You have to go a hell of a long way down the rankings to find full-time PGA Tour players who weren’t invited to play last week.
Montgomery is probably the closest thing to “the next Young or Tom Kim”, yet he got in despite neither winning a PGA Tour event or being in the top 50 in the world. It’s not a particularly high bar to entry.
I don’t feel strongly one way or the other about the elevated events. It certainly guarantees a stronger field for the events this year, but probably not compared to years gone by where a sizable contingent of the good LIV golfers would have been in action.
The greatest ‘duel’ in golf was Stenson v Mickelson for the Open Championship and it’s not even close. Absolutely wild Sunday final matchup.
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Side note: I think its important to have this on the site since we are a golf ‘data’ site, Kim Jong II’s 38, 34 under round on a 6800 yard par 72 (I assume he played the tips) should probably be recognized somewhere.
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Yeah Stenson’s performance was a huge outlier among winning performances, on par with:
- Tiger at 1997 Masters
- Tiger at 2000 US Open
- Tiger at 2000 British Open
- McIlroy at 2011 US Open
- Oosthuizen at 2011 British Open
- McIlroy at 2012 PGA Championship
- Kaymer at 2014 US Open
Basically one of the Top 10 major performances in the last 30 years and we got to see 2 of them in 1 tournament with Stenson and Mickelson
Maybe it’s an example of the Birthday Paradox though and not a coincidence. There was the 1977 “Duel in the Sun” when Watson edged Nicklaus so you might expect something like this every few decades
I think this also illustrates why everyone was so high on McIlroy when he was young. He won his first 2 majors by 8 strokes apiece and then in 2014 had a month where he basically played like Tiger in winning 2 majors and a WGC in between.
If you had given me odds on how many majors he’d have by now I’d have put the O/U at 7.5 and maybe 30-35 PGA Tour victories
Mcilroy is such a head scratcher for me, the guys unbeatable when he’s on but from the outside looking in it seems like he doesn’t have the ‘fight in the dog’ so to speak like Rahm.
Rahm just seems angry all the time. Its horrible to bet against him and then he’s like 1 back after the 1st round…
These things are unpredictable though. Scheffler couldn’t buy a win for years then wins 4 in 6 starts
For almost 2 years Rahm seemed to lack the killer instinct too and he never played his best golf until he was out of contention on Sunday when he would backdoor those Top 10’s and Top 5’s
And Rahm’s anger led him to make stupid decisions like when he put it in the water in the Players Championship that put him out of contention
So you never know in golf
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A journalist asked the club pro at the course where that infamous round occurred.
Apparently he was recording how many shots over par he was on each hole and it was incorrectly reported as his score.
Damn, can’t imagine he’s still around to explain himself!