Top Ten Upper Midwest Connections of the Year 2023 Preview

 The PGA Tour season finally wrapped three days ago, as did the DP World Tour season. And just like that...all quiet on the tour front.

Okay, that's a bit premature. There are still four Q-school events--three for the PGA Tour, as well as LPGA Q-Series--to contest in order to determine placement on professional golf tours under those organizations' umbrellas. And just as the DPWT concludes its season every year, it seems to start the next immediately the following week with a few events in South Africa--the Joburg Open, the South African Open and the Alfred Dunhill Championship--plus the Mauritius Open. All these events are co-sanctioned with the Sunshine Tour, which provides tour golf to southern Africa. Lastly, as far as I know, at least one Umcee--Erik van Rooyen--will be playing the Dunhill. But for the vast majority of tour golfers, both men and women, mid-November is a cutoff point, a time to retreat into unofficial events (if that). About the only truly bigwig event that remains on the calendar is the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, which does carry OWGR points for twenty participants. One of these, of course, will be Tiger Woods, who hosts the event and is playing for the first time since withdrawing from the Masters after making the cut.

It makes sense, then, to start planning a year-end ranking of the top Umcees of 2023. Was this the greatest year for the contingent? No, but there were enough accomplishments among such players (again, both men and women) to fill a top ten, in my opinion. Furthermore, these accomplishments might be increased as a result of Q-school outcomes. As a result of the planning, compilation and ranking of the top ten Upper Midwest connections of the year, coupled with Q-school coverage and work on second-round picks for the FA Cup, it'll be a hectic next few weeks here at the Devilish Rake. I might even consider a poll or two to help select certain entries on the list as the deadline approaches. Stay tuned.

Edward the Scop

Re: Justin Doeden, Part II: The Incident (and Suggested Punishment)

UPDATE, 24 JULY 2023: Justin Doeden has reopened his Twitter feed, and the first thing he tweeted was below.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I am here to confess of the biggest mistake I have made in my life to date. I cheated in golf. This is not who I am. I let my sponsors down. I let my competitors down. I let my family down. I let myself down. I pray for your forgiveness. John 1:9 <a href="https://twitter.com/acaseofthegolf1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@acaseofthegolf1</a></p>&mdash; Justin Doeden (@jdoeden11) <a href="https://twitter.com/jdoeden11/status/1683501137905762304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Just to be clear, I am all for people acknowledging mistakes than can affect their careers. I still believe he should be suspended for some time, but his relatively prompt response to Ryan French's article (as cited in the original version of this post) two days after the article broke is a good sign of the contrition I was talking about. Furthermore, were he to back up his apology in some tangible way, I would suggest a lighter punishment than what I recommended at first.

Some of the info in this second part of my rant on Justin Doeden is adapted from Ryan French's article on the matter. I have followed Ryan's work on lesser-known tours and players on Twitter, although that era will end on Wednesday when I delete my feed and leave Twitter for good, as promised. I still intend to subscribe to his website since Lord knows he needs the money!

Anyway, when I found out Doeden had withdrawn from the Commissionaires Ottawa Open on PGA Tour Canada yesterday, he had been fluctuating between -1 and -3. The cutline of -2 was based on the low 60 and ties, according to PGA Tour Canada regulations. I initially thought it was a data-entry error that had raised my hopes of following Doeden this weekend and later theorized he had withdrawn due to injury or illness.

Well, neither was the case. According to the linked article, Doeden was even through seventeen holes at -3 and needed only a par or even single bogey to make the weekend. But his second shot hit the water and his fourth hit the bunker by the green, and he couldn't get up and down to save bogey, taking a tap-in 7 to finish -1.

But it is believed that sometime between the last tap-in and the official scoring of his round, Doeden altered his 7 from the last hole to a 5. When rules officials confirmed the actual score, Doeden announced his withdrawal from the event.

It's one thing when a golfer who happens to be an Umcee melts down on course after a bad shot, as happened with Doeden's fellow-alumnus of the U of M, Erik van Rooyen, at the 2021 PGA Championship. But tee markers are replaceable. Divots from anger over a topped shot are replaceable. What isn't remotely as replaceable is sporting integrity lost to cheating. The only hope is that this incident isn't serial a la Patrick Reed when he was on the PGA Tour (and God knows if it's continued in his LIV era). For now, it brings me no pleasure to suggest the following sanctions against Justin Doeden:

1. That he be banned from PGA Tour Canada for the rest of the season. Wherever he goes the rest of the summer, Doeden would be followed by the allegations of cheating. Not having any hope of a paycheck until at least September would encourage him to think about the consequences of breaking the rules next time the lust for money earned doing so overwhelms him.
2. That until the ban is lifted, Doeden be not allowed to enter any qualifiers, including pre-qualifiers for PGA Tour events, nor seek any sponsor's exemptions for the PGA Tour and the Korn Ferry Tour. This would affect the next two PGA Tour events--the Wyndham Championship and the Fortinet Championship (the latter part of the FedEx Cup Fall). It would also apply to the last four events before the Korn Ferry Finals: the NV5 Invitational, the Utah Championship, the Pinnacle Bank Championship and the Magnit Championship. He wouldn't be allowed to enter any further pre-qualifiers until the ones for the Sanderson Farms Championship. This would close a competition loophole that he could otherwise exploit to get around the ban, which would enable him further, possibly.

I am not sure a life ban is the answer, especially if he proves contrite. If not, though, that may have to be an option. Furthermore, since Doeden's 16th place finish in the Totalplay Cup for PGA Tour Latinoamerica guarantees him a trip to Second Stage of Q-school, and that doesn't take place until November, he'll have sufficient time to show contrition before he is guaranteed to play again.

Again, these are just my suggestions. Feel free to suggest your own takes and punishments by commenting if you like.

Edward the Scop

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