While we were
digging out from under two-plus feet of snow, it was a pretty good week for
some of the members of Buddy Marucci’s winning United States team in the 2009
Walker Cup Match at Merion Golf Club’s East Course.
The event itself
was pretty exciting in 2009, but you just knew you would always follow some of
the young stars, many of whom made the Walker Cup their amateur swan song
before embarking on their professional careers.
The biggest weekend
for an alum of that U.S. team is obvious. Rickie Fowler outdueled a strong
field to win in Abu Dhabi and rise to No. 4 in the World Ranking. More on that
later.
In another desert
half a world away, though, three of Fowler’s teammates at Merion had solid
top-15 finishes in the CareerBuilder Challenge in Palm Springs, Calif., an
event that once was known simply as the Bob Hope Classic and for many years was
a 90-hole shootout.
Brian Harman, the
little left-hander from Georgia, finished in a tie for 11th with rounds
of 67, 66, 72 and 65 for an 18-under 270 total. Harman, No. 97 in the World
Ranking, has won nearly $6.5 million on the PGA Tour and owns a victory in the
2014 John Deere Classic.
Harman finished a
shot ahead of two of his Walker Cup teammates. Cameron Tringale, who had rounds
of 69, 68, 67 and 67, and Bud Cauley, who had rounds of 72, 65, 66 and 68,
finished in a tie for 14th at 17-under 271.
Tringale is really
starting to come into his own in golf’s big league. He won $1.8 million last
season and is off to a fast start in the wraparound 2015-16 season with a tie
for second in the Shriners Hospital for Children Open in Las Vegas and a tie
for fifth in the unofficial Franklin Templeton Shootout. He has his World
Ranking all the way up to No. 73.
I saw a little more of Tringale that Walker
Cup week in 2009 because I had a feeling I might be able to catch up with his
Georgia Tech teammate, Adam Cohan, the 2002 PIAA champion as a junior at
Radnor. And indeed I did.
A Google search of
Cohan’s name late last year yielded the troubling news that he had been
diagnosed with leukemia in 2012. He seemed to be on the road to recovery in
September of 2014 when the inaugural Cohan Cup was played at the Atlanta
Athletic Club to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Cohan reached out
to some of his old Georgia Tech teammates to help support the event and
Tringale, not surprisingly, was among those who answered the call.
Cauley’s showing in
the CareerBuilder might very well be a career builder. The $104,000 the Alabama
product earned was much needed. Cauley missed the 2014-15 season after
undergoing surgery for a torn labrum Sept. 12, 2014, five years to the day from
the first day of the 2009 Walker Cup.
He is playing on a
medical exemption and needs to make more than $500 grand in 15 starts to regain
his full-time status on the PGA Tour. He
got into the CareerBuilder off the alternate list at the last minute and made
the most of the opportunity.
Fowler has often
been criticized as being all flash and no substance, but nobody who saw him at
Merion in 2009 thought that way. When you watch a team, especially a winning
one, up close, it’s easy to figure out who the leader is and Fowler, at age 20,
was the unquestioned leader of that U.S. team. He put his pro aspirations on hold
for several months to honor his commitment to Marucci, who was wrapping up his second
stint as U.S. team captain on his home course.
Fowler stared down the No. 1 (Jordan Spieth)
and No. 2 (Rory McIlroy) players in the world to win at Abu Dhabi last week.
McIlroy finished in a tie for third and Spieth in a tie for fifth.
The year dawned with many golf observers
looking forward to the competition among the Big Three of Spieth, McIlroy and
Jason Day. Many of those same observers were updating that Big Three to a Fab
Four after Fowler’s performance last week.
Fowler made a
brilliant comeback to win The Players last year and he had top-5 finishes in
all four majors in 2014. He appears poised to become the elite player many of
us who watched him at Merion in 2009 were certain he would become.
One other name of
note at the CareerBuilder was a tie for 28th for Sean O’Hair, an
adopted son of Delco since marrying into the Lucas family of Aston. O’Hair had
rounds of 70, 67, 68 and 69 for a 14-under 274 total.
After having to
play his way through the Web.com playoffs to retain his PGA Tour privileges for
last season, O’Hair, winner of more than $19 million in his career, returned to
form, fighting his way into the playoffs and reaching the second week.
He wrapped up his bounceback
2015 with a tie for seventh in the unofficial Franklin Templeton Shootout and
he has made the cut at the Sony Open and the CareerBuilder since the calendar
turned to 2016.
This is my first
blog post since my “separation” from the Daily Times. It took a couple of weeks
to reload technologically. Since I’m hardly a tech whiz, I was unable to figure
out how to get my original Twitter handle back when I was loading Twitter on to
my new phone. The new Twitter handle is @Tmacgolf16 and I will continue to
alert you there when there’s a new post.
The email address
some of you used to contact me at was a work email, so I’ve been using a
personal account that’s been active since the days when Chase Utley was good,
thus chaseutfan@gmail.com. Feel free
to pass on any golf news you hear.
