2018-19 Web.com Tour graduate reshuffle

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – There will be no glitzy ceremony. Jarrod Lyle wouldn’t have wanted that. Instead, the 73 players who made the cut at the Waste Management Phoenix Open will quietly (sort of) pass by a makeshift tribute to Lyle on the normally rowdy 16th tee at TPC Scottsdale on Saturday. Lyle’s death last summer at 36 after a long battle with leukemia devastated the Australian golf community and others. For ballast and cheering up, they watched a video of his ace on 16 in the third round of the 2011 WMPO, a career highlight that seldom fails to bring a smile to anyone who sees it. “When Jarrod passed, I just watched that video of him making the hole-in-one over and over again, like a lot of us did,� said WMPO Tournament Chairman Chance Cozby. “It just got me thinking about it and saying, OK, what can we do for Jarrod?� Cozby, who in his day job handles player contracts for PING, called his friends at Titleist, who in short order sent a replica of Lyle’s golf bag with his clubs, including the 8-iron he used for the hole-in-one. Atop the bag would rest his signature yellow hat. Next to all that would be a temporary memorial marker: a yellow disc with the Australian flag and an inscription in memory of Lyle, and his most memorable shot. The Thunderbirds, who run the tournament, set up the temporary memorial under cool, cloudy skies Saturday morning. “We just wanted something for the guys who come through today,� Cozby said. “They can give it a little pat and remember Jarrod, and that this is just a game they’re playing.� A big man with a matching sense of fun and mischief, Lyle was first diagnosed at 17. He fought through it and later turned pro, winning twice on the Web.com Tour and eventually reaching the pinnacle, the PGA TOUR. When the cancer came back, he beat it again. Finally, after it had returned a third time, his body had no more fight. Lyle died during the PGA Championship in August, the news hitting players and others hard. Rickie Fowler, the leader at this week’s Waste Management Phoenix Open, was especially close to Lyle. They had recently spoken by phone to say goodbye, and Fowler wore yellow at the PGA at Bellerive to honor his friend. Others pinned yellow ribbons to their hats. Greg Chalmers tweeted, in part, “It is through a river of tears I say goodbye to my friend Jarrod Lyle.� That sentiment was shared far and wide. Lyle left behind his wife, Briony, and two daughters, Lusi and Jemma, and players contributed financially in addition to offering their condolences. “Thanks for your support, it meant the world,� Lyle said in his final message, shared by his wife after his death. “My time was short, but if I’ve helped people think and act on behalf of those families who suffer through cancer, hopefully it wasn’t wasted.� The final threesome of Fowler, Justin Thomas and Branden Grace are expected to come through 16 sometime around 2 p.m. local time, 4 p.m. ET. It will be loud and crazy, it always is, but also poignant as players remember big, happy Jarrod Lyle hitting the shot of his life.

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Stephen Hamblin has been the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) Executive Director for 35-plus years, so you expect him to have plenty of stories about some of the greatest players the game has ever seen. He does, and we’ll get to those momentarily. Tiger and Phil. Jordan and Justin. Rickie. Patrick. All of them cut their teeth on the country’s premier junior golf circuit. But first, to underline just how long Hamblin has been at it, consider that he can tell you about the junior golf careers of players who are now, ahem, seniors. “Steve (Stricker, the 12-time PGA TOUR winner turned PGA TOUR Champions pro) was not someone who you would have immediately picked out as a future star,â€� says Hamblin, who recently sat down for a wide-ranging interviewat AJGA headquarters in Braselton, Georgia. “He just got a little bit better at every level. Matt Kuchar was the same way. That’s a good way to go.â€� Hamblin’s fingerprints will be all over this week’s Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club. Brandt Snedeker (2018), Davis Love III (’92, ’06, ’15), Webb Simpson (2011), Sergio Garcia (2012) and Patrick Reed (2013) are some of the past champions who played the AJGA before they played the TOUR. That’s not unusual when it comes to players; you can find similar echoes of the AJGA up and down the FedExCup standings. Now add the fact that Wyndham Tournament Director Mark Brazil used to work for Hamblin at the AJGA, and you truly begin to understand the man’s influence and reach. Hamblin was 29 when he started in 1984. “I had no idea what I was doing,â€� he says. The AJGA had just 13 events. Now there are 120 in the United States and Canada, many hosted by AJGA standouts who have gone on to successful TOUR careers, from Jordan Spieth (in his hometown of Dallas) and Reed (Houston) to Stewart Cink, Scott Stallings, Brendan Steele and beyond. The AJGA aims to give players a platform to be noticed for college scholarships, but many keep going all the way to the top. Hamblin sees them early in the journey, before life starts to get complicated. No FedExCup points, money, agents, endorsements, autographs. Just – them. Tiger vs. Long Drive champ Ask Hamblin for his favorite Tiger story, and he prefaces it with one of his worst career bogeys – his refusal to allow Woods to compete in the 15-17 age division when he was just 14. Woods and his father, Earl, who sat on the AJGA’s board, accepted it, but Hamblin rues the decision. “It was a bad rule that’s since been changed,â€� he says. He smiles, though, when he recalls playing with Woods at an AJGA event at Legacy Golf Club in Las Vegas. Art Sellinger, a two-time world long-drive champion (and AJGA alumnus), was set to tee off with each group, and Woods — then 17 — was intrigued. “He wanted to know what hole Art was going to be on,â€� Hamblin says. “So I told him the 15th, a par 5. The whole front nine, he was relaxed, having fun, trying some different shots. But when we made the turn his demeanor changed, and by 12, 13, 14, he started to get very serious.â€� Woods and Sellinger had met the year before at a Houston Astros baseball game, and as they stood on the 15th tee, Woods tried to get Sellinger to hit first. “This is my show, Tiger,â€� replied Sellinger. Like every other junior, Woods would go first, and get just one ball. “I remember in Houston the year before,â€� Sellinger recalls. “It was Hamblin, myself, Tiger and Earl, we went to an Astros game, and it was a blast. We went into the radio booth and called a couple innings. But that day in Vegas, I’m telling you he looked right through me, and he spoke to me without words, with his eyes. He said, ‘I’m going to hit it right by you.’â€� Weighing just about 140 pounds and wielding a TaylorMade metal wood with metal shaft, Woods closed his stance and hit a percussive sling-draw that started out right, by design. The ball took a huge, helping kick off of the bouncy, dormant grass, shot forward and left into the fairway, and stopped some 360 yards away. (It was later measured.) “When I looked back at Art,â€� Hamblin says, laughing, “I could tell he was concerned.â€� Sellinger guesses that he outweighed Woods by about 100 pounds, but that wasn’t necessarily going to help him now. Nor would he be aided by any special equipment; he says he, too, was hitting a TaylorMade metal wood with a regulation-length shaft. He also didn’t play a big hook but more of a straight ball or a slight cut, which wouldn’t help matters. “I said, all right, I need to step on this one,â€� Sellinger says. “And I did. I hit it. We went up to the amateur tee and the amateurs hit, and Tiger didn’t say a word. I had a cart, and I got in, Tiger was on foot, and he almost beat me to the ball, he was so fired up to see how it had turned out. “I want to say I was 16 yards past him, because we paced it off,â€� Sellinger continues. “We just grinned at each other, and I went over there and shook his hand and said, ‘That was a big shot you just hit.’ I’d never seen someone so serious on the tee. He was like an assassin. I liked it.â€� Adds Hamblin, who still gets a kick out of telling the story, “Art put his arm around me and said, ‘Stephen, that was the best drive I ever hit in my life.’â€� Military upbringing One night, Hamblin found himself seated next to Arnold Palmer at dinner. What was the AJGA going to do, Palmer asked, about all these kids wearing hats indoors? “Oh, we don’t allow it,â€� Hamblin said. Palmer nodded. “Good,â€� he said. Manners, presentation, thank-you notes – these things matter to Hamblin, and have since they were impressed upon him by his father, Allen, a West Point man who flew 30 missions in Vietnam. “Yeah, he was tough,â€� Hamblin says with a smile. “Not in a harsh way, but just in that common punctuality was critically important, and he impressed on me at an early age. Presentation of self. Polish your shoes, iron your clothes, make your bed every day, clean your room.â€� Born in Eglin Air Force Base in Pensacola, Florida, Hamblin had the prototypical itinerant childhood of the military brat, bouncing around from the South to the Rockies to the West Coast. He never joined the military himself; he had a bad kidney that was removed when he was 13. Still, his father imbued him with a strong sense of accountability and attention to detail, which paid off both at Michigan State (landscape architecture) and when he landed his first big job in golf, as the resident pro at Innisbrook Resort & Golf Club under then-Director of Golf Jay Overton. It was there, outside Tampa, Florida, that Hamblin found himself working for a hard-driving, no-nonsense boss who reminded him a little of his father. Among other job duties, carts needed to be set out two-by-two each morning, with military precision. “Jay’s thing was, when you pull that cart up, it better be clean, and the scorecard better not be tilted one way or the other,â€� Hamblin says. “It better be square, with a pencil, and a rake. If any of those things were off … I told my guys, every day we’re perfect, I take you guys to lunch. They had this placed called Chicken King that they liked. Well, we were perfect every day, and it irritated Jay that he couldn’t catch me (making a mistake). “One day, he pulled his car up and took a rent set off our bag drop, threw it in the trunk of his car and drove off,â€� Hamblin continues. “One of my guys was coming up the ramp and saw it, and Jay didn’t think anyone was there. So, at the end of the day, Jay would always call, ‘How many rounds of golf, merchandise numbers, blah, blah, blah.’ And he called and asked about all that, and finally he said, ‘Any problems?’ ‘No, no problems.’ ‘None at all?’ I said, ‘Other than the rental set that’s in the trunk of your car.’ He said, ‘Who told you about that!?’ I said, ‘Jay, if you gotta do that, I’m really winning this little game we’re playing.’ He loved me.â€� (Overton says the man who saw him drive off with the rental set was Peter Ripa, another former employee of Hamblin’s who would go on to run the Farmers Insurance Open.) Crucially, Innisbrook was where Hamblin first encountered the AJGA, in 1980. The junior organization was holding its end-of-the-year Thanksgiving tournament, featuring juniors such as Davis Love III, Billy Andrade, Billy Mayfair, Heather Farr and others. Hamblin was smitten. “I was just absolutely taken with their maturity,â€� he says. “Their passion for the game, their willingness to work hard at it, their respect. They would lose a match and stop by the shop and say, ‘Hey, pro, thank you. Copperhead is great.’ They just lost! I was totally impressed by them.â€� Hamblin kept his head down, the carts clean, and the scorecards square on those steering wheels. In November 1983, two AJGA board members, talking with Overton at Innisbrook, copped to being at a loss over who should be the new top man at the junior organization. Overton knew right away. In a way, he’d known ever since Hamblin had worked for him as a teenager at Pinehurst, painting fences and even acting as a night security guard for a week when he slept in a mobile, soft-sided pro shop. Hamblin needed to be running something. “I said the person should be able to turn this organization into what it needs to be, not what it currently is,â€� says Overton, who is now the Host Professional at Corales Golf Club in the Dominican Republic. “They went, ‘Who?’ I said, ‘Turn around and look through the window at that guy standing in the pro shop. That’s your guy.’â€� Indelible memories Phil Mickelson still has the most career wins on the AJGA, with 12, while Woods and Charles Howell III are among those tied for second with eight. Alumni testimonials abound. Spieth cites enduring relationships, but also, “To be able to play against the best players in the world in a junior golf event at an early age is fantastic.â€� Simpson says the AJGA “built my game up and gave me confidence and allowed me to play college golf and now on the PGA TOUR.â€� More fun are Hamblin’s testimonials about the players. Another Woods story: He was sizing up a long second shot to a par 5 when he was forced to back off the shot by a bumbling TV cameraman approaching in a badly overloaded golf cart. Woods leaned on his 3-wood and waited. And waited. And waited some more. “All set?â€� he said when the man had finally got himself together. “All set,â€� the cameraman said. At long last, and with the camera on, Woods blasted a gorgeous shot that hung in the air forever and landed on the green. Even then, Hamblin says, Woods was used to having a camera on him. He received so much media attention that he asked if the AJGA could just tape-record his answers, since the questions he got from city to city were almost always all the same. Hamblin said no. Something in Mickelson’s mental make-up, Hamblin says, set the lefthander apart, the tip-off being when young Phil was asked by a reporter if he was happy to be out there giving it his all. With all due respect, Mickelson said, according to Hamblin, he was aiming a lot higher than that. In fact, he considered himself the man to beat any time he teed it up. “I mean, what 15-year-old says that?â€� Hamblin says with a laugh. Several years later, Hamblin played in a junior-amateur with shy, diminutive Justin Thomas, who hit nearly every fairway and green but couldn’t seem to buy a putt. “It’s OK not to make all those putts today and save them for tomorrow,â€� Hamblin says he told Thomas, “because tomorrow you’ll make them all and shoot 64.â€� The next day, Thomas made them all and shot 64. Mickelson was one of the hardest workers, always inventing new challenges for himself, even if it meant trying to hit driver from a divot. Spieth was one of the most well-spoken players, Chris Riley one of the funniest (and fastest). At one tournament, there was so much electricity in the air that Riley’s hair shot out in all directions at once, like a fright wig. “He walked by me like that,â€� Hamblin says, “and he said, ‘I think we’ve got a problem.’ We blew the horn right after that. He was like my lightning detector.â€� There was the girl with cystic fibrosis whose game was surprisingly good despite having to stop mid-round to empty her lungs of mucus. Another girl who worked at a driving range in Texas didn’t have enough money to actually play anywhere. Until, that is, a local benefactor and an ACE grant (the AJGA’s financial-aid program) got her into a national tournament, where she played so well she landed a scholarship and became the first in her family to go to college. Hamblin and the AJGA have been impactful for others, too, even if they work outside the ropes. Steve Ethun, who handles media for Augusta National Golf Club, worked for Hamblin and the AJGA, as have several PGA TOUR and Korn Ferry Tour tournament directors, plus others still who have left the AJGA only to remain in golf in some other capacity. So many roads in golf lead back to the AJGA, Hamblin calls it “a training organization.â€� That goes for administrators and officials, but especially for players, who continue to dominate the TOUR. Indeed, if a career can be measured by lives touched, Stephen A. Hamblin has few peers. “It’s been a good run,â€� he says, “but I still have a lot to do here.â€�

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While there will be no pro-am portion to this year's AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the tournament will still feature 156 players and a field full of notable names, including reigning FedExCup champion Dustin Johnson. Nick Taylor returns to defend his 2020 title, while Phil Mickelson is gunning for his record sixth title at Pebble Beach. FIELD NOTES: Dustin Johnson, a two-time winner at Pebble Beach, returns to play his first event on the continental U.S. in 2021. He finished T11 at the Sentry Tournament of Champions to start the year... Kamaiu Johnson, who was set to make his PGA TOUR debut at the Farmers Insurance Open but was unable to due to a positive COVID-19 test, will instead tee it up at Pebble. Johnson's inspiring story — he was an eighth-grade dropout but found comfort in golf — caught the eyes of TOUR event organizers... Other sponsor exemptions include 19-year-old Akshay Bhatia, who finished T9 at this season's Safeway Open, and 2019 U.S. Amateur champion Andy Ogletree. Davis Riley, who sits third on the Korn Ferry Tour's Regular Season Points List, also is in the field on sponsor exemption. He made the cut at last week's Waste Management Phoenix Open... The Prince of Pebble Beach, Phil Mickelson, returns to the PGA TOUR this week and is looking for his record sixth victory at the event... The PGA TOUR Champions will be represented at Pebble Beach. Other than Mickelson, a trio of over-50 major winners - John Daly, Tom Lehman and Jim Furyk - will also be in the field... Past FedExCup winners including Jordan Spieth, Brandt Snedeker, and Bill Haas will also tee it up. Spieth and Snedeker are past winners at Pebble Beach. FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 500 FedExCup points. COURSE: This year, with no pro-am portion of the tournament, the 156 professionals will play only two courses instead of the usual three. The two courses that will be used are Pebble Beach Golf Links (Jack Neville/Douglas Grant, 1919) and Spyglass Hill Golf Course (Robert Trent Jones Sr., 1966). The cut will take place after 36 holes instead of 54. Pebble Beach Golf Links, par 72, 7,051 yards Spyglass Hill Golf Course, par 72, 7,041 yards STORYLINES: The first of three victories for Jordan Spieth in 2017 came at Pebble Beach. Spieth, who won the Travelers and The Open Championship that same year, hasn't won since. Spieth, who was T8 heading into the weekend in Phoenix, will keep that momentum going into Pebble Beach, a place he's comfortable... Matt Gogel - who hasn't played the PGA TOUR since 2007 - is in the field as a Sponsor Exemption. Gogel won at Pebble Beach in 2002 and was a key supporting actor in Tiger Woods' comeback win in 2000. It was Gogel, then a TOUR rookie, who had the seven-shot lead with seven holes left that Woods eventually overcame thanks in part to a hole-out eagle at the par-4 15th... Jason Day has done everything but win at Pebble Beach. His fourth-place finish in 2020 gives the Aussie six top-6 finishes at the event, but no victories... Nick Taylor's win in 2020 was the first by a non-American in 15 years. In fact, only four non-Americans have ever won at Pebble Beach (Taylor, Vijay Singh, Brett Ogle, and Bruce Crampton). 72-HOLE RECORD: 265, Brandt Snedeker (2015). 18-HOLE RECORD: 60, Sung Kang at Monterey Peninsula (2nd round, 2016). Pebble Beach record: 62, Tom Kite (3rd round, 1983), David Duval (3rd round, 1997). Spyglass Hill record: 62, Phil Mickelson (1st round, 2005), Luke Donald (1st round, 2006). LAST TIME: Nick Taylor held off a charging Kevin Streelman to win his second PGA TOUR title. Taylor, whose first TOUR win came at the 2014 Sanderson Farms Championship, was paired with Phil Mickelson for the final round, but Taylor's 2-under 70 proved to be enough as Mickelson fired a final-round 74. Taylor held on down the stretch making birdies on Nos. 15 and 17 after bogeys on Nos. 11 and 12, and a double bogey on the par-5 14th. Mickelson finished third, Jason Day finished fourth, and Maverick McNealy, Daniel Berger, Matt Jones, and Charl Schwartzel all finished T5. Taylor opened the tournament with a 63 and was in contention all week long before taking it across the finish line Sunday. HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Friday, 3 p.m.-6 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Saturday-Sunday, 1 p.m.-3 p.m. (Golf Channel). Saturday, 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (CBS). Sunday, 3 p.m.-6:30 p.m. (CBS). PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday-Friday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. ET (Featured Groups). Saturday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. (Featured Groups), 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (Featured Holes). Sunday, 10:20 a.m.-3 p.m. (Featured Groups), 3 p.m.-6:30 p.m. (Featured Holes). Radio: Thursday-Friday, 12 p.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, 1 p.m.-6 p.m. Sunday, 1 p.m.-6:30 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio). TOURCast: Get shot-by-shot info in real time with shot tracks and video with TOURCast. TOUR Pulse: Get the PGA TOUR app to utilize TOUR Pulse, which provides users the ability to experience a mix of content, such as video highlights, written hole summaries and stat graphics on every player after every hole they complete.

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