Tiger Woods underwent a procedure on his right foot and released a statement saying the surgery was successful, but it now casts serious doubt on his status for 2023. Will we see Woods make any more competitive starts this year?
Josh Berhow, managing editor (@Josh_Berhow): From everything I’ve read, it seems unlikely he’ll be able to play any majors, and I don’t think he planned to play much beyond that anyway. Here’s hoping he can jump in a cart and play the PNC Championship with Charlie in December. Then, after that, maybe Riviera and the Masters. Baby steps.
Jack Hirsh, assistant editor (@JR_HIRSHey): Does the silly season count? Maybe, but that’s a big, all caps, italics and stars *MAYBE*. Who knows what he’ll be able to do with the golf swing after this surgery, which involves fusing together a joint in the ankle. I’ve heard that if it was his left foot, the surgery would be career ending. If the issue remains walking, and his recovery goes as scheduled, it sounds like we could see him at the PNC and then maybe for the start of his virtual league with Rory McIlroy, the TGL. But I don’t think we’ll hear from him at all again until the Hero World Challenge.
Josh Sens, senior writer (@JoshSens): He’ll absolutely be back for the PNC. Unless he isn’t. That old line about people planning and god laughing applies to any of us trying to forecast Tiger’s health. Raise your hand if you saw plantar fasciitis coming? Neck. Back. Knee. Foot. Ankle. The only thing I think we can say for sure is that it wouldn’t be a shocker if some other body part gave out next.
Looking beyond this season, as Woods’ injuries and surgeries continue to stack up, at what point does he decide enough is enough? Are we approaching that?
Berhow: Based on his schedule prior to this setback — the majors, maybe one or two more events — he’s really already in that second (or whatever number) stage of his career. I think he’s still several years away from officially “retiring,” since in a sport like golf — and with his lifetime exemption — he would be able to take advantage of a healthy stretch and enter an upcoming event or major to try and catch lightning in a bottle. I don’t think he’s anywhere close to giving up on those potential healthy starts yet.
Hirsh: I’m with Berhow on this. Obviously, just being able to walk pain-free is first and foremost, but if there’s any chance he can continue to play at a high level, he’s going to try. Whether that’s the right thing to do or not isn’t up to us to decide.
Sens: Agreed. Let’s just hope it doesn’t become like the knight in Monty Python (It’s just a flesh wound!), where everyone knows it’s over except the guy who wants to keep on fighting. This being Woods, and this being golf, which allows for more lives than any sport, I’m sure we’ll be on Tiger-watch for a large handful of majors to come.
Lilia Vu beat Angel Yin in a playoff to win the Chevron Championship and claim the LPGA’s first major of the season, which took place at The Club at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands, Texas, the first time since it began in 1972 it wasn’t held at Mission Hills following Chevron’s new title sponsorship. What are your thoughts on Year 1 of the new host venue?
Berhow: As someone who is not always big on change, I liked a lot of what I saw. Sure, the leap into Poppie’s Pond is no more and the alternative they cooked up on Sunday was fine, and word is the spectator shuttles took a little longer than desired, but it’s hard to find negatives about a sponsor that wants to invest in the women’s game. If I’m Chevron, it makes sense to move this event to their backyard. That’s their right. I also saw on Twitter there was a HBCU Career Panel taking place on site, and this was also the first time in this tournament’s history players who missed the cut received a $5,000 stipend. We’ll get used to the course in time, but seems like there’s lots of good to build on here.
Hirsh: While I’d love to see more events played at more interesting golf courses, I’m kind of indifferent on the venue change. I agree with Josh about it being great Chevron wanting to inject money into the LPGA, but it does suck it requires moving the event from where it’s developed a history at. I also hope the alligator netting actually works!
Sens: This was a tough, long course, with small greens and all sorts of trouble, and I loved Vu’s composure on it during what was a pretty packed race for a while. As for breaking with tradition, as my colleagues note, a small price in exchange for a solid sponsorship. I’m sure every player would take that guarantee over a jump into a pond.
John Daly, 56, and David Duval, 51, received sponsor’s exemptions into the Zurich Classic and missed the cut at 14 over, which was 12 behind the next-worst score. While it’s an event’s right to use its exemptions how it pleases, do you have an issue with this one in particular, given both players are well past their primes and rarely play competitively anymore?
Berhow: It really was a tough look when those guys struggled so much in alternate shot, but the truth is the majority of these pros make that format look so easily when it’s in fact so incredibly hard. In a way inviting them did exactly what it was supposed to by drawing attention to an event that lacked star power, but it’s unfortunate they didn’t play better.
Hirsh: Yes, this was a joke. It was likely born out of a necessity to help fill the field given the Zurich’s place in the schedule, but there were guys on the alternate list — while not the biggest names — who could have used the opportunity. The tournament typically requires one member of each team to be exempt and then the second can be a sponsor’s exemption. This was the case when 66-year-old Jay Haas made the cut while playing with son Bill last year. But Jay Haas is a PGA Tour Champions stud with 18 wins, albeit the last coming in 2016. Daly and Duval have combined for just one victory on the over-50 circuit.
Sens: I’m on the fence about this. I understand the obvious objections and the unlikelihood that Duval and Daly were going to be in the mix. But, as in Dumb and Dumber, even if the odds were a million to one, there was still a chance. It’s easy to knock the move in retrospect. But what if Duval and Daly had played out of their minds in the opening round and posted a decent score? Then the event would have had the best of both worlds: a crowd-pleasing pairing with an entertaining underdog story. And in the end, this is entertainment.
Speaking of the Zurich Classic, Davis Riley and Nick Hardy won, closing with a seven-under 65 in alternate shot on Sunday to best Canadians Adam Hadwin and Nick Taylor by two. But you’re in charge next year. What tweaks are you making to the event, either with how teams are picked, the formats played or both?
Berhow: Since it’s a team event that’s not the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup — and honestly if we are inviting aging sponsor’s exemptions — we might as well embrace the weirdness and go all out. Fourballs is boring. Let’s go four days, four formats. Make one day a scramble, but if you go three holes without a birdie you are eliminated. Make the next day a worst-ball scramble. Round 3 you get only four clubs. Then, for the final round, alternate shot. Wait a few years and this is the formula for a fifth major.
Hirsh: For starters, I’d move it to a different part of the schedule. Maybe toward the end of January or February so it doesn’t get swallowed by the Masters. I could also see an argument for the new Fall series, but I kinda like the idea of this event counting for the FedEx Cup. It really is great to see the unique format and I’d love to see it get some more big names regularly. Next I’d drop fourball. Make the whole thing alternate shot, the true team format that doesn’t allow you to hide a poorly performing partner. That would really make things interesting with the added bonus of speeding up play.
Sens: I’m with Jack: make it all alternate shot. On a more outlandish note, I’m still waiting for the team event where each team gets one opportunity during a round to pick a fan from the crowd to hit a shot for the opposition. I suppose you’d have to institute a Really Silly Season for that to happen. But I would watch.
As an 18-year-old playing on an exemption in a PGA Tour event, Charlie Reiter so impressed Jon Rahm with his clubhead speed that the Spaniard said he expected the lanky teen to hit it by him.
“He hits it far and when I mean far, I mean really far, like he can easily get it past me,” said Rahm, then the third-ranked player in the world, who was a member with Reiter at Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert, California. “He reminds me of Brandon Hagy (a Cal product and another TrackMan marvel); they’re both similar build, not the biggest guys, but they’re just fit and have a lot of power.”
During the second round of the 2018 CareerBuilder Challenge (now the American Express) Reiter averaged 348.5 yards off the tee in the second round on PGA West’s Nicklaus Tournament Course, where he pounded two of the three longest drives recorded during the event’s first 54 holes. In the third round, he averaged 332.5 yards on a windy day around PGA West’s Stadium Course.
Reiter started consistently hitting the ball more than 300 yards during his freshman year of high school, when he was just 14 years old. And the prodigy’s golf story begins in infancy. His father, Mike, a skilled golfer who played on the mini-tours, used to put plastic clubs in Charlie’s crib. By age 4, Reiter won his first tournament.
Trophies began to pile up. When Reiter was 10 he competed in the Golf Channel Amateur Tour National Championship at PGA West.
And now, finally, Reiter has a professional golf tour to play – at least for the rest of the year.
Reiter, who turned pro last fall after a summer that saw him play in the U.S. Open and the U.S. Amateur, rallied from four shots back at the start of the day Friday to win a U.S. qualifier tournament for the PGA Tour Canada. With a final-round 3-under 69 at Soboba Springs Golf Club in San Jacinto, California. Reiter is now fully exempt for the Canada tour that begins its season in June.
“Now I have a full schedule over the summer,” Reiter said after gaining full status for the Canada circuit. “I know what the summer will be.”
Reiter finished at 15-under 283, including a sizzling 64 in the third round, to edge Kyle Karazissis of La Quinta, California, by a single shot. Karazissis, a mini-tour golfer who also caddies at The Quarry in La Quinta, will be exempt on the PGA Tour Canada for the first five events, through that tour’s first reshuffle of exemptions.
Reiter’s victory turned on a two-shot swing on the final hole Friday. On the par 5, Reiter hit a good drive and reached the green in two shots, while Karazissis was forced to lay up and reached the green in three. Reiter had a routine two-putt from 20 feet for his birdie, but Karazissis three-putted from 35 feet, including a hard lip-out of his par putt from about 10 feet.
Reiter, who played college golf at both USC and the University of San Diego, fired rounds of 70, 70, 64 and 69 to win the qualifier. Karazissis stumbled to a 74 in the final round.
Reiter started his final round quickly with three consecutive birdies on the fourth, fifth and sixth holes, but he followed that with three bogeys in a row starting on the eighth hole.
The comeback started with a birdie on the 13th hole, then continued with a birdie 2 on the 16th hole. Reiter then completed the comeback with his birdie on the 18th.
Qualifying for the PGA Tour Canada was always part of Reiter’s plan for 2023 after he missed signup dates for Korn Ferry Tour qualifying last fall and also struggled for the money to sign up since he was still an amateur.
“I wasn’t thinking about (Korn Ferry qualifying) that quickly. I was just sort of so jumbled up with the U.S. Am and stuff like that,” Reiter said. “I just kind of forgot about it.”
This year he has played in the Asher Tour, a mini tour mostly in California, while preparing for PGA Tour Canada qualifying.
“This is kind of the other first little way,” Reiter said of PGA Tour Canada qualifying.
Reiter, whose 2022 season also included a victory in the California State Amateur, has experience in professional events, having played in PGA Tour’s The American Express three times as an amateur, including when he was a senior at Palm Desert High School.
The PGA Tour Canada will play a 10-event schedule starting with the Royal Beach Victoria Open in Victoria, British Columbia, June 15-18. The tour will end its year with the Fortinet Cup Championship in September. The Order of Merit winner from the tour will earn status on the PGA Tour’s developmental Korn Ferry Tour in 2024.
“There are other opportunities,” Reiter added. “I’m playing in May up in Reno, the Reno Open, and if you win that, you get to play in the Barracuda (Championship on the PGA Tour in July). You never know.”
A win at the Barracuda Championship would put Reiter in more PGA Tour events in the following weeks.
“If I could play in three or four straight events, I would probably get conditional status,” Reiter said.
The PGA Tour remains the ultimate goal for the 23-year-old who is still living in San Diego for now. But his summer will also include U.S. Open qualifying, something he did last summer that allowed him to play his way into his first U.S. Open last June.
“It will be a busy summer,” Reiter said.
Source: Golfweek
The first Masters in 1934 was won by Horton Smith, who pocketed $1,500 for his historic win. In 2023, Jon Rahm earned a record $3.24 million for winning his first green jacket and second major championship.
The money has certainly changed over the years. Jack Nicklaus played in 45 Masters and made a record 37 cuts. His career earnings at the tournament are $772,359. Arnold Palmer, who played in 50 Masters and made 23 cuts, earned $204,013.
Tiger Woods, who made the cut for a record-tying 23rd time in 2023, held the top spot on the all-time money list for the Masters, but he didn’t collect a paycheck in 2023 after withdrawing just ahead of the final round. Couple that with Phil Mickelson’s surprising tie for second and there’s a new No. 1 on this list.
Also new in 2023: Brooks Koepka enters the top 20 as he is the 15th golfer to surpass the $3 million in Augusta earnings. That means Ernie Els drops out of the top 20.
There have been 87 Masters. Here are the top 20 money winners all-time at the event.
Source:Golfweek
