Featured Groups: Valero Texas Open

Trey Wingo, a 23-year veteran of ESPN whose contract ended in November, will make his PGA TOUR LIVE debut as he calls the Farmers Insurance Open at San Diego. While he is more closely linked to the NFL, Wingo is no stranger to golf, having covered the U.S. Open and The Open Championship for ESPN. We caught up to him to talk about the game, the TOUR, pop culture, and Tiger's most overlooked accomplishment. PGATOUR.COM: You're known as a football guy, having covered the NFL. Where does golf rank on your list? WINGO: I love the game; I always say I'm not sure the game loves me back. That's kind of what I love about it because the ball only goes where you send it. I think, to me, it's the second hardest thing to do in sports, behind only hitting Major League pitching. You see the No. 1, No. 2 players in the world miss four or five cuts in a row, and if they can suddenly have a problem playing the game, you have to understand you're definitely going to have a problem. PGATOUR.COM: What exactly will you be doing for PGA TOUR LIVE? WINGO: I'll be hosting some of the featured groups on Thursday and Friday. I'll work with Billy Kratzert, whom I've worked with for six or seven years on the U.S. Open and Open Championship, so I'm looking forward to that. Also, Craig Perks, the owner of the greatest 3-2-4 in the history of golf to win THE PLAYERS Championship. That was a couple years after "Be the Right Club Today" and Hal Sutton beating Tiger at THE PLAYERS, which was when Tiger was having problems with big, burly guys - Darren Clarke beat him at the WGC-Match Play in 2000. PGATOUR.COM: What kind of scores do you shoot, and does the game suffer a bit in a Connecticut winter? WINGO: I'm about a 9. My index at my club is a 7.6. I was on a heater toward the end of the year, but the clubs have been in storage for a while. Every year about this time I'm reminded that I have to play to be able to repeat anything and have success. PGATOUR.COM: What about a simulator? WINGO: We thought about putting one in the basement, but the ceiling was six inches too low. PGATOUR.COM: You'd have got get on your knees like Dorf on Golf. WINGO: Shout out to Tim Conway, rest in peace. PGATOUR.COM: Best score? WINGO: I shot 73 at the Bay Course at Kapalua. It's a shorter course; it's not the Plantation. I made the turn at level, and birdied the 10th hole, a par-5 before they rerouted the course, and birdied 11. I texted my wife, "I'm 1 under through 11," and she said, "What are you doing? Don't tell me that, just play!" And I bogeyed the next three holes. PGATOUR.COM: Dad would love a shutout. WINGO: "Bull Durham." Still the greatest sports movie of all time. PGATOUR.COM: Favorite golf movie or book? WINGO: "The Greatest Game Ever Played" and "The Match," both by the same author, Mark Frost. "The Greatest Game Ever Played" was the Francis Ouimet story, and "The Match" was Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward versus Hogan and Nelson, who ended up winning 1 up. An incredible story. The guy who set up the match, a successful car dealer in California, was Eddie Lowery, Ouimet's caddie at the U.S. Open at Brookline. PGATOUR.COM: You started a podcast, Trey Wingo Presents: Half-Forgotten History. What's that about? WINGO: It's about Super Bowl championships, how the winners got there, what people don't know about the journey. Season one has Archie and Eli Manning together. It's off to a great start, we've sold three seasons. Season two is in the can. Season three will be a lot about golf, by the way. PGATOUR.COM: Speaking of half-forgotten history, what have we overlooked about Tiger Woods? WINGO: His 142 straight made cuts is the greatest record no one talks about. These guys today, with all due respect, don't know how good he was in his prime. He would get out there on a day when he didn't have it and still find a way to shoot 68. PGATOUR.COM: Will working for PGA TOUR LIVE make you a better golfer? WINGO: Let me put it this way: If osmosis is a thing, then absolutely. I've yet to see any evidence that that helps, but I'm always optimistic.

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PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland – Tiger Woods already has one major in his pocket this PGA TOUR season. Will he make it two this week at The Open Championship? We’ll have hole-by-hole updates from Tiger’s first round at Royal Portrush, as he tees off at 10:10 a.m. ET Thursday with American Patrick Reed and Englishman Matthew Wallace. Check this file often as Tiger plays his first competitive round in Northern Ireland. RELATED: Leaderboard | Tee times | Woods ‘not quite as sharp’ as he wants entering The Open

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SYDNEY, Australia – The trademark smile and quick-witted humor has never left former PGA TOUR player Jarrod Lyle, even though he’s certainly had reason to let them slip. Three times in his life Lyle has been struck down by acute myeloid leukemia, interrupting a promising golf career. As a 19-year-old, he was given less than a 20 percent chance of survival. He beat the odds and went on to make his way to the PGA TOUR. The cancer returned after he finished fourth at the 2012 Genesis Open, the best finish of his career. He was once again given grim odds. Lyle won again and returned to the PGA TOUR to try again. Unable to reclaim his TOUR card, Lyle returned to his native Australia to play his home tour, dabble in some commentary and take up a business selling golf apparel. He’d basically given the sticks away.  Then the leukemia returned again this year. Once again, Lyle fought his way into remission, but the battle is far from over. Next week, he faces a new battle for his life. He will gamble on stem cell therapy and have a haploidentical transplant with the help of his younger brother, Leighton. Unable to find a full bone marrow match for a transplant. he will instead go with a 50 percent match and hope for the best. He’s been given a 25 percent chance of success and told it’s basically his last hope of a cure. This week, he will watch the Australian Open in Sydney from a merchandise tent for his Lyle Apparel brand and also join the host broadcaster for some commentary. Next week, he will enter hell again. “It will be the hardest chemotherapy I have ever had to have. They want to get rid of my bone marrow,â€� Lyle told PGATOUR.com while five-year-old daughter Lucy threw feathers in the air and blissfully played nearby. “They are going to kill me from the inside out. They want to get my bone marrow to the point it is gone, and it’s never going to grow back.â€� He will enter a Melbourne hospital on November 29. Over five days, he’ll undergo two types of chemo, including one extremely toxic on the liver. He then has a day without any treatment before his brother’s cells are pumped in. The next two days might be the worst of all. “Those two days are likely to be very bad days for me. My body will recognize Leighton’s cells and will fight them,â€� Lyle explains. “My doctor said he is confident we can get it to work. If he didn’t believe it could work, we wouldn’t be doing it. But to hear the odds, and knowing it’s my last chance, it wasn’t the easiest conversation to have or information to hear.â€� With wife Briony steadfast by his side and daughters Lusi (5) and Gemma (18 months) foremost in his thoughts he is once again steeled to fight. “I know I am pushing stuff up a very steep hill. It opened our eyes that we are still struggling but there are a whole lot of things I still want to do in life and I have to keep fighting as much as I can to make that happen,â€� he said. “It’s kind of like I am filling up my positive bottle of energy now that I can use when things aren’t going well. I will have things to draw on and use and try to help me get through it all.â€� Despite exhaustion at times, Lyle has made huge efforts of late to take his daughters to the park, the beach, the playground and anywhere else he can to plant great memories in their heads. He craves the normalcy. And being at The Australian this week has him once again contemplating what would be a third comeback for the ages. He found himself wandering inside the ropes, ignoring the regulation crosswalks. “All things being equal, if I could play one more event, I’d be happy,â€� he said. “I don’t know how my body is going to turn out after this. I don’t know how much damage the chemo will do. But if I can play one event, my heart is still there. “Being here this week, it’s hard to be on the other side of the ropes. I feel like I am still part of the playing fraternity. The support from all walks of life, from all over Australia and the world, there are a lot of people behind me. That always feels good.â€� Lyle is in the process of writing a book about his life experiences, one he hopes will help people get through similar challenges in life. The hope for all is he’s signing copies at the 2018 Australian Open.

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