Numbers To Know: Travelers Championship

RENO, Nev. – Thanks to a sizzling final round Sunday at the Barracuda Championship, William McGirt sealed his spot in the upcoming FedExCup Playoffs. He’ll hope to make the most of it, since the eight-year PGA TOUR veteran soon will be sidelined for perhaps as long as a year. McGirt revealed that he will undergo hip surgery following the conclusion of his Playoffs run. He’s suffering from a torn labrum in his left hip, as well as a femoroacetabular impingement that prevents him from making a normal rotation. McGirt said he will undergo surgery “a week or twoâ€� after his season is over. Doctors told him to “expect four months without even hitting a ball. Two months on crutches. So it’s probably going to be a year.â€� Said the 39-year-old McGirt: “It sucks but life. It’s part of getting older.â€� Playing at Montreux for the first time since 2011, McGirt posted a 20-point final round that included one eagle, eight birdies and a bogey. His 35-point total put him in position to record his first top-10 of the 2018 calendar year (depending on how the leaderboard shakes out the rest of the day) and projected him closer to the top 100 in FedExCup points The hip issues have led to a frustrating season for McGirt, the 2016 winner of the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide. He entered this week with just two top-10 finishes, both coming in the fall portion of the schedule. He was 121st in FedExCup points, dangerously close to slipping out of the top 125, which is why he put the Barracuda on his calendar. He said the hip problem had been bothersome all year – he was having difficulty sleeping whenever he had to roll over — but really became an issue at the Valero Texas Open in late April when he found it difficult to work. The following Monday, he met with Dr. Thomas Byrd at the Nashville Hip Institute. X-rays were taken, and Byrd immediately recognized the torn labrum. An MRI confirmed the diagnosis. McGirt said they also had a discussion about why it happened. “He said, ‘OK, tell me about your sports history growing up,’â€� McGirt recalled. “I said I played baseball for 10 years. He said, ‘OK, what position?’ I said catcher. He said, ‘For 10 years?’ I said yeah. He said, ‘No wonder. I’m kind of surprised you made it this long without this happening.’â€� The injury, said McGirt, is not painful but simply restricts what he can do because the internal rotation turns into bone on bone. It doesn’t impact every shot but crops up from time to time – such as his second shot Sunday into the par-5 18th. With an awkward lie from 265 yards, his ball sailed to the left and ended up on a cart path. He eventually had to settle for par when a birdie would have tied the Modified Stableford course record. “If I get a ball that’s below my feet or a lie that’s severely uphill where my left foot is above my right, it’s bone on bone,â€� McGirt said. “And I just run out of room. My hips can’t rotate anymore. So they push back and then I either hold on to it or I flip it. “That one on 18, I just flipped it. That has been part of the frustration from this year is the fact that my body won’t let me do what it needs to do.â€� His golf career is not the only concern – an observation his wife Sarah made several months ago when she told him, “You just got to have it fixed for a way of life. You’ve got a 5-year-old and a 2 1/2-year-old. You can’t be trying to crawl around the house and do stuff with them.â€� Added McGirt: “Who cares about golf. It’s just about getting it done for a way of life.â€� But for the next few weeks, golf will be on his mind. McGirt’s next start is the Wyndham Championship, the final tournament of the regular season. He’ll look to improve his positioning going into the first Playoffs event, THE NORTHERN TRUST. Having made the Playoffs in each of the last seven years, McGirt has never failed to advance to at least the second event. He’d like to keep that streak going this season. Once he’s done, though, he’ll go under the knife, not knowing when the next time he’ll get to hit a shot at a PGA TOUR event.

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ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – Cameron Smith had just given up his 36-hole lead at The 150th Open. It was time for his caddie, Sam Pinfold, to give a pep talk and help turn the tide. When Pinfold was finished, Smith smiled at his good friend and, without skipping a beat, replied, “Three or four back, … don’t worry. … We needed to give them a head start anyway.” RELATED: What’s in Smith’s bag? | Final leaderboard This is the confidence of the young Australian who produced a stunning 64 on Sunday to win The Open, becoming just the fifth Australian to win the Claret Jug and first since 1993. His first major triumph added to wins earlier this year at THE PLAYERS and Sentry Tournament of Champions. He’s moved to No. 2 in both the FedExCup and world ranking in a year that saw him become the only player other than Jack Nicklaus in 1978 to win THE PLAYERS and The Open in the same year. In his Sentry win in January, Smith set the TOUR record for lowest score in relation to par, shooting 34 under. At St. Andrews, he matched that mark for majors and recorded the lowest score ever shot in an Open at St. Andrews, a 20-under 268. And he closed with a remarkable 30 on the back nine, the lowest ever shot by an Open champion. But back to Smith’s joke. It was a light-hearted response. But there was some wisdom hidden inside it. Smith is – with all due respect – like a mongrel dog fighting over the first bone he’s seen in a month. He’s the ultimate underdog, determined to prove doubters wrong. Starting Sunday four shots off the lead was enough of a challenge. The fact one of the leaders was Rory McIlroy, Great Britain’s great hope who the crowds were eager to coronate, was a red rag to a bull. Smith is from Queensland – the northeastern state in Australia known for its beautiful beaches, the Great Barrier Reef, and an ethos of never-say-die toughness. That determination is born out of Smith’s favorite sport other than golf – rugby league – where the Queensland Maroons face the powerhouse New South Wales Blues three times a year in an epic and brutal series of games called State of Origin. It’s tribal. Queensland is known for often winning against the odds. It has a smaller talent pool to draw from, yet somehow rises above itself when putting on the jersey. One State of Origin game fell on The Open’s eve, and Smith insisted on playing his last nine-hole practice round early in the morning so he could stream the match on his phone at St. Andrews. The Maroons, missing three key players because of COVID and injuries, were underdogs. Then, in a frenetic opening few minutes of the game they lost two more to concussion. Despite the obstacles, they won 22-12. Pinfold confirmed Smith “drew a lot from that.” “Never a doubt,” Smith joked about the match at his pre-tournament press conference afterwards. “It’s just another example of the Queensland spirit. I’ll be thinking of that this week for sure.” The underdog emerged on Sunday at the Old Course. Smith scripted a maroon shirt ahead of his attempt to chase down the local favorite. After a solid 34 on the front nine, Smith looked up to see he’d only clawed back one shot on McIlroy. The time had come to put up or shut up. “You’ve got to try and win. That’s what we’re all here to do. I really needed to make something happen,” said Smith, whose gallery included former tennis star Ash Barty and two-time Moto GP champion Casey Stoner. And so Smith went to work. He nearly drove the par-4 10th to make the first of five straight birdies that put him one ahead of McIlroy. The best one came at the 13th – a hole that had nearly ended his chances a day earlier. “Those guys are great players. They weren’t going to give it to me. I had to take it,” Smith added. “It was a good thing that I was behind. My mindset would have been a touch different coming in, especially on that back nine, if I was ahead.” “My second shot into 13 was really when I thought that we can win this thing.” Pinfold also caught some flak about Saturday’s double bogey on 13. Many suggested he should have called Smith off a risky shot where he attempted to hit his ball while standing in a bunker with the ball above his feet. That shot sailed into a gorse bush, resulting in a double-bogey. “You don’t mess with a confident player with his skill level,” Pinfold explained. “I’m just so proud of him. His game plan was awesome; he was just really confident and he’s got so much belief it makes my job easy. “I don’t have to think about a second option, it’s just what’s the best shot, what’s the best option, then point, shoot and go. He just has the balls and courage to stand up and do it.” Another of those moments came Sunday at the infamous Road Hole, which ranks as the TOUR’s toughest each time The Open comes to St. Andrews. Smith’s approach came up short, and the hole’s famous greenside bunker stood between his ball and his target. Smith calmly putted his ball up the slope against the edge of the trap, then buried the 10-foot par putt. When he calmly birdied the last to post 20 under, one shot better than playing partner Cameron Young, only a McIlroy eagle could beat him. But the four-time major winner failed to chip in from just short of the green and victory was secured. “I feel like I can’t breathe,” he said. “These last four or five holes aren’t easy around here, especially with the wind up off the left. I’m just really proud of how I knuckled down today and managed to get it done.” “To win an Open Championship in itself is probably going to be a golfer’s highlight in their career. To do it around St. Andrews, I think is just unbelievable. This place is so cool.” Making birdie on the first five holes of the back nine was parallel to how he won THE PLAYERS earlier this year. He birdied the first four holes of TPC Sawgrass’ back nine en route to that win. “He loves to fight,” Pinfold said. “Put him in a fight, three or four back, and he’s going to step up his game and go for it.” Another celebration, like the one that followed his PLAYERS win, is expected. “I’m definitely going to find out how many beers fit in this thing,” he said about the Claret Jug. “I’m going to guess two, two cans of beer. … I’ll probably have about 20 Claret Jugs.” He certainly earned it.

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