The 2016 calendar year was a most interesting one for the big boys who make millions of dollars on the American PGA Tour. The four major winners were all newbies and golf’s big four of Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and Rickie Fowler finished their seasons with some degree of success and yet some degree of incompleteness. It was hard to find any sort of a trend on the 2016 version of the PGA Tour.
One couldn’t say that the year was a failure for Spieth, Day and McIlory. Spieth won the TOC in Hawaii and the Colonial in his hometown. Day had a great first half of the year, taking home the hardware at the Arnold Palmer, the Match Play, and the Players. Rory won his first Irish Open, won the Fed Ex Cup playoff event at Boston, and won the Tour Championship as well as the Fed Ex Cup playoffs. While all three made a boatload of money, they will continue to judge the successes of their future seasons based on their abilities to collect major championships. They came up short in 2016.
Jason Day has a big-time issue with a bad back. He missed big-money tourneys toward the end of the season. Hopefully he won’t become the second coming of Jerry Pate. Rory McIlroy had an uneven season and yet his Tour Championship overtime win over Ryan Moore was great theater as well as a $12 million payday. Jordan Spieth is best remembered for his Masters meltdown instead of the positives of 2016. Part of making the 2017 season a rebound year will depend upon his ability to build a reasonable schedule that avoids chasing millions in faraway places. As for Rickie Fowler, 2016 was a definite step backward in his career. Maybe 2015 and his Players victory will turn out to be the high water mark in his career. Maybe he will turn out to be the American version of Sergio Garcia. Stay turned to next year for all the answers.
The golf story of the year was America’s Ryder Cup victory at Hazeltine in late September. Team USA romped to a big win over a European team of rookies and aging veterans. The crowds in Minnesota were enormous as well as vocal and Patrick Reed became the American version of Ian Poulter with his emotionally great team golf coupled with his big first-match victory on Sunday morning over Rory McIlory. The Sergio Garcia-Phil Mickelson match was one of the best Ryder Cup matches for purely great golf with both golfers shooting 9-under-par rounds.
The Americans needed the Ryder Cup win this time around after a trio of disheartening defeats in 2010, 2012 and 2014. It was a strong team win for Team USA and yet the Americans have to realize that all of those Euro rookies will be two years older and two years more experienced when the Ryder Cup is played in 2018 in France. However, the good news is that the American victory at Hazeltine made Ryder Cup competition relevant once again.
The Fed Ex Cup playoffs were all about golf’s heavyweights. There were no Heath Slocum or Billy Horschel moments as Patrick Reed won in New York, Rory won in Boston, Dustin Johnson won the BMW (Western Open) in Indianapolis, and Rory won the final event in Atlanta. The Fed Ex Cup playoffs have made professional golf relevant in September during the beginning of the college and pro football season. With all the big boys competing, golf can be riveting to the casual fan into September. To the PGA Tour’s credit, their mission has been accomplished.
This was the year that the anchoring putter ban came into play. Ernie Els had an indifferent season although he is on the tail end of his career at age 47. Keegan Bradley is a middle of the pack afterthought, far removed from his form as a major winner and Ryder Cup regular. On the other end of the spectrum, Adam Scott won twice in Florida and Brendan Steele won at Silverado. Among the senior set, Bernhard Langer is still an impact golfer on the Champions Tour with the long putter. Yes, the anchoring putter has made an impact on the tour, but it’s been a mixed bag of successes and failures.
On the local front, former Alameda High School and UC Berkeley graduate James Hahn continued his mid-30s surge on the PGA Tour with a win this past May at the prestigious Wells Fargo Tournament at Quail Hollow. Hahn competed on the high school and NCGA junior level with Kelseyville High School golfers Brels Solomon and Shawn Auten in the mid-1990s. A class act even as a teenager, Hahn is that one golfer on the PGA Tour who I actively root for. His victory at the L.A. Open in 2015 and his win in North Carolina last spring are most impressive for the ever-improving Hahn.
Although I was an opponent from the start, I do have positive thoughts about the return of golf to the Olympic Games in Rio this past August. The Gil Hanse-designed course was a great test of golf and the gold medal winners, namely former U.S. Open champ Justin Rose and seven-time LPGA major winner Inbee Park, were worthy champions. Having top-notch players such as Lydia Ko, Henrik Stenson and Matt Kuchar medal also was a boost to Olympic golf. As an aside, have you ever seen a bronze medal in an Olympic sport shown off as much as it has been by Kuchar? Talk about pure joy. Golf will return to the Olympics in 2020 and the PGA Tour has already taken the constricted schedule of 2016 into account. The PGA Championship will be moved to May from this point on whenever it is an Olympic year.
As the days get torn off the remaining calendar dates, 2016 will be remembered as a very good year for the U.S. Open champion and PGA Tour golfer of the year, Dustin Johnson. Now that he is a 30-year-old, DJ is reaching what we readily assumed was his true potential. He attributes his success to lots of hard work on his wedge game. See Woo Kim was the rookie of the year. Kim and Emiliano Grillo were the two rookies who made it to the tour finals this year. Rookies such as Mackenzie Hughes and Cody Gribble made the jump from the Web.com Tour to the winner’s circle this past autumn in Jackson, Mississippi and Sea Island, Georgia. Harry Varner III, the only African-American on tour other than Tiger Woods, won the prestigious Australian PGA against a strong field last week.
When all is said and done, if there is any theme one can extract from the world of men’s golf in 2016, it is that it just might be virtually impossible for anyone to truly dominate the game. There is an awful lot of talent out there and the clearest indication is this past year on tour.
