Numbers to Know: AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

Click here to read the full article…

SILVIS, Ill. — In a different year, at a different moment in time, Anirban Lahiri might be laser-focused on his golf, on improving his position in the FedExCup standings, on ensuring he is properly tending to his singular pursuit of a successful career at the highest level of his sport. This is not that year. Now is not that moment in time. “I don’t think COVID is going to wait,” Lahiri explained Wednesday in the midst of a coordinated and urgent plea to golf fans around the world to assist worthy organizations that are helping his native India emerge from a deadly spring surge of the COVID-19 virus. “It has its own schedule. It doesn’t wait for the season to end and the offseason to start.” A 34-year-old native of Pune, India, Lahiri is well-versed on the challenge of emerging from a bout with the coronavirus. He is two months removed from his own frightening episode with the virus, which he, his wife and 2-year-old all contracted in April when his vaccinated coach visited from India, only to discover he’d been exposed to the virus. “I had a pretty serious bout with it,” said Lahiri, a 14th-year professional and veteran of five PGA TOUR seasons. “I was very fortunate that my wife didn’t have a very serious case. I was so bad that she actually had to drive from Palm Beach to Hilton Head seven hours while she had COVID to come and take care of me because she was the only person who could have had access. It was a very difficult time for the family. I think when someone has COVID, it’s probably the family members who feel the most helpless.” Lahiri made two hours-long visits to an emergency room, spiked a fever of 104, and ultimately lost 15 pounds over a span of 10 days. At its worst, the illness raised concerns of pneumonia. Lahiri declined to say if he feared for his life at that point, but indicated he saw that fear in his wife. His personal concerns were severely compounded by the growing crisis in his homeland. Official numbers list in excess of 400,000 deaths and more than 30 million infections in India since the advent of the pandemic, but, in late June, the Wall Street Journal cited modeling by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that suggested the actual death count in the country was three times that official figure. Even with vaccinations available for months, India endured a crippling second surge that saw daily infections increase exponentially, from a low of fewer than 9,000 new infections on Feb. 8 to a peak of 414,000 on May 8, according to the worldometers.info website. While the worst now may be over — on July 5, daily cases were cited at fewer than 35,000 — Lahiri is encouraging donations to organizations such as the Akshaya Patra Foundation for COVID relief, which are working to helping the least fortunate surviving victims in his homeland. Lahiri noted he and his family are not coming forward with a specific fundraising initiative, and he said the foundation cited above is far from the only group doing extremely vital outreach for Indian families who lost means to an income and children who lost parents. In the coming days, he plans to use his social media platforms — @anirbangolf on Twitter and @banstaa on Instagram — to share links to important and trustworthy organizations in need of financial assistance. “The whole idea is to bring that awareness to the golfing audience, especially this part of the world, and encourage them to donate as much as possible to some of the Indian charities,” he said of his decision to share his story on the eve of the John Deere Classic. “The reality is people’s lives have been destroyed. The reality is people don’t have a job. The reality is a lot of futures have been compromised. The way my family, myself and my wife look at it is what can we do to make a better future. It’s about faith in humanity. The pain and the suffering are real. That’s the message I want to send out.” Lahiri’s own immediate future includes two final pre-FedExCup Playoff starts, here at the Deere and at next week’s Barbasol Championship in Nicholasville, Ky., with the hope of continuing his personal post-Covid rebound and improving his FedExCup ranking of 119. Beyond that, he will represent India in a second consecutive Olympiad July 29-Aug. 1 in Tokyo. Given his monthlong absence from the TOUR while recovering from the virus, Lahiri might have opted to bypass the Olympics in favor of playing more TOUR events in advance of the Playoffs, but his sense of duty to country won’t allow that. “In a country where golf is a young game, still maturing and developing, the Olympics is the beacon, it’s the torch of all international sports,” he said. “I’ve seen the impact on badminton a gold medal had in India. I’ve seen the impact on wrestling and shooting, where we’ve had success. If I can somehow do my best and we can see more kids coming out of India on the PGA TOUR, that’s something I would like to leave behind.”

Click here to read the full article…

Jerry McGee thought he might be in line for some good luck that week. He had come to the Florida Panhandle in April of 1975 to play in the Pensacola Open. One night before the tournament began, he and his wife Jill had dinner in a local restaurant. "We ordered oysters and I found a pearl in one of mine," McGee told the Morning Journal of Lisbon, Ohio last year. "I guess that was a good omen." It was, indeed. After opening with a 69 that left him five strokes off Andy North's lead, McGee steadily climbed the leaderboard. He led by one stroke through 54 holes thanks to consecutive 66s and ended up beating Wally Armstrong by two strokes. The win was the first of four on the PGA TOUR for McGee, who died Wednesday at the age of 77 just weeks after moving to Florida to be closer to his family. His son Mike, who is married to LPGA legend Annika Sorenstam, posted on Facebook that McGee was admitted to the hospital on Saturday. "He went downhill quickly," Mike McGee wrote. "Lots of complications that had been brewing. We were blessed that my parents moved to Orlando and we could all say our goodbyes and be together. "He had struggled for a while and I really believe that after many years of us wanting them to move closer that he finally acquiesced because he knew this was coming. Once my Mom was settled here he was at peace." McGee, who was born July 21, 1943 in New Lexington, Ohio, was a fixture on the PGA TOUR in the 1970s and PGA TOUR Champions from 1993-2004. He started out playing baseball and football but became interested in golf after his parents divorced and his mother later married a club professional. "When I was 14, some friends of mine took me to Firestone to watch the tournament; it was the Rubber City Open at that time," McGee told the Tribune Chronicle of Warren, Ohio in 2014. "And from that day on, I wanted to play professional golf." McGee played at Ohio State, then turned pro in 1966 and joined the PGA TOUR the following year. He made 404 starts and won four times, including twice in 1979, and played on the victorious U.S. Team at the 1977 Ryder Cup at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. "Outside of my family, playing on that team was the greatest thrill of my life," McGee told the Morning Journal in 2020. "To be one of 12 golfers picked to represent your country, I still get chills thinking about it." The slender 5-foot-9, 160-pound McGee was known on TOUR for his short game. He played in 26 majors and posted a trio of top-10s, including a tie for fifth in his 1972 Masters debut. "It's ironic the Masters is next week," Mike McGee wrote on Facebook. "That was by far his favorite week of the year and during his radiation treatments for cancer years ago, he played Augusta National in his mind." McGee was plagued by nagging injuries during his career and eventually sidelined by hypoglycemia, also known as low blood sugar, in 1981. He took a job as director of golf at Oak Tree Country Club in West Middlesex, Pennsylvania, where he go on to work for 12 years. During the last year of his employment at Oak Tree, McGee had a sign on his desk that said: 1993. It was a reminder that he would be eligible for what is now known as PGA TOUR Champions that year. "Everybody asked, ‘What's that,'" McGee recalled in a 2005 interview with the Tampa Tribune. "I just kept it between me and well, me. That was the year I turned 50, when I could join this tour. I gave it a shot. I've done well." McGee made 318 starts on the Champions Tour and posted five top-three finishes. He earned more than $3.2 million in a dozen seasons, including the 1999 campaign that was interrupted by surgery to remove cancerous tumors on the left side of his neck and the base of his tongue. After the surgery, McGee had 6 ½ weeks of radiation. He returned to PGA TOUR Champions four months later and ended up playing in 130 more tournaments before retiring after the 2004 season. "I was so lucky," McGee told the Tribune Chronicle. "I've gone to places, met people, that I would never had the opportunity to without the game of golf." In addition to his wife Jill, Jerry is survived by his brother, Don Holden (Joel); his daughter, Roxane Love-McGee; his son, Michael McGee (Annika Sorenstam); and his daughter, Michelle McGee (Mark Riley); along with grandchildren, Dylan Love, Ava McGee, Will McGee, and Liam Riley. There will be a Celebration of Life at a later date. Memorial contributions can be made to the Youngstown State women's basketball team.

Click here to read the full article…