Merry Christmas! The first two days out of seven revealing the top ten Umcees in tour golf in 2023 have concerned the All-Umcee Second Team and any honourable mentions. Now, we get to the First Team, so more detail is warranted for each player. We begin with one of the "big three" Umcees in tour golf this year...
Number 5: Troy Merritt, Osage, Iowa native/Spring Lake Park (MN) High School '04/Winona State University two years
Starting OWGR: #98
Current OWGR: #224
Final FedEx Cup eligibility: #124 (including fall 2022)
Wins: 0
Top tens: 2
Top 25s: 4
Majors: PGA Championship, MC
Cuts made: 11/27
Upper Midwest Connection of the Week titles: 4 (including retroactive)
To say that Troy Merritt struggled in 2023 is an understatement. After starting his year with a modestly made cut (T65) at the Sony Open in Hawai'i, he fell out of the top 100 of the OWGR permanently by missing the next week's Amex cut. Once he missed the weekend at the RBC Heritage the week after the Masters, it was eight straight MC. He fell from the OWGR top 150 shortly thereafter and, again, hasn't returned since. By the time he made the weekend at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit--an event he almost won in 2021, losing a playoff to Cam Davis of Australia--he had fallen from the top 200. That payday, which snapped a drought lasting thirteen straight events, earned him a retroactive Upper Midwest Connection of the Week honour (I began the blog the day after his final putt had dropped). He still missed the playoffs for the first time since 2017, though, despite making four of his last six cuts on the FedEx Cup regular season. And though he had consecutive top-ten finishes to open the FedEx Cup Fall, he petered out after that, posting zero top-sixty finishes in the last four events and missing a sixteenth cut in 2023 at the RSM Classic.
So why does he get to be on the First Team? The big reason is the fact that his card survived at all. After MCing at the RSM, Merritt had to sweat out results elsewhere at the event. When the dust settled, he was the last one in the top 125, the final "bubble boy"--at least at the time. Of course, Carl Yuan of China, who missed out on the range initially, did get his card back through Jon Rahm's defection to LIV Golf. Still, Merritt did well in some areas, not giving up on hope when he MCed 13 straight times and showing up enough to retain his privileges for 2024. Sometimes, you need to be more lucky than good.
Edward the Scop
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