With seven events remaining in the PGA Tour season, among the questions to be answered is: “Who will be player of the year?”
It’s a two-man race at the moment between Justin Thomas and Webb Simpson but with a WGC event, the PGA Championship and the FedEx Cup playoffs remaining, it’s what happens from here that will determine the player of the year.
Both Thomas and Simpson have won twice in this pandemic-interrupted season and both have been consistently superior. Thomas has eight top-10s in 13 starts while Simpson has six top-10s in nine starts. Had Thomas won the Workday Charity Open rather than spitting a three-stroke lead with three holes remaining he’d be the clear front-runner.
Bryson DeChambeau seems intent on making himself part of the POY discussion, but he hasn’t helped his beloved branding recently with his confrontation with a cameraman at the Rocket Mortgage event and his petulant reaction to tour rules officials last week at the Memorial Tournament.
Rory McIlroy needs to win to re-enter the conversation and Sungjae Im’s relentless consistency has worn off.
As they are fond of saying on election night, it’s too early to call.
“I don’t need to keep up with anybody. I’m good.” – Brooks Koepka
• Exhibit 5,647 in the ongoing distance debate: In pre-tournament interviews at the 3M Open, both Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson were asked if they felt compelled to find more length off the tee to keep up with Bryson DeChambeau. They average 307 and 306 yards, respectively.
Leave it to the refreshingly candid Koepka to get right to the point: “I don’t need to keep up with anybody. I’m good.”
Still, the fact the question was asked speaks to the underlying problem. And, yes, distance is a problem.
• Speaking of Koepka, he insists his lingering knee issues are not the reason he sits 154th in FedEx Cup points at the moment. Still, it seems more than coincidence that his performance has fallen off at the same time he’s been dealing with a patella tendon issue.
Watching Koepka at Muirfield Village last week, it was obvious he’s fighting his game. He didn’t look sharp and couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. At one point, he found a hazard off the right side of the second fairway then found another hazard off the left side of the third fairway.
He’s trying to play his way through it which is admirable but it’s clearly a struggle. Even his putting has gone cold, preventing him from saving strokes consistently. Next week will be one full year since Koepka’s last victory and even for someone as confident in himself as Koepka is, self-belief can get worn down without some encouraging results.
It’s not just because he’s 50, though that’s a part of it, but Mickelson doesn’t seem able to play consistently enough to give himself a serious chance to win.
• Heard this question asked recently – has Phil Mickelson won his last PGA Tour event?
It looks that way.
It’s not just because he’s 50, though that’s a part of it, but Mickelson doesn’t seem able to play consistently enough to give himself a serious chance to win. He’s as colorful as ever and if he never makes another cut, Mickelson is one of the all-timers for so many reasons, most importantly his game.
It’s no secret that putting doesn’t get easier as you get older and Mickelson ranks 148th on tour in strokes gained putting, down from his 139th ranking last year. Now he has a pause in his stroke – sometimes, not always – that screams desperation.
Perhaps more concerning is his ballstriking. He’s still long and wild but consider the falloff in his stats related to strokes gained approaching the green: In 2016 he ranked sixth, was 16th the next year and 13th in 2018. The past two years? Mickelson ranked 122nd and, now, 156th.
That’s more than a bad patch.
• While quarantining after arriving in the United States from his home in England, Tommy Fleetwood spent a couple of weeks in the Hamptons where he played Shinnecock Hills, National Golf Links and Friar’s Head.
That raises the question of whether there’s a better collection of courses anywhere in this country than the klatch of courses on Long Island.
Pinehurst and Bandon Dunes are in the discussion.
So too are the Monterey Peninsula (Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, MPCC Shore, etc.), Philadelphia (Pine Valley, Merion, Aronimink, etc.) and San Francisco (Olympic Club, San Francisco Golf Club, the California Club) with cases to be made for Chicago and other areas.
As bucket list items go, however, a golf junket around the Hamptons is near the top of any list.
• A final thought on the Jon Rahm ruling: Why didn’t the PGA Tour approach Rahm before he finished play to make him aware of the potential problem with his pitch shot on No. 16 during the final round?
If the tour has someone monitoring broadcasts and was considering a penalty, it’s only fair to Rahm and playing partner Ryan Palmer that they be made aware as quickly as possible. Letting them play the last two holes then letting a TV interviewer spring it on Rahm before officially discussing it in scoring wasn’t the right way to do it.
The tour does an exceptional job with rules and even if the Rahm decision followed the letter of the law it raised the question again of using slo-mo video replay and, perhaps more importantly, whether it’s fair to zero in on the leaders without putting every other player under the same microscope.
As one person inside the ropes at Muirfield Village said, there’s no question what happened to Rahm happened dozens of times over the course of the week to other players but their situations weren’t captured by cameras.