This year’s PLAYERS Championship almost felt like a tournament of two halves.
In the first two rounds we had probably the most benign conditions you could ever wish for and with the course in unbelievably good shape it provided some great opportunities for scoring. I kicked things off with my lowest round there in 20 years, a six-under par 66, and it felt nice to be able to fully put into practice the things I’d worked on with David Leadbetter recently, which I am really excited about.
Then at the weekend this Pete Dye layout really showed its teeth. In fact, Saturday was one of the toughest days I can remember at Sawgrass…and there have been quite a few over the years. The greens were seriously quick, plus there was a blustery wind out there. It was a challenge, to say the least. With the scoring average for the day at virtually 76, you’ve got to say that Ken Duke’s 65 has to be one of the rounds of the year…if not the round of the year. Obviously big congrats to my fellow RBC ambassador Jason Day on a superb win, which cements his current and well-deserved World No.1 status.
Anyway, after starting so strongly it was disappointing to not be able to follow-up on that over the weekend and, as some of you may have seen, I received a little gift from above on Sunday morning from a passing bird! Unfortunately it didn’t bring me too much luck but I know my playing partner Justin Rose saw the funny side of it!
Maybe the luck is destined to go my way at this week’s AT&T Byron Nelson at TPC Las Colinas in Texas, a wonderful venue that also happens to be hosting one of our Golf Challenge regional events on June 6. That is a great opportunity to get to play a PGA TOUR golf course and it will no doubt be in pristine shape. Please click here if you’d like to take part in this event, or any one of the other 20-plus events on this year’s Golf Challenge schedule.
The Byron Nelson was one of my first PGA TOUR wins back in 1995. Can it really be 21 years ago? That’s unbelievable. Well, that was also the year that I got to meet Mr Nelson for the first of many occasions. I was US Open champion at the time and together we did a clinic on the Tuesday and Wednesday of tournament week, a tradition that we continued for a couple of years actually. I’ll never forget Mr Nelson saying some nice things to me about my game back then, which really meant a lot to me as a young man just forging a career in America.
Subsequently it was always a thrill to spend time with the great man. He was one of the game’s true gentleman and he had a brilliant memory; honestly I could have listened all day to him talking about his wins, his era and the guys he played against. I can’t see that anyone is ever going to beat his record of 11 straight tournament wins in 1945. It’s worth recalling that his stroke average that season was an incredible 68.33. Only Tiger’s since beaten that…and then only once in 2000 by just 0.16 of a shot. When you look back, it’s truly amazing what Mr Nelson achieved in his career and it’s wonderful that his legacy endures, not just in the record books but in this tournament. So I’m looking really forward to teeing it up here, as I always do.
Before we sign off, we have to give a big shout-out to Mike Usendorff who you’ll recall from last week’s blog was attempting an incredible marathon golfing challenge at Humewood Golf Club this Monday. In the end, Mike managed to play 200 holes in 10 hours. I congratulate him on this incredible feat and send my personal thanks again for supporting Els for Autism.
Congrats also to Jeunghun Wang who won the AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open at the Ernie Els-designed Four Seasons Golf Club at Anahita last weekend. That’s back-to-back wins for him on the European Tour – the first Asian golfer ever to do that and at 20 years of age the youngest in tour history. Well done to him and to everyone at Anahita, the European Tour, Asian Tour and Sunshine Tour, for hosting such a wonderful tournament. From the coverage I saw on television, Anahita was playing tough with that ever-present ocean breeze, proving that this beauty can also be a bit of a beast! What a venue, though.
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