We are currently in the fourth week of the new 2020-2021 PGA Tour wraparound season. There will be 50 tournaments contested on this season’s PGA Tour schedule. The tour visits Jackson, Mississippi, this week for the playing of the Sanderson Farms Championship. Thus far it’s been a unique start to the new season. The game’s top players were in Napa at the Silverado Resort three weekends ago. Then it was across the country to the Winged Foot Golf Club in New York for the playing of the 120th annual United States Open Golf Championship. Last week the tour visited the Dominican Republic where they held the Corales Championship. It would have been the Ryder Cup weekend as well at the Whistling Straits Golf Course in Wisconsin, but the pandemic has put the Ryder Cup on hold for another year.
The other unique thing about 2020-2021 is the relocation of the two Asian events this autumn. The Kuala Lampur tourney will be played in Las Vegas the week after the regular tour event in Las Vegas. The tournament scheduled for Japan will be played at Thousand Oaks the following week. Both events should have strong fields with Justin Thomas and Tiger Woods as the defending champs, respectively.
Normally this would have been the “quiet” time of the year on the PGA Tour. After a summer of major championships, World Golf championships followed by the Fed Ex Cup playoffs, the big boys of the circuit normally take a break during the start of the new season. However, this time around, the top linksters needed to keep their games in top shape for the U.S. Open as well as for next month’s rescheduled Masters Tournament. Nonetheless, the likes of Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Bryson DeChambeau and Xander Schauffele will be taking a few weeks off and skipping tournaments in places such as Jackson, Sea Island and Las Vegas.
The tournament in the Dominican Republic was one of those autumn events that didn’t feature a stellar field because of its place on the PGA Tour calendar. It was originally scheduled for the last week of March and was going to be played opposite of the World Golf Match Play. With the top 64 golfers in the world in Austin, Texas, for the Match Play, the Corales Championship could always rely on a decent field, a sort of “best of the rest.” Yet when all is said and done, someone has to win in the Dominican Republic, and in the end someone was going to collect $720,000, a two-year exemption on the PGA Tour, a spot in the Tournament of Champions, the Players Championship and the Masters as well as a bundle of FedEx Cup points. Normally tournaments such as the Corales result in an old-timer regaining some old magic or some newbie getting that first or second career win.
The field in the Dominican Republic included 144 professionals and just two of them had a major championship victory on their golfing resume. One of them was the defending champ, Graeme McDowell, winner of the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. The other was Henrik Stenson, who won the British Open over Phil Mickelson back in 2016. McDowell missed the cut while Stenson ended up tied for 21st place.
That meant that Sunday’s leader board would be a battle of golfers who weren’t necessarily used to being on center stage on Sunday afternoon. Of the top 10 golfers in the field going into the final nine, Mackenzie Hughes, Hudson Swafford, Nate Lashley and Adam Long had exactly one victory apiece on the PGA Tour. James Hahn, a veteran who played at Alameda High School and UC-Berkeley and was recovering from elbow surgery, was the grizzled old pro of the top 10 with past tour victories in Los Angeles and Charlotte. The other five golfers in the top 10 were winless on tour. For Will Zalatoris, it was just his ninth PGA Tour event while Tyler McCumber had just 23 prior tourneys on his resume. In fact, McCumber might have had the most recognizable name among the top 10 because of his father. Mark McCumber won 10 times on the PGA Tour, won the Players Championship in 1988, the 1994 Tour Championship, and had runner-up finishes in the U.S. Open and the British Open.
Yet regardless of its field, I found myself watching last weekend’s tournament with interest. The scenery was beautiful. On top of that, I was rooting for James Hahn. I figured he wouldn’t win, but I was hoping he’d garner his second top-10 finish of the year so that he could regain his exempt status on tour. He ended up in a tie for sixth place at the Corales and coupled with his top 10 at Napa last month, he should be on his way to regaining his PGA Tour card. Hahn was well known in North Coast Section high school golf circles some 20 years ago and competed in junior tourneys with Lake County locals Brels Solomon, Shawn Auten and Jonathan Carlson. Always a class act, Hahn looks like he will have a home on the PGA Tour for the rest of this season. In the end, Hudson Swafford won the tournament for his second career victory.
During the course of my many years of competitive amateur golf, I have come across some gifted amateur golfers who have turned out to be great friends. One of those talented linksters is Jim Hegarty of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Hegarty has qualified into the U.S. Mid-Amateur on two occasions, has played in five U.S. Senior Amateurs, including one at Chicago’s Beverly Country Club in 2009, and has been a force in tournaments throughout the upper Midwest.
Of course, Jim is not a kid anymore, but that doesn’t stop him from competing nationally against his age group. There is an active super-senior circuit for amateur golfers and now that Jim is 66 years old, he’s making an impact with his fellow competitors. Last weekend he won the prestigious Sunnehanna Super Senior Championship in Pennsylvania. Sunnehanna is an old-style A.W. Tillinghast design (Bethpage, Baltusrol, Winged Foot) that requires accurate driving off the tee and a deft putting touch. Hegarty won the Sunnehanna Super Senior by two strokes over Hilton Head’s Duke Delcher. Delcher is another one of those talented career amateurs who has qualified into 27 USGA events and played on the 1997 Walker Cup team. Past U.S. Open champ Justin Rose played for the Great Britain and Ireland team that year.
Anyways, congrats to Jim Hegarty for his victory in a super-senior major. After he got me onto the highly acclaimed Crystal Downs Golf Club in Northern Michigan (a top-15 America course designed by Alister Mackenzie) some 25 years ago, I promised him I’d get him some good golf press if he ever did something impressive. The Sunnehanna Super Senior is just that.
