Fleetwood caught fire after 2017 WGC-Mexico

Former NFL running back Danny Woodhead advanced through U.S. Open Local Qualifying on Wednesday, carding even-par 71 at Omaha CC to earn one of five Sectional Qualifying berths available via the site. Woodhead, who played 10 NFL seasons from 2008 to 2017, finished in a two-way T3 to finish one stroke clear of a playoff. The Nebraska native, 37, made four birdies against four bogeys on the 6,915-yard layout, which also hosted last year’s U.S. Senior Open. Woodhead played for the New York Jets, New England Patriots, San Diego Chargers and Baltimore Ravens across his NFL career. He was undrafted out of Chadron State but proved his mettle as a resourceful offensive weapon, accumulating 4,936 yards and 32 touchdowns. Joining Woodhead in advancing from the Omaha qualifier, conducted by the Nebraska Golf Association, were Corbin Mills, Connor Peck, Carson Schaake and Alex Schaake. Local Qualifying for the U.S. Open is being contested across 109 qualifying sites between April 25 and May 23. Those who advance through Local Qualifying will compete in Final Qualifying, contested across 11 sites – two on May 23, nine on June 6. The 122nd U.S. Open will be held at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, June 16-19. Since retiring from professional football, Woodhead has committed substantial energy to golf, self-described as obsessed with the game. He also successfully qualified for the 2021 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball at Chambers Bay, paired alongside fellow Omaha CC member Michael Wilhelm. “It was definitely a goal of mine to get to a USGA Championship,” Woodhead told USGA’s Golf Journal in 2021. He’ll now have a chance to compete in a second.

Click here to read the full article…

The first pork shoulder Stewart Cink ever smoked was, well, to put it bluntly, close to inedible. Cink and his wife Lisa annually host several dozen friends at their house on Lake Keowee in upstate South Carolina on July 4. But feeding that large a group is always a challenge – “You can only make spaghetti and chili so many times,â€� Cink says. So his buddy, Chad Parker, who is the general manager at East Lake Golf Club and one of the regular house guests, decided to give Cink a Big Green Egg, which is among the Cadillacs of outdoor cookers. Parker figured that would take care of one night’s meal. “We researched how to do it right, get the charcoal, get the smoke, get the flavoring and protect it and all that, and it was horrendous,â€� Cink recalls. “Like, it was terrible. We completely failed.â€� The failed experiment, though, turned into something of a challenge for Cink, and a decade later he’s cooking ribs, chicken, pork and brisket competitively. “I have this nature of excess,â€� Cink explains. “I didn’t just learn how to have fun playing golf, I became a PGA TOUR player. Skiing, climbing, all of our hobbies, anything I’ve ever picked up, I just can’t stop it.  “I can’t stop at okay or decent or good. I have to take it to a new high. So we went from let’s try to feed 45 people with a pork shoulder that wasn’t very good, so now we’re entering contests and we have a pro team and all that stuff.â€� Cink learned a lot about making barbecue through trial and error, as well as on the internet. He learned the terminology and how to refine his searches to find different flavor profiles and timelines for cooking the meat. And everything – soup to nuts, so to speak — has to be done in a smoker. Cink has three, in fact – the Big Green Egg at his lake house, a Primo in Atlanta and one of those big, black barrel-shaped smokers for competitions. It’s about 13 feet long and he pulls it behind a truck. “A lot of people like to start by boiling ribs or finishing them off in the oven,â€� Cink says. “You can do that.  But to me, barbecue is meant to be cooked over a smoking case of charcoal, and that’s the way it has to be done to me, so that’s the way I do it.â€� Cink is well-aware of the different regional methods of cooking barbecue. North Carolina, for example, is a state divided with a pungent vinegar-based sauce in the east while the Lexington-style favored in the Piedmont and to the west uses ketchup in its sauce. Memphis, Texas and Kansas City also have their distinct flavors. “We use some western style North Carolina stuff,â€� Cink says. “We’re more like Memphis style, I think.  I like a dry rub and I like a sweet sauce but not too much.â€� In 2011, Cink and his wife decided to host a barbecue cook off to benefit their charitable foundation. He describes it as like a county fair without the rides – complete with a stage for the bands and more than 70 different vendors. “We had to set up all the operations for it –- water, power — and it was in the middle of a field,â€� Cink recalls. “… So we learned a lot. “We also learned that it was a lot of work for minimal charity because the second year we also decided to start a golf tournament for our foundation, and it made like seven times the money for about 10 percent of the work.â€� They staged the event again a year later and this time the competition was sanctioned by the PGA TOUR of smoking, the Kansas City Barbecue Society. Cink and his cooking partners, Parker and his swing coach Mike Lipnick, ended up winning. Suffice it to say, they caught the bug. So now, several times a year, the three pack up their tent, hitch the smoker to a truck and head to a competition. They sit under the stars and stoke the fire all night. The KCBS sanctions more than 500 cook offs s a year. One of the people Cink and his friends competed against once told them he was participating in his 37th event of the year.  “I mean, that’s full‑time,â€� Cink says. “If you do it like that you get a rhythm and you learn your timeline and you have very little change, and you really start to perfect it.  We can’t do that.  We’re close, but we can’t do that.  “We still have to build in some wiggle room in case we mess up, so that extra 30 or 40 minutes from the time when your meat is perfect until it gets turned in, it’s only getting worse.  So we’re not quite that consistent. “ But some weeks they are very good – once besting 40 teams to win first place for ribs at the Atlanta barbecue festival. In fact, the three have placed in every competitive category except for pork. Cink isn’t the only TOUR player who competes, either. Davis Love III is also serious about the pursuit and other players are eager to learn the fine art of barbecue after receiving Big Green Eggs as gifts from the Sanderson Farms Championship. The TOUR newbies often come to Cink for advice. He recently gave Kyle Stanley the step-by-step instructions he prepared for the men in the barbecue class he and Parker taught to raise money for charity at East Lake. Cink also hosts a barbecue dinner at his Atlanta home to raise money for his foundation. The going rate is in the neighborhood of $25,000. “We have a good time,â€� Cink says. “We’ve gotten some really good relationships out of it, and it’s fun for us to be able to open up our home. “I like to share my passion of golf ‑‑ I like to cook and I like to see people enjoy what I made and teach them a little something along the way.â€� Cink gets a busman’s holiday of sorts this week when he plays at the FedEx St. Jude Classic in Memphis, too. Don’t be surprised if Cink and Love go on a barbecue tour. They’ll get friends like former TOUR pro Mike Hulbert and hit, maybe, four restaurants in one night, ordering a sampler platter at each place. And at least once Cink will make a pilgrimage to the Cozy Corner, a bare-bones joint that has been featured in Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Food and Wine magazines, among others. “You talk about ribs, if you like ribs, dry ribs, Cozy Corner, you can’t beat it,â€� he says. Right down Cink’s alley.

Click here to read the full article…

Austin Cook (+10000 to win) … Golf. You just never, ever, ever, ever know. After enduring a dreadful 2021 that included 17 missed cuts, including 11 in a row at one point, he settled for 136th in the FedExCup. And even that was possible because a playoff loss at the Shriners last fall served as approximately 64 percent of his season total in points. A T15 at the Barracuda Championship in August was a glimmer, but it wasn’t until a seemingly pedestrian T32-MC-T11 in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals that translated into real success and fully exempt status on the PGA TOUR once again this season. Although splashing at 42nd in the pecking order of his category, he’s already on the board with a T11 at the Fortinet Championship and a solo 67th at the Sanderson Farms Championship, so he’s poised to climb into the top 10 when the first reorder occurs at the conclusion of The RSM Classic, which he won four years ago. Adam Svensson (+8000 to win) … When I signed off on my comment beside him at No. 137 in the full-membership fantasy ranking, I had revised “reinvented” to “refined” as a description of his evolution as a professional golfer. In his only previous spin on the PGA TOUR in 2018-19, the Canadian was among the top 25 in numerous measurements of ability from tee to green, but as it often is with fresh faces, poor putting relegated him to the Korn Ferry Tour. Suffice it to say that he doesn’t belong there, either. With two wins among eight top 10s, he’s back in the big leagues. To the message of what’s better, he slotted 36th on the KFT in putts per GIR during its two-year season, but he still checked in at sixth in accuracy off the tee and 11th in GIR. The ball-striking captured my attention for Port Royal, but the improved putting qualified him for this prop. Cameron Percy (+8000 to win) … This already is his second appearance as a Sleeper this season, and that’s OK. He lined up here for the Fortinet Championship and finished T64. He needed better to fulfill the terms of a Minor Medical Extension but the 47-year-old Aussie is set with conditional status for the remainder of this season. Sometimes, the absence of that hovering is addition by subtraction, but he’d look good in the vacuum of these variables, anyway. He’s cashed in eight consecutive PGA TOUR starts and he’s 2-for-2 at Port Royal where the wind likely connects with the muscle memory of his formative years Down Under. He also led the TOUR in 2020-21 in greens in regulation and finished T7 in proximity to the hole. Beau Hossler (+8000 to win) … After opening last season with five straight paydays in the fall, he went cold until June but four top 25s still left him on the outside looking into the FedExCup Playoffs and ultimately conditional status this season. Still just 26 years of age, he can get over on the learning curve as if he never sputtered. Perhaps a season-opening T16 at the Fortinet Championship served as a combination of a devil-may-care approach and relatively recent form, but it projects to continue at Port Royal where he’s finished a respective T24 and T26, the latter including a second-round 68 on a day when the field averaged 73.64. He split only four (of 14) fairways and hit nine greens in regulation that day, but this patented putter delivered as he needed it just 22 times on the greens. Mark Hubbard (+5000 to win) … Second appearance for the 32-year-old. He finished T41 in the inaugural edition but sat T20 entering the final round. After what was a career campaign in 2019-20, he backpedaled into more familiar territory well outside the top 125 in the FedExCup last season, but he ranked 19th in fairways hit, T52 in Strokes Gained: Putting and T4 in par-3 scoring. Of course, it now means that with conditional status, he has nothing to lose and everything to gain. He’s also picked up the pace in recent months with 13 cuts made in his last 16 starts on two tours. All four top 20s baked in that stretch were on the PGA TOUR, including a T16 at Silverado last month. Odds were sourced on Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. For live odds, visit betmgm.

Click here to read the full article…