Cut prediction: Valero Texas Open

Doug Ghim was lost. The former No. 1 amateur in the world had just missed the cut at the 2020 Sony Open in Hawaii, his fourth weekend off in his first five PGA TOUR starts. Swing changes suggested by an instructor he politely refuses to name hadn’t solidified, and he now wondered if they ever would. Fast forward to today and Ghim is one of the most improved players on TOUR. He contended at THE PLAYERS Championship before fading on the weekend to a T29; has made 13 of 17 cuts, including seven top-25s; and with partner Justin Suh just finished T11 at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Ghim is 70th in this season’s FedExCup, an improvement of more than 100 spots over last year. He finished 184th in 2020 and would have lost his TOUR card were it not for the pandemic, and the TOUR freezing everyone’s status for 2020-21. “I’ve always been a slow starter,” says Ghim. Not sure he belonged, he felt that way in junior golf, and college. “And then you turn pro,” he continues, “and it’s like, that’s Dustin Johnson, or Rory, or Tiger, or whoever. Honestly, when I get out here, sometimes I feel like I’m 5 years old.” Few good stories came out of 2020, but without that terrible year we wouldn’t have one of the best stories of 2021. Ghim’s fantasy camp perma-smile suggests even he can’t quite believe it. His parents immigrated from South Korea, and the family had modest means. His father Jeff, an architect who also taught golf, put up a net in their backyard in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a cube-like contraption with metal pipes. His mother Susan, a flight attendant, was gone a fair amount, but his older sister, Deborah, helped look after him. Doug graduated to a junior membership at The Arboretum Club, a nearby public course where father and son fished golf balls out of the ponds. They practiced constantly, and Ghim, no taller than a pull cart when he started, got better. He played local junior tournaments and then American Junior Golf Association events, making use of that organization’s ACE Grant in order to help defray the costs. (A cause for which Ghim remains a passionate advocate.) It was during Ghim’s sophomore year of high school, on a sunny day in September, when he came home from school to find a large box from Titleist had come in the mail. “I remember opening the box, and my dad watching me, and it was a pretty emotional moment,” Ghim says. “It was kind of one of those things like look how far we’ve come.” Having gone from regional events to the AJGA’s invitational tournaments, Ghim had climbed high enough in the rankings to qualify for free gloves and hats from Titleist. Also, golf balls. Lots of them. “These things are not cheap, and I’m getting 12 dozen at a time, for free,” he says, smiling at the memory. “They were brand new, and I could put my own markings on them instead of taking nail polish remover and removing the markings from other people’s golf balls. It was cool.” He decamped for the University of Texas, where he was an All-American and established himself as one of golf’s top amateurs. At the 2017 Palmer Cup and Walker Cup, he went a combined 3-0 with partner Maverick McNealy in the Foursomes sessions. “He was just always was in position and made my life really easy,” says McNealy, who briefly lived with Ghim in Las Vegas. “That’s a true testament to a great player, if he’s an easy person to play with in alternate shot. He made so many clutch putts He has a knack for that.” The ’17 Walker Cup team was loaded with enough stars – Collin Morikawa, Will Zalatoris, Cameron Champ, Scottie Scheffler, Doc Redman and McNealy – to give anyone an inferiority complex. Still, Ghim went 4-0-0 as the Americans cruised. He turned pro and played well enough on the Korn Ferry Tour to earn his TOUR card for 2019. Then he bonked. Thinking he had to be technically perfect, Ghim abandoned his natural, vertical swing for a more rounded, inside-out action. It didn’t work. After missing the cut at the Sony, he resolved to start over and began working with Drew Steckel at the Farmers Insurance Open. It was January 2020. Both teacher and student live in Las Vegas but have Midwestern roots, and Steckel looked at swing pictures and video of Ghim, before and after, and saw a player who had lost his way. “I said, ‘Obviously, you have something good in there as the former No. 1 amateur, so let’s not reinvent you as a golfer,’” says Steckel, who teaches out of Southern Highlands Golf Club. “He had a very upright vertical swing naturally, and he was trying to get it really in and behind him, and it was a very uncomfortable position for him to play from.” Progress was slow. One week, Ghim would miss the cut by three. The next, he would miss by one. Meanwhile, Steckel worked on his confidence, helping Ghim realize he belonged on TOUR. “I brought him around my other guys, who in some cases have been out here 20 years,” he says. Players like Pat Perez, Kevin Na, Chesson Hadley and Jason Kokrak. “It was about getting him exposed to that and comfortable with that,” Steckel says. Then came the pandemic, and everything paused, allowing Ghim to keep working outside the glare of competition – a blessing in disguise for his career. He started seeing mental coach Jared Tendler, who works mostly with poker players, and lost 10-15 pounds by continuing to work out while consulting with a nutritionist who emails him recipes on the road. The TOUR’s decision to carry over players’ status for 2020-21 was also big. Ghim could exhale, and he started with a T14 at the Fortinet (then Safeway) Championship last fall. That led to a series of made cuts highlighted by a T5 at The American Express early this year. He contended at THE PLAYERS Championship (T29), playing with winner Justin Thomas on Sunday. Ghim shot 78, but having always looked up to Thomas he was thrilled to sign the card of the winner. “First time for that as a pro,” he says. “I learned that winning is an active verb.” He smiles at this, but then Ghim smiles a lot these days. Life is good. “People forget that Doug was the No. 1 amateur in the world, low amateur at the (2018) Masters, first-team All-American in college,” says Brett Augenstein, Ghim’s agent. “He hopes to have the success that Collin and those guys have had; obviously he hasn’t had it as quickly, but I think he has the confidence, deep down, to know that he can be as good as those guys.” Adds Ghim, “It’s a second start. I’m not a rookie, but I feel like one because I didn’t get to see a lot of these courses last year. I was also trying to figure out my swing and getting used to being out here, so I didn’t really get to try to attack the courses that I did see.” With sparkly credentials, top-of-the-line equipment, and now a growing certainty that he’s good enough just as he is, there’s no question Ghim belongs. Seldom has anyone made better use of a mulligan.

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In pursuit of his first PGA TOUR victory, Texas product Andrew Landry proves he’s got what it takes with a 4-under 68 in the final round at TPC San Antonio. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Landry shook off short misses at the par-4 12th hole (just inside five feet) and par-5 14th (inside four feet) to win and move from 42nd to 9th in the FedExCup. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Landry knows his game. “My game is built for hard golf courses, tough conditions, just because I’m pretty accurate with the driver,â€� he said a few years ago. Yep. Shortly after that, Landry went on to contend at the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont before a final-round 78 and a T15 finish, and he was at it again at difficult TPC San Antonio. He led the field in strokes gained: tee-to-green, and his 17-under total was the lowest winning score since the Valero moved to TPC San Antonio (AT&T Oaks Course) in 2010. “Every single player out here is good,â€� said Landry, who lost to Jon Rahm on the fourth hole of a playoff at the CareerBuilder Challenge earlier this season. “Every single one of them is great. We’re all here for reasons, because we worked really hard and we’re really good at what we do.â€� 2. Zach Johnson, 42, the 54-hole co-leader with Landry, was exactly the right guy for the 30-year-old Landry to play with as he tried to chase down his first win. In fact, Johnson was such a perfect playing partner it was almost eerie. Landry, interviewed on camera after he had finished 21st on the 2015 Web.com Tour money list, was asked which players he looked up to. Answer: Jason Day (not in the Valero field) and Zach Johnson. “Zach’s such a good guy and he is so—he just gets it,â€� Landry said after winning the Valero. “He was telling me good shot after good shot, just keep pushing. He would change the subject every now and then to just kind of lighten the mood. I just knew what I had to do. I just stuck to my game plan and saw it happen.â€� 3. As for Johnson, the 12-time TOUR winner struggled with a final-round 72, but he says he doesn’t mind being a shoulder to lean on for the younger players like Landry. “What I’ve seen lately is that I’m getting questioned a lot by the young guys, about not just golf stuff but life stuff,â€� Johnson said at the RBC Heritage. “That just means I’m getting old. But I asked the same questions myself with David Toms, Chris DiMarco, Davis Love, Corey Pavin, Tom Lehman, Lee Janzen, guys that I really admired.â€�     Johnson was vying to become the third player to win the Valero three times, after Arnold Palmer (1960-’62) and Justin Leonard (2000-’01, ’07). 4. Sean O’Hair isn’t far off. After a T2 that saw him sign for the lowest final round (66), the 35-year-old four-time TOUR winner was a mixture of disappointed and encouraged. The upside: He’d just racked up eight birdies on a course that’s notoriously stingy with them. The downside: He was still chasing his first win since the 2011 RBC Canadian Open. “That fifth [win] has been hard to come by,â€� he said. “… I’ve had some close calls. “I feel like my game’s kind of coming into form a little bit,â€� added O’Hair, who with partner Steve Stricker won the unofficial QBE Shootout late last year. “But this year’s been a little bit erratic and I’ve just got to clean that up a bit. I’ve been driving it really well all year and I felt like this golf course really called for that. Felt like if I could just hit a few more greens, because this golf course is all about that as well, make a few putts, which is what I did, I was going to have a good week.â€� O’Hair chipped in for birdie from 55’ 1â€� on the final hole for his seventh runner-up finish in 345 starts, including one in each of the last four seasons. 5. There were breakthroughs all around in San Antonio. Landry is the seventh first-time winner of the season, with three coming in the last five weeks (Landry, Satoshi Kodaira, Brice Garnett). He’s also the third first-time winner in the last five editions of the Valero, joining Steven Bowditch (2014) and Kevin Chappell (2017). Trey Mullinax shot 62-69 on the weekend for a career-best T2 in his 41st TOUR start. Jimmy Walker (67, solo fourth) had his best finish since a third at TPC Boston in the fall of 2016. Then there was former No. 1-ranked amateur Joaquin Niemann of Chile. The 19-year-old merely birdied his last three holes for a second straight 67 and solo sixth place. “It’s one of the best week of my life,â€� Niemann said. Even better, while becoming the first player since Anthony Kim (T2, 2006) to finish in the top 10 at the Valero in his professional debut on TOUR, Niemann also gained entry into the Wells Fargo Championship without having to burn a sponsor’s exemption. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Although he came into the Valero at 91st in strokes gained: tee-to-green, Landry was first in the field in that stat at TPC San Antonio. He came into the Valero at 84th in strokes gained: approach-the-green, but led that category, too. He was 98th in greens in regulation entering the Valero, but first last week. In fact, his 53/72 greens in regulation was tied for his second-best effort on TOUR. And he’s now one-for-one at converting a 54-hole lead/co-lead into a victory.    2. Landry became only the fourth player to rank in the top 10 in strokes gained: approach-the-green (1st) and strokes gained: putting (8th) while winning this season. The others have been Dustin Johnson at the Sentry Tournament of Champions (7th in sg: approach-the-green, 6th in sg: putting); Ryan Armour at the Sanderson Farms Championships (3rd in sg: approach-the-green, 2nd in sg: putting); and Patton Kizzire at the Sony Open in Hawaii (3rd in both). 3. Zach Johnson, who won the Valero Texas Open twice before it moved to TPC San Antonio, might have won the tournament had the front nine been closed for the week. Johnson was even on the front but 13-under on the back over the four rounds. 4. The margin of victory at the Valero, two strokes, qualified as something of a blowout relative to the rest of this season. Going into the Valero, eight of 14 tournaments had been decided by a playoff, and the average margin of victory was one shot. 5. Since the Valero moved to TPC San Antonio in 2010, six third-round leaders/co-leaders have held on to win, with Landry doing so on the heels of Kevin Chappell in 2017. That makes the TPC San Antonio – AT&T Oaks Course one of the best places on TOUR to be a 54-hole leader/co-leader. So far this season, just 12 of 24 leaders/co-leaders have held on for the win in stroke-play events, with Patrick Reed at the Masters the most recent to do it before Landry.

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ORLANDO, Fla. – Rory McIlroy is a glass-half-full kind of guy. The defending champion at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard remained upbeat on Sunday despite suffering another final-group fade out. In what has become a worrying trend for the former FedExCup champion, he has now failed to win the last nine times he has played in the final group on Sunday dating back to the start of 2018. McIlroy did win at Bay Hill a year ago but came from well back to do so. It remains the 14-time PGA TOUR winner’s most recent triumph. Starting one shot back in second place, McIlroy could only manage an even-par 72 on Sunday to fall to T6, four shots off the pace. Of the top 14 on the leaderboard, he was the only one who failed to shoot under par. “My Sundays haven’t been what I would have liked, but I’m putting myself in that position, so good golf is good golf, I keep saying that, at the end of the day,â€� McIlroy said. “It was a tough day, tough to get it close to the hole. I feel like I really didn’t play that badly. I missed a couple of shots, but I felt like I was hitting good shots to 30 feet all day and it’s hard to sort of shoot a score.â€� While winner Francesco Molinari needed just 25 putts, making 146-feet, 9 inches worth, it wasn’t as pleasant for McIlroy on the greens. He needed 30 putts and made just 61 feet, 11 inches worth. On the plus side, McIlroy has now finished inside the top six, without winning, in his last six starts on the PGA TOUR. Rather than dwell on the missed chances, the Northern Irishman has already turned his focus to THE PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass. “I’m playing well, I’m getting myself into contention every week, (I need to) continue to do that, going into next week, that’s the great thing about golf, you don’t have to wait too long to get back on the horse,â€� he said. “So I’m happy with everything, I just think today I could have played the par 5s better, but really apart from that it was an unbelievable round from Francesco to shoot what he did. “I would have needed to go out there to shoot 67 to better him, which would have been one of the best scores of the day, and anything under 70 out there this afternoon was a great score.â€�

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