Lexi Thompson seals Indy win with traditional kiss of bricks

It’s been some time since a Canadian has won the RBC Canadian Open. It was 1954 when Pat Fletcher hoisted the trophy, and even longer – 1914 to be exact – since a Canadian-born player won the tournament (Fletcher was born in England). But despite that lengthy drought, there has been no shortage of excellent Canadian performances on golf’s biggest stages. Between TOUR victories, generational inspiration, and Hall of Fame resumes, Canada has a strong legacy in the game. As part of our preparation for the first RBC Canadian Open in three years, let’s take a closer look at the top 10 players in the country’s history. Then we can watch the strong current crop of Canadians – including Corey Conners, Mackenzie Hughes, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin — compete at St. George’s Golf & Country Club. 10. Stan Leonard A three-time PGA TOUR winner, Stan Leonard was a celebrated professional who racked up 38 wins across Alberta, British Columbia, and nationally. He was six-time winner of the PGA of Canada’s national championship – which celebrates its 100th playing in 2022 – and was the low Canadian at the Canadian Open eight times. Leonard won the 1957 Greater Greensboro Open (now the Wyndham Championship), the 1958 Tournament of Champions (now the Sentry Tournament of Champions), and the 1960 Western Open. Leonard, who was inducted in into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 1972, also finished inside the top 10 at the Masters three years in a row. No Canadian had accomplished that until Corey Conners did it earlier this spring. Leonard was also inducted into Canada’s Sport Hall of Fame, the BC Sports Hall of Fame, the BC Golf Hall of Fame, and the PGA of Canada Hall of Fame. 9. Al Balding Balding was a four-time winner on the PGA TOUR and his victory in 1955 at the Mayfair Inn Open was the first by a Canadian in the United States. Two years later he finished sixth on the PGA TOUR’s money list – the highest of any Canadian before or since. He also lost in three TOUR playoffs. One of those losses, at the 1964 Fresno Open Invitational, came to fellow Canadian George Knudson. Balding was a multi-time PGA of Canada champion and won the World Cup alongside Knudson in 1968. His best result at a major was a T8 at The Open Championship. He backed that up with another top-10 finish the next year. Balding was inducted into Canada’s Sport Hall of Fame in 1968, the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame in 2000, the PGA of Canada Hall of Fame in 2014, and Canada’s Golf Hall of Fame in 1985. 8. Stephen Ames Ames was born in Trinidad & Tobago – his grandmother was a champion golfer in his native country – but became a Canadian citizen in 2005. Ames turned professional in 1987 and has won on every TOUR level. His four wins on the PGA TOUR was highlighted by his victory at the 2006 PLAYERS Championship. “This is big,” said Ames at the time. “Forty-eight or 49 of the top 50 players were playing? I beat the top players in the world this week.” Ames, who won on the Korn Ferry Tour and the DP World Tour before notching his first TOUR title, would go on to win twice more on the PGA TOUR (the Children’s Miracle Network Classics in both 2007 and 2009). He’s also a two-time winner on PGA TOUR Champions. Ames had six top-10 finishes at majors in his career and was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 2014. 7. Moe Norman Tiger Woods once said Norman (and Ben Hogan) were the only two golfers in history who have truly “owned” their swings. Sam Snead said Norman was golf’s greatest striker of the ball. The accolades about Norman’s ball-striking prowess continued until his death in 2004, but not before he racked up 55 wins on the old Canadian Tour, the PGA of Canada, and more. He was also the Canadian Men’s Amateur Champion in 1955 and 1956. Norman played 27 events on TOUR (his highest finish was a fourth-place result at the New Orleans Open in 1959) along with five on PGA TOUR Champions. He made 25 of 27 cuts on TOUR and made two starts at the Masters. He was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 1995 and Canada’s Sport Hall of Fame in 2006. Norman’s idiosyncrasies – many attribute it to not receiving proper medical treatment after a car accident when he was 5 or to an autism spectrum disorder – may have caused his TOUR career to be short, but his return to his native Ontario saw him become one of the most beloved characters in the country’s golf history. 6. Lorie Kane Kane was a celebrated youngster growing up on Prince Edward Island, wining the PEI Junior Girls’ Championship twice and the province’s Women’s Amateur nine times. She played basketball at Acadia University as well before turning professional in golf in 1993 and earning LPGA Tour status three years later. She captured the PGA of Canada’s Women’s Championship each year from 1996-1999 and again in 2001 – the year after she won three times on the LPGA Tour. Kane’s 2000 campaign on the LPGA Tour saw her win the Michelob Light Classic, the New Albany Golf Classic, and the Mizuno Classic. Kane, who also has 14 career runner-up finishes on the LPGA Tour, was the second Canadian in the LPGA Tour’s history to have a multiple win season and her three-win campaign saw her win the Canadian Female Athlete of the Year title. Kane’s off-course accolades are numerous. She was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 2015, Canada’s Sport Hall of Fame in 2021, and was named to the Order of Canada (the second-highest honor for a civilian in Canada) in 2006. 5. Marlene Stewart Streit Streit is one of the most accomplished amateur golfers in the history of the game – regardless of country. She is the only golfer to have won the U.S., British, Australian, and Canadian Amateur Championships along with dozens of other high-level amateur events across Canada and around the world. She is the only Canadian in the World Golf Hall of Fame and the only golfer in the country’s history to be named Canada’s Athlete of the Year more than once. Streit is a four-time winner of Canada’s Female Athlete of the Year title, was given the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, and was inducted into Canada’s Sport Hall of Fame in 1962 – when she was only 28 years old. She showed no signs of slowing down as she’s advanced in age, either. Streit won the 2003 USGA Senior Women’s Amateur at age 69 – the oldest champion in the tournament’s history. 4. George Knudson Knudson won eight times on the PGA TOUR in an 11-year span and was the winningest Canadian in the TOUR’s history for more than three decades. His winning resume as a professional is robust – both at home and abroad – as an individual and as part of a team. He represented Canada in the World Cup nine times, winning as an individual in 1966 and with Balding as a team in 1968. Knudson had one of the silkiest swings in Canadian golf history and he wielded it to win five PGA of Canada National Championship titles and earn low Canadian honors at the Canadian Open five times. He was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 1986 and Canada’s Sport Hall of Fame in 1969. 3. Sandra Post Post was the first Canadian to achieve several milestones on the LPGA Tour. She was the first Canadian to play the LPGA Tour and as a rookie, in 1968, she won a major championship (the then-LPGA Championship). She was, at the time, the youngest golfer to win a women’s major. Her young age (20 years, 20 days) would not be topped by a women’s major winner until 2007. Post would go on to win eight times on the LPGA Tour and was the first Canadian to win more than once in the same season – a feat she accomplished twice, in both 1978 and 1979. She was a celebrated junior and amateur golfer in Ontario and decided to skip college. The decision turned out to be the right one, as she won Rookie of the Year honors in her debut season. Post, who was named Canada’s Athlete of the Year in 1979, was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 1988 and bestowed the Order of Canada in 2004. 2. Mike Weir Canada’s most celebrated male golfer is also responsible for inspiring the current generation of TOUR starsA. Almost every golf fan in the country can recall where they were when Weir captured the Green Jacket in 2003, becoming the first Canadian male to win a major. Weir won eight times on the PGA TOUR including a World Golf Championship and the TOUR Championship in 2000 and 2001, respectively. His Masters title came in his three-win season of 2003. That year Weir made it to third in the world and was named Canada’s Athlete of the Year. Weir played on five Presidents Cup teams and has been an assistant captain in 2017, 2019, and 2022. He received the Order of Canada in 2009 and was inducted into Canada’s Golf Hall of Fame the same year. He was inducted into Canada’s Sport Hall of Fame in 2017 and has seen a career resurgence since joining PGA TOUR Champions. He won for the first time on the over-50 circuit last year and continues to be a threat when he tees it up. 1. Brooke Henderson The only golfer on this list not to be inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame has still had the greatest career of them all. And the reason why she’s not a Hall of Famer yet? Because she’s only 24. Henderson, who has won 10 times on the LPGA Tour, is the winningest Canadian of all time on either the LPGA or PGA Tour. She’s won one major so far – the 2016 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship – along with the CP Women’s Open in 2018, becoming the first Canadian to win on home soil since Jocelyne Bourassa in 1973. Henderson’s amateur career peaked when she was ranked as the No.1 amateur in the world in 2014. She skipped college and turned professional, winning her first event on the LPGA Tour in 2015 by eight strokes at just 17 years old. She was named Canada’s Female Athlete of the Year in back-to-back years in 2017 and 2018, won an ESPY Award in 2019 as the ‘Best Female Golfer’ and earned the LPGA Founders Award that same year. And, well, she’s just getting started.

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Yes! We are back in business! After the pandemic-inducing pinch between seasons a year ago, the gap between the concurrent conclusions of the FedExCup Playoffs and Korn Ferry Tour Finals last week, and the 2021-22 season-opening Fortinet Championship next week, has granted enough time and space to generate my annual full-membership fantasy ranking. This has published at PGATOUR.com for a decade, but it’s also a pet project that goes back to the previous century. FULL-MEMBERSHIP RANKINGS: Intro | 1-50 | 51-100 | 101-150 | 151-200 | 201-234 | Cheat sheet As a loyal reader of Baseball Weekly in the ‘90s, nothing beat “The Leviathan.” That was the nickname for the preseason fantasy baseball guide built by John Hunt. His humor alone was appointment reading, while his industry knowledge legitimized every bit of his comprehensive analysis. I had success in rotisserie formats, but when things didn’t go my way during a season – remember, always blame the players – I was smarter as a gamer and as a fan because of Hunt’s work. My experience as a consumer was the manifestation of why I got into sports writing in college with how I envisioned my role should I establish myself with an audience that wanted something similar. Hunt also created the famed League of Alternative Baseball Reality in 1994, the same year I started playing fantasy golf. In 2009, when I realized that I might be able to blaze a trail in this industry, what he did with the LABR inspired me to assemble nine knowledgeable voices in golf to participate in the Rotoworld One-And-Done Invitational, or ROADI, which I hosted at what was then known as Rotoworld.com. The standard format included Scott Pianowski, whose Yahoo! content preceded my in-house contributions when I was hired here in 2010, and it was a blast. The thirst for the ROADI exceeded even my hopeful expectations. Hunt, who is enshrined in the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association’s Hall of Fame, also is linked indelibly to the Tuffy Awards. They are distributed ceremoniously to MLBers who go undrafted in fantasy but burst out of the gates on Opening Day. Named after light-hitting Tuffy Rhodes, who hit three home runs off Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets on Opening Day at Wrigley Field in 1994 (coincidentally), I felt an even deeper connection to Hunt’s work, not because that had anything to do with fantasy but because I was at Wrigley that day. Still have the ticket stub. It could be perceived that attention to fantasy golf today is driven by DFS and betting, neither of which is confused with traditional fantasy where I got started. What’s more, both of those pursuits have been a legal fixture on the landscape for but a fraction of the time that I’ve been playing and contributing to the industry. However, this full-membership fantasy ranking, which is a spiritual descendent of “The Leviathan,” is not geared toward any specific format in particular. It’s just not practical in fantasy golf for which, anecdotally, there are more variations of how to play than for all of the team sports combined. So, consume this as a guide that includes a ranking of draft value. I’ve never nicknamed it, but it mostly definitely is a beast. While the ranking could be updated every week (read: it won’t be), the content on this opening page is evergreen. It includes all notable announcements, changes and nuggets for whatever format you play. The 2021-22 PGA TOUR season includes 47 events. It’s down one since the original announcement because of the cancellation of the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions. The Bermuda Championship, which was to be contested concurrently, now is a stand-alone stop with 132 golfers. It will award the full allocation of FedExCup points (e.g., 500 to the winner), just as it did in 2020. The Strategic Alliance between the PGA TOUR and the European Tour has yielded the addition of the Genesis Scottish Open as an official PGA TOUR event for which the winner will receive 500 FedExCup points and the customary two-year PGA TOUR membership exemption (through 2023-24). The Barbasol Championship and the Barracuda Championship also will be co-sanctioned, so both fields will expand to the maximum of 156 of which at least 50 will be European Tour members. Because both tournaments are opposite events, each winner will receive 300 FedExCup points, but a distinction for the membership exemption applies to both. If either winner is a PGA TOUR member, he’ll receive the customary two-year exemption. However, if he’s a non-member of the TOUR, the membership exemption will extend only through 2022-23. Also, top 10s recorded by non-members at Barbasol and Barracuda will not be eligible for the top-10 exemption into the next open. (This aligns with the current provision for top 10s in WGCs.) The other two opposite events – Puerto Rico Open and Corales Puntacana Championship – will return to reserving space for 120 golfers. That reflects a reduction of 12 in each field. It previously was announced that the gold medalist at the Olympics will be exempt into the Sentry Tournament of Champions if not already eligible. This means that Xander Schauffele has qualified for the limited field at Kapalua to open the 2022 portion. Baked into some of the analysis for international talents outside Europe are references to the Presidents Cup, which is scheduled for the last weekend of September in 2022. It’s impossible to get a feel for its influence on any specific golfer until well into the new year, but playing time has been known to increase for those chasing a spot on the team. (Think Danny Lee in 2015.) Fantasy value usually rises as a result. The 234 golfers in the ranking are representative of most who have status in the Priority Ranking through Ryan Blaum on a Non-exempt Medical Extension. All active members are returning, including 48-year-old Lee Westwood, who sat out five seasons until the super season of 2020-21. The only active member who is omitted is Davis Love III, he of Life Membership at age 57. Ages, 2020-21 earnings (for salary leaguers) and status for 2021-22 are positioned beside the golfers. Each also has a comment with useful intel, analysis and/or a projection of performance. For 2020-21 non-members who now are members, earnings include prize money in World Golf Championships, so if you’re a salary leaguer, use what you’ll find in the ranking or on this page to assign accurate value to those golfers. An asterisk beside a 2020-21 salary represents a bargain or a buy in those formats. If a golfer earned $0 last season, he’s annotated with “–“ and no asterisk. It’s assumed that he’ll earn greater than $0, so valuate him on his position in the ranking and what’s mentioned in the comment. References to 2020-21 FedExCup position in the status column are specified because the series of invitationals during the 2021-22 season automatically invite the top-X from the previous season’s FedExCup. The top 30 basically can play whenever they want, but opportunities are directly proportional with ranking. In part, it’s why it’s easier to stay on the PGA TOUR than it is to get to the PGA TOUR. STATUS … BERTHS • Top 125 in 2020-21 FedExCup … Projects entry into every open and the following invitationals: The American Express, The Genesis Invitational, THE PLAYERS, RBC Heritage. • Top 80 … Top 125 exemptions plus entry into the Charles Schwab Challenge. • Top 70 … Top 80 exemptions plus entry into the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard and Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. • Top 60 … Top 70 exemptions plus entry into the THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT and ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP, both of which will make room for the top 60 available. • Top 30 … Exemptions into every tournament before the Playoffs except the winners-only Sentry Tournament of Champions, the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play and the PGA Championship. Golfers who finished outside the top 125 in the 2020-21 FedExCup but still have fully exempt status via a victory no more recent than during the 2019-20 season are labeled as “Multi-year.” Because some ownership philosophies favor long-term success, Korn Ferry Tour graduates are segregated into two groups. Those who finished inside the top 25 in KFT points during the 43-event regular season are annotated with “KFT.” The 25 who earned cards at the three-event Finals are annotated with “KFT Finals.” In addition to 27 rookies, there are four first-time members who exhausted rookie eligibility in a previous season: Christiaan Bezuidenhout (2019-20), Lucas Herbert (2020-21), Kurt Kitayama (2019-20) and Will Zalatoris (2020-21). Because entry into premier events often cuts off at No. 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking, I always include all non-members inside that bubble, but for the first time in memory at this checkpoint, all 50 are members. For leagues that allow for midseason drop-adds, it’s important for you to know that the target for Special Temporary Membership for non-members in 2021-22 is the equivalent of 287.137 FedExCup points. That represents what Satoshi Kodaira totaled at No. 150 in the 2020-21 FedExCup standings. My weekly contributions will continue and I’ll be defending my 2020-21 title in PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, but the home game on this website is getting a makeover. I shared what I could about it in the Fantasy Insider during the week of the Olympics, but I’ll have more on it in the FI for the Fortinet Championship. Have fun, listen and learn, and remain fluid. In fantasy, in reality. Good luck and thanks for reading!

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