Firstly, I'd like to apologize for being a day late. There's been an overload of work at my job of late and I couldn't get around to working on the blog since my daytime work took precedence. Now that the load is lightening, I can resume with my usual blog duties.
Anyway, I finally got the prehistory of the Devilish Rake up and running earlier this week. It explains what led up to the blog's creation last July. As my "What to Expect This Year" post had incorrectly predicted, I had intended to publish it earlier, around January or early February, but it never works out that way since I had THREE rounds of FA Cup picks to disseminate and Upper Midwest Connection of the Week and Month honours to designate. The next general page will be the glossary of terms, which you can expect to see the first entries for later this spring. As for the Patreon, I plan to set aside whatever I get from my tax refund to set that up and maybe support content creators I like.
But back to the golf. As I foretold last week, it was a busy four days from Thursday through Sunday for Umcees in tour golf. Firstly, let's consider the Korn Ferry Tour's Astara-Chile Classic, which involved the five Umcees who made Q-school finals last December: Frankie Capan III, Van Holmgren, Thomas Longbella, Andre Metzger and Alex Schaake. Unfortunately, four missed the cut; the only exception was, of all of them, Metzger. "Dakotas Dre" is, as the epithet I confer on him indicates, a legend on the Dakotas Tour, which is my favourite minitour in North American golf. He finished T44, good to enter the KFT points list at #139. Probably not enough to get very many starts, but it's a start.
The other developmental tour with OWGR or Rolex Ranking points to involve Umcees last week was, of course, the Korn Ferry's women's equivalent--the Epson Tour, which kicked off its season with the Florida's Natural Charity Classic. This year, the tour has switched to a points-based system for its order of merit, which means I will no longer regularly quote paychecks of prize money earned for applicable golfers. That aside, Kim Kaufman fared significantly better than Kate Smith-Stroh, especially in the last two rounds. Kaufman had a -5/67 Saturday to highlight her weekend, collecting 81 2/3 points in the Race for the Card. This year, there will be a further five cards awarded, bringing the total to fifteen spots on the 2025 LPGA Tour.
On the PGA Tour, though, there were two events! That's because last week had a signature event in the Arnold Palmer Invitational and an opposite event in the Puerto Rico Open. Of the three Umcees who participated on the Tour last week, only Troy Merritt was unfortunate to miss out on Bay Hill. He did an okay job in Puerto Rico, finishing T23 and climbing to #119 in the FedEx Cup. Back on the mainland, Scottie Scheffler's performance clearly overshadowed the rest of the field, winning by five strokes. Even so, Erik van Rooyen mustered a T25 and inched up to #18 on the points list. The big winner among Umcees, though, was...
Tom Hoge.
I was tempted to put Kaufman atop the Umcees for the week, what with her top-ten finish. But Hoge saved his best for last. Though he still has some work to do to reach this year's Masters, which would require a win in any of the remaining PGA Tour events beforehand (yes, all of them are full field) or a top fifty showing after the Houston Open in the OWGR, he took an important step towards a third straight appearance with his T12, which enabled him to crawl up to #56 in the world rankings. He also jumped to #12 in the FedEx Cup standings, putting him well on his way to the playoffs yet again. Lastly, he is now up to #15 in the Presidents Cup standings for Team USA thanks to yet another top-fifteen showing. I suppose his progress has Jim Furyk on notice by now, especially with this week being the week of the Players Championship.
Speaking of which, this week brings the big three Umcees together with 140 others as of this writing. (Tom Kim of South Korea was the 144th player, but he withdrew due to illness eight holes in.) After one round, Hoge was on his way to an UMCOW repeat, two strokes off the -7/65 lead at -5/67. Van Rooyen was less lucky, finishing -1/71 for his opening round, but was on the right side of the cutline for now. The same can't be said for Merritt, though, as he was +1/73 to start his Players.
As for the Korn Ferry Tour, it goes back into hibernation after the Southern Fortnight until the Club Car Championship in Savannah, Georgia at the start of April. I say Southern Fortnight because this is the first time that the Argentine Open and Astara-Chile Classic were contested as consecutive yet isolated KFT events, and both are in the Southern Hemisphere--the only two such KFT tourneys. But that doesn't mean that the developmental scene has run dry for Umcees. Instead, Kaufman and Smith-Stroh will contest the IOA Golf Classic on the Epson Tour, and they will be joined by Emily Lauterbach of Hartfield, Wisconsin.
Lastly, the inaugural PGA Tour Americas season launches next week with the Bupa Championship in Tulum, Mexico. As a result of the Termas de Rio Hondo Invitational getting scrapped due to economic strife in Argentina, it's part of a Mexican fortnight to open the season this year. Plenty of Umcees are expected to populate leaderboards during these two events such as Holmgren and Longbella, but also Derek Hitchner, Andre Metzger and a hopefully contrite Justin Doeden.
Edward the Scop
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