Re: Justin Doeden, Part I: Background to an Incident

Any time a golfer or anybody whose career revolves around golf does something that tarnishes the sport, it's reason for pause. We've been bombarded with stories about the PGA Tour clashing with breakaway golfers forming the LIV Golf League, lured by Saudi money without apparent strings. Then came the hypocrisy of imitating LIV with designated events run strictly by the PGA Tour rather than in collaboration with other tours as the similarly no-cut WGCs had been run. (The only difference is these designated events will have 72 holes, not 54.) And to top it all off, the PGA Tour acquiesced to the Public Investment Fund to make peace with LIV after pretending to stand for the integrity of the game.

All this is well-documented. But at the end of the day, it doesn't compare with an actual breach of the rules of the sport. Whereas PGA v LIV is a matter for the sport's professional governing bodies to sort out (with a little help from the politician-friends of said bodies), the incident described and the punishment I recommend in these next couple posts is related to playing the game itself. And the player who broke the rules, sadly, happens to be an Umcee.

Justin Doeden of Prior Lake, MN has had a quiet but respectable career grinding on PGA Tour Canada since graduating from the University of Minnesota in 2018. He was forced to go back to Q-school for that tour in 2019 but managed to finish 36th in the money list that year, earning full membership for 2020. Only, Covid-19 intervened, killing PGA Tour Canada for two years. In the meantime, Doeden continued to plug away on the LOCALiQ Series in 2020, even taking the 54-hole Classic at the Club at Weston Hills for his first PGA Tour pyramid win. As Covid continued to close the Canadian border in 2021, Doeden participated on the one-off Forme Tour and finished 27th, missing out on a First Stage bye for Q-school by just seven points. That said, he made it through First Stage and squeaked through Second Stage to earn conditional Korn Ferry status, though he wasn't able to capitalize at Final Stage. Last year was a step backward, but he still mustered a top-50 finish in the new Fortinet Cup, which is a points-based metric that has replaced the money list for PGA Tour Canada.

Justin Doeden in happier times.

After sitting out last year's Korn Ferry Q-school due to injury, Doeden qualified for half a season on the other third-tier circuit in the PGA Tour pyramid, PGA Tour Latinoamerica. He struggled early on, missing the first two cuts, but then made it at the Chile Open in mid-December. He cracked the top-60 threshold needed for survival to the second half of the season with a T12 when it resumed at the Rio Hondo Invitational in March in Argentina. By the time the reshuffle followed the Brazilian Open in early April, Doeden had secured enough points to play the second half of the Latinoamerica schedule. His first top-10 finish on the Latinoamerica was a T6 at the Kia Open in Ecuador in early May, but his best showing was in the all-time finale of the PGA Tour Latinoamerica at the Bupa Tour Championship on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

Doeden was one of two losers in the playoff to decide the winner of the event, along with France's Jeremy Gandon. (Chandler Blanchet won all the marbles.) This PT2 lifted Doeden to a final Totalplay Cup (points system for the Latinoamerica) standing of #16, good for a long-awaited Second Stage direct entry. Given such a track record, one would think he could suddenly do little wrong that mattered, right? Wrong! One month or so after his strong showing in Mexico, Justin Doeden committed an incident that could epitomize a good golfer gone foul...

To be continued,

Edward the Scop