I find that I”ve spent a lot more time than I”ve ever anticipated going to all those search sites on the worldwide web in my quest to accumulate golfing information of late. It was just a few weeks ago that I stated that the start of the PGA Tour”s season was beginning to look like the year of the journeyman. Since then, we”ve had two venerable tour events of note, the old Bing Crosby and the old Los Angeles Open, or as they are known nowadays, the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am and the Northern Trust Open. The results of those tourneys meant that I had to go off and Google exactly who was that man holding the $1 million winner”s check.
The 2011 Pebble Beach tournament will best be remembered as the event where professional comedian and amateur golfer Bill Murray won the team title alongside first-time tour winner D.A. Points. Murray has played at Pebble Beach for more than two decades, so in some ways it was inevitable that he”d win the team title one of these times. There was nothing inevitable about Points” breakthrough PGA Tour victory.
Points has spent more time playing mini-tour golf than he has spent on the PGA Tour during his 12-year professional career. The 34-year-old Points attended the University of Illinois, was a third-team All-American and a three-time winner of the Illinois State Amateur. He has won four Nationwide Tour events during a nine-year period of time. It always seemed like every time he qualified for the PGA Tour, he struggled on golf”s center stage and had to return to minor league golf the following year. Last year Points was 93rd on the money list. He has never played in the Masters although his big win at Pebble Beach will get him in that field this time around. Simply put, Points doesn”t have much of a golfing resume.
Aaron Baddeley has been around professional golf just as long as Points, but he”s a whole lot better known. Baddeley first burst onto the golfing scene when he won the 1999 Australian Open over Nick Faldo as an 18-year-old amateur. He turned professional the next year and successfully defending his title in 2000. The following year, he won another important Australian Tour tourney, the Greg Norman Holden International.
Baddeley joined the PGA Tour in 2003 via the Nationwide Tour route, and while he has remained exempt for the past eight years, he has had his share of ups and downs. In 2006, he recorded his first PGA Tour win when he captured the Verizon Heritage Classic at Harbor Town, edging Jim Furyk by one stroke. The following year he won at Phoenix, beating John Rollins by one stroke. Baddeley also took home an Australian Tour/European Tour co-sanctioned event in 2007 when he won the Australian Masters. Baddeley finished 10th on the PGA Tour money list in ”07 and he was one of golf”s emerging young guys. Alongside fellow countryman Adam Scott, Baddeley was often considered to be a bonafide threat to the reign of golf”s No. 1 player, Tiger Woods.
However, during the past four years, Baddeley lost his form. He finished 48th on the 2008 money list, followed it up with a 101st-place finish, and last year he came in at 110th on the money list. In 2010, he qualified for the United States Open and missed the cut. He wasn”t ranked high enough to get into the field at the other majors.
Yet 2011 has been a very different year for Baddeley. He had a 34th-place finish at Hawaii, missed the cut at San Diego, and finished 37th at Phoenix. Baddeley finished sixth at Pebble two weeks ago. He parlayed his good showing at Pebble Beach by winning the L.A. Open, beating Hall of Famer Vijay Singh by two strokes.
Baddeley and Points are wealthy men, but they are also journeymen in the big picture of golf. They have yet to make an impact in the majors and their last two weekends could be the high-water mark of their still relatively young careers. Only time will tell. For now, they fit perfectly into this year of the journeyman.
Speaking of journeys, golf has become very international in its scope. While there is big money to be made in faraway lands, professional golfers and the various tours need to think carefully about the current world situation in some very unstable places. It was less than one month ago that Paul Casey captured the European Tour”s Volvo Golf Championship contested at the Royal Golf Club in Bahrain. With all that is going on in Bahrain these days, it”s hard to imagine how much longer the ruling Al Khalifa family can hold power let alone maintain their Royal Golf Club or a European Tour event.
Political unrest is one thing. However, the golfing powers also have to take into account the deterioration of societal structure in our neighbor to the south, Mexico. The drug wars that have plagued that country during the past two decades have found their way into the resort areas of Mexico. Beheadings in Cancun, gang-oriented roadblocks in Guadalajara, and chaos in Michoacan have forced professional golf tours to rethink their interest in bringing tournament golf to Mexico.
The LPGA Tour has canceled its Tres Morias Championship, which is scheduled for April in Morelia, because of safety concerns. The PGA Tour is in Cancun this week for the Mayakoba Golf Classic, and the field is full with golfing names of note, including Baddeley, John Daly, Boo Weekley, Chad Campbell, Charles Howell III, Jasper Parnevik, Tom Lehman and other notables. The tour is convinced that they have security issues under control. Hopefully, those golfers in the field as well as the spectators will be safe.
Finally, the world”s top 64 golfers are in Tucson for the World Golf Match Play Championship. It”s not exactly March Madness, but when the 16th seed, Thomas Bjorn of Denmark, defeats No. 1 seed Tiger Woods in the first round, you know it”s all about the magic of match play. On any given week, anyone on golf”s center stage can beat anyone else. All you have to do is check out the results of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am and the Northern Trust Open to realize that just about anything is possible this year. And that”s why it”s the year of the journeyman.
