Johnson birdies 18, wins APGA Tour Championship

There was something about the eyes. Jonathan Randolph had just seen one of the “Star Warsâ€� movies, and when he looked at that puppy he and his wife Lacy had adopted, well, let’s just say a light dawned. “I just kept looking at these dogs and they looked like Yoda; eyes way off the side and stuff,â€� Randolph says. “So that was in the back of my mind. When we found her, Yodi for some reason just came out. “Seemed like a good dog name.â€� Indeed, and the name stuck. So did Yodi, a brown and black and white Chihuahua, who has traversed the PGA TOUR and Web.com Tour with Randolph for nearly three years now. Randolph and his wife have recently added another traveling companion, too. Their son, Boyd, was born in March, and made his first trip – with Yodi in tow, of course – to A Military Tribute At The Greenbrier in July. “We said it was a traveling circus before, because we had a dog with us,â€� Randolph says with a grin. “And now we’ve got a baby. “It’s a lot more bags and stuff, but when they’re able to be on the road with me it’s just so awesome. It makes you feel a little bit more like home.â€� There are days when an excited Yodi entertains her humans by running circles around the hotel room. And she’s happy to help Randolph when he practices putting on the carpet, picking up golf balls and bringing them back to him. Yodi is still getting used to the new addition to the family, though. When Lacy picks Boyd up, for example, Yodi clamors to be in her arms as well. “She’s definitely gotten jealous, but also shows off like crazy when she knows he’s watching and she’s playing,â€� Randolph says. “She’ll start high stepping around and doing stuff to make him happy, which is pretty awesome.â€� In time, though, Randolph knows the Yodi and Boyd will be thick as thieves. “She’s got a new best friend,â€� Randolph says. “She just doesn’t know it yet. He’s been grabbing at her and doing that fun stuff. … Her life is going to get a whole lot more interesting when he gets mobile and can grab her. “For now, she’s got it made.â€� Yodi, who will be 3 years old in December, joined the family in early 2016. The couple was looking for a dog and Lacy had owned Chihuahuas in the past. When Randolph headed to South America to open the Web.com Tour season, the puppy stayed behind with Lacy at the couple’s home in Oxford, Mississippi. Once the Web.com Tour went stateside in March, their adventure began. “She’s been to almost 40 states,â€� Randolph says. “She’s well-traveled.â€� Yodi is remarkably calm for a breed that is known to be a bit skittish. And she’s perfectly content when Randolph puts her in a carrier and takes her on a plane. “She just sits there and looks at everything,â€� Randolph explains. “We’ve never gotten a complaint. So it’s a credit to her, not to us.â€� Yodi has been a positive influence in other ways, too. The first time Yodi came out to the golf course during competition, Randolph finished birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie-par at the 2016 BMW Charity Pro-Am. A year ago at the Albertsons Boise Open, the puppy watched as he played the final three holes in 7 under for the week. “I’m not going to say she’s a good luck charm, but good things happen when she’s around,â€� the Ole Miss grad says. On Tuesday, Yodi made her second straight appearance in the media center at the Sanderson Farms Championship. Randolph’s a member at the Country Club of Jackson, which hosts the tournament, and tied for third last year. “She had a good run here last year so she’s allowed to come back, I guess,â€� Randolph says. “I had my best finish on TOUR the only time she’s ever come to the media center, so it’s good to have her back in here.â€� The family has also been there for the not-so-good times, too, though. Take a month ago when Randolph found himself back at the Web.com Tour Finals after finishing 174th in the FedExCup. He thought his game was rounding into form but he ended up missing the cut in three of the four events – a stretch he called “one of the most devastatingâ€� of his career. Lacy, Boyd and Yodi were waiting for him beside the 18th green, though, and suddenly life was good again. “Just to have them there — it’s hard to put into words, you know, like what that’ll do for you,â€� Randolph says. “But it’s pretty awesome to have the little guy on the road. “Last year I said we were a traveling circus. We are legitimately a traveling circus now with the baby and the dog and everybody, but it’s like the most fulfilling thing ever.â€�

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Ambition and enthusiasm are resourceful commodities by themselves. But when accompanied by a firm embrace of technology and a commitment to meeting the high standards of your fan base, a meteor is your mode of transportation. And it’s likely to land you in a stratosphere never imagined – like being able to deliver to your fans every shot by every player in THE PLAYERS Championship. Yes, all of ‘em. Somewhere north of 31,000 combined by 144 players over four days over THE PLAYERS Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. Digest those numbers and the mere concept of Every Shot Live for a minute. Then you can appreciate the sense of anticipation that is swelling within Scott Gutterman, Senior Vice President of Digital Operations for the PGA TOUR. SUBSCRIBE TO EVERY SHOT LIVE “It’s one of the most exciting undertakings in technology that we’ve ever done at the PGA TOUR,� he said. “THE PLAYERS has traditionally been where we have introduced new technology to golf. We look forward to showcasing what we believe is the future of golf coverage.� He could add that it’s daunting, overwhelming, and complicated, too, but Gutterman knows passionate fans aren’t so much interested in all the logistics. Nope. They’re only thrilled that Every Shot Live is the ultimate supply that answers the demand. “This is the thing that fans have asked the most about since I joined the TOUR 15 years ago. When can we see every shot?� Gutterman said. Well, if you’re a subscriber to PGA TOUR LIVE on NBC Sports Gold, the answer is: Tune in bright and early to start Thursday’s first round on March 12 and you can live-stream to your heart’s content at PGATOUR.COM/EveryShotLive. And stay right there till dusk for the final round on March 15, because you’ll still be in position to live-stream every shot from every player who makes the cut. This seriously ambitious PGA TOUR undertaking involves impressive numbers: • 120 total cameras on the course between NBC, PGA TOUR LIVE, and Every Shot Live. • Of those, 93 will be used for Every Shot Live. • The project required adding 36 cameras to what was already planned to be on-site at the tournament. • All 18 tee boxes will have unmanned cameras. • All 18 greens will have manned cameras. • At least one wireless camera will be at every fairway. • The estimate for live coverage to chronicle every shot of the 2020 PLAYERS Championship is astounding – 747 hours, roughly 432 on Thursday and Friday, 315 for Saturday and Sunday. When you factor in the contributions made by Trackman and TopTracer that are hugely popular with PGA TOUR fans – not to mention the ability to view “speed rounds,� whereby subscribers can see a whirlwind of shots by their favorite players – it’s no wonder Gutterman laughed when he says Every Shot Live is not a project “for the weak of heart.� Nor would it be a project that could even be comprehended by an unnamed cameraman whose hiccup moment from nearly 60 years ago pretty much sums up the sort of different galaxies golf on TV has traveled. The cameraman filming a match between Byron Nelson and Gene Littler on “Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf� in 1962 never was identified, which is a shame given the comical shape he provided to golf folklore. But the late Fred Raphael, who was an innovator in TV sports (and gets much credit for giving birth to the idea of legends playing competitive golf, which morphed into the PGA TOUR Champions), never tired of telling the story with sheer delight. As on-site producer, Raphael watched Nelson deliver a fairway-splitting drive at a tough, par-4 first hole at Pine Valley, then turned his attention to the next player on the tee, Littler. Only thing is, there was a disruption. “The cameraman,� Raphael recalled, “climbed down from the tower� and waved for Littler to stand back. “Ask (Nelson) to hit it again, we missed it.� Oh, how Raphael used to laugh when he told the story. And, oh, how that cameraman might think he had been beamed onto Mars if told that PGA TOUR Entertainment folks were going to not only film the very first tee shot and the very last putt, but also every other shot in between. Welcome to a project that personifies the technological explosion with sports television. “The evolution of this technology is incredible,� Gutterman said. “When I got (to the PGA TOUR) in 2005, we started doing the live-stream at 17 (the iconic island green at TPC Sawgrass). But it was very hard to watch. We just didn’t have enough bandwidth.� Just 15 years later, as improbable as it sounds, Gutterman and his colleagues tested the Every Shot Live process earlier this season at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and his anticipation is palpable. His isn’t the only view that can measure the eons by which televised golf has improved from where it once was. Tommy Roy, the highly regarded producer of NBC’s golf telecasts since 1993, remembers when he first assumed command, TV viewers would get maybe three hours of coverage, an hour on Saturday and two on Sunday. “But on Saturday we’d come on after baseball and if the game went into extra innings, there’d be maybe a half-hour of golf,� Roy said. “Now, viewers have several hours available to them each of the four days of competition. “Back in 1993, I think we had maybe three trucks in the TV compound. Now, we have dozens.� All of this, said Roy, is keeping up with demands, “because the appetite of sports viewers has grown exponentially.� He gives great credit to the PGA TOUR’S ambition and is thrilled to be part of the execution. But if there’s one component to televised golf that hasn’t changed, it is this: It’s arguably the most difficult challenge for TV producers, more demanding than football, basketball, baseball and the other team games played in fixed locales. “In golf, we have 18 stadiums to cover,� said Greg Hopfe, vice-president and executive producer at PGA TOUR Entertainment. “It’s intimidating.� Oh, “and the 18 stadiums are spread out over 150-plus acres,� said Gutterman, “with maybe 75 players all over the course.� That massive playing area once required networks to put down miles and miles of cable, all of which had to be connected to cameras. Such an assignment is pretty much why coverage years ago would be limited to maybe the last six or seven holes. “It would take us five days to set that up,� Roy said. But with the introduction of fiber optic cables, well, you’ve got the proverbial “game-changer,� in Roy’s opinion. It’s the reason 18-hole coverage is the norm and why coverage is miles beyond what it used to be. Throw in two other major technological advances – super-slow motion “that allows you to actually see what happens at impact,� and TopTracer, which allows viewers “to see how the best players work the ball left-to-right or right-to-left� – and Roy applauds the PGA TOUR for answering their fans’ call for more. More shots by more players for more hours. Few could have envisioned the initiative stretching all the way to offering live coverage of all the shots by all the players. Yet Every Shot Live is just days away from being a reality for subscribers. “The PGA TOUR is the most content-rich sport on the planet and we have been focused on expanding the amount of content we bring to our fans from our competitions,� said Rick Anderson, the PGA TOUR’s Chief Media Operator, who shares a vision with Gutterman and the entire leadership team at the PGA TOUR. That is, execute this week’s Every Shot Live endeavor at THE PLAYERS, study the results, learn from the experience, and see if, and when, it can become part of the week-to-week landscape. “Our vision is to bring every shot in every PGA TOUR golf tournament live and on-demand to our fans, and this is the first step to making that happen,� said Anderson. There was a time when the lack of technology left golf fans totally detached from the game via television. Heck, the first golf tournament wasn’t shown on TV till 1947, eight years after MLB had made its television debut – and even then, it was shown only to local viewers in St. Louis. When golf did have its first national broadcast of a tournament, it was in 1953 and a whole hour of the World Championship of Golf was shown from Tam O’Shanter in Chicago. The Ryder Cup wasn’t shown live for the first time until 1983, 56 years after it had started, and all you saw was the final four singles matches for the last four holes. The entire 18 holes of the Masters coverage didn’t debut till 2002. Along the way, viewers absorbed the hiccups – like the do-over demanded of Nelson at the “Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf� and perhaps more infamously, Gene Sarazen’s gaffe at the 1955 U.S. Open. The Squire, working TV coverage for NBC – which was delivering the tournament for the second year, even if only for one hour – gleefully praised Ben Hogan for this closing 70 that had him in the clubhouse at 287, at the time five shots better than his nearest threats, Tommy Bolt and Sam Snead. “Congratulations on your victory,� Sarazen said to Hogan. To viewers, Sarazen then added it was Hogan’s fifth U.S. Open win. The great Sarazen needed a “do-over,� as they say in golf. Better still, what he really needed was a little technology, something that would have shown two late birdies made by an unheralded golfer named Jack Fleck, who pulled even with Hogan, then shockingly won the playoff the next day. In other words, he needed Every Shot Live. Alas, while The Squire played his golf in the Golden Age of American Sports, his TV work came decades before the introduction of meteoric technology.

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Anthony Ford had made history in high school but was unsure about the specifics of college golf. Kharynton Beggs was coming off a back injury and wondered if her dream had already died. Maeve Cummins stood out in Northern Ireland but was apprehensive about coming to America. All three are playing collegiately thanks in no small part to the Congaree Global Golf Initiative (CGGI), an immersive golf and life skills program at an 18th-century estate in the middle of South Carolina. CGGI transforms lives via equal parts education and game-improvement, with the aim of getting kids college golf scholarships. There’s instruction, club-fitting, and yoga, but also SAT prep, time-management, and college placement. The program fits nicely into the philanthropic mission of Congaree, a world-class golf club set amid 2,000 acres of Lowcountry longleaf pines and lakes. “My mom didn’t believe it was real,” says Cummins, who was among the first wave of CGGI campers in 2017 and now plays for Div. II Carson-Newman University in Tennessee. “She was like, ‘This has to be a scam.’ I was all in, straightaway.” Cummins, who as a freshman would win Women’s Golfer of the Year for the South Atlantic Conference, had received a gem of a letter. It read, in part: You have been recommended by a member of Congaree’s global network of ambassadors based on your interest in golf and for your dedication and desire to pursue higher education and a collegiate golf career. She would get coaching from PGA professionals, on a Tom Fazio-designed course, with input from education and testing experts – including a seasoned college-placement professional. She and her mother, who had just picked her up from school to go play golf, were flabbergasted. “I shot under par that day,” Cummins says. “I was on cloud nine. It was pretty cool.” This week’s Palmetto Championship at Congaree will change the life of the player who wins it, but just as impactful will be CGGI, an all-expenses-paid golf immersive that prepares promising high schoolers to tee it up in college. The fifth season of the program will start when 15 new campers roll into Congaree on the Monday after the tournament. “What I like about it is we’re helping kids make a decision to commit to education,” says CGGI Executive Program Director Bruce Davidson. “Education is the key. Going to university to play a sport gets you in the door, and if you can manage an athletic timetable as well as studies, it teaches you so much about time management, discipline, and all that goes along with that.” Cummins flew from Belfast to Heathrow – where she met up with other campers and two Congaree ambassadors – and then flew the rest of the way to South Carolina. She reports an almost mystical quality about being driven through the gates – like rolling up Augusta National’s Magnolia Lane. (Not bad for a first visit to America.) She showed up with a set of hand-me-down men’s clubs with extra-stiff shafts and was promptly fitted for a new set of PINGs – a fantasy-camp-like experience that is very real at CGGI. Kayleigh Franklin of the Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) gives each camper an assessment and personalized exercises. Davidson, who worked under Dick Harmon at Houston’s River Oaks Country Club, and John McNeely, who learned from Claude Harmon at Winged Foot, handle instruction along with fellow world-class teachers Katherine Doyle and Jason Baile. Matt Cuccaro, Director of Performance at Georgia’s Sea Island Resort, offers guidance on the mental aspect. Kids work on test-taking and college-admissions essays, and consult with Lorne Kelly, a Walker Cup player for Great Britain & Ireland who ran a business that helped place European kids in American universities. “He has like 2,200 college coaches on speed dial,” Davidson says. “It made me decide that going to America to play golf was something I’d like to do, if it was possible,” Cummins says. “We went through SATs and stuff, what it takes to get into college in America, which was good because our exams back home aren’t multiple choice. Lorne told me that a DII size school might be the best fit and put us in touch. From the first call I knew.” Ford, who led Atlanta’s Drew Charter to its historic state title in 2019 and now plays for North Carolina A&T, a historically Black college and university, describes the week as unlike any golf camp he’d ever seen. His full fitting, driver to wedges, was a first for him, and the course and accommodations were spectacular. The atmosphere gave him a taste of what playing college golf would be like. “They didn’t treat us like kids,” he says. “They treated like we were already student-athletes. They gave us that responsibility. Workouts and yoga every morning. They expected us to be on time, be punctual, give it our all when we practiced or played.” Some but not all of the Congaree kids come from the First Tee. That goes for Ford, who played with partner Billy Andrade in the 2019 PURE Insurance Championship at Pebble Beach. Beggs, who is an alumnus of First Tee chapters in Baltimore, Maryland, and Charleston, South Carolina, once considered quitting golf. Her father, Chris, died in a motorcycle accident in Baltimore five years ago. Kharynton, who had been living with her mother, Teia, in South Carolina, and had just gotten home from a First Tee leadership academy in Minnesota, was shattered. “I was doing really well before the accident,” she says. “I was at that leadership academy, which I was so excited about. I had just finished freshman year of high school. After the accident I went into a state of denial, kept doing everything I was doing before, went right back into it. “In hindsight it wasn’t the best idea. When school started, I was like, I don’t know if I’m OK.” She didn’t play high school golf that year. “I thought, maybe this is a good time to take some time off,” she says. “Then I really removed myself from the game.” Her coach at the First Tee of Charleston kept checking in on her. “He kept calling to ask, ‘Hey, am I going to see you later today?’” she says. “And I would say no, and he would keep calling. He didn’t make me feel weird for missing it, but he also didn’t give up. That’s what got me back into it. Eventually one day I just said OK.” Beggs played No. 1 for all-girls Ashley Hall in Charleston but suffered another setback when she hurt her back hitting a shot during her junior year. College coaches stopped writing. She was, however, nominated to go to Congaree, which was when things began to turn around. She got stronger, worked on her game, wrote a five-year plan. She recently happened upon it, marveling at how many of her intentions had become a reality. Soon after leaving Congaree, she played the 2018 PURE Insurance at Pebble Beach with partner Jay Haas – a fellow Palmetto State resident. Teia, who’d gotten Kharynton into golf, formed a friendship with Haas’ wife, Jan. Today, Kharynton plays for Division III Oglethorpe University, where she will be a junior in the fall. Without the helping hand of CGGI, she says, it’s unclear where she would have ended up. “Going to Congaree helped,” she says. “Getting that instruction, seeing how much I loved the sport, I knew how much I wanted to play college golf and make that a reality.” Davidson says there are plans to take CGGI on the road, although thus far that’s only happened virtually, owing to the pandemic. The U.K. version of CGGI was limited to distance-learning last summer and will be again this year. Still, it accomplished its goal of connecting kids to colleges. “We’ve had discussions with a golf course in Brazil,” Davidson says. “We’re looking at the Middle East. We want to have as many Congaree kids as we can get into college.” And after that? “The cool thing about Congaree,” he adds, “is our ambassadors are standing by and ready to help them get employment after graduation. If they play the PGA TOUR or LPGA, that’s terrific, but we all know that less than one percent of NCAA graduates go on to play any professional tour.” Cummins, whose father works in the window manufacturing industry and mother works part time resolving disputes in the workplace, never had much money to travel throughout Europe for tournaments. But by getting involved with CGGI, and now being a member of the Carson-Newman Eagles women’s team, she has put those issues behind her. She plans to graduate a semester early this December with a major in sports management and a minor in accounting, and then begin work on her MBA. She is doing an internship at The Preserve Resort in Tennessee this summer to get a taste of normal life in the States. It was arranged, as so many things have been, through Congaree. “It’s one of those things in life, I don’t know where I would be in life if I didn’t get that letter in the mail,” she says. “I’ve made so many good friends in America; I’m definitely very grateful.”

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