McDowell looking to use Canadian Open to qualify for Open Championship

NAPA, Calif. – The Fortinet Championship marks the beginning of a new season and, for 26 rookies and other Korn Ferry Tour graduates, the start or restart of a PGA TOUR career. For Phil Mickelson, 51, it’s more like the culmination of a wild 2021 season, and he’s looking forward to taking three months off to process it all. Well, the PGA Championship victory, mostly. Other than that, his season was a reminder that he’s in the September of his years. Until now, which happens to be, ahem, September. Mickelson strung together five straight back-nine birdies to reach 10 under par and with a very real shot at the Fortinet trophy going into Sunday. He is just four behind surprising Jim Knous (65) and Stanford product Maverick McNealy (70), with just eight players ahead of him. “I’m in a position where a good round tomorrow will do some good,” Mickelson said after making 123 feet, 8 inches of putts with his new grip extension and arm-lock putting method. “And it’s fun to have a little later tee time and to feel some of the nerves and so forth. I know I’m going to have to shoot probably 7, 8, 9 under par to have a chance, but either way it’s fun having that chance.” That was before the wind picked up in the afternoon, and the leaders stalled. The distance he might have anticipated between himself and the leaders never really materialized. “I’ll have to be a little bit more precise,” he said after hitting just five of 14 fairways. Mickelson’s 2-wood broke Friday, but he travels with backups and simply popped on a new head. Whatever happens Sunday, he will stay busy. Although the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits will mark the first U.S. Ryder or Presidents Cup side he hasn’t made as a player since 1993, he will still be there as a vice-captain to Steve Stricker. He plans to fly from Napa to San Diego after the final round, spend a night in his own bed, then depart with wife Amy for Wisconsin. While Mickelson will be chasing his 46th TOUR win Sunday, the eight guys ahead of him on the leaderboard have seven victories combined. Scott Stallings (67) leads the way with three, while Max Homa (65) and Troy Merritt (69) have two apiece. All are at 12 under, two back. Co-leaders Knous and McNealy are each seeking their breakthrough TOUR win, and only one of them is a surprise atop the board. McNealy, 25, racked up 11 victories at Stanford, just 60 miles south of here, and has made the BMW Championship in each of his first two TOUR seasons. A win Sunday would be a very natural next step in his progression, and it would be hard to find a more fitting place to do it. McNealy grew up in the Bay Area, got sponsor exemptions into the Fortinet as an amateur, and had his parents, uncle and friends cheering him on Saturday. “It’s one of the places on TOUR where I don’t feel like as much of a rookie,” he said, “and it’s going back to the Bay Area roots. Something about the air here, I feel really comfortable, and the grass and the conditions and it’s a lot of fun having people rooting for you.” As for Jim “Hard K” Knous – his real nickname, by the way – well, no one saw him coming. He made just five cuts in 18 Korn Ferry Tour starts last season and got into the Fortinet field on a major medical extension due to a wrist injury. Knous, who finished 25th in the 2018 KFT Finals to earn his TOUR card, has this and one more start to fulfill the terms of his extension. A two-way tie for third or better Sunday would give him enough points to equal the 125th player in the 2018-19 FedExCup standings, while a solo 12th or better would give him conditional status on TOUR and full Korn Ferry Tour status, allowing him to skip the upcoming Q school. “Do your best,” he said his wife told him. “Let God do the rest.” So far, it seems to be working. Two days after world No. 1 Jon Rahm missed the cut, Hard K is playing to dramatically alter the trajectory of his career. “Yeah, nothing to lose really for me,” he said. “I can go out there and play free and hit the shots that I know I can hit, try to go win the tournament. I know it sounds like a lot, but I’m going to play like that because that’s when I play my best golf, when I make full committed swings.” With so much inexperience at the top; 18 players within four of the lead; and Mickelson, Webb Simpson (65), and newly minted Rookie of the Year Will Zalatoris (71) lurking, the stage is set.

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AUGUSTA, Ga. — Fred Ridley recalls soaking up the ambience of Augusta National a week before his debut in the 1976 Masters as the U.S. Amateur champion. He was alone under the massive oak tree next to the clubhouse when he turned around and realized he had company. Clifford Roberts, co-founder of the club and the first chairman of the Masters, was standing behind him. “I kind of jumped and thought, ‘Oh God, what have I done?'” Ridley said. “We had a nice conversation. The interesting thing was, we were leaving and he says, ‘Now young man, you’re going to be playing in the Par 3 next Wednesday. You make sure you get some practice over there.’ He loved the Par 3. That was my recollection of the only conversation I had with him.” Forty-one years later, Ridley is the seventh chairman in the 85-year history of Augusta National. He took over Monday when the club re-opened for a new season. Ridley, a 65-year-old business lawyer from Tampa, Florida, succeeds Billy Payne, who is retiring after 11 years. Payne’s tenure was marked by the club inviting female members for the first time, and for creating events geared toward American youth (Drive, Chip and Putt) and two amateur events in Asia and Latin America that offer the winners a spot in the Masters. Payne, who chose Ridley as his successor, becomes chairman emeritus. Starting with that chance meeting with Roberts under the oak tree, Ridley says he has met every chairman who preceded him and knew most of them well. What he took from Payne was the value of relationships and the willingness to share credit. “The worst thing I can do is try to be Billy Payne, other than his accomplishments and his drive to be the best,” he said. Ridley was not specific on any changes or initiatives he had in mind for the club, saying only that he would lean on the principle established by Roberts and Bobby Jones. “That principle here is constant improvement,” Ridley said. “That permeates the culture here, whether it’s the Masters Tournament, whether it’s the member experience, whether it’s growing the game or whatever we do.” Augusta National recently acquired land from adjacent Augusta Country Club that would allow it to expand the par-5 13th hole, which now is 510 yards. “We are looking at whether we’re going to do anything,” Ridley said. “We just haven’t made any decisions.” He also was reserved about how the club felt about the distance the modern professional is hitting the golf ball, referring only to a good relationship with golf’s two governing bodies, the USGA and the Royal & Ancient. “We’re interested in that issue,” he said. “It’s not my place to talk about what’s good and not good for the game. I might have opinions, but I’m not the person to talk about it. What I can talk about is what’s good for Augusta National and our golf course. Going back to the guiding principles, again, I believe that the philosophies that Jones and (Alister) MacKenzie established here are timeless.” Ridley is the second Augusta National chairman, along with Hord Hardin, to have served as USGA president. He has not stayed active with the USGA, where executives are known for their blue blazers, saying that “my jacket has been green for quite some time.” Ridley was USGA president in 2004 when the final round of the U.S. Open was marred by the overly baked condition of the greens at Shinnecock Hills and a pin position at the par-3 seventh that made it impossible for anyone to hold the green without putting water on it. He was not directly in charge of the golf course, but “I was the president, so the buck stops there.” He was chairman of the competition committees at the Masters for the last 10 years, making him responsible for a rules controversy involving Tiger Woods in 2013. Woods hit a wedge off the pin and into the water on the par-5 15th. He dropped from an incorrect spot, which was spotted by a television viewer, David Eger, a former USGA and PGA TOUR rules official. When word got to Ridley, he said he viewed the drop and did not see a violation. Only after more questions were raised did the rules committee realize Woods should been penalized. Woods was given a two-shot penalty but spared disqualification for signing an incorrect card because Ridley said officials made a mistake by not speaking to Woods. “I think anytime you get involved in a complicated situation you learn,” Ridley said. “I think we were pretty transparent when we told the media what happened, what we did, how we resolved it. But yeah, we learn things all the time. I try not to look backward other than to learn.”

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