Phil Mickelson becomes oldest to win a major, hangs on for 2-shot win at PGA Championship

SAINT SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — Veteran PGA TOUR caddie Kip Henley has seen his share of spectacular golf, but he said he’d never seen two stress-free, back-to-back rounds as those turned in by Austin Cook at The RSM Classic. In fact, Cook made it look so easy on Friday at the Seaside Course that Henley didn’t even realize Cook had signed for an 8-under 62. “I knew it was good, but I didn’t know it was that good,” Henley said. Cook hit 17 greens while carding eight birdies in the second round. He equaled the best 36-hole score at The RSM Classic, 14-under 128 and grabbed a 1-stroke lead over Brian Gay. Cook, who played his college golf at Arkansas, remembers playing in the Southeastern Conference Championship here, but never quite like this. He made four birdies in a row on the back nine beginning at No. 13, and said the 5-iron he stiffed from 179 yards at the 14th hole was his best shot of the day. “I never remember doing what I just did on that golf course,” he said, adding, “I was close to a 62 for nine in one SEC.” Cook, 26, is a PGA TOUR rookie after finishing 15th on the 2017 Web.com Tour money list. He solidified his spot in “The 25” with a runner-up finish at the Utah Championship. “It’s been a lifelong dream,” he said of earning his TOUR card. Next Tuesday, his hometown club, Jonesboro Country Club in Arkansas, is throwing a party for him in recognition of his achievement. When told he could have a lot more to celebrate if he were to become The RSM Classic’s fifth PGA TOUR first-time winner, Cook hesitated to look too far ahead. “Well, you know…” he said, taking a pregnant pause. “Yeah, we can have a lot to celebrate.” OBSERVATIONS GAY’S PUTTER HEATS UP. Brian Gay is regarded as one of the TOUR’s top putters and it keyed another vintage performance. Gay, 45, drained a 38-footer at the 6th hole for birdie, one of seven birdies in a round of 6-under 64 at the Seaside Course. He ranked third in strokes gained: putting (+3.538) on Friday, and heads into the weekend trailing Cook by one shot. Gay, who missed 18 months due to neck surgery and a thumb injury, regained his TOUR privileges last season on a major-medical exemption. Now he’s looking to get back into the winner’s circle. “It feels like it’s been a while,” said Gay, who last won at the 2013 CareerBuilder Challenge. “It really does.” WEEKEND PLANS FOR de JONGE. The putter case for Brendon de Jonge is a sun with shades and a smile and it matched its owner’s disposition after he shot a second-straight round of 67. That’s because de Jonge made his first PGA TOUR cut since the Shell Houston Open in April. “It feels really nice,” de Jonge said. “It’s a small monkey off my back.” Missing 16 of your last 17 starts, and finishing 221st in the FedEx Cup standings can lead to dark feelings. It has de Jonge contemplating a life after golf. He said he and his wife have started a company and invested in real estate. But he’d still like to get that elusive first TOUR win. De Jonge is fully-exempt on the Web.com Tour and plans to play out of the Veteran member category on the TOUR this season as much as he can. “The last few years have been a mental battle if whether this is what I want to keep doing,” he said. “I need to play one really good week and that’s how I’m going to figure out if that’s what I really want to do.” De Jonge, 37, wore a smile on his face as he described holing his second shot for eagle, a 9-iron from 138 yards on the 13th hole. He’s also enjoyed having childhood friend Bruce McDonald on the bag and staying with Sea Island teaching pro Mike Taylor this week. De Jonge and Taylor spent an hour on the putting green Wednesday, and it has paid quick dividends. “Sometimes you need a few to go into the hole to start believing,” McDonald said. KIRK USES AN OLDIE BUT A GOODIE. Chris Kirk blames a balky putter for his dip in performance last season. He slipped to a career-worst 125th in strokes gained: putting. But this week his short stick is behaving, and he credits a switch to a Scotty Cameron by Titleist center-shafted Laguna model that he used during the 2010 Web.com Tour. “That was one of the best putting seasons I’ve ever had,” he said. Kirk, a Georgia Bulldog alum, pulled the Laguna putter out of his storage closet last weekend while watching the Georgia-Auburn football game. “The game wasn’t going so well so I started messing around with it on my putting rug,” he said. It ended up in the bag this week. The 2013 RSM Classic champ took just 23 putts Thursday en route to a 9-under 63 at the Plantation Course, and though he needed 31 putts during Friday’s even-par-70 at Seaside Course, he said he rolled it “incredibly well.” Kirk, who is winless since 2015, enters the weekend at 9 under and in a share of third place. NCAA CHAMP IMPRESSES AGAIN. Amateur Braden Thornberry, a 20-year-old junior at Ole Miss, fired a 6-under 64 at the Seaside Course on Friday. Count veteran TOUR caddie Don Donatello, who is on the bag for the reigning NCAA champ this week, impressed. “He’s the youngest player I’ve ever caddied for, and he handles himself like he’s been playing this game for 30 years,” Donatello said of Thornberry. Thornberry, the Haskins Award winner as college golf’s best player, continues to show that his game can translate to the next level. He finished tied for fourth at the FedEx St. Jude Classic in June in his TOUR debut. After an opening-round 72 at the Plantation Course, Thornberry canned a 34-foot birdie putt at the first hole at Seaside Course and birdied five of his first 10 holes. He enters the weekend tied for 22nd. “I was surprised how comfortable I do feel out here,” he said. NOTABLES Brandt Snedeker – The eight-time TOUR winner used his 14-week layoff with a rib injury to good effect. He and instructor John Tillery changed his natural draw ball flight to a fade through a series of drills and exercises.” I was anxious to see how it would perform under pressure,” said Snedeker, who carded a second-straight 67 to improve to 8 under. “I hit a 4-iron from 220 into the wind today at the second and it never left the pin. Hit it straight to 5 feet and made birdie. I feel like my swing is starting to feel natural.” C.T. Pan – He finished in style, making eagle at the 18th hole en route to shooting 7-under 65, the low round on Plantation Course. Pan, 25, enters the third round at 9-under overall and in position to improve upon a T6 finish at The RSM Classic last season. Bud Cauley – Cauley, who grew up just across the Georgia border in Jacksonville, improved nine strokes on Friday. Cauley, 27, carded a bogey-free 7-under 63 on the Seaside Course. That was a stroke off Cauley’s personal-best on the TOUR — a 62 during round one of The 2012 RSM Classic. Cauley rallied on Friday to make his sixth consecutive cut dating back to last season. Bubba Watson – The nine-time TOUR winner made eight threes and a five on the par-5 seventh hole of the front nine at the more difficult Seaside Course and signed for a 6-under 64. Watson, who finished 75th in last season’s FedExCup and had intended to take a long layoff, is making his second start in the fall season. He improved to 7 under overall and T12 heading into the weekend. QUOTABLES “My mind kind of got off of golf. Being home and being with the family and everything, I realized how much I missed the game of golf and that’s why I wanted to come and play in these tournaments.”– Bubba Watson, who after a subpar year, decided to play in two fall events” He has the confidence on the greens like Jordan Spieth in that he thinks he can make anything.”– Caddie Don Donatello on reigning NCAA champion Braden Thornberry SUPERLATIVES Low round: 62. Austin Cook at the more difficult Seaside Course. Longest putt: Scott Brown went long distance at the par-4 14th hole, draining a putt from 69 feet, 4 inches. Longest drive: Trey Mullinax gripped it and ripped 357 yards on the ninth hole at Seaside Course. Fewest putts: Bubba Watson led the field with 13 one-putt greens and took just 23 putts in Round 2 at the Seaside Course. Hardest hole: The par-4 14th hole at Seaside played to a stroke average of 4.429. Only four birdies were recorded on the day. Easiest hole: The par-5 15th hole at Seaside played to a stroke average of 4.506. There was one eagle and 41 birdies in round two. CALL OF THE DAY

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In the 1970s, Ping began making two gold-plated replica putters for golfers who won major TOUR events using a Ping putter. One of the gold putters went to the player, the other was kept at the company’s headquarters in Phoenix. Eventually, the stockpile of gold putters, which mimic the exact specifications of the game-used putters, grew into a collection of nearly 3,000 that are now housed in Ping’s “Gold Putter Vault.� And the collection continues to grow. In turn, the Gold vault also houses a stockpile of fascinating stories. During a recent trip to Ping’s headquarters, I entered the vault with tour guide and longtime Director of Marketing at Ping, Pete Samuels, to uncover some of those stories from inside the vault. Below were my discoveries, with narration from Samuels. The First of Many “The first documented putter win (for Ping) was 1962, the Cajun Classic, which was won by John Barnum. I believe it was the (model) 69 series. This tradition of doing gold-plated putters started in the mid-70s, so some of these putters have been added after the fact. The first major was the ’69 Masters with an Anser by George Archer. It’s been interesting over the years, people have been becoming more and more aware of it… pros who did win, who never got a gold-plated putter, just because the records weren’t as well kept back then. So if a player reaches out to us and says ‘Hey, I won such and such tournament, but never got my gold putter.’ If it’s documented, we can prove it, we’re happy to give it them. We want as many putters in here as we can get, right?� Westwood vs. Seve: Who has more Gold putters? “From a wins perspective, Seve has the most wins with 47. And they’re all with the Anser putter… I’m pretty sure it was the same spec. So what we do is we build (the Gold putters) the exact specs of their putter: length, lie, loft, all that. I can’t say all of those wins were with the same Anser, they’re all an Anser model, but he may have had more than one over the years.� “Then as far as Westwood… so Lee just won (the 2018 Nedbank Golf Challenge) with a Fetch. I think he’s closing in on Seve, with a couple more wins he’ll overtake him. But Lee has more Gold putters in the vault because as a staff player we also acknowledge some career milestones or achievements, so he would have some Ryder Cup putters in here. We also give staff players a gold putter based on surpassing a career earnings milestone. So he has several of those as well. I’d have to count them up. It’s probably in the mid-50s in terms of how many he has. But wins wise, he’s still a hair short of Seve, but not much. Hopefully he’ll win a few more here. I think (Westwood has) 13 or 14 different models. Probably 14 now because of the Fetch, that’ll be another new model for him. What’s interesting is everything from mid-mallets to pure mallets to even blades, some Anser-style putters. Quite a variety.� Ping at THE PLAYERS “There was a string here, that mid-to-early 90s, we had a pretty good streak of putters winning THE PLAYERS. So from ’91 to ’97, every one except for Nick Price in ’93.� Steve Elkington won the 1991 and the 1997 PLAYERS Championship, Davis Love III won in 1992, Greg Norman in 1994, Lee Janzen in 1995, and Fred Couples in 1996 — all using Ping putters. Tiger Woods, the putter that started it all “It’s an Anser 2, which he used growing up. And these are the ’94 and ’95 U.S. Amateurs, where he used the Ping Anser 2, stainless steel was the material. Those are definitely must-sees when people come in here they want to see the Tiger putter. As you know, he still uses a Ping grip on his current putter. On his current putter he blacks it out, but it’s the same grip design that he had on his Anser 2.� “He did some experimenting this year for sure. Pretty much since he switched from the Anser 2 to the Cameron he’s had the Ping grip on there, because it’s our understanding, it’s not confirmed, there’s some debate… but we believe either 13 or 14 of his major wins have had the Ping grip on it. Somebody questioned all 14, but we’re pretty sure it was all 14. “He definitely loves the grip, and we provide them to him obviously, happily. We actually still sell it. We have what we call a black-out version, because he’s made that popular and people ask for it.� Not only putters “We’ve got a replica of Bubba’s wedge that he hit out of the trees on the 10th at Augusta in the playoff with Louis to win that Masters. The same year, if you recall, Louis made a double-eagle on No. 2, so we have a replica of his 4-iron in memory of that. “And then we do have some other wedges like when Bob Tway holed out of the bunker to win the ’86 PGA, that’s a Ping Eye2 wedge. Azinger hold out of the bunker at The Memorial on 18 to win to beat Payne Stewart. Jeff Maggert chipped in on I think the first extra hole at the match play to win ’99 with the Eye2 sand wedge, as well.� 1988 “The other cool story is in 1988, Ping putters were used to win all 4 major championships, which was the only time in history to date that that’s happened. If my memory serves me, Sandy Lyle won The Masters with the Ping Pal, Curtis Strange won the U.S. Open with the Zing 2, Seve won the British with an Anser, and Jeff Sluman won the PGA with the Pal 2. Pretty cool feat when you think about winning the Grand Slam of Golf.�

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Rory McIlroy – needing a win at Augusta National to complete the career Grand Slam — plays well late in the season, and therefore will benefit from a rescheduled Masters. RELATED: What to know about a November Masters | Roundtable: Most emotional Masters | All-time Masters Power Rankings That was the logic Jack Nicklaus used when he recently told the Golf Channel the new November date could benefit the two-time FedExCup champion. After all, it was only last November when McIlroy beat Xander Schauffele in a playoff at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions. McIlroy’s late-season theatrics also include winning two FedExCups, two PGA Championships, and two (European Tour) DP World Tour Championships in Dubai. All of those accomplishments came in golf’s late, August-through-November stretch. And now the Masters is set for Nov. 12-15 in the revised golf calendar announced earlier this week. A win that week by McIlroy would make him the sixth player to achieve the career Grand Slam, although theoretically Jordan Spieth (PGA Championship, now Aug. 6-9) or Phil Mickelson (U.S. Open, now Sept. 18-21) could beat him to the punch. (Mickelson, by the way, is not yet qualified for the U.S. Open.) In a sense, trying to predict how McIlroy might fare at a November Masters is a fool’s errand. For one thing, the coronavirus pandemic may or may not allow for the tournament, and others, to come off at all. For another, the top-ranked player in the world is by definition best equipped to adapt to any change – be it a new date or some other twist. Oh, also: It’s not like McIlroy needs to change his fortunes all that much to win the Masters. He has finished in the top 10 there in five of his last six starts. That the course suits him has been obvious since he led by four shots through 54 holes in 2011, only to fall apart on the back nine on the way to a final-round 80. As he said last year about Augusta National, “If I haven’t figured it out by now, there’s something wrong.â€� Had the Masters been held as originally scheduled this week, McIlroy surely would’ve been a a big favorite. Not just because of his track record and obvious motivation, but also his recent form – seven consecutive worldwide top-5 finishes, including all four of his PGA TOUR starts in the 2020 calendar year that has left him currently No. 3 in the FedExCup standings. In fact, going back to his last 14 worldwide starts, he has two TOUR wins and 10 other top-10 finishes. He seemed to be peaking at the perfect time. Now he’ll need to peak again in six months. Asked on a Golf Channel media conference call Thursday what they thought of Nicklaus’ assessment, analysts Notah Begay III, Brandel Chamblee and Justin Leonard did not disagree, but gave their own reasons why November might suit McIlroy just fine, or better than that. “I’ve never been to Augusta in November, but my guess is that the golf course could play a little bit softer,â€� Leonard said. “… We know how well Rory McIlroy plays in kind of softer conditions.â€� (McIlroy cruised to his first major title, the 2011 U.S. Open, on a wet, soft course at Congressional and has since dominated on other wet, soft venues, particularly at the PGA.) Added Chamblee, “My friends who have played there in November tell me the golf course plays quite long.â€� (McIlroy was second in driving distance and sixth in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee when the season was suspended after round one of THE PLAYERS Championship last month.) “I can’t imagine any scenario that doesn’t favor Rory,â€� Chamblee added. Leonard and Chamblee also noted McIlroy’s remarkable consistency (a TOUR-leading 14 top-10s, with three wins, last season), and his ability to put together long stretches of greatness. That could bode well for him in a late summer and fall that could be chock full of big events. Begay seconded that and added another factor that might help McIlroy: No longer the season’s first major, the Masters – if the reconfigured schedule goes according to plan – would be the last. “So that might change a little bit of the mind-set,â€� Begay said. “That might change a little bit of the approach. He might have already won one by then.â€� Not only would McIlroy be coming in hot, he would be coming to a Masters for which the golf world would not be converging with quite the usual amount of pent-up anticipation. “So it actually could benefit him in a couple of ways from a mental standpoint,â€� Begay said. Added the Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner, moderating the discussion: “Just to put a button on this Rory conversation: 27 pro wins combined, European Tour and PGA TOUR, seven of those wins have come in the month of September or beyond, and deep into November.â€� Add it all up and a Masters in November might leave McIlroy with a very warm feeling, indeed.

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