Upper Midwest Connection of the Week Ending 26 May 2024

 Although all five Umcees made the cut at their respective events, three--Troy Merritt and Zach Johnson at the Charles Schwab Challenge and Van Holmgren at the KFT Visit Knoxville Open--may be safely removed from the board as a result of their poor performances after making the weekend. That left two of them for this week's poll.

For the second straight week, the televote was overridden by the expert jury. I received two votes, and both went to Tom Hoge, who won the honours last week after a good performance at the PGA Championship. However, I don't see how a tie for 17th, as much as that matches his personal best at the Schwab Challenge, lifts Hoge to Upper Midwest Connection of the Week. Not when the Visit Knoxville Open went to a sudden-death, two-hole playoff involving...

(PGA Tour/Korn Ferry Tour)

Frankie Capan III.

Heading into Sunday's final round, FCIII had a one-stroke lead. The North Oaks, Minnesota product has never won an OWGR-sanctioned event but already had matched his top-ten finish total coming into the week with three on the season. Capan, though, was charged down by Harry Higgs, who is a former PGA Tour member seeking to get back his card. Higgs came to the final hole leading by one himself until FCIII birdied the last and Higgs settled for par, triggering a playoff.

Normally a birdie-birdie playoff showing would hand a given player the win, but on the second hole of the playoff--both holes were replays of No 18--Higgs drilled a 37-foot eagle putt for the win and Capan missed his from a third of the distance by seventeen inches. Even so, FCIII got to reap great rewards in his own right with 300 KFT points, lifting him to within some reach of the PGA Tour at #7 on the points list, as he is closing in on 700 total. (Higgs, along with Swedish hotshot Tim Widing, already is thought to have enough points to graduate back to the big Tour with over 1100 so far.) Furthermore, Capan jumped to #172 in the OWGR.

This week's action revolves around two foci. On the men's side, the big event is the RBC Canadian Open. Hoge won't be playing the event, but the other two Umcees from last week's Schwab Challenge will be joined by the well-rested Erik van Rooyen, who tied for 20th at the exact same course in Hamilton, Ontario five years ago. Of course, the place has since undergone a renovation, so course history may not be that relevant for handicapping. There are multiple extra incentives for success. Firstly, the Presidents Cup is being held at Royal Montreal this fall; and as an International Team-eligible player, van Rooyen will want to impress Mike Weir, the 2003 Masters champ who hails from Canada and is captaining the team, this week. Secondly, the Canadian Open is an Open Qualifying Series event, which means that a certain number of top finishers who aren't otherwise exempt get into next month's 152nd Open at Royal Troon in Scotland. In this case, three spots are available; and unlike previous OQS stops, this and subsequent such events fall after the deadline for Open entries (30 May this year), so the bids are nontransferable. 

Meanwhile, the Korn Ferry Tour features three more Umcees, as Capan and Holmgren are joined for once by conditional member Andre Metzger. Metzger is legendary on the Dakotas Tour, which is one of my favourite minitours in golf. Not only does it conduct events in the Upper Midwest (except Wisconsin), but it partners with locals to quarter cash-strapped players and distributes prize money with great efficiency. Anyway, Metzger makes some residence in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, especially during the Dakotas Tour season.

As for women's golf, the U.S. Women's Open goes down at Lancaster Country Club in the Pennsylvania Deutsch Country (and yes, the Amish historically spoke German, not Dutch--hence the spelling). Earlier in the spring, Kim Kaufman of Clark, South Dakota won an open qualifier to make this women's major, giving her a playing opportunity while the Epson Tour is on another hiatus. At some point during the tournament or afterward, I might also comment on Lexi Thompson's retirement, which she announced at the event this week.

Facere pro Qui Non Possunt.

Edward the Scop

Post 100: Charles Schwab Challenge and Other Events Recap

 Lost amid the tragic backdrop at Colonial National was the actual playing of golf. But at the Devilish Rake, the show must go on, and this past week's events followed that rule, at times magnificently. I mentioned in the above-linked post that most felt it's what Grayson Murray would have wanted.

Anyway, just like last week's PGA Championship, this week's Charles Schwab Challenge featured three Umcees. While Erik van Rooyen sat out an event at which he's never done well (0-for-3 in cuts made), Troy Merritt and Zach Johnson came back to action after missing out on the season's second major. All three made the cut, but Merritt and Johnson both finished +2/282 for the week. Johnson had an especially ugly final round, carding +3/73 to lose four places in the FedEx Cup. He is teetering closer to the threshold for so much as conditional status retention, as it's clear his day has come and gone. Merritt is in a somewhat more favourable position, but he is also on track to fall to the conditional category, slipping a place in the list.

Tom Hoge, though, saved his best for last. After struggling in the odd rounds (with a -1/69 in between Friday), he showed up to finish under par (-2/278 overall, -3/67 Sunday). Hoge only suffered one bogey Sunday, and his efforts propelled him to #20 in the FedEx Cup and #59 in the OWGR. While the latter wasn't good enough to make it to the Open Championship yet, there is still time for him to secure his place at Royal Troon this July.

While the Schwab Challenge was won comfortably by Davis Riley, who polished off Scottie Scheffler and Keegan Bradley by five shots each (-14/266), there was considerable drama on the Korn Ferry Tour at the Visit Knoxville Open. Last week's people's choice as Upper Midwest Connection of the Week, Van Holmgren, made the cut for the second straight week but stumbled with a +3/73 final round, tying him for dead last among the 75 who made the cut in Knoxville, Tennessee. At the other extreme was Frankie Capan III. After a phenomenal -8/62 third round Saturday, FCIII matched veteran Harry Higgs' -19/261 regulation finish with a birdie at the last, followed by two more at No 18 in the playoff. Which would have won Capan his first KFT title...except Higgs sank a 37-foot eagle putt on the last playing of the hole to win by one. Even so, Capan is up to seventh on the KFT points list and is arithmetically on track to be PGA Tour-bound by the time the KFT finals roll around in the fall. He also has a personal-best four top-ten finishes on tour, and even in playoff defeat, this is his best KFT finish ever.

I will ask it again: Whom do you think was the best Upper Midwest connection of the past week in tour golf? I pose this question again to both this blog and YouTube, so answer away!

Edward the Scop

Facere pro Qui Non Possunt

Grayson Murray, 1993-2024

C.W.: Suicide references 

Normally a week like this, what with the PGA Championship the week before, would be pretty quiet. Many bigwigs take off a week or two before the next high-profile event or otherwise opting to make another start. However, this week's quiet was broken by nothing short of a tragedy--and I don't mean my Wolves blowing Game 2 of the conference finals against the Mavs.

May he rest in peace, and may his memory be a blessing.

On Friday, Grayson Murray WD from the Colonial National Invitation, known for sponsorship reasons as the Charles Schwab Challenge, after three consecutive bogeys. Despite these those struggles, Murray could still have made the weekend, it turned out, by going -1 the last two holes. Instead, he said he was sick and quit. But nothing could have prepared anybody--not his fellow-players, not the fans in the stands, not the T.V. audiences around the world, not the PGA Tour itself and definitely not his family and fiancée--for what was to befall them. The next morning, Murray was found dead, and the day after, his parents confirmed he had committed suicide.

The news hit like a thousand sledgehammers falling randomly from the sky. The percussion track in the usual theme for CBS' coverage was suppressed at the weekend as soon as they came on the air to broadcast the action Saturday out of reverence for Murray. This was just four and a half months after he had won the Sony Open in Hawai'i--his second win on the Tour and first full-point victory. Just a month and a half after his Masters debut, where he made the cut. Just a week or so after making the PGA Championship cut and less than that after securing an exemption to the U.S. Open. And just weeks before he was to marry the love of his life.

I mentioned on a community post on my YouTube channel, which is a companion to this blog, that Grayson Murray suffered depression; and as one with depression myself, I have sought to live life as I am able. There are good days and bad days with the condition, so I could relate to Grayson's struggles in a way, even though I never knew the guy on any personal level.

Back at Colonial National came the outpouring of tears. Valspar Championship winner Peter Malnati, in particular, sobbed during his interview with Amanda Balionis of CBS. Webb Simpson, who knew Grayson from his junior days in North Carolina and early university days at Wake Forest, was also moved to emotion greatly. Jay Monahan personally flew into DFW to be with the players. Meanwhile, on the Korn Ferry Tour, Harry Higgs--himself trying to get back to the PGA Tour, in which endeavour he should succeed--dedicated his two-hole playoff win to Grayson's memory. By the time Davis Riley polished off a fairly high-profile field including top-ranked Scottie Scheffler, no prize money, no FedEx Cup points, no silly little trophy (or not-so-little trophy) or tartan jacket or 1975 Schwab roadster could take away the meaning of this tragedy. Sports success comes and goes, but the loss of a human life is forever.

In conclusion, I commend Grayson on his honesty in terms of his depression and alcoholism. In a sport that trolls its practitioners for length of days like none other, his vulnerability is to be remembered and honoured. Perhaps this quality, above all his ability as a golfer, is why they dared play on at the Schwab Challenge. It has also led me to coin a Latin motto for the Devilish Rake: Facere pro qui non possunt. To do for those who can't. That, I feel, will be Grayson's lasting legacy, long after the players, organizers and broadcasters move on, long after Grayson's parents bury him, long after his premaritally widowed fiancée (hopefully) finds someone new to love. Remember Grayson Murray.

Edward the Scop

Upper Midwest Connection of the Week Ending 19 May 2024

 Having started a YouTube channel affiliated with this blog, I recently got clearance to add community posts, including polls. To that end, I decided to run a viewer/reader poll on people's opinion of who should be crowned Upper Midwest Connection of the Week. Although the poll is still running, I decided to cut off consideration for the "people's choice" alongside my own opinion.

Since YouTube limits polls to five choices but more than four Umcees made the cut at their respective tournaments (at least seven did), I took a representative sample of Umcees, basing my selections on the principle of one per event. In the end, Tom Hoge at the PGA Championship, Van Holmgren at the Korn Ferry Tour's AdventHealth Championship, Kim Kaufman at the Epson Tour's Copper Rock Championship and Thomas Longbella at the PGA Tour Americas' Inter Rapidisimo Golf Championship made the poll. By popular vote (if one vote counts as such, since that's how many I got), Van Holmgren was people's choice for the week. To his credit, unlike the other three finalists, Holmgren lacks full membership on the tour he primarily plays on these days but made the cut and finished in the top twenty and ties. This sufficed to get him into this week's Visit Knoxville Open in Tennessee, which is the third event in this reshuffle period. After next week's UNC Health Championship in Raleigh, North Carolina, the reshuffle falls again, and players will be ordered for priority reasons according to their points-list position. Holmgren is in a very good position to get more starts on the Korn Ferry Tour this year.

However, this is a time when expert or semi-expert opinions trump those of the crowd. See, I don't even consider Holmgren's performance the second-best of the week in tour golf. Two golfers from the Dakotas top my list. Kaufman had the better rank and moved up in the Epson Tour's Race for the Card with her simple T10, but given that she played just three rounds (the length of most Epson Tour events), she just loses out to...

Tom Hoge finished T23 at Valhalla (Fargo Forum).

Tom Hoge.

Hoge has made the cut at every PGA Championship since Harding Park 2020, and this year fit the bill as well. His finish of three-way T23 at Valhalla Golf Club was his second-best major finish ever only to a T9 at Southern Hills in 2022, also at the PGA Championship. He moved up to #21 in the FedEx Cup, and his OWGR remained at the minimum #60 to enter the U.S. Open, no qualifiers needed.

Speaking of U.S. Open qualifiers, another Umcee, Erik van Rooyen, secured his exemption straight to the event at Pinehurst as the fifth-leading FedEx Cup placement among those not yet exempt by any other category, including world rankings, after the PGA Championship. His T53 at Valhalla got him 10 FedEx Cup points, which enabled him to edge out Patrick Rodgers by about six points for the final spot for now.

Anyway, this week's action revolves mostly around the PGA and Korn Ferry tours. The Inter Rapidisimo wrapped up the Latin American Swing on the PGA Tour Americas, and a series of Q-school events follow to help fill fields for the North American (mostly Canadian with one U.S. event) Swing. As for the Epson Tour, it has the rest of the month off, both for Memorial Day and the week of the U.S. Women's Open, two weeks before the men's version (Kaufman did qualify for the former). Three Umcees--Hoge will be joined by Troy Merritt and Zach Johnson, both of whom are struggling to keep PGA Tour membership--will contest the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial National in Fort Worth, Texas. The aforementioned Visit Knoxville Open involves two more, as Holmgren is joined by Frankie Capan III, who missed the cut last week but remains in the top 30 of the KFT points list. The only other Umcee of note is O.J. Farrell, former Wisconsin Badger, who is on the Clutch Pro Tour in his native England. Farrell competed in European Q-school last winter but missed the 72-hole (out of 108 holes) cut, losing access to DP World Tour events and having few opportunities to play the Challenge Tour.

Edward the Scop

PGA Championship Week Part II: Upper Midwest Connections

 For those coming to the Devilish Rake blog via my YouTube channel, one of the quirky topics I cover is connections to the Upper Midwest. There is a glossary on the blog defining the region and what constitutes a connection to it.

Anyway, the PGA Championship had three Upper Midwest connections, often abbreviated at "Umcees." Tom Hoge, Erik van Rooyen and club pro Ben Polland--the latter this year's PGA club-pro champion--were present at Valhalla in Louisville. Polland, despite his credentials, missed the cut by one stroke with a bogey to close his second round on even par overall. However, the two Umcee tour pros--Hoge is from Fargo, North Dakota, and EVR went to the U. of Minnesota--both made it with room to spare against the -1/141 cut. Van Rooyen eventually finished -5/279, going even-par or better his last three rounds to finish T53 and gain just enough FedEx Cup points to qualify for next month's U.S. Open (per the "top five players not otherwise exempt in the FedEx Cup standings" criterion). Meanwhile, Hoge secured a T23 with a final score of -10/274, doing well enough to clear the OWGR threshold (top sixty after the PGA Championship).

While no major is run by any tour, the PGA Tour (along with the DP World and Japan Golf tours) includes all four majors as part of its calendar. Hence, it is prudent to go through the tour pyramid and scour for Umcees who made the cut. The circuit immediately below the PGA Tour is currently known for sponsorship purposes as the Korn Ferry Tour, and this past week's Advent Health Championship in the Kansas Cities featured two Umcees--Frankie Capan III of North Oaks, Minnesota, who enjoys full KFT membership; and Van Holmgren of Plymouth, Minnesota, who achieved conditional membership via Q-school last fall and slotted well thanks to his performance at the Argentina Open back in February. FCIII missed the cut (badly), but Holmgren made it on -4 through two rounds and threatened to break through before settling for T20. He still climbed into the OWGR top thousand.

On the women's side, there are no Umcees on the LPGA Tour, but the developmental Epson Tour has a couple of them. Kate Stroh (nee Smith) of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota finished 19th in the Race for the Card, which is pretty good for a second-year pro. But she has stumbled so far this year, making the cut just twice, and that didn't change this week at the Copper Rock Championship in Tucson. On the other hand, Clark, South Dakota native Kim Kaufman, who played on the LPGA Tour as late as 2021, tied for tenth in the 54-hole event with a cut, posting consecutive -3/69 rounds to earn $5234 and jump to seventh in this year's R4C. It looks at this point like she'll be back on the big tour next year, as the top fifteen R4C finishers will earn LPGA Tour status.

Finally, five Umcees--Thomas Longbella, George Kneiser, Derek Hitchner, Sam Anderson and Matthew Walker--were involved in the Inter Rapidisimo Championship in Bogota, Colombia on the PGA Tour Americas. None of the four impressed in the end, but three of them did make the cut. Longbella and Hitchner--the latter of whom went to the Blake School for high school near the Twin Cities--both finished -5/283 for the week. Kneiser, who hails from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, showed promise but fell apart at the weekend. Anderson (homegrown Wisconsin Badgers alumnus) and Walker both missed the cut. At the end of the Latin American phase, Longbella didn't do quite well enough to get even conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour yet, but he is fifth in the Fortinet Cup, and the current top five will receive exemptions into four Latin American KFT events next year: the Panama Championship, the Astara Championship in Colombia, the Argentina Open and the Astara Chile Classic. Anderson also finished the Latin American swing in the top ten. Hence, he and Longbella are on track to receive KFT cards in 2025.

Whom do you think was the Upper Midwest Connection of the Week this past week? Offer up your opinion in the comments, whether on Blogger or on YouTube.

Edward the Scop

PGA Championship Week Recap (etc.) Part I: How Did LIV Golfers Fare?

 In the Norse tradition, Valhalla is the place where heroes go when they die in combat. But there is another, IRL Valhalla in Louisville, Kentucky, and it's just hosted its fourth PGA Championship.

No, we didn't see Rory McIlroy end his major drought dating to the 2015 Masters. No, Jordan Spieth didn't complete the career grand slam. And no, Scottie Scheffler wasn't able to keep alive his Scottie Season Slam hopes. He did, however, get clapped into jail for not cooperating with the cops at a traffic stop after a poor fan had been killed in a car crash. This led to a third day of split tees, which you normally don't see at majors.

We also saw yet another dramatic finish on the premises. In 1996, Mark Brooks nipped local boy Kenny Perry in a one-hole, sudden-death playoff. In 2000, Tiger Woods caught Bob May and effectively beat him with his birdie on the first hole of what was now a mandatory three-hole aggregate playoff. In 2014, Rory McIlroy won the PGA Championship as fast fell the eventide by one stroke over Phil Mickelson. And just today, 19 May 2024, we saw Xander Schauffele launch the first-ever season Golden Slam bid (and add to his career one) by responding to LIV founding member Bryson DeChambeau's closing birdie with one of his own from just outside 6' to set a new scoring record for men's majors against par (-21/263).

I mentioned LIV Golf. What you see here is a grid of what I call "expectations versus reality." Since the majors are the only events at which LIV golfers compete against PGA Tour loyalists these days, I decided to compare the proportional performances of the various LIV contingents at the majors since the start of last year to assess their "real" performances when the size of the field and its nature (club pros and amateurs excluded who are not otherwise exempt to the majors) are taken into account. In other words, I'm sort of making like Phil Steele, except for professional tour golf.

The "LIV" column is simply the number of members of LIV Golf at each major. The "aField" column is the total field size minus any amateurs (Masters, U.S. Open, Open Championship) or not-otherwise-exempt club pros (PGA Championship). I say "not otherwise exempt" because of the case of such guys like Michael Block, who placed in the top fifteen and ties at last year's PGA Championship, so he didn't need to play the PGA Professional Championship to get in (he did anyway but finished outside the top twenty). The "tField" column is simply the total number of golfers--tour pros, club pros and amateurs--who are competing in that major.

"aProp" refers to the proportion of LIV golfers among those covered in the "aField." "tProp" is the overall proportion of LIV golfers in the field. As you can tell, there has been a slight decline in the proportions due to the lack of OWGR points for LIV golfers. In general, the largest percentages of LIV membership at each major have been correlated with the Masters Tournament and the PGA Championship. This may be because the first category for exemption to each of those majors is simply having won the event in the past, no questions asked. This year's contingent at Valhalla may also have benefited numerically from further defections to LIV among the OWGR top 100 (Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, Adrian Meronk), a good performance among last year's contingent (especially winner Brooks Koepka) and special invitations extended to members outside the top 100 (Talor Gooch comes to mind). While the jury is still out on the last two majors of this year, last year's "open" majors had much lower percentages of LIV members. This may stem, in part, from restrictions on past champions (such as the USGA's ten-year limit and the R&A's age-sixty, soon to be age-55, limit).

The three columns with the letters "NY" revolve around the number of golfers invited to the following edition of that particular major by virtue of a top finish. For the open majors, one must finish in the top ten and ties to be automatically invited next year if not otherwise exempt. For the Masters Tournament, it's top twelve and ties. For the PGA Championship, it's fifteen and ties. The column "xNY" multiplies the original "NY" column by "tProp" to ascertain the number of expected LIV golfers among the top finishers. This year, seventeen overall players finished among the top fifteen and ties. Of these, two--DeChambeau and South Africa's Dean Burmester--are affiliated with LIV Golf. The latter number is noted under "lNY," which indicates the actual LIV membership among the top finishers.

The last three columns are marked "T4." These refer to the number of top-four finishers at a given major. The original column is, again, multiplied by "tProp" to derive "xT4." As with "xNY," "xT4" is the expected total of golfers in that range. I track this because the three majors other than the Masters send their top-four finishers to next year's Masters, no matter what. This year's PGA "lT4" came up with one LIV member, Bryson DeChambeau. Not as though he needs the exemption because he won the 2020 U.S. Open, which gives him Masters access through next year. After that, though, it'll matter.

This year's majors have been a mixed bag for LIV so far. Given the data above, I would argue that the LIV contingent was generally successful in living up to expectations at Valhalla. But this is a step down from the Masters, where they exceeded expectations in terms of top-twelve finishes. So, how will they do at Pinehurst next month, home of the U.S. Open? Or at Royal Troon, home of the Open Championship the month after? Feel free to offer your predictions, either on the YouTube short I posted or in the comment form below.

Update on the Blog and Kindred Activities

I know it's been a while since I wrote last, but there have been some developments here. Firstly, I now have a YouTube channel. On it you can find announcements in short-video form as to whenever I put out a new blog post, usually in advance of the same. From time to time, I'll put out longer-form content, but it's mostly going to consist of videos lasting no more than one minute each. It's taken some time to figure out a direction for the channel, but I plan to mostly use it to get people to read the Devilish Rake. There's still some sawdust, but it's coming along.

Anyway, to get you up to speed, the first Upper Midwest Connection of the Week I missed was Frankie Capan III. He secured the honours twice, at the LECOM Suncoast Classic and the Veritex Bank Championship, both on the Korn Ferry Tour. He set an official course record of -13/58 in his first round! Though he was unable to hold on in the face of Sweden's Tim Widing, who played this week's PGA Championship and made the cut at Valhalla (more later), FCIII still kicked ass, as this was his third straight finish in the top ten on the Korn Ferry Tour. It also secured his status as Upper Midwest Connection of the Month for April 2024.

The next week on the PGA Tour Americas, Thomas Longbella won the KIA Open in Quito, Ecuador for his first win that counts in the world rankings. Longbella is from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and attended the University of Minnesota, playing alongside Angus Flanagan and current Gopher star Ben Warian, among others. He sank an eagle at No 17 to take a one-stroke lead heading into the final round...which was cancelled due to rain and unplayable conditions. On the PGA Tour, they would have tried to play the final round and would've extended it to Monday if necessary. On developmental circuits, though, where the players are often stuck for money, the threshold for Monday finishes is stricter. Since so few were able to start that Sunday, the tournament was curtailed on 54-hole scores, which sufficed for Longbella to secure the win.

Last week, Erik van Rooyen secured Upper Midwest Connection of the Week honours for the first time since the Masters Tournament with his tie for fourth at the inaugural Myrtle Beach Classic. It was his third finish in the top ten on the PGA Tour this year. (For the record, the tourney was won by Chris Gotterup, who had previously been in the reshuffle but earned a trip to this past week's PGA Championship as a result.)

The next post deals with various tidbits on the week that was in tour golf, including (but NOT limited to) the second major of the year.