Tiger pushes British to best ratings in years

There were nights when his parents wouldn’t eat so he could, tournament directors who accepted an IOU in lieu of an entry fee, and utility bills that went unpaid. RELATED: Q & A with Vasicki So the moment was choked with emotion when Sarasota mini-tour pro Michael Visacki, 27, Monday-qualified into this week’s Valspar Championship and called home to break the news. “I made it,” he croaks amid the tears, his father alternately cheering and crying. The hundreds of thousands of miles driven on his 2010 Honda Accord. The job cleaning carts. The ball that got stuck in a tree and led to a heartbreaking double bogey in the second stage of Q School in 2019. Visacki, who still lives at home with his parents, has come a long way to arrive at his first PGA TOUR start since turning pro in 2014, and the viral video shows just how long. “Just a lot of people give up on their dreams, probably because they can’t afford it,” Visacki said in a press conference Tuesday afternoon, when he was again overcome by emotion as he tried to explain the public’s reaction to his emerging story. “But I’ve been lucky enough to be with my parents and been able to help me out sometimes to keep living it.” Visacki is an only child. His parents, Mike and Donna, own a transport company that ships wheelchairs and stretchers and have done so for about 16 or 17 years. Michael showed great talent as a junior golfer, but developing that talent sometimes proved too costly. “Tournaments would want us to register about two weeks in advance to know that they had so many players in,” he said. “And sometimes money was tight where my parents would call the director and be like, ‘Do you mind putting my son in? I’ll have the money for you when we get to the event.’ And they knew that I was a really good junior golfer, so they would accept that, they would waive that restriction for me back in the junior days.” And Visacki was good. Having played tennis as a boy, he switched to golf at age 8, inspired by his dad. He grew so big and strong the Riverview High School football coach wanted to put him on the offensive line, but Visacki said no, he was a golfer. The coach soon realized he was right. Visacki played one year for the University of Central Florida, then turned pro. Playing 30-45 tournaments a year, he racked up 37 victories on the West Florida Pro Golf Tour and made his reputation as a big-time talent. He qualified for the Korn Ferry Tour’s 2018 Kansas City Golf Classic and finished T27. He lived at home to save money and bought a used Honda Accord he’s since driven 170,000 miles, at one point driving to Utah and back. He tried “six or seven” Monday qualifiers, but the closest he had come before this week was missing a playoff by a shot. Keep your head down, his dad told him. Keep grinding. “Because he knew that I had it,” Visacki said. He worked in the cart barn and pro shop at Serenoa Golf Club in Sarasota to make ends meet, sometimes closing the pro shop at 5, 6 o’clock and then hustling out onto the course to chase the sun. Never, he said, did he consider quitting. Not even after his ball got stuck in the tree to derail his Q School hopes by one shot in 2019, an agonizing close call that nearly broke him. “I don’t know how I was able to even drive,” he said of his somber ride home. His dream of playing his way into the Valspar almost fizzled when his tee shot stopped just short of going into a bush on the first extra hole. He chipped out sideways and got up and down from 107 yards and survived when Chris Baker missed his birdie putt. Visacki had his own birdie try from 20 feet on the second extra hole. “The first thing I was like, man, I have a chance to, if I make this putt I’m playing, I’m going to be playing in the Valspar,” he said. “But after that I was like, OK, I got to not think about that, I got to think about putting the best stroke possible, picking out a good line with me and my caddie and we picked out a great line and I hit the spot and it went in the hole.” Visacki embraced his caddie Kaylor Steger, a friend and fellow pro, and broke down. Then came the freighted phone call, and the viral video, and his reputation quickly growing far beyond all those mini-tour victories. Of his chances at establishing a foothold on the Korn Ferry Tour and/or PGA TOUR, and finally being able to make a decent living as a golfer, Visacki said, “I mean I think it’s just trying to get one percent better every day. I feel like I’m not that far off.” He added, not without ample evidence, “I know I’m capable of doing it.” For the Valspar’s newest fan favorite, the dream is coming together right before our eyes.

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Rory McIlroy has been in this position many times. For Ryan Fox, it’s a new experience. Two golfers with very different profiles are vying to finish atop the DP World Tour’s season-long points standings entering this week’s season-ending DP World Tour Championship on the Earth Course in Dubai. McIlroy — who recently won a record-setting third FedExCup and sits atop the world ranking — leads the Race to Dubai standings as he bids to be the DP World Tour’s leading player for the fourth time in his career (2012, ’14 and ’15). McIlroy could be the first player to end a year as the FedExCup champion, DP World Tour champion and No. 1 player in the world ranking. Fox is only narrowly behind McIlroy in second place — the points difference is just 128.1 — after the best year of his career that has seen him win two events, the Ras al Khaimah Classic and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, and be runner-up four times. Last month, the New Zealander reached a career-high ranking of No. 23. “Rory is the best player in the world,” Fox said Wednesday. “He’s obviously the favorite but to be in this position is great and I’ve got nothing to lose this week. “Won’t do anything different from what I’ve been doing all year. Just go out and try to beat the golf course and see what happens in that sense. That’s served me pretty well and hopefully I can do the same thing this week.” McIlroy has won the FedExCup and DP World Tour Ranking three times each, but never in the same year. “The way I’ve played throughout the year, I’ve been so consistent, especially the last six or seven months post-Augusta,” said McIlroy. “I feel like my game is in good shape. I would be slightly disappointed if I walked away from here knowing I didn’t play as well as I can, and I know if I do play like that, I’ll give myself a good chance.” Five other players — Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Viktor Hovland, Shane Lowry and Adrian Meronk — also have a chance of pass McIlroy in the Race to Dubai standings but would need both players to have poor finishes this week. Fitzpatrick, the U.S. Open champion, is in third place and has the best chance of the outsiders. A third win at the DP World Tour Championship would see him jump to first place provided neither McIlroy or Fox finish the event in second, while a second-place finish would also require McIlroy to finish lower than seventh. Fitzpatrick feels he has the ideal game to follow up his previous victories at the Earth Course in 2016 and ’20. “I remember when I first came here in 2015, everyone said they didn’t think that it would necessarily suit me because it is a big golf course,” Fitzpatrick said. “But there are things that you have to do well here. Putting is No. 1. That’s the biggest influencer of playing well here, and driving is No. 2. And they are both my strengths. Over the years, particularly as I’ve got longer as well now, that’s obviously been a big bonus and the greens are just so pure here as well.” As for Fleetwood, Hovland, Lowry and Meronk, they all need to win and hope McIlroy and Fox aren’t too close behind them on the leaderboard. Fleetwood, who recently moved to the Middle East with his family, is coming off winning the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa last week, his first victory in three years, and opening the Tommy Fleetwood Academy at Jumeirah Golf Estates this week. “Dubai is where normal life is for us at this time,” Fleetwood said.

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