Miura signs Ancer as its first ever PGA TOUR ambassador

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SAN DIEGO - Marc Leishman wasn’t one to spend time on the range as he was growing up - and who could blame him. In those days you had to pick up your own range balls at Warrnambool Golf Club. Instead, he would use the course proper as his practice facility, challenging his mates to contests on each hole. Warrnambool is a coastal town in Victoria, Australia, a little over three hours drive from Melbourne. The course was rarely full, which allowed a group of youngsters to spend a bunch of time on each hole without slowing pace of play. "It might take us three hours to play nine holes - not holding people up - but we forever came up with things to do," Leishman recalls. "We put ourselves behind trees, or in divots, or tough bunker lies – really in all sorts of spots where we had to use our imagination. We had a lot of fun." Imagination. It's a word used less and less in modern golf. The art of golf is - at times - being bludgeoned by the science. In the past, the likes of Seve Ballesteros would wow the masses with his creativity from all over the course. In more modern times, Bubba Watson has shaped the ball in ridiculous ways. But now the game is skewed towards the athletic prowess and strength of a player and brute force can get you to places never seen before. We have players like Bryson DeChambeau following the science of the swing and of the body and calculating all sorts of variables around every shot to chase perfection. We have technology and stats measuring everything. Gadgets and gizmos a plenty, whozits and whatsits galore. Science has indeed taken the sport to incredible new heights. But science isn't everyone's best subject. Leishman has always been an artist. The joy in his golf comes from shaping the ball both ways or hitting it high or low on demand. He craves hard and fast courses and thrives in the wind. He loves being able to hit the same club across a wide yardage range and gets juiced up when the opportunity to paint a picture surfaces in his game. "That’s when I play my best golf - when I have to use my imagination. Augusta requires a lot of it, the British Open requires a lot of it and it’s what makes golf fun for me," Leishman says. I would call myself an old school pro. The game is an artistic game for me, and I love when you have to control it on the ground and through the air and you really have to think. It is a style that has seen him win five times on the PGA TOUR including last year at the Farmers Insurance Open where he defends this week at Torrey Pines. In the final round a year ago, Leishman couldn't buy a fairway. He was 70th in the field for Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee losing -1.235 to the field. But he invented ways to get himself to the greens regardless of the inaccuracy and gained +4.778 strokes putting as he made 151 feet, four inches worth or putts. Not long after Leishman was runner up at the Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented by Mastercard, an event he won in 2017. Then he opened THE PLAYERS Championship with a 5-under 67, his career best first round at TPC Sawgrass where his scoring average is a not so impressive 72.25. At seventh in the FedExCup, he was rolling along nicely. Of course, we all know what happened to the world next. But Leishman had no clue the COVID-19 pandemic would derail his form so significantly. Not many players - if any - spiraled like he did after the extended pandemic break. In his six regular season starts upon return, Leishman missed three cuts and posted a T40 as his best result. His early season form kept him in the duration of the three FedExCup Playoffs but he was a virtual passenger. Leishman missed the cut at THE NORTHERN TRUST. He then shot 80-78-79-73 (+30) in the no-cut BMW Championship (another tournament he's won before) to be dead last, nine shots worse than second last and 34 shots behind winner Jon Rahm. In the TOUR Championship he was 29th of 30 players. His start to the 2020-21 season wasn't much better as the now 37-year-old missed the cut at the U.S. Open followed by a T52 and T70 at the limited field CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK and ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP @ SHERWOOD. It wasn't pretty. So, what happened? It was a bunch of factors but at its core - Leishman got bogged down studying science and got frustrated with his art not making it to a gallery. "Having a big rest over the pandemic break was good for me to be with family but for my golf game it wasn’t so good for me," Leishman explains to PGATOUR.COM. “Normally on weeks off I don’t play at all, so I virtually have never played golf with no crowds. It’s either in a tournament or in a practice round at a tournament so that was very new to me. Even when I play golf back home in Warrnambool there are people watching me so returning without fans was weird. I really struggled with energy." The energy he refers to is the competitive instinct of the artist who loves to entertain and who thrives on an internal underdog factor. Leishman long went unheralded by the American public who confused him with other golfers and even when his profile rose, and he was grouped with big name stars, Leishman's nationality usually meant he'd be fighting for the majority of support. It was fuel for him. "When you’re struggling with crowds around it can still be fun because if there are 50 people watching and you hit a shot from the trees you can kind of entertain or show off your skills a little bit," Leishman says. "It gets you engaged even if you’re going to miss the cut – you think these people might remember this if I pull it off. But I was in the trees a lot last year and you can’t even show off when no one is there. "As an artistic player, when you start drawing dodgy pictures with your shots, which I was doing, you start to think about it too much and I started getting technical. I started thinking science and that's never good for me. I was looking in the wrong places for solutions." Now, it's not like Leishman hadn't had some tough weeks in his career before. But in normal circumstances, time with coach Denis McDade would quickly fix any swing issues. Problem was McDade is based in Australia and the pandemic made travel to the U.S. very difficult indeed. Sure Leishman could have looked for a local coach but he's a fiercely loyal type of guy. He's had the same coach and same caddie since he burst on to the PGA TOUR and was Rookie of the Year in 2009. McDade is loyal also. Despite plenty of roadblocks he made his way to the U.S. in late October last year and hooked up with Leishman in Los Angeles during the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP. After watching the opening two rounds intently, he had the answer. "It was huge for him to come over and a massive commitment from him," Leishman says. "He has a family back home, but he was over here for six weeks and he got home and had to spend two weeks mandatory quarantine in a hotel room where you don’t get given a room key. He missed his birthday and his wedding anniversary during quarantine, so I am really appreciative and want to thank him. "In the end it wasn't really my swing at all. It was the way I was getting into the ball - I was standing too far away from it," Leishman reveals. "I was being technical on the tee; I was doing drills in the tournaments before every tee shot which I had never done before, and it was getting me too far away from the ball and my weight too far on the toes. When my weight is on the toes my balance is bad and I miss it right and left and it’s just a disaster – I was in a hiding to nothing. "So, it was something really simple and that's where it’s really good that I’ve been with Denis for 18 years. He knows my tendencies and he saw it straight away. If I had gone to someone else or jumped ship with him not being able to come over, a new coach may or may not be able to see that." The results were near instant. In his next start at The Masters, Leishman was T13, hitting the ball better than most of the field but only falling behind on the greens. Two weeks ago at the Sony Open in Hawaii, he finished T4, his first top 10 since the pandemic break. Now he gets another crack at Torrey Pines where he has a win, two runner ups and two further top 10s in his portfolio. Look out. The artist is back.

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TULSA, Okla. – After opening the PGA Championship with rounds of 68 and 64, Mito Pereira has taken the lead early in the third round at the PGA Championship. The 27-year-old from Chile is playing his first full season as a TOUR member and looking to make a major his first PGA TOUR victory. Here’s Five Things to Know about the leader at the PGA Championship: 1. THREE’S COMPANY Pereira earned his first PGA TOUR card by winning three times on the Korn Ferry Tour during the extended 2020-21 season, becoming the 12th player to earn a three-win promotion from that circuit and the first since 2016. His first win came at the Country Club de Bogota in February 2020. Sixteen months later, he won back-to-back starts to graduate to the PGA TOUR. In those last two events, he was 48 under par and had a 65.1 scoring average. His highest score in that span was 67. “This is crazy, man,” Pereira said after the win. “This is by far the best thing that I’ve done in my life. … It’s been a long ride. There’s been tough moments, good moments, but it’s all worth it.” It didn’t take him long to have success on the PGA TOUR. He had back-to-back top-6 finishes in July before finishing fourth at the Olympics, falling in the seven-man playoff for the bronze medal. 2. STANDING ROOM Pereira entered this week ranked 46th in the FedExCup and 100th in the world ranking. A third-place finish in the season-opening Fortinet Championship is his lone top-10 of the season. He entered the week with four consecutive top-30 finishes in individual tournaments, though, including a T17 at last week’s AT&T Byron Nelson. The stats show that ballstriking is Pereira’s strength, which is paying off this week. He’s fourth this season in greens in regulation (71.4%), 13th in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green (+0.67) and 30th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee (+0.45). He ranks outside the top 100 in both Strokes Gained metrics that measure short-game performance (Putting and Around-the-Green), however. He’s also 16th in the standings for this year’s International Presidents Cup team. 3. PHENOM-ENAL Pereira was something of a junior phenom in his native Chile. He was runner-up in the boys 10-11 division of the 2006 Optimist International Junior Golf Championship and won the 12-13 division two years later (Beau Hossler finished third, one stroke back). Pereira enrolled at the prestigious IMG Academy in Florida when he was 14 but was burnt out after six months and quit the game for two years. When he decided to start playing again, he quickly picked up where he left off, however. “I took the two years off but when I came back I knew I could do it, I knew I could get to here,” he said Friday, “and I just kept the confidence, and obviously there were some up and downs but (I’m) really happy to be here.” He won on the Chilean Professional Tour when he was 17 and embarked for Lubbock, Texas, to play one season at Texas Tech, reaching as high as No. 5 in the world amateur world ranking before turning pro in 2015 after his freshman season. The Big 12 Championship was played at Southern Hills for Pereira’s lone season with the Red Raiders. He finished eighth, nine shots back of winner Scottie Scheffler. Pereira finished third on the PGA TOUR Latinoamerica Order of Merit in 2016, racking up a win and three-other top-3 finishes, to earn Korn Ferry Tour status. He finished a solid 76th on the Korn Ferry Tour money list the next year before losing his card in 2018. He returned to Latinoamerica for one season before making it back to the KFT. 4. RISING STARS Pereira is the third Chilean to earn a PGA TOUR card, after Benjamin Alvarado and Joaquin Niemann. Pereira and Niemann, 23, have been friends since they were kids. They used to practice together daily and shared a coach, Eduardo Miguel, who still coaches both of them. Pereira also resided in Niemann’s South Florida home after the COVID-19 pandemic made international travel impossible, and had his Korn Ferry Tour trophies sent to Niemann’s home. Niemann was known in their younger days for wearing a lot of yellow. “He looked like a bee,” said Pereira. Niemann also looked up to the older Pereira. “We all grew up together,” said Carlos Bustos, another Chilean who played college golf at Florida. “Mito was always better because he was older than us. He was on another level at that age, when we were like 13, 14, I mean he was an unbelievable golfer.” Niemann went on to become the No. 1 amateur in the world before winning twice on the PGA TOUR. He and Pereira were teammates at last year’s Olympics and now look to team together again at this year’s Presidents Cup. 5. ADRENALINE JUNKY Pereira is known as a bit of an adrenaline junkie, which could help him cope with the stress of a major championship. He’s a fan of motocross and MotoGP (Grand Prix motorcycle racing). After enduring a difficult season on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2018 and failing to regain his status at Q-School, Pereira broke his collarbone when he fell off his bike. The injury may have been a blessing in disguise. “Obviously in that moment it was terrible,” he said. “But if I look back, it probably helped me a little bit. It was a month that I didn’t play. I cooled down and took all the bad things out.” He also discovered a mental coach, Eugenio Lisama, who works with Formula 1 racers and soccer players. Pereira says working with sensors on his brain and analyzing the data was “like going to the gym for your brain.” “He showed me some data of those guys and it’s unbelievable,” Pereira said about the athletes who engage their brain much quicker than he does playing golf. “But we all need our minds to be blank. That’s what he teaches and trains with me on.”

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