PGA Championship Recap
By Dan Daly
VegasInsider.com
Now playing out of Salome, TX…
Ok, so Jimmy Walker isn’t exactly a driving range pro from West Texas, far from it, but to say his win this week was a surprise would be a monumental understatement. His best finish on the PGA Tour this year was a T-4 back in January at the Farmers and he had missed the cut in three of his last four Major starts with a T-29 finish at Augusta. The guy was 125/1 to start the week. To put that into perspective, Tiger Woods was only 100/1 before he officially WD and the guy hadn’t hit a competitive golf shot on the PGA Tour in over a year. If you saw this coming you are either a liar or…well, that’s the only realistic option.
While it certainly wasn’t anywhere close to the performance that we saw from Henrik Stenson two weeks ago at the British Open, Walker was the first player to go wire-to-wire to win the PGA since Phil Mickelson did it at Baltusrol eleven years ago. Other than a small stretch during the front nine Sunday morning (his third round), Walker never wavered all week.
What’s not to like about Jimmy Walker though, the guy plays golf on a regular basis back in San Antonio with George Strait. I don’t have a lot of rules in life but if George Strait is a regular in your weekend golf game you are automatically good in my book. On top of which he went Jason Dufner after he won and gave his wife a solid ass slap on the 18th green with the cameras still rolling. It wasn’t quite to Dufner’s standard but let’s not take away too much credit, the move itself is all that matters.
Although I do have to question his decision making on the 72nd hole when he channeled his best Jean Van De Velde/Roy MacAvoy and hit a 3-wood for his second shot. Granted, it worked out fine in the end, but my god, if he makes bogey there and loses in a playoff he is never going to live that down. Clearly his caddie didn’t study under the great Romeo Posar (aka the Mexican Mac O’Grady) or else he would have obviously stepped in, "You don't need to be thinking immortality. You need to be thinking hit the 7-iron!"
As for the tournament itself, I don’t think we will be watching it again on the Golf Channel in the years to come when they show Golf’s Greatest Rounds.
Basically the 2016 PGA Championship resembled the rest of the 2016 PGA season so far in that it had one very small window of excitement the last 10 minutes with the Jason Day eagle on 18 and the Jimmy Walker birdie/par on 17 and 18, but the rest of the tournament was, well, in a word…boring. I know we still have the rest of the regular season and the FedEx Cup playoffs still to go but with all four majors already behind us I don’t really see anything changing at this point to make this golf season much better. It hasn’t been quite as bad as the 2013 and 2014 seasons, but after what we got in 2015 I expected a much more exciting 2016 than we have had thus far.
I will at least give the PGA of America credit for their work this week. While it wasn’t an ideal scenario with the same groups playing the final two rounds together and the fourth round being lift, clean and place, the fact that they got that thing finished on time was nothing short of a miracle. If that was the USGA we might still be playing golf on Wednesday and the leaders would have gone off the 10th tee in foursomes.
As for everyone else:
It was a heroic performance by Jason Day to gut out a second place finish while “battling” a cold this week. This is a guy that has had to overcome some enormous obstacles so far this year. He had the flu at Augusta, another cold at the US Open, a rib injury at the British Open and now this at the PGA Championship. If WebMD isn’t the title sponsor on his bag starting next year someone needs to lose their job. Look, the guy is still the best player in the world, and the most dramatic, but the fact that he has played as well as he has the last 13 months and has as many major championships to his name as Jimmy Walker is pretty troubling.
Congratulations to Robert Streb on shooting what has to go down as the most uneventful, least watched or talked about 63 in the history of Major Championships. The guy was a missed 8-footer on his 17th hole away from making golf history and literally 12 people would have been there to see it.
Watching Hideki Matsuyama and Branden Grace putt this weekend was incredibly painful. I actually felt bad for them. If a random kid in the grandstands had putted for either of them they might have won this thing by 10 shots.
I thought Mike Weir was just bad at golf now, but it turns out he is even worse as a golf commentator for TNT. Wow, that was one of the most uncomfortable debuts for anyone I have ever seen in any line of work.
Daniel Summerhays finished 2016 with two top-10 finishes in a major. Which is two more than Bubba Watson, Rickie Fowler, Adam Scott and Patrick Reed combined. On a side note I will now write, “I will not bet on Patrick Reed in a Major” 500 times. I will just open up my Sergio Garcia page.
As for Rory McIlroy, he missed the cut…for the second time this year in a major. My how times have changed since he won back to back majors in 2014. Here is my article from the week after his 2014 PGA Championship.
Since I think golf in the Olympics is stupid and will only write a preview for it if I am required by law, Henrik Stenson is the favorite at 6/1 and he is going to win, and going to win very easily. Although, it’s not considered a Major so Sergio and Patrick Reed certainly have a chance.
I want to thank Jordan Spieth for missing a 5-foot birdie putt on both the 71st and 72nd holes Sunday, either of which would have secured him (and me) a top 10 this week. For as good as he has hit it at the British Open and PGA Championship, to see his game falter because of his putter has been extremely surreal to watch. If he gets his putter figured out again in the next 4 weeks don’t be surprised to see him make a run in the FEDEX playoffs. If not, zero chance.
Jimmy Walker may have won the PGA Championship but the best player this week was a guy you have never heard of, Stephan Jaeger. Jaeger played the Ellie Mae Classic on the Web.com Tour this weekend and the dude shot an aggregate 250 for 72 holes, which is 30-under. That's a 62.5 per round average for four days. I don’t care what course or tour you are playing on that’s INSANE!
Finally, after years of having to endure the Rory/Omega/Living in the Hall of Fame commercial and thinking I never had to hear it again, I was unpleasantly surprised when they revealed their newest acoustic Olympic version Ad nauseam this weekend. In one such instance my wife was passing through the living room when it came on and she immediately stopped, turned to look at the TV and said, “Seriously? Another f#%king Omega ‘living in the hall of fame’ commercial!? You have to be kidding me.” Yeah, what she said…