Starting with Craig Stadler in 1987 and extending to Tiger Woods at the 2013 Masters and Lexi Thompson at this year’s ANA Inspiration tournament, TV viewers impacted golf by calling in violations from home. In 2018, the witch hunt ends.
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JACKSON, Miss. – Tom Hoge couldn’t keep pace with Joaquin Niemann over the final holes of last week’s A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier, but now Hoge finds himself atop the leaderboard in the second event of the PGA TOUR season. Hoge, who finished second to Niemann on Sunday, shot a bogey-free 64 on Thursday to lead the weather-delayed Sanderson Farms Championship. Hoge temporarily tied Niemann at The Greenbrier’s Old White TPC after making birdie on the 12th hole. Hoge bogeyed on two of his next three holes, though, and Niemann made six back-nine birdies to win by six strokes. Related: Leaderboard | Johnson takes advantage of ‘opportunity’ Hoge finished alone in second to earn 300 FedExCup points. It was his best finish in 134 career PGA TOUR starts. Hoge couldn’t have capped off Thursday’s round in better fashion, holing a 45-footer for birdie to shoot a bogey-free 64. Hoge, 30, shot 68-65-67-65 last week. He has a 65.8 scoring average in five rounds this season. Hoge’s hot start to the 2019-20 season came just weeks after he had to regain his card at the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. Now he could have his card locked up before October, and possibly his first PGA TOUR victory. “Just a great opportunity for a guy like me to go out and have a great week and change my life,â€� he said. Hoge credited strong driving and putting to his good play in the first two events of the season. He gained more than four strokes on the greens Thursday. In addition to his long putt on the final hole, he made three of his five attempts from 10-15 feet. Hoge has made 21 of 25 (84%) putts from 5-10 feet this season. He ranked 161st in that category last season, making 53% from that distance. He’s missed just one of the 14 putts he’s faced from 5-7 feet this season. This is Hoge’s sixth PGA TOUR season. He’s qualified for the FedExCup Playoffs just once, finishing 92nd in 2018. He dropped to 159th in the standings last season. His game has been trending in the right direction, though. Hoge finished sixth in the Barracuda Championship, then T7 and T20 in his two starts in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. He knows the importance of getting his season off to a strong start. Two seasons ago, he had two top-10s in his first six starts. He’s off to a similarly hot start this season. “There was so much pressure there for a few weeks to play well and get back out here on the PGA TOUR,â€� Hoge said. “Once you get that done, it frees you up a little bit. At the same time, you know you played well, so just kind of keep it rolling.â€�
RIDGELAND, S.C. – Rickie Fowler, hot off a runner-up finish at last week’s ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP in Japan, finished up a long practice session at Congaree Golf Club Tuesday and exhibited genuine excitement when he learned his grouping for Thursday’s opening round at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina. Fowler will play alongside 2022 FedExCup champion Rory McIlroy, his south Florida neighbor, and South Korea’s Tom Kim, golf’s fresh-faced, 20-year-old rocket ship. (A bonus: Kim has Fowler’s good friend and former caddie Joe Skovron on his bag.) It wasn’t that long ago, or so it seems, that Fowler was the kid strapped to the PGA TOUR launch pad. The high-flying California motocross daredevil and gunslinging Oklahoma State Cowboy was the game’s resident star in waiting. He certainly has had shining moments, winning five PGA TOUR titles, including THE PLAYERS, earning more than $42 million, becoming a highly sought-after pitchman and performing on U.S. Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup teams. He may reside at 106th in the Official World Golf Ranking, but he is a first-team A-lister. As needle-movers go, few can move it more than Rickie. Fowler will turn 34 in December, and he finds himself in a different mode in this season of his career. Fowler is busily rebuilding and rebooting after a few dismal campaigns defined mostly by struggle. Fowler made 60 starts over his last three seasons starting in 2019-20, and finished in the top 10 four times. (Consider that in 2014, he had top-5 finishes in all four major championships.) Outside of golf, Fowler said his life could not be better. He and his wife have an 11-month-old daughter who fills their lives with joy. The hard work on the golf course, even through challenging times, never has stopped, and lately, finally, there is real optimism in his tank. (“You’ve seen that Rickie wants to get back to where he was and play at a high level again,” said Billy Horschel, Fowler’s former Walker Cup teammate.) Fowler’s solid performance in Japan, where he lost by a shot to Keegan Bradley, came on top of a tie for sixth at the season-opening Fortinet Championship in Napa. It’s early days, as they say, but in 10 rounds this season Fowler has yet to shoot anything higher than 70. When the charter from Japan touched down Monday morning, Fowler, wanting to stay awake and adjust to his new time zone, just walked the golf course at Congaree to see it. His mind, understandably, was in a pretty good place. “It’s just nice to see some things head in the right direction, to start to build some momentum and confidence,” he said. “That’s definitely something we struggled with the last few years. I might have a good week here or there, but nothing ever back-to-back, or able to build on a good week, anything like that. It (the finish at ZOZO) was definitely good to see.” There are two keys to Fowler’s improved play. In a word, Fowler seems to have simplified the many swing thoughts and new feels that seemed to complicate his long game, or at least prevent it from feeling natural. He returned to the tutelage of the sage Butch Harmon, the man with whom he started this journey. Fowler said he feels terrible that things did not work out with coach John Tillery, who had been teaching him for a period. They certainly worked at it. He said his days with Tillery, and all he learned, have been a sturdy bridge to start up with Harmon again. “I can’t say enough good things about him (Tillery),” Fowler said. “We were living and dying with it together, and I really wouldn’t be in this position that I am now, playing, and being able to do the stuff with Butch, without learning all the stuff that I did with Tillery. It’s a bummer that we didn’t have the success that we wanted, but it also kind of laid the groundwork for right now.” His work with Harmon has led him to a steeper swing plane with his left arm that gets his hands in a better spot, gives him more room to swing, and makes his swing far more efficient. More importantly, Fowler’s confidence in his putting has returned, too. That’s huge. He led Strokes Gained: Putting in 2016-17, and finished as high as 13th four seasons ago, but he has been completely lost on the greens the last two seasons. In 2021-22, he was 161st in the category. That will put pressure on every nook and corner of one’s game. He doesn’t have a great explanation why it seems to be so improved of late, and didn’t putt great on Sunday, when he might have put forth a better challenge to Bradley, who also hadn’t won in a few seasons. But since going to a new putter in Memphis, his final start of last season – where Fowler opened with 65 – the putting has started to build, like a burgeoning drumbeat. So the swirling swing thoughts are reserved only for practice sessions, and the mindset on competition days is “Let’s go play golf.” That, and the 10-footers are starting to find the hole. That combination can ease a golfer’s mind in real time. “That (improved putting) frees up so much from just getting to the green,” he said. “That’s something that, the last couple of years, I never had that … to let myself free up.” The CJ CUP in South Carolina will be Fowler’s last start of 2022. He loves to play in Mexico, at Mayakoba, but his good friend Justin Thomas is getting married that week in November, and Fowler is a groomsman. So he will play this week and carry his positive vibes into 2023. Give Fowler credit. Through the tough times, his chin seldom dropped, and he never has not been shy discussing the process of his long climb back. He carries some pretty good perspective to the struggling times he has endured with class. “This isn’t life out here. This is part of life; it’s what we get to do,” Fowler said. “It’s fun, though not all the time. Looking back, it wasn’t an enjoyable time, but it’s part of it, and it’s ultimately how you come out on the back end, and how you get through it. … If handled and done the right way, it’s only going to make you better.” And Fowler, if nothing else, is better, and just bold enough to harbor aspirations that, in his mid-30s, he can be better than ever.
MELBOURNE, Australia – If you want to be successful at Royal Melbourne Golf Club, you better have the keys to the sandbelt. No, that is not some random car model from the 1970s you’ve never heard of. But it is a term you will hear a million times over at this week’s Presidents Cup. The sandbelt is an incredible region where the golf gods set up conditions for near-perfection when it comes to golf course design. Some of the world’s best championship courses are scattered around here. Royal Melbourne is clearly one of those. PRESIDENTS CUP: Power Rankings | Expert Picks | Data-driven Els | What will Tiger be like as captain? | Inside Internationals’ win in 1998 | Quiz: Who should you root for? The term comes from the sandy loam soil that provides the ideal foundation for shaping a course that can boast undulating and firm greens, tight-cut greenside bunkering and all-year round playability. The courses are kind of like a hybrid between parkland and links golf. In contrast to much of Melbourne, which is covered by heavy clay subsoil, the Melbourne sandbelt region is a geographic anomaly resulting from a prehistoric flood which deposited heavy sandstone into low lying areas. The sandy loam can reach a depth of up to 80 metres in some places. There is no doubt this type of golf is different to what most of the globe is used to, particularly those in the U.S. So we went to International captains assistant Geoff Ogilvy – who has played Royal Melbourne more times than he can remember – to find out the seven secrets of sandbelt golf. 1. Tee shots are all about position, not distance. The big-bombing Americans will need finesse as well as brawn this week. Says Ogilvy: “The importance of your tee shot is not about being able to get it as close as you can to the green… it is important to get yourself in a position to find the right place on the green with your next shot. “You can’t outmuscle Royal Melbourne. Distance is valuable in some spots but sometimes it’s a 4-iron off the tee and sometimes it is a driver. Power is usually always an advantage but it is a balanced advantage here. “You need to work out where to be by theoretically playing the hole backwards. Sometimes the rough on the correct side of the hole is better than the fairway on the wrong side of the hole. You have to find that position from the tee and that can be tough as it is very wide and the best position isn’t always obvious.â€� 2. You must be under the hole if you want realistic looks at birdie on these slick greens. Greens around 13 on the stimp… you better watch out. Says Ogilvy: “The whole day at Royal Melbourne is about being under the hole for your birdie putt. This is really why the tee shot has to be positioned. If your tee shot is great, then it is exponentially easier to get it under the hole — and if you are under the hole, it is exponentially easier to make birdie. “You need to find the slopes where it will push the ball towards the pin, not away from the pin. If you let Royal Melbourne give you things it will, if you fight it … it will punish you every time. You can’t force it.â€� 3. Play to the front yardage, not the hole. Underestimate the bounce factor at your peril. If the ball looks like it’s all over the pin at Royal Melbourne, there is a good chance it won’t stay there. Says Ogilvy: “You have to be used to landing the ball short of the hole and having it bounce up. We are so used to getting the pin number and then taking the corresponding club and just fly it to the hole on the PGA TOUR where you can stick it or spin it back. “At Royal Melbourne, if the number is 170 [yards], you might be flying it 150. This is something all professional golfers can do but as we don’t do it as often, it is a skill you have to get back again and sharpen up in quick time. “Firm greens are always a challenge. When you are in the rough … it isn’t chip out rough … it’s flyer rough and that takes all the control off the ball. If you send it too far then the ball hits the green and just scoots through.â€� 4. Remember to stay clear of the dead zones. Says Ogilvy: “There are six or seven holes with spots that if you end up in them around the greens … you’ll be lucky to find the green at all with your chip shot or putt. Now I’m not going to give away where these all are but there are some obvious examples we’ve seen over the years where it is very difficult to get up and down. In the right place you are looking at a three or four on your card. The wrong place, it’s a six or a seven … that is the magnitude.â€� While Ogilvy didn’t give up specifics ,our best guess at some obvious problem areas come early in the round on the third, fourth and fifth holes. Those greens are potentially diabolical. The 176 yard par-3 third repels balls too short and is lightning from above. The par-3 sixth is just 148 yards but miss the green and you are likely dead. Find the wrong spot on the green and prepare for a likely three-putt. And then the par-4 fourth — that green slopes so hard from back to front that if you are behind the pin, you are more likely to chip or putt it off the green and back down the fairway then you are to make birdie. 5. Sharpen up your bunker play. Well it is called the sandbelt after all. Australians grow up on the beach. Says Ogilvy: “The bunkers are really tough. Firm greens mean you need to roll out your bunker shots as you won’t get a lot of spin from them. It’s a skill that is really rewarded. A lot of guys who grow up here are revered bunker players all around the world because they’ve seen it all and learned it all. Practice from the sand more than usual… and then practice some more.â€� 6. Find a chip and run game, with multiple clubs. You don’t always need to chip with a high loft. And even the old Texas wedge from off the green might not be the dumbest play. Says Ogilvy: “The PGA TOUR can be very much a lob wedge tour. You get your 60 degree out when you miss the green generally speaking because that is the best club to use with the majority of setups. “But around Royal Melbourne guys might chip with 3-irons, hybrids, 5-irons … you name it. Again this is a skill everybody has but they need to relearn it this week. The more you can have the ball on the ground the better.â€� 7. Take your medicine. When in trouble, find the smart play. Unless forced by an opponent’s position, the aggressive hero shot is a very small percentage option. Says Ogilvy: “You have to think much more than usual around this sort of course. And you must remain patient. You can’t force it. You have to let it come to you with smart searching. This is certainly a place you can compound errors badly. It is a course played inside your head as much as anything else. It’s tricky and awkward so you just have to play it smart to prevail.â€�
