Day: August 11, 2022

Andrew Kozan’s 935-mile commute in pursuit of TOUR cardAndrew Kozan’s 935-mile commute in pursuit of TOUR card

August 11, 2022August 11, 2022| 23:48

ELKHORN, Neb. – Andrew Kozan enjoyed an extended victory lap after an unlikely victory at last week’s Utah Championship presented by Zions Bank. Kozan and his wife Caylin made a 935-mile drive from Salt Lake City to Omaha for this week’s Pinnacle Bank Championship presented by Aetna, for an attempt at becoming the Korn Ferry Tour’s first multiple winner this season. Having suffered a skid of 11 consecutive missed cuts into Utah, Kozan had been planning out his strategy for First Stage of Q-School. Now he’s chasing his first PGA TOUR card. Kozan, 23, opened the Pinnacle Bank Championship in 4-under 67, a strong start at The Club at Indian Creek, a par-71 track measuring 7,721 yards. No player fared better than 66 in the morning wave. “I had never met him until today, and what I just watched was pretty damn good golf,” said playing partner Paul Haley II, who stands No. 2 on the Korn Ferry Tour Regular Season Eligibility Points List and has safely cemented a PGA TOUR return. “He hit the ball great, putted well, got up and down a bunch … I was impressed with his game for sure.” After his string off 11 consecutive missed cuts, Kozan had fallen outside the top 150 on the standings. With just two events remaining in the Regular Season, his prospects of finishing top-75 to qualify for the Korn Ferry Tour Finals looked bleak, let alone having a chance at earning a place in Sunday afternoon’s TOUR card ceremony in Nebraska. For a few months, Kozan struggled to bring all areas of the game together. Sometimes the driver might be off. Other times, the approach game, or chipping, or putting. “Three of the four would be great,” Kozan said. “And the one that wasn’t there would cost me.” It coalesced in Utah. Refreshed after a well-timed off-week where he barely touched a club, Kozan entered the final round at Oakridge CC in 13th place. He carded 8-under 63 and took the trophy with a one-stroke win over three players at 21 under. Kozan fulfilled the various winner’s obligations in Utah, then hit the road with his wife. They stopped at a Hampton Inn somewhere in southern Wyoming, then slept from 1 a.m. until 7 a.m. They completed the remaining nine hours of the journey to Omaha on Monday. “We drove ‘til we got tired,” explained Kozan. “We had a rental car the week before. Didn’t know if I was playing in this event until maybe Tuesday of last week; I wasn’t sure if I was going to be in (the field) or not. By then, by the time we looked for decent flights, it was a thousand bucks a ticket, so we might as well save two grand and drive over there. It wasn’t too bad. It was a cool, scenic drive.” From uncertainty of whether he would qualify for the Pinnacle Bank Championship on his number, to a reasonable chance at a PGA TOUR card, Kozan has seen an appreciative quick turn in fortunes. This week, the Florida native needs a two-way T3 at minimum for a chance at a TOUR card. The operative word, though: chance. It’s all he could ask. “It’s great, and it’s frustrating,” remarked Kozan of life in professional golf. “And that’s why we keep coming back.”

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FedExCup bubble boy Trey Mullinax enjoying second lifeFedExCup bubble boy Trey Mullinax enjoying second life

August 11, 2022August 11, 2022| 19:30

GERMANTOWN, Tenn. – Trey Mullinax could have found fault with his first-round 66 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. He didn’t putt well. He bogeyed 15 and 18. But the fact is he’s in the glass-half-full business these days. “I think 4 under was the highest I could have shot,” said Mullinax, who began the week at No. 70 in the FedExCup and clinging to the final spot for next week’s BMW Championship. “I hit a lot of good putts that didn’t go, but if I keep doing what I’m doing I have a good chance.” Mullinax isn’t complaining because he knows real trouble is more than just a balky putter. Nine months ago, Chip Mullinax, Trey’s dad, first coach and best friend, was diagnosed with Stage 4 throat cancer. Trey was playing in the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba when he heard the news. He missed the cut. Chip, a former stock car racer who runs the family transmission shop in Birmingham, Alabama, underwent five months of chemo and three rounds of radiation. Trey kept missing cuts. By the time the Barbasol Championship rolled around last month, Mullinax had missed 14 cuts in 23 starts, but there was something different about him. Chip had been declared cancer-free three weeks earlier. Unburdened, Trey birdied the 72nd hole to win the Barbasol for his first PGA TOUR title. “I tried to not let it affect me,” Mullinax said at TPC Southwind, where he was four behind early leaders Si Woo Kim and J.J. Spaun. “But mentally it’s tough, watching your dad, your best friend, go through cancer. I don’t blame any of my poor golf on that. I just wasn’t playing that great. But then we got good news, and it might have freed me up a little bit.” He paused. Reconsidered. “But I knew he was cancer-free a couple tournaments before Barbasol,” he said, “and I missed all those cuts, too.” Mullinax laughed. It hasn’t always been easy to keep his sense of humor, especially not after one of his amateur playing partners nailed him in the back of the head with a ball at the 2019 Charles Schwab Challenge. Mullinax lost consciousness but upon visiting the ER in Fort Worth was given pain pills and released. He finished T40 at the Charles Schwab, but something was wrong. He began to lose sight of the ball while standing over it. He was moody. He had persistent headaches. He missed the cut in his next six starts through the Barbasol, where he shot 77 with a cold towel around his neck, threw up in the locker room, and passed out trying to get to his hotel room. Doctors told him his concussion was more serious than he’d known and playing in the heat had made it worse. His season was over. Mullinax fell off the TOUR despite a Minor Medical Extension, and figures that, combined with the pandemic, his concussion set his career back about two years. “It took me four months of vision therapy just to be able to see the ball again,” he said. He regained his TOUR card through the Korn Ferry Tour Finals last fall. Fast forward to today and he is one of the TOUR’s emerging talents at age 30. “There’s not five people in the world who hit the driver like him,” said Jay Seawell, his old coach at Alabama. (Mullinax is 25th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee.) “Maybe Rory and a couple of others. He is really, really good but there were times when I think he wondered if he should be doing this. As soon as his dad got cleared, you could almost see the burden come off him.” Mark Blackburn, Mullinax’s swing coach back in Birmingham, called him “a top-20 player in the world, no problem. “He’s super-talented,” Blackburn added. “We’re just working on better decision-making and strategy. He’s a sponge. I’m trying to get him to hit lower, cut drivers to find more fairways.” Like Seawell and Blackburn, Justin Thomas, one of Mullinax’s old teammates at Alabama, was among those who tried to encourage him during the lean times. “I just wanted to be a friend more than anything,” Thomas said Thursday after signing for a first-round 67. “I mean, I love Trey to death; he’s one of the nicest people, got one of the biggest hearts, his family is incredible. I’ve had Thanksgiving dinner at their house when I was in college. “I know how good he is,” he continued. “Trey is so freakishly talented he could win a lot out here and stay out here as long as he wants. I expect a lot out of him.” Mullinax won’t have much wiggle room over the next three days, but so far, so good. He’s got aunts and uncles here watching him, plus his mom and dad. Friends. To them, and to his wife Abi and their two kids, the important part isn’t his scores, although those are nice. It’s that the hard stuff is behind him. “I’ve been hitting it good for a long time, I just haven’t scored,” Mullinax said before going to find his crew of supporters. “And now I’m finally scoring. I’ve got to think the good Lord’s got a plan.”

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FedExCup update: Rickie Fowler, the last man in the FedEx St. Jude Championship, shoots 65FedExCup update: Rickie Fowler, the last man in the FedEx St. Jude Championship, shoots 65

August 11, 2022August 11, 2022| 18:00

GERMANTOWN, Tenn. – Rickie Fowler’s spot in the FedEx St. Jude Championship came by the slimmest of margins. It wasn’t secure until Sunday evening. The first round at TPC Southwind also was Fowler’s first since splitting with the caddie he’d had for his entire professional career. The perfect recipe for Fowler’s best round in nearly a year, right? It wouldn’t seem so, but he shot 65 on Thursday to perhaps start a Cinderella run through the Playoffs. Thursday’s round was Fowler’s lowest score on the PGA TOUR since a third-round 63 in THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT in October. His third-place finish there was his lone top-10 of the season and accounted for half his FedExCup points. It was still enough to earn the final spot in the Playoffs after missing out for the first time in his career last year. His presence at the Playoffs opener seemed unlikely after he missed the cut at last week’s Wyndham Championship but the final 36 holes played out in his favor, as he finished eight points ahead of Matt Wallace for the 125th spot in the FedExCup standings. With his Playoffs fate out of his control, Fowler didn’t watch the Wyndham Championship’s final round. He played a casual round Sunday at Michael Jordan’s The Grove XXIII in South Florida, occasionally checking the PGA TOUR app to see his FedExCup standing. Now that he’s in, he has nothing left to lose. He was projected to move to the cusp of the top 70 in the FedExCup standings and needs no worse than an 11th-place finish to crack the top 70 and advance to next week’s BMW Championship at Wilmington (Del.) Country Club. It’s been three years since he last qualified for the BMW. “Being 125, obviously need to play well to just make it to next week,” said Fowler, who had Cobra tour rep Ben Schomin on the bag Thursday. “Kind of leave it all out there, see what happens, but definitely happy with the start, especially with not making a whole lot.” Fowler made five birdies, an eagle at the par-5 16th and two bogeys to sit three shots off the lead of Si Woo Kim and J.J. Spaun after the morning wave. Fowler missed just one fairway and hit 13 greens; he gained around two strokes on the field with both his play off the tee and approaching the greens. Fowler, who led the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting five years ago and was 13th in that stat in 2019, gained just 0.2 strokes on the greens Thursday. A 12-footer was the longest putt he made all day. He had a new putter in the bag this week, a Scotty Cameron Newport Plus that is slightly wider than the traditional Newport head. It was the latest putter switch for Fowler, who has cycled through several flatsticks this season. The most recent switch came two weeks ago, when he switched back to a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 GSS that had come from a set of heads once reserved for Tiger Woods. Fowler first used the club in 2014. “There was a lot of good out there today. Actually, a lot of really good putts,” Fowler said. “Left a couple short, but other than that, some of it was just a little off on read.” The margins are small on the PGA TOUR. Fowler knows that as well as anyone this week.

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