Power Rankings: Sony Open in Hawaii

POTOMAC, Maryland – A tiny square of chocolate sat nestled in cupcake frosting. Rory McIlroy, celebrating his 33rd birthday at the Wells Fargo Championship pro-am at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm, plucked the decorative part off the top and ate it. He thanked everyone and discretely left the cupcake under a tent next to the 10th tee. RELATED: McIlroy extends agreement with TaylorMade | McIlroy looks to improve wedge play “I try not to eat a lot of that stuff,” he said on the walk to his pre-tournament press conference. A 22-year-old McIlroy might have eaten the whole cupcake. That’s how old he was when he won the 2011 U.S. Open at nearby Congressional Country Club, which on Wednesday he called “the best week of golf I’ve ever played in my life.” Now, though, he’s older, and wiser. He’s an athlete, and athletes don’t often eat that stuff. McIlroy drove past a familiar looking course on his way to TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm for the first time Tuesday. Familiar, he realized with a start, because it was Congressional, the place where he rebounded from his Masters meltdown with an emphatic statement win. Since then, of course, he’s won nearly all the important hardware, at THE PLAYERS Championship, PGA Championship (twice), Open Championship. He’s the only other player besides Tiger Woods to win the FedExCup twice. Somehow, though, he’d never had occasion to play TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm. He hadn’t even heard much about it. “But from what I’ve seen the last couple days,” he said, “I really like it … green complexes are tricky, pretty small targets, the rough maybe isn’t up as much as they usually have it here because of the time of year. “But overall, really solid test,” he continued. “Looking forward to getting out there.” The usual Wells Fargo venue, Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, is busy preparing for the Presidents Cup, but rest assured, McIlroy, who won the Wells Fargo for the third time a year ago, knows how to adapt. He also knows how to relate. He was the pro-am partner of choice for the four HBCU graduates and former First Tee kids who got him for the front nine. McIlroy made sure everyone walked away smiling, and offered tips to at least one of his young playing partners, Lennard Long of Morehouse College, now a First Tee coach. “Super friendly,” Long said. “Super just helpful. Asked him some tips for chipping and he was willing to give them to me, so I’m going to take them back and give them to our kids when I coach them so they’re really appreciative of it.” None of this should be surprising. McIlroy could be No. 1 in Strokes Gained: Self-awareness. A 20-time PGA TOUR winner, 11th in the FedExCup, seventh in the world, he is also a husband (Erica) and father (Poppy). He’s coming off a three-week break, his last competitive round a wild 64 at the Masters that vaulted him to second place, his best-ever finish at Augusta. He and playing partner Collin Morikawa each holed out from a greenside bunker on 18, touching off a wild celebration, after which McIlroy said he’d never had so much fun playing golf. Now he hopes to build on that success, as he’s on the precipice of playing six times in the next eight weeks. Those eight weeks should begin to tell us if anyone can challenge FedExCup leader Scottie Scheffler. Whatever shakes out between the ropes, McIlroy is sure to command eyeballs. He has become one of the game’s elder statesmen (albeit a young one), a Player Director on the PGA TOUR policy board who isn’t afraid to speak his mind. “He’s a leader I think for us in a lot of ways,” said Webb Simpson. “Very articulate. And he’s been a global player for a long time, so I think his opinions matter. Him being on the board now, I think he brings a lot to the table. He’s certainly a guy who I think has been fun to listen to because he’s not just going to give you the right answers, he’s going to give you what he thinks.” Small example: Saturated from overnight rain, TPC Potomac would seem to offer the kind of soft targets that suit McIlroy nicely. Those were the conditions, after all, when he won his first major at that 2011 U.S. Open. Asked about the favorable conditions, though, he offered the gentle reminder that he’s won 30 trophies worldwide, not all of them on soggy grass. Instead of being chastened, though, the assembled journalists laughed right along with him. Still, Congressional really was special, and McIlroy planned to drop in. “We’ll see if I can rekindle some of those vibes from 11 years ago,” he said of the Wednesday afternoon visit, the first time he will have gone back to Congressional since participating in a First Tee clinic there a few years ago. Coming off the time of his life at the Masters, defending at his beloved Wells Fargo, and on his birthday, no less, McIlroy is in his element, that enviable, happy place where all the vibes are good and all the cupcakes fully frosted.

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If the national amateur golf stage never fazed Jim Wiechers, the reason was simple. Just to fare well locally in the San Francisco area in the 1960s, Wiechers had to compete against the likes of a rising teenage star named Johnny Miller, future PGA TOUR winners such as Ron Cerrudo, Bob Lunn and Dick Lotz, and a legendary veteran named E. Harvie Ward. That accomplished, Wiechers knew he could more than hold his own in the deep end of the pool. Which he did with distinction. Wiechers won the 1962 U.S. Junior Amateur, the 1964 Western Junior, the 1966 Western Amateur, and finished second, one shot behind Marty Fleckman, at the 1965 NCAA Div. 1 Championship. That Wiechers, who died Monday night at the age of 74, failed to carry that winning touch over to a 12-year PGA TOUR career that featured 32 top 10s, none of them victories, surprised Cerrudo, but never seemed to unsettle his friend. “If it did bother him, he never showed it,” said Cerrudo. “He was just a good person. He’s the only person I know who never had a disparaging word spoken against him.â€� Susan Wiechers confirmed that her husband died at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa, California, after a four-month illness. Born in Atherton, California, on August 7, 1944, Wiechers was a young teenager when he got swept into the rabid amateur golf circle that engulfed the Bay Area. “We got to know each other when were 15,â€� said Cerrudo, “and we were always together.â€� Wiechers, Cerrudo and two other Bay Area players who later became PGA TOUR members – Bob E. Smith and Ross Randall – traveled the country playing the biggest amateur tournaments when they were 20 and 21. “One summer, every passenger in our car won a big tournament,â€� said Cerrudo. As had been Bay Area icons such as Ward, Ken Venturi and Tony Lema years earlier, Wiechers, Cerrudo, Smith and Randall were backed by the famed Eddie Lowery. “We were so blessed to have competition like that,â€� said Cerrudo, now the director of instruction at the Daniel Island Club in Charleston, South Carolina. “We heard so much about guys in the Northeast, when we finally saw them, we said, ‘Hey, we have 25 guys back in the Bay Area who are better than these guys.â€� Wiechers didn’t have to take a back seat to any of them, said Cerrudo. “He was one of the world’s greatest putters inside of 5 feet. We always said if he could put his putting with my driving, he’d have won a bunch.â€� As it was, Wiechers’ playoff loss to Bob Goalby in the 1969 Robinson Open Golf Classic was his best PGA TOUR finish in 277 tournaments. Later in ’69, Wiechers did win the West End Classic in the Bahamas, but that was an unofficial event. He played in the 1976 Masters, four U.S. Opens, three PGA Championships, and three PLAYERS Championships. His best season was 1973 when he earned $74,807 for 33rd place, his highest finish on the money list. But to Cerrudo, whose own PGA TOUR career included two wins while running virtually concurrently (1967-1978) to his friend’s, Wiechers “was a very steady player who just quietly got the job done.â€� Having followed Cerrudo to live at the Silverado Resort & Spa in Napa in the late 1960s, Wiechers loved the area and got into the wine business upon leaving the PGA TOUR. But eventually he returned to golf as an instructor, then as coach of the men’s and women’s teams at Napa Valley College. “He was very talented . . . an amazing player,â€� Miller told Marty James of the Napa News. Another onetime resident of Silverado, PGA TOUR Champions standout Scott McCarron, considered Wiechers a mentor. “I used to practice with him. He and Ron Cerrudo would be over at my parents’ house on Friday evenings for dinner and tell us stories about the TOUR,â€� he told James. “Jimmy Wiechers was really the guy that got me thinking, ‘Hey, I could someday play on the PGA TOUR as well.’â€� Wiechers, who was a member of the Santa Clara University Hall of Fame, is also survived by a daughter, Erica; son-in-law Jason Kuykendall; grandson Evan Kuykendall; a brother; and two sisters.  

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