Kan goes low to help Purdue finish fifth in Puerto Rico

   Aurora Kan, the 2010 PIAA champion as a senior at Chichester, started the homestretch of her senior season  at Purdue this week when the Boilermakers hosted the Lady Puerto Rico Classic at Rio Mar Country Club’s River Course in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.

   Kan is the senior leader on a young team that is trying to get Purdue back among the elite. Kan  was a sophomore when the Boilermakers featured two future pros in South African Paula Reto and Laura Gonzalez-Escallon of Belgium and finished third at the NCAA Tournament. She has been to the NCAA Tournament every year, her first two years as part of strong Purdue teams and last year as an individual. I’m pretty sure she would like to have her teammates along for the ride at the NCAA Tournament this year.

   Kan opened the Lady Puerto Rico with rounds of 77 and 81 and Purdue sat in seventh place. Having covered Kan throughout her high school career, I’m guessing she took a look in the mirror after those two rounds and said quite simply, “You’re better than that.”

   In Tuesday’s final round, Kan ripped off a nearly flawless three-birdie, no-bogey 3-under 69 to lead the Boilermakers to a 290 team score that enabled them to move up to fifth in the final team standings at 890. Purdue had opened the tournament with a pair of 300s. The 290 single-day total was matched only by team champion Arkansas on Day 1 of the event.

   The Razorbacks backed up that opening-round 290 with rounds of 295 and 291 to cruise to the team title with an 876 total. LSU was seven shots back in second at 883 followed by Iowa State (884) in third and Northwestern (886) in fourth, four shots ahead of fifth-place Purdue.

   Iowa State was led by individual champion Chonlada Chayanun, who put together rounds of 66, 69 and 74 for a 7-under 209 total, the second-best  individual finish in the history of the event.

   Purdue got a strong showing from its  most talented player, sophomore Floridian August Kim, who matched par 72 in each of the first two rounds and then added a final-round 73 to finish in a tie for sixth at 1-over 217. Junior Anna Appert Lund (75-74-74—223) of Sweden and freshman Marta Martin (76-73-74—223) of Spain finished in a tie for 22^nd and Kan’s final-round surge left her in 33^rd place.

   Johanna Tillstrom, a senior from Sweden, had three straight 81s to finish in a tie for 75^th at 243. A third  Swede, freshman Linn Andersson, competed as an individual and had rounds of 75, 80 and 76 to finish in a tie for 44^th at 231.

   It was an encouraging start for a Purdue team that entered the Lady Puerto Rico ranked 45^th in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin national rankings. Something tells me with a senior leader like Kan and some talented youngsters, that ranking is going nowhere but up.

PGA Tour returning to Aronimink?

   There were whispers around the Daily Times newsroom Wednesday – actually it was an email from editor Phil Heron, but the whisper thing sounds more intriguing – that the PGA Tour is coming back to Aronimink Golf Club in the form of the 2018 BMW Championship.

   The BMW is the penultimate event in the FedEx playoffs, the last step before the Tour Championship. It’s been moved around to several top courses, last year being played at Cherry Hills Country Club in suburban Denver, a course that has hosted three U.S. Opens, most  notably Arnold Palmer’s epic comeback victory in the 1960 Open. Cherry Hills, by the way, is a William  Flynn design, like so many of the courses in our area, including Rolling Green Golf Club.

   It’s not surprising that the PGA Tour would find a way to get an event back to Aronimink. The two AT&T Nationals staged at the Donald Ross gem in 2010 and 2011 were flawlessly run and drew huge and enthusiastic  galleries, despite being staged on the Fourth of July weekend. Aronimink was filling in for Congressional Country Club in suburban Washington D.C., while it was busy staging the 2011 U.S. Open.

   Aronimink produced two worthy winners in Justin Rose in 2010 (who would then get his biggest win three years later at the U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club’s East Course) and Nick Watney in 2011.

   Stay tuned on this possible development.

Kim, Lees, Bradbeer, Hummer

   The Philadelphia Section PGA’s Junior Tour sent out its 2014 year in review this week and some golfers with Delco ties picked up season-long awards.

   Radnor sophomore Gabby Kim was the Graham Co. Player of the Year in the 13-to-15 division. Also earning Player of the Year honors was Merion Golf Club’s Peter Bradbeer, a former Penn Charter standout who was the top performer in the 16-to-18 division in 2014.

   While Kim beat out Agnes Irwin sophomore Kaitlyn Lees for Player of the Year in the 13-to-15 division, Lees’ consistency was rewarded with the Sam Penecale scoring average award. Lees, the Inter-Ac League champion as an eighth-grader, still has her sophomore season ahead of her as the Inter-Ac girls don’t tee it up until the spring, assuming spring ever gets here.

   Another Sam Penecale scoring average winner was Case Hummer of Glen Mills, who won the award among the nine-holers.

Nicklaus' record starting to look pretty healthy

   This appeared in Saturday's Daily Times print edition under the Punch Shots banner, but it was worth posting on the golf blog. Plus I don't want you think I'm ignoring the golf blog just because the temperature's been stuck in the 20s a lot lately.

   It was pretty strange watching Tiger Woods wince on every shot on his way to withdrawing before the first round of the Farmers Insurance Open was over Thursday.
   It was at the same Torrey Pines complex at which Tiger won his last major, the 2008 U.S. Open, and where his body first started to betray him in a big way. Woods walked off the North Course Thursday while the 2008 Open was at the tougher South Course.
   Nobody could have imagined at the time that Woods’ 14th major championship victory might very well be his last, but that possibility seemed very real after two weeks of watching the greatest player of his generation chopping it around for an 82 last Friday in Phoenix and then hitting it right of right on nearly every tee shot Thursday at Torrey Pines.
   But there always was that caveat when the thought of Woods equaling and then passing Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major championships was brought up. It was always, if his life off the golf course didn’t cause any problems and if he could stay healthy.
   He has had issues in both areas at various times ever since he won that 2008 Open. Obviously, the 2009 incident that led to the demise of his marriage to Elin Nordegren and the subsequent revelations of infidelity didn’t help.  But co-parenting two kids with an ex — and by all reports, they get along fine — takes some work.
   And he very simply has not stayed healthy. While winning the 2008 Open on a broken leg was heroic, it might very well have led to many of the issues he has dealt with since then, including the weak back that plagued him Thursday.
   Somehow the guy who burst on the scene as Fat Jack in the early 1960s always stayed healthy, had a stable family life and remained motivated to win as many major championships as he could, getting the last one, quite memorably, in 1986 at the age of 46.
   He could never have imagined that a young kid would come along in the next generation and challenge those 18 majors. It’s starting to look, however, that Nicklaus’ 18 is going to remain the standard for a while, maybe even after Tiger’s career is over.