Seven things you should know about Liberty National

GREENSBORO, N.C. – It was Webb Simpson’s turn to order hot dogs for his energetic and hungry brood when the phone rang last Tuesday. “Tiger, I’ll have to call you back,” the harried father of five told the 15-time major champion. When he did, Simpson received some unexpected – and welcome – news. Woods told him he was going to be an assistant captain at the Presidents Cup in September at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, where Simpson makes his home. “It meant a lot, but honestly, I got done with the phone call and I’m like, I don’t know if that was official or not,” Simpson said. “I don’t know if he meant like he’s rooting for me to be an assistant or if I am an assistant.” After all, Davis Love III is the captain, not Woods, and Love wasn’t the one who made the call. But he and Simpson finally talked – yes, Tiger “spilled the beans,” Love later said with a grin – and Simpson couldn’t be happier to join Zach Johnson, Steve Stricker and Fred Couples on the staff. Simpson has played in three Presidents Cups and three Ryder Cups, and has always had this one circled on his calendar. He lives beside the seventh tee at Quail Hollow – he joked Tuesday that maybe someone could leave an opening in the fencing so he could drive his cart home each night – and is a North Carolina native. This will be the first Presidents Cup played in his home state. Problem is, Simpson ranks a distant 29th in the U.S. Team standings, so his chances of being picked are relatively slim, barring a couple of wins in the next four weeks. “Not that I feared not being a part of it, but there was a part of me that’s like, if I don’t make the team and Davis goes a different direction, that’s fine, but it’s going to be hard to see the Presidents Cup happen there and not be a part of it in some way,” Simpson said. “So, I was really, really relieved to get a chance to be a part of it.” Love, who is a two-time Ryder Cup captain and was Simpson’s favorite player growing up, said the goal is to add new players to the mix as potential captains for all U.S. Teams going forward. At the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits last year, Matt Kuchar filled that role. “We said in those Ryder Cup meetings … (that) instead of Davis bringing his four pals and hanging out for a week, we’re going to have two former captains and two future captains here for the assistants,” Love said. “We set kind of a criteria. So, we’re letting that spill into Presidents Cup, too. “It’s like Team USA basketball,” he continued. “We’re not just going to show up as a bunch of superstars and just shoot the ball around. We’re going to have a program year-round to get ready to play international competition.” Love said he definitely sees the 37-year-old Simpson as a future captain. He doesn’t know if he’ll lead a U.S. Team at a Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup “but he needs to be in the system.” He’s a natural leader and he has a servant’s heart, Love explained. When he captained the 2012 Ryder Cup, Love remembers watching Simpson with great interest. He and Bubba Watson partnered three times, winning two of those matches, but after each one, the two players and their caddies would gather on the green and pray. “He’s always the leader or the calming influence, or the guy to do the right thing at the right time,” Love said. “And we would stand on the side of the green and just go look, we don’t have to tell him what to do. He’s a Ryder Cup rookie but he’s a team leader. So that doesn’t just influence his caddies but the players around him. Everybody sits back and goes look, holy cow. This guy’s different. “He’s always been like that, but that was when it really hit me,” he added. “The things he just does for people, you know? I said, ‘This is perfect for you because you like to serve. No matter what it is you want to do for other people.’ He’s excited about the golf and he is excited about Charlotte, but he’s excited to give back.” Simpson, who said he plans to be a sponge during the matches at Quail Hollow, hasn’t abandoned the idea of making an international team – maybe even this year, should he get hot over the next four weeks. But as he approaches his 37th birthday on Monday, he knows his opportunities are growing more limited. Over the last three years, Simpson worked hard to add length, and he feels his 2020 wins at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and RBC Heritage were a byproduct of those efforts. But so were some bad swing habits that really manifested themselves this year as he collected just one top-10 finish, a T8 at The RSM Classic, in 18 starts heading into this week’s Wyndham Championship. “So I feel like the last four, five months we’ve been playing catch up, trying to neutralize everything,” Simpson said. “We’ve been pulling up a lot of video from ’17, ’18, ’19 before I started getting longer. The good news is I’ve retained the distance, but I’m starting to hit more fairways.” He has held fast to his confidence, he said, despite lackluster results that have left him at No. 117 on the FedExCup eligibility list. (He’s never finished lower than 87th and has appeared the Playoffs 13 straight seasons.) And more good news, he loves this week’s TOUR stop, the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club, having posted one win, four finishes in the top 3 and nine top-10s in 12 starts there. “I believe in myself,” Simpson said. “I’ve just got to be a little smarter, I’ve got to think a little better. And this golf course, even though the scores are good every year, it is a golf course where you cannot make mistakes, otherwise it’s so penal. The rough is up this year, so I’m looking forward to that challenge. I’ve just got to limit my mistakes. The last few weeks I’ve just been saying I just want to get to Memphis, I want to make the Playoffs. I haven’t been in this position for a while where I needed to make a push.” One thing he doesn’t have to worry about is whether or not that push will be enough to propel him onto Love’s team that will defend its title at Quail Hollow. Simpson is already relishing the home game as only a local can, and it’s nice to know he’ll be there, one way or another.

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AUSTIN, Texas – Golf has a way of returning to a man, again and again. RELATED: Scores, bracket, tee times | Recaps from Day 3 | Richard Bland explains wild equipment setup, including a 5-wood from 2010 Richard Bland, who got his first win in his 478th start on the DP World Tour last year, and is currently peaking at 49, could tell you all about it. And he knows his late-in-the-game rise has reverberated far beyond the yellow, nylon gallery ropes. “Yeah, obviously the messages that I get from people that, all over the globe, over the last 12 months, has been incredible,” Bland said after beating Lee Westwood 2 and 1 at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play on Friday. “People that you never will ever meet, and they tell me their kind of story that what I’ve done has inspired them to carry on their journey. They were losing a little bit of hope, and am I going down right path, and it’s given them that extra sort of belief that they are on the right path. “And that’s – reading them is quite emotional,” Bland continued. “I will always keep them. Whenever this phone gets sort of upgraded or whatever, all those messages will stay forever.” Bland has a lot of silver in his 5 o’clock shadow, but who gets to say when it’s finally too late? In a sense, the action Friday, as Bland dispatched his old English boys’ teammate Westwood to set up a knockout-round match against Dustin Johnson, was a microcosm of Bland’s whole career. That is, things looked shaky – until they didn’t. But that’s golf. It serves up the same shot that just left a bad taste, the same tournament that slipped away last year, until a man either gets it right or quits. It was slipping away as Bland missed putts of 7 feet and 9 feet at the 13th and 15th holes, respectively, allowing Westwood to close the gap. Finally, though, when he could afford no more lapses, Bland coaxed in an 8-foot birdie putt on 16 to preserve a 1-up lead. Then he drained a 32-foot birdie on 17 to defeat Westwood 2 and 1 and advance. A moth flitted just above the ball as it made its way to the hole on the decisive putt, and when it dropped, golf’s most unlikely new Cinderella pumped his fist – Bland fury! – and waited for Westwood to line up his own birdie try from 21 feet. It slid by. Bland, who got an exemption into next week’s Valero Texas Open and is trying to play his way into the world top 50 and his first Masters in two weeks (he’s 60th), was moving on. He is the oldest player to win his group since this format began in 2015, topping Phil Mickelson, who was 46 when he advanced to the knockout rounds in 2017. The new darling of Austin, Bland has increasingly enviable problems. He and his wife, Catrin, were supposed to be headed to New York to celebrate her 40th birthday, but that will have to wait. She’s flying from England to Austin and is expected to be here by Saturday night. They will be in San Antonio for the Valero next week, and possibly Augusta, Georgia, after that. Bland’s life has utterly transformed since his playoff win at the Betfred British Masters last year. Since then, he’s had a share of the lead through two rounds at the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines (fading to finish T50) and lost in a playoff to Viktor Hovland at the Dubai Desert Classic in January. More than two decades into his career, he is, somewhat inexplicably, peaking. He’s getting into tournaments, like this one, that once went on without him. How to explain it? He has no idea. “I’m not doing anything different,” he said. He still uses the same mismatched set of clubs, some of them a decade old. He still has the same coach, and still laces up his boots and puts his head down and just gets on with it. Success, though, has finally gotten in the way. “I guess probably someone at 49 shouldn’t be doing this for the first time,” he said. But in the next breath he says if a man stays fit and takes care of himself, why not? “Never,” he said, when asked if he’d doubted himself. “Even when I lost my card in 2018, I always kind of thought one year doesn’t make you a bad player, you don’t become a bad player overnight. Not when you’ve played on the European Tour for 15 plus years. So yeah, I knew what was in front of me going back to the Challenge Tour at 46 years old.” When was the last time Bland hit a 400-plus-yard drive, like Johnson, his next opponent? “Probably never,” Bland said, “but it’s going to be fun. Of course, he’s favorite. Yeah, I’m not, that’s not being negative or anything like that. That’s just realistic. Everybody knows that. “But if I play how I know I can play,” he added, “I would like to think he’s got a game on his hands.” Counting Bland’s Irish caddie, Greg Milne, and his caddie’s kid brother, Rory, who plays college golf in Louisiana, there were four people on the Bland-wagon for this rousing run. The other two: Bland’s brother, Heath, who nearly died from a virus in 2018 and has come all the way back, and his brother’s best friend, Tim. Golf has returned to Bland; life itself has returned to his brother. To mark Heath’s incredible recovery – “He died twice,” Bland said – the brothers were supposed to play Augusta National in 2020. Like so much else during the worst of the pandemic, the trip got canceled. They were supposed to play again this week. That, too, got canceled when Bland did enough to punch his ticket to Austin. “That’s my bad, that one,” he said, laughing. Bland also laughed at the vagaries of the Official World Golf Ranking. “I didn’t play for three weeks, and I think I went up seven spots,” he said. “So, I was kind of thinking, well, if I don’t play for the rest of the year, I might be world No. 1.” The line got a big reaction, but why not? Less than a year shy of PGA TOUR Champions eligibility, Bland is on the kind of rise that would confound even TopTracer. He never lost hope, he’s going down the right path, and whether or not it gets him to Augusta, the other guys have got a game on their hands.

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Phil Mickelson’s U.S. Open quest resumes this week after a one-year hiatus. After skipping last year’s U.S. Open to attend his daughter’s high-school graduation, Mickelson needs a historic victory to complete the career Grand Slam. Mickelson would be the oldest winner in U.S. Open history if he could finally claim his national championship after years of anguish. He’ll turn 48 during the third round at Shinnecock Hills. Hale Irwin had just turned 45 when he won the 1990 U.S. Open. Irwin needed a special exemption just to get in the field at Medinah. Mickelson, even as he nears 50, is still among the game’s elite. He won the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship earlier this year and ranks fifth in the FedExCup. He has six top-10s in 14 starts this season and has missed just two cuts. This will be Mickelson’s first U.S. Open with younger brother Tim on the bag, as well. Mickelson has come close in the U.S. Open’s previous two visits to Shinnecock Hills. Both times he was derailed by a double-bogey on one of the course’s closing holes. He made 7 on the 16th hole in 1995 after hitting his lay-up into the rough. Nine years later, he three-putted from 8 feet on the par-3 17th after thinking that his time had come to hold the U.S. Open trophy. He’ll take his third crack at the historic course this week. He called Shinnecock Hills the best U.S. Open setup he’s seen. “It’s the fairest test, where skill is going to be the biggest factor,â€� he said. Here’s a closer look at Mickelson’s close calls in the U.S. Open: 2013 Merion Golf Club, Ardmore, Pa. 54-hole position: 1st, 1 shot ahead of Hunter Mahan, Charl Schwartzel and Steve Stricker Final-round score: 74 Finish: T2, 2 shots behind Justin Rose What happened: The stage was set for the storyline finish. Mickelson began his 43rd birthday with a one-shot lead in the U.S. Open. This was the first time he had the outright lead entering the Open’s final round. He struggled early, making double-bogeys at Nos. 3 and 5, but regained the lead after holing a 75-yard shot for eagle at the par-4 10th. Bogeys on three of his final six holes kept him from winning, though. He flew the green on the 121-yard, par-3 13th hole to make bogey, then “quitâ€� on a wedge shot on No. 15, resulting in another bogey. Merion’s 18th hole didn’t allow a birdie in either of the final two rounds, but Mickelson needed one to tie Rose. Mickelson made bogey after a last-ditch effort to chip-in from in front of the green. Notable quote: “This is tough to swallow after coming so close. This was my best chance of all. I had a golf course I really liked. I felt this was as good as opportunity as you could ask for. It really hurts.” 2010 Pebble Beach (Calif.) Golf Links 54-hole position: 6th, 7 shots behind Dustin Johnson Final-round score: 73 Finish: T4, 3 shots behind Graeme McDowell What happened: Mickelson won his third Masters earlier that year. Now he was in contention at a course where he’d won four PGA TOUR titles. Mickelson moved within two shots of the lead after a second-round 66, but Dustin Johnson matched that score in the third round to take control. Johnson’s final-round 82 let the field back in the tournament, though. Mickelson made birdie from off the green on the first hole to reach even par – McDowell’s eventual winning score – then parred the next eight holes to make the turn in 34. He made bogeys at Nos. 10, 14 and 16 and six pars on the final nine. Mickelson was hardly the only one to struggle on the second nine. The top 11 on the leaderboard averaged 2 over par on the back nine. Mickelson lamented missed opportunities on Pebble Beach’s accessible opening holes, though. He missed short birdie chances at 2 and 3, then three-putted for par from 15 feet after driving the fourth green. He made par on the par-5 sixth hole despite having just a 5-iron remaining for his second shot. Having that opportunity to win is what’s so fun, and it’s what’s so exciting as a professional golfer, and I knew the entire round pretty much that if I could make some birdies or shoot under par, that I might be able to do it. 2009 Bethpage State Park (Black), Farmingdale, N.Y. 54-hole position: T5, 6 shots behind Ricky Barnes Final-round score: 70 Finish: T2, 2 shots behind Lucas Glover What happened: Mickelson was playing in front of the partisan New York fans again in 2009. Already a sentimental favorite because of his four previous U.S. Open runners-up, Mickelson also had the galleries’ support because his wife, Amy, and mother, Mary, were battling breast cancer. Mickelson reached 4 under par – the eventual winning score – after making a 35-foot birdie putt at the par-4 12th and a 5-footer for eagle on the par-5 13th. Mickelson missed a 3-foot par putt at 15 and an 8-foot par putt at the par-3 17th, though. Notable quote: “I was standing on the eighth tee box after a couple of bogeys at even par not looking good, and I fought back in it with that birdie on 9, birdie on 12, eagle on 13, and put myself in a great position to close it out. But unfortunately I didn’t finish it off. And certainly I’m disappointed, but now that it’s over, I’ve got more important things going on, and, oh, well.â€� 2006 Winged Foot 54-hole position: T1 with Kenneth Ferrie, 1 shot ahead of Geoff Ogilvy Final-round score: 74 Finish: T2, 1 shot behind Ogilvy What happened: This may have been the most dramatic of Mickelson’s U.S. Open meltdowns. He was seeking his third straight major win after claiming the 2005 PGA Championship and 2006 Masters. Mickelson arrived at Winged Foot’s 18th hole with a one-shot lead despite struggling off the tee throughout the final round. “I just couldn’t hit a fairway all day. I tried to go to my bread-and-butter shot, a baby carve slice on 18 and just get it in the fairway,â€� he said. He sliced that final tee shot off a hospitality tent, then compounded the error en route to a crushing double bogey. After his ball ended up in an area where the gallery had trampled the rough, he tried to cut a 3-iron around a tree. He hit the tree, instead, leaving himself a lengthy third shot. His next shot plugged in a greenside bunker, and he failed to get up-and-down. I still am in shock that I did that. I just can’t believe that I did that. I am such an idiot. … As a kid I dreamt of winning this tournament. This one is going to take a little while to get over. This one is pretty disappointing. 2004 Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Southampton, N.Y. 54-hole position: T2, 2 shots behind Retief Goosen Final-round score: 71 Finish: 2nd, 2 shots behind Goosen What happened: This was Mickelson’s first major since winning his first one at the 2004 Masters. He made three birdies in a four-hole stretch – on Nos. 13, 15 and 16 – to take a one-shot lead. Then a three-putt from 8 feet on No. 17 cost him his second major. His 6-iron tee shot at the par-3 landed in the left bunker. His bunker shot took a big bounce and scooted 8 feet past the hole. He ran his par putt 6 feet past the hole, then missed the bogey putt. “I hit an easy putt because I knew it was quick. But it still shouldn’t have gone 6, 7 feet by,â€� Mickelson said. “The putt was downwind. When the wind gets a hold of it on these greens, it takes it. It just wouldn’t stop.â€� He finished two shots behind Goosen after making par on 18. After I birdied 16, I had a one-shot lead, and I thought this was going to be the day. 2002 Bethpage State Park (Black), Farmingdale, N.Y. 54-hole position: T3, 5 shots behind Tiger Woods Final-round score: 70 Finish: 2nd, 3 shots behind Tiger Woods What happened: Woods started the day with a four-shot lead over Sergio Garcia but made bogey on the first two holes.  Mickelson, a favorite of the New York crowds, pulled within two shots with a birdie at No. 13. Woods also birdied the hole, though, to regain a three-shot lead. Mickelson fell four behind after a bogey at No. 16. The victory gave Woods wins in the year’s first two majors; he went on to finish 28th at the Open Championship and second at the PGA Championship. The 2002 U.S. Open was Mickelson’s third consecutive top-3 finish in a major. Notable quote: “This was certainly not a disappointing day today. It was one of the most exciting days that I’ve had in the game of golf. It was very electrifying, very similar to what the 1999 Ryder Cup in Boston was. It was an incredible feeling, and a very exciting event to be a part of. And I could feel the electricity in the air. I could feel the excitement stirring, and I could feel as though I had a really good shot at it. Making birdie on 11 and making birdie on 13, I could sense that I was closing the gap there, and it was a very exciting day.â€� 2001 Southern Hills Country Club, Tulsa, Okla. 54-hole position: 6th, 2 shots behind Stewart Cink and Retief Goosen Final-round score: 75 Finish: T7, 6 shots behind Retief Goosen (won playoff) and Mark Brooks What happened: Mickelson played the first eight holes in even par to remain at 3 under par for the tournament (Goosen and Brooks finished 72 holes tied at 4 under). He made five bogeys and no birdies over the next 10 holes, though. “I felt starting at 9 I could make birdies. (No. 9) through 13 all were very birdieable,â€� Mickelson said. “When I missed that fairway and made bogey, that certainly stung, as did the bogey on 10. That really took a lot of momentum out.â€�  It’s certainly not the finish I would have liked, but out of playing 45 majors or so now, and not winning any, I’m tired of beating myself up time all the time. 1999 Pinehurst Resort (No. 2), Village of Pinehurst, N.C. 54-hole position: 2nd, 1 shot behind Payne Stewart Final-round score: 70 Finish: 2nd, 1 shot behind Stewart What happened: Mickelson was a moment’s notice from withdrawing, insisting that he would leave the tournament if his wife, Amy, went into labor with the couple’s first child. His caddie, Jim Mackay, carried a pager so Mickelson could be immediately notified. Two short misses kept Mickelson from winning, though. He missed an 8-foot par putt at No. 16 and 6-foot birdie putt at the 17th to give Stewart a one-shot lead at the final hole. “I putted very well, but 16 and 17 I pulled those just slightly and missed by an inch or two,â€� he said. His bogey on No. 16 was his only bogey of the day in an even-par 70. Stewart had to lay up after driving into the rough on the par-4 18th, but holed an 18-foot par putt to win by one. Amanda Mickelson was born the next day. Notable quote: “I think that although it’s a disappointing day … the fact that our first child is expected to come here in the next week or so is awfully exciting, and something that I’m looking forward to. It will be a bigger change of my life than had I won today.â€� 1995 Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Southampton, N.Y. 54-hole position: T3, 1 shot back Final-round score: 74 Finish: T4, 4 shots behind Corey Pavin What happened: Mickelson made two bogeys and seven pars on the front nine to shoot 2-over 37. He was still 2 over par for the round when he reached the par-5 16th. A lay-up into the long rough led to a double-bogey 7 that effectively ended his chances, though. He made birdie on the next hole – a 186-yard, par-3 – but finished with a bogey on Shinnecock Hills’ demanding finishing hole. This was Mickelson’s fifth U.S. Open start, and his first top-25. It wasn’t like I was trying to get greedy and get on in two. I just pulled my second shot and was hacking out of the rough.

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