and we are not really out on the course ourselves but your notes are my main source of keeping up with the PGAT and I think this is true for others even if the post count is a little lower.

The solution might be to get the site administrators to drive some more traffic to the golf section so that more chat gets going. Could Navy or the other mods here maybe talk to the site admins about this?

Just please keep writing the notes even if you wait until some of the bigger events get going. And remember Tiger is about to come back again which is guaranteed to get the numbers up again.

Kwini, I don't say it enough, but I always appreciate your weekly previews. 

And I always like the challenge to find a nitpicking error, which seldom happens.

McLaren wrote:
The solution might be to get the site administrators to drive some more traffic to the golf section so that more chat gets going.  Could Navy or the other mods here maybe talk to the site admins about this?

A bunch of wrestling fans in here? I don't think so. We get enough of that every two years at RC time

kwinigolfer wrote:Wonder who'll draw the Tiger straw in tee times for Rounds 1 & 2 of the Farmers?
Snedeker & Rahm??
Sponsors anxiously await.

Patrick Reed & Charley Hoffman playing with Tiger Woods. Day playing w/Sneds & Rahm, the last three Champs there.


Happy to see Will Wilcox leading the web.com after 3 rounds. Two or three years ago he was one of the premier ballstrikers on Tour - he seems to fight demons, but reckons he's sorted out his putting. Hopefully he'll get back on Tour and strut his stuff once again.

Could those posters also active on other boards maybe do some PR for us there? Just to attract a few more over here.

kwinigolfer wrote:
Happy to see Will Wilcox leading the web.com after 3 rounds. Two or three years ago he was one of the premier ballstrikers on Tour - he seems to fight demons, but reckons he's sorted out his putting. Hopefully he'll get back on Tour and strut his stuff once again.

Is he back to being Will again? He was Willy for a while. Always a sign of a certain lack of confidence if you can't even decide on your name.

Sorry to see Gonzo go backwards in round 3.

Still Willy, just prefer Will!

Gonzo has become inconsistent during his US experiment hasn't he? Can't seem to stitch 3 or 4 good rounds together - still, a 60-something on Wednesday would be good.

Confirmation from Suri that he has sponsor invites to Phoenix & Pebble Beach in addition to this week.

GPB wrote:Pieters played horribly in the two PGATour events in Asia this past fall.

BTW...Rahm will become #1, if he wins Torrey Pines, assuming no key WDs that will hurt the SoF.

Even if things go awry (i.e. he doesn't win), Jon Rahm will get another crack at Number One the following week in Phoenix, where he does have previous.
Then DJ has two weeks at Pebble & Riviera to set the world to rights.