‘Put a plaque down in that bunker’ – Tiger Woods’ outrageous sand shot lights up World Golf Championships

When the latest iteration of The Match begins under the lights at Pelican Golf Club on Saturday (TNT, 6 p.m.) it will feature four of the most prolific winners of the PGA TOUR’s modern era. Of the five youngest players to reach 10 career TOUR wins since World War II, four of them will be playing: Tiger Woods (age 23), Jordan Spieth (23), Rory McIlroy (25) and Justin Thomas (26). Jack Nicklaus (24) is the fifth name on that list. The four who will tee it up at Pelican have combined for 24 major championship wins and nearly a quarter-billion dollars in official PGA TOUR earnings. They’ve won a combined seven of the 16 FedExCup trophies ever contested. All four have reached the top of the Official World Golf Ranking. Their on-course accomplishments are well known, but a deeper dive into their statistics can illuminate an underlying trend that many fans may not be aware of. Something you might not know about: Jordan Spieth Spieth’s name will permeate the age-related section of golf’s record books for generations to come. When he won the 2013 John Deere Classic, he was the first teenager to win a PGA TOUR event since 1931. By age 21 he was a two-time major champion, the youngest player to do that in the men’s game since Gene Sarazen. Among players in the modern era, only Spieth and Nicklaus have accumulated three professional major wins before age 24. For fans watching Spieth during those early seasons – especially in 2015 – it felt like he made every putt he looked at from 20 feet. Your eyes weren’t deceiving you: that season, Spieth made 27.2% of his putts from 15 to 25 feet away. The overall make percentage from that range on TOUR that season was just 16.0%. In the seasons since, no player with enough rounds to qualify has sniffed a 27% make-rate or better from that distance. But consider this: In 2015, Spieth actually gained more strokes with his approach play (40.78) than he did on the greens (37.67). In Spieth’s brilliant 2015 season, he was the only player on TOUR to make 25% or more of his putts from 15 to 25 feet and average half-a-stroke gained per round or more with his approach shots. There’s only been one player to replicate the feat over an entire PGA TOUR season since. Something you might not know about: Justin Thomas Perhaps nobody in the game can go super-low like JT. At the 2017 Sony Open in Hawaii, he peppered the PGA TOUR record books with numbers that have stood up for more than five years. At Waialae Country Club that week, he opened with 59, recorded the lowest opening 36-hole total score in TOUR history (123), and finished with the lowest 72-hole total ever shot in an official TOUR event (253). That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. Thomas has shot 63 or lower a staggering 20 times in his PGA TOUR career. Since the beginning of 2015, that’s six more such rounds than any other player – McIlroy is second with 14. Thomas has five rounds of 61 or lower in his TOUR career, and 38 rounds of 64 or lower. In both cases it’s most of any player over the last decade. It’s fitting, then, that a player who can go crazy-low holds a major comeback record: At the 2022 PGA Championship, Thomas won despite being seven shots back to begin the day. That’s the largest final round deficit overcome to win a major since Paul Lawrie was ten back at the 1999 Open Championship. Something you might not know about: Rory McIlroy Rory McIlroy is often heralded as the best driver in the world. Statistically, it’s justified: Since the beginning of 2014, McIlroy has averaged 0.96 Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee per round, the best of any player with 100 or more rounds played on the PGA TOUR In that span. Although his hypnotic excellence with the driver can sometimes overshadow the other wonderful things he does, McIlroy is obviously no one-trick pony. Take this, for example: Since the inception of Strokes Gained tracking on the PGA TOUR, McIlroy has put together nine different rounds in which has gained at least a full stroke in each of the four key disciplines: Off-the-Tee, Approach the Green, Around the Green, and Putting. No other player has more than six such rounds. In 2022, both he and Thomas did it on two occasions; they were two of just four players with multiple such rounds this year. Something you might not know about: Tiger Woods You would think that with Woods so limited it would be difficult to unearth and celebrate statistics about him not readily shared in the past. The reality is that as time passes his seemingly limitless list of accomplishments grows even more ridiculous. When the immensely talented players of today accomplish lofty tasks, the question isn’t whether Tiger did it before them, the question is usually how many times he did it before them. When McIlroy won the 2012 PGA Championship by eight shots, he joined Woods as the only players in the last 100 years to win multiple majors by eight strokes or more. Woods has done it three times (1997 Masters, 2000 U.S. Open, 2000 Open Championship). When McIlroy successfully defended his title at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina in the fall, it marked his second back-to-back of 2022 on the PGA TOUR (RBC Canadian Open). McIlroy was the first player to do that twice in a calendar year since Woods in 2007 – the sixth different year Woods had done it. Arguably the greatest stretch of golf ever played was by Woods when he won four consecutive majors, the Tiger Slam, at the turn of the century. Expanding this window from the 1999 Memorial Tournament presented by Workday through the 2001 Memorial Tournament, Woods won a ridiculous 20 times in 40 official PGA TOUR starts. But what if I told you that years later Woods would have another similar run of greatness? While the Tiger Slam era is rightfully heralded as the halcyon peak of Tiger’s play, it’s not the only time he had a run of 20 wins in 40 PGA TOUR starts. From the 2005 WGC-American Express Championships through the 2008 U.S. Open, Woods made 40 official PGA TOUR starts. Again, he won 20 of them. When comparing the two runs of dominance, the younger Woods still takes the crown, but the numbers within that later run are nothing to scoff at, either. Woods had a combined margin of victory of 69 strokes in the earlier stretch, and 56 strokes in the later one. Five majors won in eight starts for young Tiger, three in eight starts for the early 30’s Woods. The percentage of rounds led or co-led is close, too: 34.9% to 31.0%. Think of it this way: Over the last 40 years, five players besides Woods have won 20 or more times on the PGA TOUR over the course of their entire careers. Woods twice won 20 times in 40 starts, which is something unlikely to happen ever again just once, let alone twice.

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Davis Love III will be the captain of the U.S. Presidents Cup team for the event that was postponed until 2022, facing off against an International squad captained by Trevor Immelman of South Africa.

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GREENSBORO, N.C. — Webb Simpson counts the 2012 U.S. Open and 2018 PLAYERS Championship among his seven PGA TOUR victories. He’s played on three Presidents Cups and a trio of Ryder Cups, as well. But that doesn’t mean the 36-year-old doesn’t remember being a teenager growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and wondering whether he’d ever be good enough to play the game he loved at the highest level. Or horror upon horrors, what he’d do if he couldn’t. Simpson hasn’t forgotten the many battles he had with crosstown rival Brendon Todd, who moved to nearby Cary when he was 11 and won the state high school title three times, either. Or the time he beat Todd in the championship match of the 1999 N.C. Junior Boys. Both went on to play college golf – Todd at Georgia, Simpson at Wake Forest – and are still pushing each other to excel, only now it’s on the PGA TOUR. Those memories are literally everywhere, and Simpson wanted to find a way to make more for the teenagers to come. That’s why he’s hosted the Webb Simpson Challenge for the last 12 years. And why he was only too happy to serve as honorary chairman of the U.S. Junior Amateur when it was played in July at the Country Club of North Carolina where Simpson has a second home. “I had such an amazing childhood of junior golf, just guys older than me letting me come play with them, and I think that’s part of the reason I developed at the rate I did, because I was always challenged by guys who were older, more experienced, better players,” Simpson says. “So, it just felt like a fun way for me to give back. “I love being around kind of the youth of the game who are passionate about golf. They want to get better. They might want to play college golf or even at the professional level.” But the Webb Simpson Challenge is more than competition. Much more. The way the seven-time TOUR winner, who is playing in the Wyndham Championship this week, sees it, the goal is to combine faith, fun and golf – essentially a hybrid of a camp and a golf tournament. This year’s event was held June 27-29 in Southern Pines. The competition is held at two of the area’s great old Donald Ross courses, Mid-Pines and the legendary Pine Needles, which will host its fourth U.S. Women’s Open next year. The teens stay at the Inn at Mid-Pines. The Webb Simpson Challenge is open to rising ninth grade boys through seniors in high school. On the high side, there have been about 90 participants. This year’s group was 49. What Simpson calls the “secret sauce” of the event are the nearly two dozen NCAA Division I and II golfers who come to hang out with the teenagers and act as small group leaders. All are part of the College Golf Fellowship, and many have previously attended the Challenge. “So now that I’m 36, these kids kind of look up to them more than me because they’re only a few years older and they’re these great college golfers,” Simpson says. “We’ve had guys pretty much every year, the top 10 of college golf rankings come. “And I think these juniors, we have a lot of repeats. They have so much fun doing it. Also, obviously the faith component, we tell them about our faith. And we’re very upfront about it on our website. So, it’s no surprise or anything. The parents know what they’re getting into. But most people have given us great feedback. One of those “repeats” is Stephen Franken, who has four top-10s on the Korn Ferry Tour this year. He came to the camp as a junior, then volunteered as a small group leader while he was playing golf for N.C. State. Franken came back again this year and spoke this year. Among the others giving their testimony were Peter Fountain, who won the ACC Tournament this year as a sophomore at the University of North Carolina, and William Kane, who was Simpson’s caddie for his first two years on TOUR and now works for the College Golf Fellowship. “We want to give these junior golfers access, not only to college golfers and what to expect, how to choose a college, what should be important to them, but also pro golf,” said Simpson, who attended the first two days of the event and did a clinic for the teenagers. “We really want to expose them to what they might be getting into with golf in the future.” Simpson has long had an association with Pinehurst and Southern Pines. As he was growing up, his parents owned several houses in the area, including three different ones at CCNC, where he now brings his own family of seven a couple of times a month. Once Simpson got his license, he’d drive down on the weekends, taking day trips to play golf or staying overnight when his parents were there. One of his fondest memories is of the 2007 Southern Amateur that he won on CCNC’s Dogwood Course with his late father on the bag. So, the memories are strong in the Sandhills, and with the Webb Simpson Challenge, he has come full circle. He calls the event “one of my favorite weekends of the year.” “There’s an energy about it I think that’s really fun,” Simpson says. “And it brings some nostalgia, and it brings memories back. Some of my favorite memories in golf, even though I’ve been a pro now for 13 years is junior golf going to two-day tournaments with my dad, or even in the amateur golf, playing some of these great courses that amateurs get to play before turning pro. “So, it doesn’t feel like work for me, it feels fun. And I’ve gotten a lot from them as well.”

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