Tiger Woods returns to Torrey Pines with eyes set on record 83rd win

JACKSON, Miss. – Sahith Theegala had qualified for his first Open Championship appearance, The 150th Open at St. Andrews, as a PGA TOUR rookie. He earned a spot at the Home of Golf as an alternate via the Official World Golf Ranking (No. 62 at the time), a remarkable rise considering he was a year removed from zero status on either the PGA TOUR or Korn Ferry Tour. St. Andrews is largely defined by its robust bunkering; a hole can be endlessly strategized based on wind direction, firmness, club selection and other factors. Theegala is a chess enthusiast; he freely shares his chess.com username (it’s srtheegala) and gladly accepts challenges. So when he and caddie Carl Smith mapped out their strategy for St. Andrews, the comparison was inevitable. “I’ve joked all year with Carl, ‘It’s chess, not checkers,’” Theegala laughed in advance of this week’s Sanderson Farms Championship. “We were out at St. Andrews plotting the bunkers, ‘It’s chess, not checkers, Carl.’” Theegala has long applied the “chess, not checkers” mindset in his rise through the golf ranks. After suffering a wrist injury as a senior at Pepperdine in fall 2018, he returned for a fifth year. The following season, without an opportunity to compete at Q-School due to the COVID-19 pandemic-induced combined season, he went about earning enough non-member FedExCup Points to qualify for the 2021 Korn Ferry Tour Finals, in which he earned his first TOUR card. Theegala qualified for last month’s TOUR Championship as a first-year PGA TOUR member, his season kick-started by a T8 at the Sanderson Farms Championship, where he led through 54 holes at the Country Club of Jackson. He cooled down in a final-round 71 to finish three back of winner Sam Burns, but the golf world was put on notice. Playing out of the Korn Ferry Tour graduate category, Theegala needed that top-10 in Mississippi just to earn a spot in the following week’s Shriners Children’s Open. Now by virtue of his top-30 finish on the 2022 FedExCup, he’s fully exempt for the next two seasons on TOUR. Theegala returns to the Country Club of Jackson as a second-year TOUR member and with the second-best odds to win, behind only Burns. He recalls looking at his tournament odds early last season and seeing, “I was near last out of every field.” Now the public expects him to break through any week. Rather than shying away from the expectations, he’s relishing them. “Max Homa just talked about it at the Fortinet (Championship), being the odds-on favorite there … in previous years, he said he would use that as extra pressure. Now he’s taking it head-on and being like, ‘Dang, that’s cool that I’m the favorite of the tournament. Let’s go get this thing done,’” Theegala said. “That’s pretty cool to see. It’s cool to know (my odds) are up there. “Golf is such a crazy game; it’s just a hard game. There are very few times in golf where you’re truly happy. Trying to strive toward accomplishing stuff that maybe personally I didn’t think was possible a few years ago, now I do think is possible. The constant drive to get better; I do feel a little bit of that is almost an intangible, inherent love for the game … There’s something over getting the next hurdle that’s just so satisfying.” In his first year as a TOUR member, Theegala was close. After his near-miss at the Sanderson Farms Championship, he played his way into another 54-hole lead at the WM Phoenix Open, long known as one of the TOUR’s most stadium-like settings. Looking back, he describes it as “playing in front of 10 million people.” With several family and friends in attendance, he attempted to drive the green on the short par-4 17th but pulled it slightly left, the ball finding a greenside pond. He made bogey, followed by a closing par to finish one back of a Scottie Scheffler-Patrick Cantlay playoff. He was devastated but reflects on the experience as a season highlight nonetheless. “It was crazy how many people were there,” Theegala said. “That’s going to be a memory that I’m never going to forget. Still hurts. It’s going to hurt. People have said, ‘Oh, if you ever win … “No. It’s still going to hurt, no matter what. But it was such a special week. Really kept me going for the rest of the year.” He finished fifth at the Memorial presented by Workday and was runner-up at the Travelers Championship, making double bogey on the 72nd hole at TPC River Highlands to finish two back of Xander Schauffele. But the lanky, oft-smiling California native has kept fighting. He rebounded from an opening 74 at the following week’s John Deere Classic to finish T16, and he made the cut at The Open en route to a T34. He added two more top-15s to close his first TOUR season, and he arrives in Mississippi fresh off a T6 at the 2022-23 season-opening Fortinet Championship. Theegala didn’t watch much of last week’s Presidents Cup, aside from a bit of Sunday Singles. He understands the noise that he was a popular candidate for a captain’s pick, but he doesn’t believe he earned a spot on the team. That sentiment – believing he didn’t earn his spot – fuels him. He’ll have more chances to represent the U.S. Team. He’ll take the long view. “The energy was incredible,” Theegala said of the Presidents Cup. “I love how the guys are so into it. I’ve never played on any (U.S.) team .. I didn’t play on a junior golf (national) team or the Walker Cup, so I have a little chip on my shoulder. I wasn’t good enough to make those, so I might as well try to make one in the future. “I love to use anything as fuel to the fire, so I think the reason I didn’t watch the first couple days, using it as more fuel. I don’t think I earned my way onto the team at all, and I wasn’t close on points or anything like that, but it’s definitely something I’ll use as motivation moving forward.” Chess, not checkers.

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This is a home game for him. He grew up in San Diego. Played Torrey Pines a ton. Sure, there are other choices, but our experts are feeling the hometown feel-good story.

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SOUTHAMPTON, Bermuda – Here was the lead in a wire services story 53 years ago: “Postman Eardley Jones in Warwick, Parish, Bermuda, is a father, a golfer – and more recently, a hero.” The story detailed how Jones jumped out of his mailman’s outfit and dove into rough water on Bermuda’s south shore to save a drowning man. After medics took the man to the hospital, the story goes that Jones nonchalantly slipped back into his work clothes and continued on with his route. “I have a picture somewhere, of my father that day standing in his skivvies,” says Nick Jones, the youngest of Eardley’s six children. It is that segment of the slideshow memory that makes him laugh. The next slide, however, brings a somber, yet respectful reflection. “I’ve met the man (my father) saved,” Nick says. “He’s still alive. It’s that connection that helps me remember my dad fondly. I miss him every day. He believed in me and was the driving force behind me. “There was no shaking his faith in me.” When Eardley Jones died at 73 in 2012, he was praised as “the Arthur Ashe of Bermuda golf,” a Black man who helped end segregation policies on this island. Until 1967, Black golfers could only play Ocean View, but Eardley Jones helped break down that barrier and open the door for Frankie Rabaid, Llewelyn Tucker, Keith Pearman, and so many others. Including, of course, Nick Jones, now 33 and beaming with pride as he prepares to play in this week’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship at Port Royal Golf Course. He earned one of three spots in a local qualifier (fellow Bermudians Michael Sims and Jarryd Dillas also got in) and embraces the opportunity before him. “I love that I’m here,” he says. “I love the chance to show what I’ve got.” What Nick Jones has is a story that is equal parts adventure, passion, and pride, with golf being the common denominator. The game took him from Bermuda to high school in Florida. He turned pro at a young age and showed immediate promise with victory in the 2011 Daytona Beach Open, then flew to England to chase minitours while living with extended family. “I can’t be in the United States for three months at a time because of visa (restrictions),” Jones, who has a British passport, says by way of explaining his allegiance to competitive golf in the U.K. By now it’s likely you have heard of those who were stranded somewhere during the beginnings of the COVID pandemic. But Jones can likely top them all. “I was stuck in Palau for almost two years,” he says. Palau is in the Western Pacific, part of an archipelago of hundreds of islands in the Micronesia region. Indonesia is to the south, the Philippines to the north, but Jones, whose wife’s job had moved them to Palau in late 2019, couldn’t leave once the lock-down began in the spring of 2020. “There was a range with a big net where I could hit balls, but during lock-down they down took the net,” Jones says, laughing at the memory. “I could chip and putt, but that’s it. I didn’t touch my clubs for more than a year. I just did a lot of diving and a lot of fishing.” When the lock-down was lifted in the fall of 2021, Jones followed his heart. “Bermuda is home,” he says, “and it’s the golf community here that I love.” Beyond rusty, Jones didn’t get through the local qualifier for the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in ’21. But he was so determined to be a part of the tournament that he caddied for a competitor in a Monday qualifier, then stuck around Port Royal to wash dishes at night and even tend bar. The sense of adventure still burns for Jones, who placed fourth in the Trinidad and Tobago Open in the spring and is signed on for the upcoming Jamaica Open. But his time back in Bermuda has returned him to his roots. It’s where he learned the game, and where his father’s legacy still is rich. “My ideal goal is to spend six-to-eight months here,” he says, “teaching kids and rebuilding and developing the junior program, which my father started years ago. Then spend a few months traveling to play in golf tournaments.” He has a soft spot for Spain, has family in the U.K., and says, not surprisingly, “I love all the islands.” His father and other Black golfers from Bermuda were trailblazers who overcame long odds. Rabaid played in the 1971 Open Championship. Eardley played in the Canadian Amateur and once brought Nick, then a young teenager, to caddie for him in the British Senior Open. “My father didn’t have much money, but he had a big heart,” says Nick, whose father played at an elite level while juggling two jobs, as a mailman and a maître d’ at that onetime bustling hot spot in Hamilton called Forty Thieves. On top of that, Eardley Jones led the fight against segregation. “He had to fight for his sport,” Nick adds. That battle won, Eardley Jones then brought kids, Nick Jones prominent among them, into his junior program right here at Port Royal. “He didn’t force me to play, but he made sure I wanted to play,” Jones says. “He gave me the freedom to fall in love with the game.” Mission accomplished, Eardley. Mission accomplished.

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