Posts

The steps that led to Brooks Koepka winning the U.S. Open

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — History will look at Brooks Koepka and note that he won the same major championship two years in a row. The only similarity in victories between last year and this year is that the name of the courses had the word “Hills” in it. Because, in truth, the U.S. Open he won at Erin Hills a year ago and the one he locked up Sunday at Shinnecock Hills could have not have been more different.

At lush Erin Hills, he took home the trophy after shooting 16 under par over four days in Wisconsin. This time, on a fast and hard Shinnecock Hills course that drew the ire of players this past week, he posted 1 over for the tournament.

How did we end up here, with Koepka becoming the first player to win consecutive U.S. Opens since Curtis Strange did it in 1988 and 1989? We go through all the key moments of Sunday’s final round.

The hole that won the U.S. Open

Koepka made five birdies, but it might have been the par at 14 that lifted him to his second consecutive U.S. Open. Fitting, really, that it was a par at a U.S. Open in which pars were so tough to get. The player with a bad left wrist, playing in the event that most puts that wrist in danger — at a U.S. Open with high, thick, punishing rough — needed to navigate that rough to get home with a pivotal par at 14.

He pounded his tee shot 340 yards, but it found that unforgiving rough up the right side. He advanced it as far as he could, hacking it out 98 yards. With that, he had to get up and down from 62 yards to keep his one-shot lead. His wedge settled 8 feet from the hole. He walked in the putt and kept a lead he wouldn’t give up.

The 63 that wasn’t good enough

Tommy Fleetwood was surprised when he shot 66 in Friday’s second round. Imagine how he felt after tying the U.S. Open record with a 63 on Sunday. He finished at 3:49 p.m. local time, then waited … and waited … and waited.

“Looking at the pins, you knew they were going to be more accessible,” Fleetwood said immediately after his round. “I knew I was kind of in it teeing off, but you still have to get off to that good start. [When I was] 4 under through seven, and it was game on.”

Still, he would have liked to have back the putt that just slid by on the final hole.

“I wanted 62,” he said.

Final-Round 63s At A Major That Didn’t Win

YEAR PLAYER MAJOR
2018 Tommy Fleetwood U.S. Open
2017 Haotong Li Open Championship
1995 Brad Faxon PGA Championship
1993 Payne Stewart Open Championship
1991 Jodie Mudd Open Championship

 

The Grand Slam conversation that wasn’t

Patrick Reed doesn’t lack confidence. He wanted to make a statement, and he did that early. Reed birdied his first three holes, five of his first eight, and went out in 4-under 31. The murmurs started: Maybe Reed could follow his Masters win with a triumph at the U.S. Open. Only seven times a player has opened a calendar year by the winning the season’s first two majors. The last time it happened was when Jordan Spieth won at Augusta and then picked up the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay in 2015.

Reed, though, couldn’t keep up the momentum after bogeys at 9, 11 and 12. A missed short par putt at 18 officially ended his hope of the major double.

The quest for a major comeback

In 1975, Lou Graham won the U.S. Open after trailing by 11 shots at the 36-hole mark. Tony Finau and Daniel Berger faced the same scenario. It appeared early they wouldn’t be joining Graham. Finau strung together three consecutive bogeys at Nos. 2, 3 and 4. Berger had back-to-back bogeys at the second and third. They each tried to rally — Finau made four birdies in a seven-hole stretch in the middle of his round, while Berger opened his back nine with a birdie at 10 — but they could not make the long road back from 11 down.

The USGA changed the place

The tone of the day started very early, well before Andrew “Beef” Johnston hit the day’s first shot at 8:21 a.m. local time.

“In preparation for [Sunday’s] forecasted dry and windy conditions and to maintain a challenging yet fair U.S. Open test, we applied appropriate levels of water to all putting greens last night and this morning for turf health and firmness,” the USGA said in a statement. “Similar to the preparation we took for Round 1, green speeds will be, on average, 10-12 inches slower than Rounds 2 and 3. We also adjusted some hole locations in a manner similar to what we did in Round 1, reviewing our initial selections and comparing them against our weather forecast and other agronomic data.”

Our translation: We messed up Saturday. We are going to make up for it. The place is going to play easier. Did it ever. Not only did Fleetwood shoot 63, but the whole field had a better day. The course played nearly a shot easier on average than it did on any other day this past week.

 

SOURCE: ESPN

/by

Why Jordan Spieth’s Next Four Weeks Are So Important

Why Jordan Spieth’s next four weeks are so important

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Jordan Spieth understandably could have been upset about putting his tee shot in the water and quadruple-bogeying his final hole at the Players Championship, but the three-time major winner was pretty pumped after his final round.

That’s because he really likes the way he’s playing, and that has his confidence soaring for the upcoming back-to-back tournaments on his home turf.

“I feel as good about my golf game right now as I have in two-plus years,” Spieth said Sunday after finishing tied for 41st at 6-under par at TPC Sawgrass. “I went 14-under … with three holes left in the first round until the 17th hole the final round on a golf course that really doesn’t fit my game, and I’m going to a few places in a row that I really love.

“Everything feels like it’s progressing really nicely. I’m extremely positive about the next few weeks.”

The PGA Tour’s next two stops are in Dallas, for the AT&T Byron Nelson Classic, and Fort Worth, Texas, for the Fort Worth Invitational. Spieth lives in Dallas and has played numerous rounds at Trinity Forest Golf Club, a links-style course that opened in the fall of 2016 and will be the new home of the Byron Nelson.

Spieth said that gives him a significant advantage over “anybody else in the field, having been there from the day they sprigged the greens.

“I haven’t seen a lot of the pins and I know the tees are going to switch around from what we normally play, but I’m excited about the next few weeks.”

Spieth hasn’t finished higher than a tie for 18th in six appearances at the Byron Nelson, but he has finished in the top 10 in four of his five appearances at the Fort Worth Invitational, including winning the tournament in 2016 and finishing tied for second last year and in 2015.

Those two tournaments will be Spieth’s second and third consecutive weeks of golf, and he’s expected to play the Memorial at the end of the month. It’s the only time he plays four times in four weeks every year, and he likes doing it.

“Historically I play better golf after I’ve played the week before,” Spieth said. “You just get these weird kinks, like what I did there on 18 [at the Players], these kind of, OK, refocus and make sure you’re playing away from trouble. I get a little, I don’t know if lazy is the right word, but a little lack of commitment or maybe even over-commitment, to trying to be too aggressive first weeks out trying to shoot up the board.

“Is it difficult [to play four consecutive weeks]? No. I’m in my own bed. There’s certainly a lot of obligations that I don’t have other weeks the next two, but I’ve done a good job managing them the last couple years and will continue to.”

Quadruple-bogey on No. 18 aside, Spieth’s performance at the Players was his best there since he finished tied for fourth in his tournament debut in 2014 (he missed the cut the previous three years), and his third-round 65 was his second-best round of the season. He had shot 66 five other times this season, including the first round of The Masters (he finished third).

Spieth missed the cut at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans two weeks ago and didn’t play in the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina, May 3-6. With his confidence in his game sky high, he’s excited about the next few weeks.

“I’ve got a four-week stretch here now that I really enjoy,” Spieth said. “This is the only time I play four in a row in a season, and I like doing that. It’s fun. I love being on the road and practicing and grinding and having a chance to play on the PGA Tour, and to have these events, go home — I’ve got an opportunity in these four weeks to have a lot of fun playing golf and potentially give myself a chance to win. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

SOURCE: ESPN

/by

A look at the changes made to Quail Hollow for the 2017 PGA Championship

A look at the changes made to Quail Hollow for the 2017 PGA Championship

A professional golf tournament has not been played at Quail Hollow since James Hahn beat out Rickie Fowler, Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose and Phil Mickelson in the 2016 Wells Fargo Invitational in May. That’s because this year’s Wells Fargo Invitational was bumped to Eagle Point because of the upcoming PGA Championship at Quail.

Since that tournament, though, the golf course itself has undergone some serious renovations in front of hosting its first major championship. Let’s take a look at some of those with the year’s final major just two weeks away.

These changes to the course took place in a very condensed amount of time. As Hahn was finishing off his second PGA Tour win on the back nine of the course, the front nine was already undergoing treatment.

Few places in Charlotte are reimagined more frequently — and more privately — than the exclusive club on Gleneagles Road. This past May 8 (2016), as soon as the last group teed off on the final day of the Wells Fargo Championship, construction crews descended on the course and began a 12-week renovation process that would have taken five or six months on most other courses. But Superintendent Keith Wood didn’t have that kind of time. The club’s president, Johnny Harris, wanted to have the course open to members by the fall.

That led to one of the most remarkable renovations of a golf course in the country, involving three new holes, overhauled fairways, reshaped greens, and the addition of areas for grandstands and spectators — all in three months. “I don’t think I’ll ever come up with any project like this again in my career,” says Wood, a 20-year veteran in the industry.

Here are three other changes to the Quail Hollow track.

1. New Bermuda: A type of grass called Champion Ultradwarf Bermudagrass has been installed on the greens at Quail Hollow. It will be as pure as the driven snow, and it should erase all memories of that nightmare 2013 event at the course in which the bentgrass greens were as splotchy as any PGA Tour event in recent memory.

2. Thousands of trees removed: We will see a sparser Quail Hollow than when we last saw it in 2016. Many of these trees were removed to allow more sunlight to hit the greens, but some were removed to re-shape the golf course, according to the Charlotte Observer.

3. Four-ish new holes: The first and second holes were meshed into a single hole, a 540-yard par 4. The fifth hole was changed from a par 5 to a par 4. A new second hole was built, a par 3. The 11th was given extra bunkering. This is an oddity, for sure, but not much has changed in terms of the actual landscaping of the track.

Golfers will see a totally different front nine (and greens) than they have seen in past years at this course. Jimmy Walker thinks it could lead to higher scores because of thickened rough and a faster track.

Kerry Haigh, the PGA’s chief championships officer, said he was a bit dubious about reformatting the course some 16 months before this year’s major, but Quail Hollow nailed it.

“They lay out all these plans on the table, and thank God we were sitting down; 16 months before the 99th PGA Championship (they) want to totally rebuild three holes and change the green on No. 11,” Haigh told reporters. “I’m not sure anywhere else we could have had that faith to make such significant changes to what is already a fantastic golf course.”

This may not make a material difference in who wins the golf tournament. Quail Hollow has produced some big boy winners in the past including McIlroy, Tiger Woods and Fowler, and given what we’ve seen in the last few years at major championships, that’s not likely to change in two weeks at the 99th PGA Championship.

SOURCE: CBS SPORTS

/by

Spieth’s Strong Finish Puts Him In The Mix At Memorial

Read more
/by

Titleist Heading to Wall Street

Mass. maker of Titleist golf equipment ready for $435 million IPO

By Dan Adams GLOBE STAFF  

A new symbol will soon scroll across the New York Stock Exchange ticker: GOLF, representing Fairhaven-based Acushnet Holdings Corp., maker of Titleist golf balls and other golf equipment and apparel.

The initial public offering next week — hinted at for more than a year — will peg the market value of Acushnet at around $1.7 billion. The offering is expected to raise roughly $435 million with the sale of 19.3 million shares priced between $21 and $24. Previous investors, not the company, will reap the proceeds.

Thanks to a series of related transactions in advance of the offering, the majority of voting shares will be retained by Fila Korea Ltd., which has owned Acushnet since 2011.

A spokeswoman for Acushnet, which was founded in 1910, declined to comment, citing a legally mandated “quiet period” in advance of the IPO.

Acushnet operates golf-ball manufacturing plants in New Bedford and Dartmouth and said it employs about 5,200 full-time workers worldwide, including 1,500 at a glove factory in Thailand. Federal filings indicate the company lost $1 million last year on $1.5 billion in sales of products under several brands it owns, including Titleist and FootJoy Golf Wear.

The offering comes in a year that has seen a substantial reduction in the number of IPOs in the United States: Just 85 have priced so far this year, down from 170 last year and 275 in 2014, according to Renaissance Capital. In Massachusetts, most of the 10 IPOs by local companies so far this year were by life sciences and technology firms; Acushnet’s would be the first by a consumer goods outfit.

Kathleen Smith, the manager of IPO-focused exchange-traded funds at Renaissance, said the slowdown is largely attributable to private companies with high valuations that are proving to be a tough sell on Wall Street.

“Investors right now are very cautious about overpaying,” Smith said. “That makes [IPOs] hard for companies that don’t want to admit they’re not worth as much as they think they are on the private market.”

Smith said investors may be drawn to Acushnet’s IPO by Titleist, one of the most iconic brands in the $8.7 billion golf industry. On the other hand, she noted, the sport itself is in a decline, and other companies such as Nike and Adidas have pivoted away from golf equipment following successive years of declining sales. Golfsmith, a major retailer and Acushnet customer, declared bankruptcy last month.

“The industry is not that robust, so you need to have a strong relationship with diehard golfers,” Smith said. “Acushnet has good brands, and that’s important.”

Just 24.1 million people in the United States played at least one round of golf last year, according to the National Golf Foundation, down from 30 million in 2005.

Enthusiasm is even lower among those 18 to 34 years old, a group whose participation dropped 30 percent over the past two decades. A majority of youth surveyed by the NGF called golf “boring.” And while the number of people trying golf for the first time is rising, few of those players come back for a second helping.

Observers cite a confluence of factors in explaining golf’s subpar performance, including the lack of a new Tiger Woods-level star, the suburban location of most courses in an era of urbanization, and the length of games. They also speculate that the high cost, reputation for exclusivity, and stuffy traditions of the sport are particular turnoffs for younger players.

In response, some operators are trying to jazz up their offerings. Woods himself recently opened a beginner-friendly section at his Bluejack National club in Texas, where groups can play under lights at night, blast music, and wander from hole to hole in any order. The course, called “The Playgrounds,” also lacks any rough or brush, an attempt to reduce the time spent poking around for lost balls.

SOURCE: BOSTON GLOBE

/by