Steve Stricker, Sean O’Hair team to win QBE Shootout

Two transcendent talents, tied together in history, will face off again Sunday. I’m not talking about Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, though they both fit in that category. I’ll stick to golf in this space. From that perspective, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are the headliners of The Match II: Champions for Charity. Woods (82 wins) and Mickelson (44) are the only players born after 1965 with more than 20 PGA TOUR victories. From 2000 through 2007, either Tiger or Phil won 17% of the tournaments on the PGA TOUR. They are first and second on the TOUR’s all-time official earnings list. Either Woods or Mickelson has finished in the top-ten in 60% of the major championships contested since 1993. Woods holds a seemingly uncatchable record of 661 weeks atop the Official World Golf Ranking. Mickelson was ranked No. 2 for 270 weeks and stayed in the top 50 for a staggering 26 straight years. Everyone is familiar with their countless accolades (126 combined PGA TOUR wins and counting), but how has each legend fared when they’ve gone against each other on the TOUR? HEAD-TO-HEAD The pair has an extensive history playing together. They’ve played in the same grouping 37 times on the PGA TOUR. Woods has got the best of Mickelson in those situations, shooting the better score 18 times to Phil’s 15. They’ve tied four times when playing in the same group. Woods is 54 under when playing with Mickelson on the PGA TOUR, while Mickelson is 34 under. Woods also leads in victories when the two are grouped together at some point in the event, 10 wins to five. MAKING EACH OTHER BETTER Mickelson has frequently talked about how Tiger pushed him to be a better player. The numbers from when they have played together overwhelmingly confirm that statement. Over the last 15 years, Mickelson has averaged 1.12 strokes gained per round. When playing alongside Woods, that number skyrockets to 2.00 strokes gained per round. The era from 2005-2014 paints an even more staggering picture. During that span, Phil averaged 1.36 strokes gained per PGA TOUR round. When playing with Woods in that same stretch, that number is almost doubled – to 2.61. How about Mickelson pushing Woods? The statistics aren’t as dramatic, but they do confirm that Woods plays a little bit better when he’s grouped with Lefty. Since 2005, Woods has averaged 2.01 strokes gained per round average. When grouped with Phil, it rises to 2.17 strokes gained per round. IN CONTENTION ON SUNDAY How about when both players have been in contention entering the final round on the PGA TOUR? There have been 31 instances when both Tiger and Phil have been at or within five shots of the lead going into the final round of a PGA TOUR event. When comparing the numbers from those final round performances, the overall results have been incredibly close. Mickelson is 52 under in those situations. Woods is 51 under. Mickelson’s scoring average is 69.81, three one-hundredths of a stroke better than Woods’ (69.84). Woods has shot the better score 14 times. Mickelson has shot the better score 14 times. And they’ve tied three times. Woods has won 10 of those tournaments. Mickelson has won nine – including the last two times it happened in major championships: the 2010 Masters and 2013 Open. THE BEST OF THEIR GENERATION Mickelson’s first PGA TOUR win came when he was still an amateur, at the 1991 Northern Telecom Open. Since that day, Woods and Mickelson have won the most (82) and second-most (44) PGA TOUR titles of anybody. You would need to put together the next six names on the list of most wins since 1991 – Vijay Singh, Dustin Johnson, Ernie Els, Davis Love III, Rory McIlroy and Jim Furyk to add up to 127 – one more win than Woods and Mickelson have in that span. From 1995 through 2010, there are two players who averaged 2.0 or more strokes gained per round in the major championships: Woods (2.84) and Mickelson (2.02). They ranked first and second in scoring average and score to par in the majors during that time, as well. The length of each player’s brilliant career should be celebrated, too. Despite not turning pro until mid-1996, Woods tied Nick Price for most PGA TOUR wins in the 1990s, with 15. Mickelson was third on the list, with 13. The pair also rank first and second in PGA TOUR titles since the beginning of 2000 – Tiger with 67, Phil with 31. While neither player appears to be quite ready to ride off into the sunset, the opportunities to see these two legends competing against one another are running low. This weekend, golf fans can enjoy the sight of them facing off once again – all for a tremendous charitable cause.

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It’s been more than two years since he has won. He has tinkered with his game, altered his grip, as the search for the player who sat atop the world continues.

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Vin Scully was 8 years old when, in an essay assigned by the nuns at his parochial school, he declared his desire to be a sports broadcaster. He wanted to follow in the footsteps of the men he heard on a nightly basis as he listened to his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers on his family’s large, four-legged radio. “What a job!” he recalled thinking as he enjoyed his pre-bedtime snack of milk and crackers and enjoyed the southern drawl of Red Barber. But even a young Scully couldn’t have envisioned what lay ahead, a career that spanned parts of eight decades and had him narrate some of the biggest moments in sports, including 67 years calling games for his beloved Dodgers. “As far back as I can remember, that’s what I wanted,” Scully said about his career as a broadcaster. “God’s been good.” Scully went from listening to Barber on the radio to working alongside him. Barber, another legend of the industry, described Scully as “the son I never had,” mentoring him and instilling a professionalism that complemented Scully’s genial tone. When asked what he learned from Barber in those early years, Scully mentioned two things: “You should have the attitude of a reporter, not a fan. You’re not there to have a good time. You’re there to work, not to clown with guys around the batting cage. “Above everything else, the people have to believe you. If there’s the slightest doubt about your accuracy and fairness, you aren’t doing it right.” He brought those characteristics to the booth at Ebbets Field and Chavez Ravine, where he narrated the careers of Sandy Koufax and Clayton Kershaw, but his talents translated across sports. He called 19 no-hitters in his baseball broadcasting career, 14 of those by his Dodgers. But Scully also sat in the press box high above San Francisco’s Candlestick Park and called the 1982 NFC Championship game for CBS that saw Joe Montana connect with Dwight Clark for “The Catch,” a touchdown that led to the San Francisco 49ers’ win over the Dallas Cowboys and a trip to the Niners’ first Super Bowl. He was one of the announcers for the 1950 World Series, working for the Brooklyn Dodgers at the tender age of 23, still the youngest person to broadcast a World Series game, and he’s remembered nationwide for his call of Bill Buckner’s error and the New York Mets’ ensuing Game 6 rally against the Boston Red Sox in the 1986 World Series. His most famous call may have come on Kirk Gibson’s game-winning home run two years later in the opening game of the 1988 World Series. “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened,” Scully declared as an injured Gibson hobbled around the bases, pumping his fist. Yes, all big events. But right up there with those golden moments in sports history was 1975 in Georgia. Scully was there, too. As a first-year CBS Sports broadcaster, Scully was the network voice of the Masters, a tournament that year featuring a duel between Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller and Tom Weiskopf, still considered one of the best and most-important Masters in history. At the opening of the final-round telecast, which, in those days, was but two hours and showed only the back-nine action, Scully proclaimed, “The Augusta National Golf Club has seen some marvelous finishing rounds, and in this fourth and final round of the 1975 Masters might very well be a story that will live for many years to come.” Prescient comment. With Nicklaus finished at 12 under, Miller and Weiskopf, both tied and trailing the Golden Bear by one, had the 18th hole to still negotiate. Miller hit his approach shot right of the pin, to 15 feet. Weiskopf went next, knocking his pitching-wedge approach shot to 8 feet above the hole. “And he’s inside Miller. Oh, what a horse race,” Scully exclaimed. When Miller missed his putt, what Scully called a “gallant effort,” he also added, “and one birdie flew away.” It was then Weiskopf’s turn, “one last shot in the arsenal.” Weiskopf didn’t make his putt, leaving Nicklaus to put on his fifth green jacket. The only voice viewers heard in those final, exciting minutes was Scully’s. No analyst sat next to him. And for much of that late-afternoon drama, the announcer stayed silent, letting the pictures tell the story. It was a hallmark of Scully’s understated style that was fitting for a man known for his humility and grace. He passed away Aug. 2 at the age of 94. Scully will most certainly always be inexorably tied to baseball due to his decades broadcasting Dodger baseball as well as network games. But sometimes lost in a career that earned Scully a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among a myriad of other honors, was his work in the golf broadcast booth, usually near the 18th holes at some of golf’s most-important tournaments. He worked for both CBS and NBC, calling the Masters as well as the first PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass. Despite his legendary status, even in 1975, Scully was still an unknown to Augusta National Chairman Clifford Roberts, who asked, “Who is this baseball guy?” when he found out who CBS had hired to do Masters play-by-play. Roberts soon found out. Scully skipped the 1976 Masters due to baseball commitments but handled play-by-play duty from Augusta National through the 1982 tournament when he left CBS Sports due to his desire to call national baseball. He joined NBC Sports mainly because it held Major League Baseball rights and showed its Saturday baseball “Game of the Week.” While baseball was the draw, Scully began calling PGA TOUR golf in early 1983. His first assignment was the 1983 Bob Hope Desert Classic, followed by the Hawaiian Open at Honolulu’s Waialae Country Club a week later. In the final round at Waialae, Japan’s Isao Aoki holed out from the fairway to immediately end the tournament as Aoki defeated Jack Renner, who was sitting in the scoring tent when Aoki’s shot went in. Scully, watching the shot land on the green and go in the hole, immediately left his mark with a classic comment, referencing nearby Diamond Head, “Jack Renner thought he had a handful of diamonds, but they turned into calcite.” Throughout his career, Scully worked with legendary golf broadcasting figures, including CBS’s Pat Summerall, Jack Whitaker, Ben Wright and Ken Venturi, all under the direction of Frank Chirkinian. When CBS signed a deal with the PGA TOUR to take on a larger role in televised golf after ABC Sports allowed its contract to expire, Scully expanded his golf repertoire beyond the fairways of Augusta National. It was in 1979 that Scully first traveled to what was then a sleepy seaside enclave of Ponte Vedra Beach outside of Jacksonville, Florida, to broadcast the Tournament Players Championship from Sawgrass Country Club, just a four-hour drive from Vero Beach, the spring training home of the Dodgers. He continued to make his way to North Florida every March, even after the tournament moved across the street to the newly built TPC Sawgrass. He was in the 18th-hole tower when Jerry Pate in 1982 hit his 5-iron approach shot to the closing hole to three feet and rolled in the birdie putt for the victory. Scully then watched what he called “perhaps the wildest moment in the history of sports” as Pate tossed then-PGA TOUR Commissioner Deane Beman into the lake adjacent to the 18th hole, pushed course designer Pete Dye in after him and then dove in the water himself. “I was a great admirer of Vin and his career. At CBS, he broadcast the network’s most-important events, and A No. 1 was the NFL. When he started broadcasting golf, it was a real positive for the PGA TOUR because somebody of his stature did not do minor events,” recalled Beman. “At that time, we were still a minor sport. I think it was a very subtle message to the public that when Vin Scully started doing golf that golf was more important than they realized. I think Vin probably saw in the future that golf had the opportunity to become a major sport. It took a while, but that’s what it became. I don’t think Vin would have taken golf under his wing if he didn’t think golf was worthy of somebody of his stature describing the action.” Scully broadcast nine PLAYERS Championships for CBS then took a two-year hiatus when NBC assumed the tournament’s telecast rights. Scully returned to TPC Sawgrass in 1990 when he took a job with NBC. That first year, Scully teamed with Lee Trevino, a future World Golf Hall of Fame member, who had left competitive golf to move into broadcasting. Scully also worked alongside Bob Costas and Bob Goalby, among others. In addition to his regular schedule of official PGA TOUR events, Scully was also closely associated with and the voice of the popular Skins Game. He first worked the annual Thanksgiving weekend exhibition in 1986 from PGA West in Palm Springs, a tournament featuring Trevino, Nicklaus, Fuzzy Zoeller and Arnold Palmer. Scully left NBC Sports in 1990 when his old employer, CBS, secured the MLB contract. Although he had two years remaining on his NBC deal, the network asking him to stay and work its 14 scheduled PGA TOUR tournaments, Scully declined, citing the time away from home and wanting only to travel with the Dodgers. That same year, Trevino left NBC to join what was then known as the Senior PGA Tour. Scully’s golf-broadcasting year essentially ended but a legacy of greatness left behind. Scully also was a passionate player, describing in a 2020 Forbes article the pangs he felt when his golf clubs were among the items sold at auction. “I did have a twinge that there goes a major portion of my life, because I played with my wife, Sandi, at home and all over the world and we had a wonderful time,” he said. He counted three aces and an eagle at Bel-Air’s second hole as the highlights of his time on the career. “I would never consider myself a good golfer,” Scully said, “just an extremely lucky one.” It was that same grace and gratitude that made him a legend.

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