I mostly leave the commentary on the touring-pro level to
those at a higher pay grade than me, but I do like to check in on captain Buddy
Marucci’s crew that claimed a resounding 16.5-9.5 victory over Great Britain
& Ireland as the United States retained the Walker Cup in 2009 at Merion
Golf Club’s historic East Course in the Ardmore section of Haverford Township.
International match play will return to the East Course in a
little more than two years when the Curtis Cup pits top women’s amateur players
from the U.S. of A. against GB&I on the Hugh Wilson classic (with some
finishing touches provided by greenkeeper William Flynn).
It will be interesting to see how the East Course looks
following its reworking under the watchful eye of Gil Hanse. Hearing that the
green on the par-5 second hole has been moved back 50 yards or so on land the
club didn’t use to own. Of course, if you push it right off the tee onto
Ardmore Avenue, you’re still OB.
This one-time Merion looper was fortunate enough to have a
press pass for the 2009 Walker Cup Match in my previous life as a golf writer
at the Delaware County Daily Times.
Oddly, only one alum of that 2009 U.S. team, former Georgia
Tech standout Cameron Tringale, made the cut at last weekend’s Farmers
Insurance Open at Torrey Pines. The 32-year-old Tringale struggled to a
final-round 74 to finish in a tie for 49th place at 2-under 286.
Tringale has been a solid if unspectacular pro. He failed to
make the FedEx Cup Playoffs two years ago, but battled his way through the Korn
Ferry Tour Playoffs (the tour formerly known as the Web.com, among other
corporate sponsors that have come and gone) to retain his playing privileges in
the big leagues, the PGA Tour.
Tringale maintained his status by finishing 105th
on the money list in the wraparound 2018-’19 season with just more than $1
million in earnings. And he certainly seems to be building toward an even
better 2019-’20 season. Playing the weekend has become a regular thing for
Tringale as the Farmers was his eighth made cut in eight starts this season.
The star, then and now, of that 2009 U.S. Walker Cup team,
Rickie Fowler, keeps on keeping on. Fowler turned 31 late last year and married
Allison Stokke, a fitness model who was an NCAA qualifier in the pole vault at
California.
Fowler missed the cut by a shot at the Farmers, adding a
3-under 69 to his opening-round 75 for an even-par 144 total. He will defend
his title at this week’s Waste Management Phoenix Open.
His win at Phoenix a year ago was the fifth career PGA Tour
victory for Fowler who has piled up more than $38 million in career earnings.
Fowler came in at just less than $4 million in the 2018-’19 season, good for 15th
on the money list.
Fowler finished in a tie for ninth in the Masters and tied
for sixth in the Open Championship at Royal Portrush in 2019, which, I’m pretty
sure, gives him 10 top-10 finishes in major championships in his career.
I still think the guy has a couple of majors in him and he’s
always a welcome addition to the U.S. Ryder or Presidents Cup teams. He was
only 20 a decade ago at Merion, but he was so clearly the leader of that team
and by the end of that weekend, they really were a team and a winning one at
that.
By the way, two places behind Fowler on the 2018-’19 money
list was the GB&I player from 2009 who has turned out be the best player,
one Tommy Fleetwood, who earned $3.85 million and change. Fleetwood just might
turn out to be the first major champion to emerge from that 2009 Walker Cup
Match.
Bud Cauley, a former Alabama standout, also missed the cut
at the Farmers, adding a 75 to his opening-round 71 for a 2-over 146 total.
Cauley has made four cuts in seven starts in the 2018-’19 season, including a
strong showing in The American Express (wish they would just let us call it the
Bob Hope Desert Classic) in the desert in Palm Springs, where he finished tied
for fourth place with a closing 65.
The 29-year-old Cauley was a focus of my annual look back at
the 2009 Walker Cuppers around this time last year because of his remarkable comeback
from a car accident he was involved in in May of 2018 that left him with
numerous broken bones and needing a ventilator to help him breathe in a
hospital bed in Columbus, Ohio.
Cauley had missed the cut at the Memorial Tournament when he
was a passenger in the car that was involved in that terrible accident. But he
was back playing by the time the 2018-’19 season got under way. And he didn’t
miss the cut at the Memorial Tournament in 2019, finishing in a tie for ninth
with a 9-under 279 total.
That top-10 finish helped him earn just more than $1 million
for the season, good for 97th on the money list and enabling him to
qualify for the FedEx Playoffs.
Another alum of the 2009 U.S. Walker Cup team, Peter
Uihlein, missed the cut at the Farmers, adding a 72 to his opening-round 76 for
a 4-over 148 total.
I keep waiting for the 30-year-old Uihlein to have a bustout
week or season. I thought he flashed the most pure talent of any of his
teammates that week in 2009, a feeling Uihlein seemed to confirm when he won
the 2010 U.S. Amateur at Chambers Bay.
After some solid years on the European Tour, 2018-’19 was only
Uihlein’s second full year on the PGA Tour and he finished just outside the top
125 on the money list at 130th with $842,991 in earnings.
Uihlein isn’t completely exempt for the PGA Tour, but he has
enough status to get into a lot of events. He is off to a slow start, making
four cuts in seven starts, but he is completely capable of winning any time he
tees it up.
Fowler and Uihlein were two of three Oklahoma State Cowboys who
made that 2009 U.S. Walker Cup team. The third was Morgan Hoffmann, who like
Cauley, was a focus of my look back at the team at this time last year because
he, like Cauley, had stared some big-time adversity in the eye in the previous
couple of years.
Hoffmann had revealed late in 2017 that he had been
diagnosed with muscular dystrophy a year earlier. He played through his issues
-- the condition had manifested itself in a degenerating pectoral muscle that
had left doctors mystified for some time – well enough to make the FedEx
Playoffs in the 2016-’17 season.
Hoffmann made the cut and played the weekend in the Farmers
a year ago, but he was only able to earn $97,212 in the 2018-’19 season. He was
not in the field at Torrey Pines last week.
Playing on a Major Medical Exemption, Hoffmann made the cut
in the first event of the 2019-’20 season, A Military Tribute at The
Greenbrier, but it is the only cut he made in four starts before the calendar flipped
to 2020.
The 30-year-old Hoffmann had staged a fundraiser to benefit
muscular dystrophy research in 2018 at Arcola Country Club in Paramus, N.J. in
the central New Jersey area where he grew up. I couldn’t find any followup on
that first year, but Hoffmann had made it quite clear that finding a way to
battle the malady that was affecting him was his highest priority.
The second most successful pro from that 2009 U.S. team
behind Fowler has been Brian Harman, the little left-hander from Georgia. He
was not in the field at the Farmers, but Harman has made seven cuts in eight
starts in 2019-’20, including a tie for third in the opener at The Greenbrier.
The 33-year-old Harman finished 85th on last
season’s money list with $1.34 million and change in earnings and has won
$16-and-a-half million in his solid 10-year career on the PGA Tour. He makes
cuts and he makes money, year after year.
One of my favorite stories on that 2009 U.S. team was Drew
Weaver, the Virginia Tech kid who, just weeks after the horrific shooting on
the Blacksburg campus, had ventured across the pond and won The Amateur
Championship at Royal Lytham and St. Anne’s in 2007.
The professional journey for the 32-year-old Weaver has been
a tough one, but he has not quit. He made it through the Korn Ferry Qualifying
School late in 2018 and retained his Korn Ferry status by finishing 75th
on the points list in 2019, highlighted by a runnerup finish in the Country
Club de Bogota Championship early last year.
Weaver had a share of the opening-round lead earlier this
month in The Bahamas Great Abaco Classic at Baha Mar after firing a 66 and
finished in a tie for 23rd place at 5-under 283. I’m guessing
Weaver’s dream is to make it to the PGA Tour and the dream is still very much
alive.
It’s been a bumpy ride in professional golf for Harman’s
Georgia teammate on that 2009 U.S. team, Adam Mitchell, and Wake Forest product
Brendan Gielow. I couldn’t find any recent results for them, but I’m sure
they’ll show up somewhere down the line, possibly even as reinstated amateurs.
I’m also sure Mitchell and Gielow, like their more
successful – at least golf-wise – teammates at Merion, treasure that week when
they beat GB&I on one of the classic American golf courses.
The final member of that team, Pittsburgh’s Nathan Smith,
the 1992 PIAA champion as a sophomore at Brookville, never turned pro. Smith
played on two more U.S. Walker Cup teams and added three more U.S. Mid-Amateur
titles to the one he had won in 2003 before Marucci selected him as his mid-am
addition to the 2009 team.
Smith failed to win the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s R.
Jay Sigel Match Play Championship for a seventh time last summer at Llanerch
Country Club, but at 41, he’s still not the guy you want to have to take out in
a match-play event.
In checking over the results from the Farmers, I did come
across a name of local interest that a guy like Weaver can look to for
inspiration.
Vince Covello, a product of the junior program at Llanerch
who played high school golf at Episcopal Academy, missed the cut at Torrey
Pines with rounds of 70 and 75 for a 1-over 145 total.
After years of laboring on the Korn Ferry Tour, the
37-year-old Covello, who played college golf at the perpetually underrated
North Florida, parlayed a win in the Chitimacha Louisiana Open last March to a
top-25 finish on the developmental tour for the year and a spot in the big
leagues, the PGA Tour.
Covello has made a habit of showing up for one of the Golf
Association of Philadelphia-administered local qualifiers for the U.S. Open and
advancing to the sectionals, often earning the qualifying medal, although he
has never made it to the Open itself.
Covello came out of the gate by making the cut at The
Greenbrier, the 2019-’20 season opener, finishing in a tie for 47th
at 5-under 275. But it’s been a rough ride since then as the Farmers was
Covello’s eighth straight missed cut. He’s not missing by a lot, but that’s
life on the PGA Tour.
It’s tough out there, but if Covello has proven nothing else
in his long, slow march to the PGA Tour, it is that he absolutely refuses to
back down from a challenge.
Another name of local interest popped up while I was
checking up on Weaver on the Korn Ferry Tour. At age 37, four-time PGA Tour
winner Sean O’Hair had a pair of strong showings in the two Korn Ferry stops in
the Bahamas earlier this month.
O’Hair became an adopted son of Delaware County when he
married Jackie Lucas, an Aston native who was a pretty good scholastic golfer
at Sun Valley. Jackie Lucas is raising her own golf team these days as it looks
like the O’Hair brood is up to six youngsters.
O’Hair’s 2018-’19 PGA Tour campaign came to an end when he
pulled out of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am with an oblique injury. When I
ran into one of O’Hair’s go-to swing gurus, John Dunigan -- who was following
his daughter Mary and two other girls he works with in the final foursome in
last fall’s PIAA Class AAA Championship at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort in
York County – he indicated that O’Hair would be ready to go again in 2020.
O’Hair finished in a tie for fourth place in the Korn Ferry
Tour opener, The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic at Sandals Emerald Bay with a
6-under 282 total and in a tie for 13th place in The Bahamas Great
Abaco Classic at Baha Mar, including a sparkling 8-under 64 in the second
round.
Playing on a Major Medical Exemption, O’Hair has a starting
time in Thursday’s opening round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open, back on
the PGA Tour where he belongs.
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