Golf industry sets three-stage to reopening US courses

With only five players in history to achieve the feat, most recently Tiger Woods, winning the career Grand Slam in men’s professional golf is one of the toughest tasks in sports. RELATED: Tee times: Rounds 1 and 2 | Tuesday notebook Since Jack Nicklaus became the fourth member of the group at the 1966 Open, only one other player – Woods – has joined the club. Yet for the better part of the last decade, three players have been knocking on the door. Phil Mickelson’s surprising victory at the 2013 Open Championship left only the U.S. Open remaining on his to-do list. (Easier said than done.) In 2014 and 2017, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth won their third legs of the Slam at The Open, too, adding intrigue and creating a three-man Grand Slam watch that continues to this day. While McIlroy needs to win the Masters Tournament to complete the Slam, Spieth’s next shot at it comes at Southern Hills this week, as he needs only a PGA Championship title to finish the job. What other players have flirted with the Slam? And what traits did the five career Slam winners share? Finishing quickly The definition of ‘Grand Slam’ has evolved since Bobby Jones won the 1930 U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, Open Championship and (British) Amateur Championship – golf’s four most prestigious titles at the time. That’s the old Slam. For this exercise, we’ll use the modern definition of winning all four men’s professional majors. History shows it helps to complete the Slam early. None of the five players to finish the career Slam needed more than three opportunities to get the final leg. Three players – Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan and Woods – won the first time they had a chance to close it out. Sarazen won his first Masters start in 1935, and Hogan famously won the only Open Championship he ever played in 1953. Woods won the third leg of the Slam in his Pebble Beach runaway in 2000, then backed it up with his first Open Championship title that summer at St Andrews. Once the third leg of their respective Slams were secured, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus needed just three tries apiece to complete the task, Player at the 1965 U.S. Open and Nicklaus at the Open Championship the next year. The smoke of history that plumes around a player going for the final leg again and again? Not helpful. The timeline factor There are 12 players who are credited with winning three of the four men’s majors that comprise the Slam. Some, like Englishman Jim Barnes, were excluded from a proper pursuit of that fourth leg simply because they were playing in the wrong era. Barnes won the three oldest majors but, alas, was 47 years old when The Masters was first held in 1934. He never competed at Augusta National. Walter Hagen was 41 at the time of the first Masters and had already won 43 of his retroactively-credited 45 PGA TOUR titles. His best finish at Augusta was a T11 in 1936. Tommy Armour was 37 when the first Masters was played, and retired from full-time professional golf in 1935, the year after it was founded. Still, he finished T8, his best ever Masters result, in 1937, at age 40. Byron Nelson’s missing piece was The Open Championship, a tournament that was not held from 1940 to 1945 because of World War II. He would play in The Open only twice – in 1937 (tied for fifth), and in 1955, nearly a decade after he had retired from competing full-time professionally. Outside looking in In a couple of instances, a somewhat-surprising late-career major win has made finishing the Slam more unlikely. When Raymond Floyd won his U.S. Open in 1986, he was – at the time – the oldest winner in that championship’s history. Needing the Claret Jug to finish the Slam, Floyd played The Open nine times following his U.S. Open win, but never finished better than 12th. Phil Mickelson has the most runner-up finishes at the U.S. Open, with six. But his best chances to win that championship came before he won The Open at Muirfield in 2013. Since that victory, Mickelson does not have a top-25 finish at the U.S. Open, the major he needs to join the exclusive career Grand Slam club. At age 34, Lee Trevino claimed the 1974 PGA Championship, his first Wanamaker Trophy and the third leg of the career Slam for Trevino, who was missing only the green jacket. Trevino’s relationship with Augusta National was complicated; in his prime, he openly said he didn’t like the place. In 20 career starts, his best finishes came after he had won the first three legs of the Slam, as he tied for 10th in 1975 and again in ’85. Closest calls Arnold Palmer won the 1961 Open at Royal Birkdale at age 31, picking up his third leg of the career Slam. Needing only the PGA Championship to complete it, Palmer would finish runner-up three times, in 1964, ’68 and ’70. The 1968 PGA at Pecan Valley Golf Club is the closest any player has come to sealing the Slam without doing so, as Palmer had an eight-foot putt on the 72nd hole to force a playoff with Julius Boros, but missed. If you think McIlroy or Spieth might be weary from all the Slam talk, consider this: Palmer played the PGA Championship 34 times needing only that tournament to complete it. Sam Snead finished runner-up at the U.S. Open four times, twice after winning the third leg of the Slam at the 1949 Masters. In retrospect, he lost four opportunities to win the Slam when the U.S. Open went on hiatus for World War II from 1942-1945. In 1953, Snead began the final round one shot behind Ben Hogan, but closed with 76, and Hogan ran away with his fourth U.S. Open title. The numbers say Snead’s pursuit of the Slam was just as agonizingly close as Palmer’s, if not more so. From 1937 through 1959, there were 102 men who played 20 or more rounds in the U.S. Open. Of that group, Snead ranked fourth in Strokes Gained: Total per round (3.49) and scoring average (72.89), yet never won. In that span, he finished in the top-five seven times. In 1982, Tom Watson, then 32, won his U.S. Open title at Pebble Beach, giving him three legs of the Slam. He headed to the PGA at Southern Hills having finished fifth, first and first in the season’s major championships, but Raymond Floyd would open with 63 that week and win wire-to-wire, while Watson tied for ninth. Needing only the PGA to complete the Slam, Watson compiled six top-10 finishes there, including in 1993, when he was 43. One of 10 players within two shots of Greg Norman entering the final round, Watson birdied the 7th hole to get within one. Alas, that was as close as he got, finishing in fifth place. From 1982 to 1993, Watson had a scoring average of 71.8 at the PGA, a respectable 10th-best of any player in that span. McIlroy and Spieth Since winning The Open in 2014, McIlroy has had eight starts at Augusta National, needing only a Masters win to complete the Slam. While his best finish (runner-up) came this year, McIlroy started the final round 10 shots behind Scottie Scheffler. His best opportunities there came in 2011, when he was seeking his first major title and lost a four-shot lead with a final-round 80, and in 2018, when he was in the final pairing with Patrick Reed for Round 4. (Reed shot 1 under to win, McIlroy a 2-over 74 to tie for fifth.) Jordan Spieth is one of three players in the modern era to have won three legs of the Grand Slam before age 24. The other two – Nicklaus and Sarazen – finished the job. This will be Spieth’s sixth start at the PGA needing it to complete the career Slam. His best finish in that stretch was a tie for third in 2019, when Brooks Koepka won wire-to-wire. Coming off a win and a runner-up in his last two starts, Spieth is riding arguably his best pre-PGA form to date with a chance to close out the Slam. None of the five members of the Grand Slam club has taken the final leg at the PGA Championship. Already a prominent name in golf history, Spieth has a brilliant opportunity to be the first to do so this week in Oklahoma.

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Tiger isn’t right. Rory McIlroy, Adam Scott and Matt Kuchar are in the final group. There’s a lot going on in Los Angeles.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Notes and observations from Thursday’s first round of the PGA Championship where Thorbjorn Olesen and Kevin Kisner each birdied the 18th hole to grab a share of the lead at 67. The two own a one-stroke lead over Grayson Murray, Gary Woodland, U.S. Open champ Brooks Koepka, D.A. Points and Chris Stroud, who won last week’s Barracuda Championship. Murray playing a home game Grayson Murray was born, raised and still lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is only two-and-a-half hours from Charlotte. Until this week, though, the 23-year-old had never played Quail Hollow Club. Considering the significant changes to the course made last summer, though, maybe it was good for Murray to come to the PGA Championship flying blind, so to speak. After all, the 68 he shot in the first round that included a 32 on the extremely challenging back nine left him one stroke off the lead. Murray shot 83-81 at the 2013 U.S. Open in his only other major appearance. “This course is very tough,â€� Murray said. “I played about as good as I could. I had some putts that could have dropped but that’s how golf is. I’m very pleased with the round today.â€� That 7:20 a.m. start came early. But maybe it was only fitting that a native North Carolinian hit the opening tee shot of the first PGA played in the state since the 1974 event at Tanglewood. And he had plenty of fans urging him on as the round progressed. “It was nice to have a lot of friends and family out there supporting me,â€� he said. “You hear, ‘Go Grayson, let’s go.’ It’s good motivation for me.â€� Murray didn’t even know he was in the PGA field until two weeks ago when the rookie won the Barbasol Championship. He also vaulted from 124th to 58th in the FedExCup with the win and locked up a two-year exemption and trip to Maui for the SBS Tournament of Champions in January. “People ask me was it a relief or excitement,â€� Murray said. “And it was excitement. … Getting that first win was huge confidence-wise. “I can’t say how hard it is to win out here. I can’t stress it — what these guys do, what Jason Day or Rory or Jordan or Hideki, people take that for granted. It’s unbelievable. Hopefully I can be in that category in the next year or two and be in their shoes. “Right now, I’m just trying to get that second one.â€� Murray credits Josh Gregory, who used to be the golf coach at Southern Methodist, with helping turn his season around. He hired Gregory the week of the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard and the results were almost immediate – he missed his fifth straight cut at Bay Hill but then made 10 in a row. “My short game has really elevated since I have been working with Josh,â€� Murray said. “My time management, I’m out here practicing for a purpose now.â€� And Murray has another purpose this week. He may be young and he may be less experienced than some but he knows he has the game to compete. “Honestly, that win took a lot of nerves off,â€� he said. “I’m freewheeling it now. … All the world class players are here, so I’ll have to play my A-plus game probably right now to win where some guys may be able to play their B-plus and win. “Hopefully I’ll be at that stage of my career soon.â€� Reed’s game coming around Patrick Reed came to Quail Hollow in a positive frame of mind, even if the rest of his body was a little fatigued. The 27-year-old is competing in his ninth straight event – on two continents, no less – this week at the PGA. Two of those, played in Scotland and Germany, were sandwiched around the Open Championship, all three of which counted toward his European Tour membership. The rest were in the good old USA. Reed showed no signs of being tired on Thursday, though, as he fired a 69 that left him two strokes off the lead. Reed, who has won five times on TOUR, has yet to post a top-10 in a major, with a tie for 12th at the 2016 Open Championship his best in 15 appearances. “I feel like it’s moving in the right direction,â€� Reed said when asked about his game. “I got to keep my energy level up. Being my ninth week in a row, you have to save your energy for tournament rounds.â€� Reed said he hadn’t planned on playing nine straight tournaments. But the 2016-17 campaign hasn’t been up to his standards with just two top-10 finishes, and Reed prefers to work on his game between the ropes rather than beating balls. “If I don’t feel like things are going exactly how I want to, I don’t want to go home and try to work on it at the range,â€� he explained. “I can go to the range and it the ball perfect every time. I want to fix it on the golf course. That’s why I have been playing a lot.â€� While Reed is 54th and safely in the FedExCup Playoffs that begin in two weeks at THE NORTHERN TRUST, where he will defend his most recent title, The Presidents Cup is a different story. The fiery Texan ranks 11th in the standings with the top 10 automatically qualifying and Captain Steve Stricker making two picks on Sept. 6. “Those team events are always on my mind,â€� Reed said. “The way you take care of those is go out and play good golf. I don’t sit there and focus on standings and what you need points-wise. “At the end of the day you win a golf tournament, it takes care of itself. That’s been the way I thought about I everything when it comes to World Ranking, FedExCup, the Playoffs, Presidents Cup, Ryder Cup, any of those team events. If you go out and play golf like you are supposed to, it’s going to take care of yourself. That’s all you can control.â€� Quail Hollow suits big-hitting Woodland To say Gary Woodland is a fan of the changes made at Quail Hollow might be something of an understatement. The new holes suit his eye and the 196 yards added by architect Tom Fazio pose no problems for him. “I hit more drivers now than I ever did,â€� said the man who ranks 14th on TOUR in distance off the tee. “… Almost like they did it for me, I think.â€� Woodland demonstrated his affinity for the course on Thursday with a 68 that left him one stroke off the lead. He made four birdies and dropped just one shot to par. Interestingly, the putter, which has been uncooperative this year, was the key to Woodland’s round. He came into the week ranked 182nd in Strokes Gained: Putting but finished the day ranked in the top 10. “I haven’t made putts in a long time,â€� Woodland said, adding that seeing birdies drop in his first seven holes set the tone. In an attempt to shore up his putting, Woodland worked with Brad Faxon early in the week and Steve Stricker on Wednesday. “I talked to two of the greats,â€� he said. “I picked up some things definitely.â€� Most of his conversation with the Presidents Cup captain on Wednesday focused on his setup. More importantly, Woodland was trying to let things happen rather than focus on the fundamentals. “The day before a major, it’s all about freeing it up,â€� he said. “We’re not trying to do too much. Just get comfortable was the big deal.

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