Ko leads by 1 at Kapolei entering final round

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That loud, steady knocking you hear at the door? That’s the 2020-21 PGA TOUR season, or super season if you will, delivering some news: This is it. Last stop. We’ve reached our destination. As Sinatra might say, it’s the final curtain. Fifty events – six of them major championships – across the United States and beyond, giving us an overflowing bushelful of great storylines and winners. We had it all: some powerful resurgences, lots of bonus golf (playoffs), new faces hoisting trophies, and of course, history, like a 51-year-old winning the PGA Championship … all of it wrapped up with a bow and delivered to the front stoop at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta this week, where 30 elite golfers have made it to the finish line. Not since 1975 (51 events) had the TOUR staged so many tournaments in one season. The Covid-19 pandemic that halted the 2019-20 TOUR season for three months at THE PLAYERS Championship in March of 2020 would cancel some events and move others, and eventually spin us into a new season unlike any we have seen before. Golfers are creatures of habit, and the new jam-packed schedule threw some off their normal rhythm. Still, through it all, week to week, the golf delivered, from then-47-year-old Stewart Cink winning in Napa in September to Sunday’s stirring six-hole playoff between Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Cantlay to decide the second leg of the Playoffs at the BMW Championship. We have witnessed indelible snapshots we will not forget. Hideki Matsuyama became the first male player from golf-rich Japan to win a major championship, donning a green jacket at the 2021 Masters. That was only five months removed from a Masters played in November, another first, in which Dustin Johnson won. Interestingly, Rahm and Johnson would tussle much of the season to be World No. 1. (Currently, Rahm is on top, with Johnson second.) “It’s hard to categorize the year, just because of how much has been going on, especially in the last two months,” Rahm said at last week’s BMW Championship, the second of two FedExCup Playoffs events, and the penultimate tournament of the season. “It’s been a lot.” Rahm’s year, in abbreviated Cliff’s Notes: He twice tested positive for Covid-19 (once when leading The Memorial by six shots through 54 holes), collected his first major championship (the first Spaniard to win a U.S. Open), and had to sit out the Olympics in Tokyo. Rahm was the last person to arrive to the Masters in April, for good reason: He and his wife, Kelley, had just become first-time parents to a son they named Kepa. That’s a lot to jam into a single calendar; Rahm will not soon forget his 26th year on the planet. The events most would consider to be the eight largest tournaments of the 2020-21 season – six majors, THE PLAYERS and the Olympic Games – were divided nicely amongst eight different champions, ranging from 51-year-old Phil Mickelson (2021 PGA Championship) to 24-year-old Collin Morikawa (2021 Open Championship). DeChambeau brought rugged Winged Foot to its knees at a delayed U.S. Open in September. Justin Thomas sizzled on the weekend (64-68) to win THE PLAYERS in March. Fortysomethings such as Cink, Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood showed renewed vigor in their games. Cink won twice, opening his campaign by winning the Safeway Open with his son, Reagan, on his bag. It was his first TOUR victory in 11 years. Garcia won at Sanderson Farms, stiffing an 8-iron tight for a winning birdie at the 72nd hole. Westwood, who was fast closing in on his 48th birthday, camped near the top of the leaderboard for two weeks in March, running second in two huge events: the Arnold Palmer Invitational (to DeChambeau) and THE PLAYERS. We had new faces winning, victories posted by such exciting players on the rise as Jason Kokrak (twice a winner), Max Homa, and Mexico’s tandem of Carlos Ortiz and Abraham Ancer. Six majors in the season, along with a PLAYERS, three World Golf Championships and so many other marquee events … it gave us a never-ending drumbeat of big-time golf. Not that it was all was easy, especially for those hitting the shots. They did what they could, and rested when they found windows to do so, but few players ever rested for very long. Instead of making the short trek from the opening FedExCup Playoffs event in New Jersey (THE NORTHERN TRUST) directly to the BMW Championship in Baltimore, Rory McIlroy, a new father himself, stole a day to fly home to Florida to see his wife and baby daughter. It helped him to refresh and recharge. From the start of the post-pandemic schedule in summer 2020 through this week’s TOUR Championship, McIlroy said he will have played in 34 events, which included his first Olympics start in Japan. (McIroy, playing for Ireland, fell short of a bronze medal in a wild seven-man playoff; C.T. Pan of Chinese Tapai took bronze.) The Ryder Cup (McIlroy’s 35th event) in Wisconsin awaits in a few weeks. McIlroy did manage to collect his first PGA TOUR trophy since late 2019 when he captured the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, N.C. That was a nice moment. “All that in a space of 15 months, it’s a lot of golf,” McIlroy said at last week’s BMW. “It’s probably too much for me. I’ve played more than I probably should have and feel like it’s just sort of all caught up with me.” For international players on the PGA TOUR, attempting to travel in the era of Covid has proved very challenging. Adam Scott and his family (he has three young children) are based in Switzerland. At the conclusion of the Open Championship at England’s Royal St. George’s, Scott was unable to travel home, as the United Kingdom resided on Switzerland’s “red” list for travelers. So Scott spent his off-week week in Spain instead, his seventh consecutive week away from home. He said travel restrictions made it difficult to spend time in person with his coach in 2021. He didn’t even bother to try to get with his physical trainer. “I’m not complaining about anything,” Scott said at the Wyndham Championship, noting that not many of his fellow pros are playing the PGA TOUR out of Switzerland. “I’ve made a lot of these decisions and I’ll live with whatever it is, but yeah, from a golf side of things, if I just lowered my expectations a bit, I think the frustration levels would have been down. “I missed the boat on finding the right cadence for the ‘super season.’ It certainly feels like here in the States that a lot of things are returning to a bit more normal, you would say, and hopefully as we go into next season, (we can) fall back into so many old rhythms.” There was one player whose World Ranking qualified him to compete at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, but he was leaning against going in the months beforehand. With a major championship right in front of the Olympics and a World Golf Championships event (FedEx St. Jude) and FedExCup Playoffs lurking shortly afterward, going all the way to Tokyo might not be the most prudent move in pacing himself. In the end, however, that player opted to go; he simply didn’t want to live with the regrets he might harbor in his heart if he didn’t. Xander Schauffele was glad he went. He left Tokyo with an Olympic gold medal around his neck, fulfilling a dream he shared with his father, Stefan. It was one more big performance, big moment, inside a season that gave us so many. Yes, it has been a season like no other. And we still have one more big finish to go.

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Matt Fitzpatrick will reach for his wedge after missing a green, rehearse a few practice swings and pause for the predictable murmurs, mumblings and crowd chirps that inevitably will start circulating across the gallery ropes. He and veteran caddie Billy Foster will look at one another and have a laugh. They have come to expect some true gems. “I find it hilarious,” Fitzgerald said of the reaction he gets as he prepares to pitch or chip cross-handed. “I’ll hear in the crowd, ‘Oh, my God! What’s he doing?’ Really, it’s hilarious. But it’s worked really well for me. My chipping stats are 100 percent better from this year compared to last. It’s a good start.” It’s not as if Fitzpatrick, 27, a player with seven wins in Europe and ranked 23rd in the Official World Golf Ranking heading into this week’s RBC Heritage, was a terrible chipper when he utilized a conventional technique. He simply thought he could be better and save a few strokes. And he has. Fitzpatrick had used a cross-handed chipping drill for a number of years, and he always liked how his strike was so consistent when he did it. So why not put the technique into play during tournament rounds? He has been chipping predominantly cross-handed for a year or so, according to Foster. “People think he probably has the yips or something,” said Foster, who caddied for World Golf Hall of Famer Seve Ballesteros, during the recent Florida Swing. “He doesn’t. He chips brilliantly.” Foster said Fitzpatrick tended to “cut across” the ball just a bit when conventional (his path through the ball coming a fraction inside). Thus far in 2021-22, Fitzpatrick’s play around the greens has been a real asset. He missed 14 greens across his first three rounds at the Valspar Championship, and he got up-and-down 12 times, ranking as high as second in scrambling (he finished the week sixth). Fitzpatrick tied for third in scrambling at last week’s Masters. Overall in 2021-22, he ranks 15th in Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green and third in scrambling, getting his ball up and down 68.93% of the time. Two years ago, by comparison, he ranked 138th in Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green and 99th in scrambling (58.79%). Playing partners may do a double-take the first time they see Fitzpatrick go to work around the greens, but they should not underestimate him. In a group-play playoff against Scottie Scheffler at last month’s WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, Fitzpatrick had an all-world chip to set up birdie on the fifth playoff hole, nestling a slick, downhill tester (with a tree closely behind him) to a foot. Scheffler won the playoff on the next hole, en route to winning the tournament, and is the hottest player in golf. Fitzpatrick has been on a pretty strong run of late, too. With the exception of THE PLAYERS Championship – where Fitzpatrick was on the wrong side of the draw in terrible conditions and shot a pair of hard-earned 74s – his other five stroke-play starts in 2022 have all resulted in finishes of T14 or better. (He was T14 at last week’s Masters.) He tied for fifth at the Valspar Championship, tied for sixth at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and tied for ninth at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. Last fall on the DP World Tour, Fitzpatrick also won the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters and was runner-up at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. He enjoys the challenge of Harbour Town Golf Links, where the greens are very small and short game can prove pivotal to contending. A year ago, Fitzpatrick tied for fourth at the RBC Heritage. Why has the quality of his short game risen with his unorthodox technique? “I just found it more consistent,” Fitzpatrick said. “The ball comes off the face much more consistently. It’s the same every time. You know what’s coming. When I was chipping normally, it’s not like I had the yips. I was just getting a lot of inconsistency in the strike, and the release. I started doing it a couple of years ago in the rough, because I felt the technique really got the (club)head out. “To me, I can’t drag my hands across, because I’ll shank it if I go cross-handed. It helps me throw the head in, and I feel I have way more control over it. … I just got so comfortable with it, and now I really like doing it.” Fitzpatrick still uses a conventional grip when he is in the bunkers. (“Bunkers are no problem,” he said.) He generally uses his cross-handed technique from 30 yards and in. On certain shots – say, a flop shot, or a shot where he needs to generate high spin, such as a pitch he faced to a front hole location from behind the left-side pond at Augusta National’s 11th hole last week – he’ll still use a conventional grip. Fitzpatrick certainly isn’t the first player to chip cross-handed. TOUR winners Vijay Singh and Chris Couch have chipped and even hit bunker shots that way, and Korn Ferry Tour player Josh Broadaway played cross-handed from tee to green. Golf is a copycat sport. Could Fitzpatrick, given his new chipping prowess, start a new chipping trend with his cross-handed method? “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said, laughing. “I’m happy with my start to the year; I’ve been playing really well. I think the changes that I made in the offseason have been positive. I think it’s a matter of time before I string it all together and hopefully knock a few (victories) off.”

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