There have been six events of note in the world of golf that have occurred in the last seven days. The Fed Ex Cup champion has been crowned. The 2020-21 wraparound season on the PGA Tour has come to an end, and after a one week offseason, the new 2021-22 schedule starts just down the road at the Silverado Resort in Napa. It will be the start of a new season for the Korn Ferry Tour graduates as well. The Solheim Cup was riveting golf theatre with the European Team winning for the second time in a row. The Ryder Cup Matches are just a few weeks away and American captain Steve Stricker filled out his team with captain’s choices this past Wednesday. Finally, on a weekend when the Tour Championship and the Solheim Cup were the featured events, a most memorable Italian Open played out on the European Tour.
With a purse of $60 million and a winner’s share of an eye-popping $15 million, former UCLA golfer Patrick Cantlay lived up to his nickname of “Patty Ice” to capture the Fed Ex Cup playoffs. Cantlay went into Atlanta starting at 10-under-par because of the staggered start nature of the final playoff format. He finished one stroke ahead of reigning U.S. Open champ Jon Rahm, who tied for the low 72-hole aggregate score. Had the former method for determining the Fed Ex Cup still been in play, Rahm and Kevin Na, who finished third overall, would have headed back onto the course in a sudden-death playoff. While the staggered start is most unique in the world of tournament golf, it does make it easier to determine the overall Fed Ex Cup titlist. Up until three years ago, you needed a panel of three men with doctorates in quantitative analysis to even have a clue about who would win the big bucks. At least we can understand how we get to the end result. Not everyone likes the staggered start, but pretty much no one had any sort of an appreciation for the former mathematical method. It is a step up.
Now that the PGA Tour’s 2020-21 season has concluded, enjoy that one week offseason. The new season starts Thursday in Napa on the North Course at the Silverado Resort. Formerly known as the Safeway Open, the new sponsor for the next six years of the Napa tournament is Fortinet, a cyber-security company. Silverado kicks off the tour’s Fall Series, and although the likes of Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, and Patrick Cantlay won’t be a part of the field as they prepare for the Ryder Cup, you can be sure that there will be a lot of excitement and drama next weekend in Napa. Stewart Cink is the defending champion.
The world of women’s golf was also on center stage with a Labor Day Monday conclusion in the 17th biennial Solheim Cup Matches. Team Europe eked out a 15-13 victory over the American squad. While the American team had a greater amount of golf talent based upon the world golf rankings, the Euros had some of its rookies show brilliance during their first time in the limelight, most notably Finland’s Nanna Koerstz Madsen and Ireland’s first Solheim Cup participant, Leona Maguire. For the sake of pure drama, 16 of the 28 matches throughout the three days of competition came down to the 18th hole, meaning that the Solheim Cup was very tightly contested. Having a Labor Day Monday finish gave the women a monopoly on big-time golf earlier this week, and the Inverness Club in Toledo was an iconic choice for the Solheim. The Cup heads overseas to Spain in 2023 at the Finca Cortesin Golf Club.
It marked the first time that Europe has defended the Solheim on American soil. Captain Catriona Mathew won her second cup and promptly retired from Solheim leadership, contending that it was time for someone else to get to lead the European ladies. First contested in 1990, Team USA now holds a 10-7 advantage over the Europeans. Europe has won four out of the last six cups.
While this column has seldom featured the results of the Italian Open on the European Tour, last week’s tournament conclusion Sunday was noteworthy. It featured a first-time winner with a familiar face. Nicolai Hojgaard of Denmark captured his first European Tour event. He is the identical twin brother of Rasmus Hojgaard, who has not only won three times in Europe, but just so happened to capture the European Masters the week before. So for the past two weeks in Europe, the winner’s circle went to identical twin brothers from Denmark. This probably won’t be the last time we hear about the Hojgaard brothers as both are talented 20-year-olds.
With the start of a new PGA Tour season, a number of new faces will join the PGA Tour. Of the 25 new tour graduates from the 2021 Korn Ferry Tour, 19 of them will be tour rookies. Sunday marked the conclusion of the Korn Ferry playoffs, a three-tournament form of Q School for those golfers ranked 26-100 on the Korn Ferry Tour as well as those PGA Tour golfers who lost their tour cards because they were ranked from 126-200 this past year. Of the 25 golfers who survived the Korn Ferry playoffs, nine of them will be rookies. The three tourney survivors included such name PGA Tour regulars as Joseph Bramlett, Trey Mullinax, John Huh, Euro Tour regular Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Patrick Rodgers, former U.S. Amateur champ Peter Uihlein, and Kiradech Aphibarnrat. Bramlett and Rodgers are former Stanford University golfers. The rookie who is on my radar is Sahith Theegala, a member of Pepperdine’s NCAA championship team this past June. Finally, the close-but-no-cigar award sadly goes to Taylor Montgomery, a former UNLV golfer who finished 26th on the season long Korn Ferry list as well as 26th on the three-tourney field. He will return to mini-tour golf for another year.
The Ryder Cup Matches are just two weeks away. They are being held at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin alongside the western shores of Lake Michigan. It is the three-time site of the PGA Championship, most recently in 2015. The six Americans who qualified for the team are Collin Morikawa, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas and Patrick Cantlay. This past Wednesday, Stricker added Daniel Berger, Tony Finau, Harris English, Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Jordan Spieth. That makes for a team of six Ryder Cup rookies with heavy emphasis on the new breed. Irishman and three-time major champion Padraig Harrington already has Jon Rahm, Rory McIlory, Paul Casey, Tommy Fleetwood and Viktor Hovland on Team Europe based on world golf rankings. Four more golfers will be added to the team this Sunday following play in the European Tour’s BMW Championship at Wentworth from that tour’s list. After those nine linksters are determined Harrington will get to add three more captain’s picks to his team.
Next week we’ll feature the Ryder Cup with input from former thre-time Cup winner Johnny Pott.
