Well, it’s day 2 of the PGA Championship and the Best Golfer in The World is at +10 after eight holes and needs to make up six, maybe seven strokes to par to make the cut. DeChambeau missed the cut at the Masters with a spectacular meltdown on the 18th. Doesn’t want to leave it to the last today it seems.
And somehow on a course with tens of thousands of spectators Theegala has a lost ball!
Our hero needed to come in eagle-eagle-eagle to make the cut, but could only manage birdie-birdie-birdie.
The top 8 are:
Smalley, McNealey, Matsuyama, Gotterup, Potgeiter, Jaeger, Greyseman and Min Woo Lee. Half of them I’d never heard of until this week, and I watch quite a lot of golf.
I was there yesterday, gorgeous weather. The chicken pattie I got was a hockey puck in a former life.
But followed Scottie Scheffler then Rory McIlroy; the latter was 9 shots out when he teed off; he’s now tied, tho most guys on the leaderboard have the entire round to shoot their own gems.
This is a crazy leaderboard. 27 players within two of the lead and 11 players have led or shared the lead today.
Aaron Rai birdied 3 holes in a row to take a one-stroke lead, so now there are only 12 players within two of the lead.
Rai just saved par on the 12th to keep the lead. Six players are a stroke behind.
Rai went on to win it. First. Englishman to win the PGA in the stroke play era. In fact the first one to win in over 100 years.
As far as I can remember, Rai has never been a factor on Sunday in a major before. I kept expecting him to fall back to the chasers, but he kept pulling away on the last few holes. 65 footer for birdie on 17 nailed the door shut, but in the end he didn’t need it.
I am a golfer myself, and I marvel at the modern Pro’s abilities, especially their short games, and driving distance/accuracy.
But… why are they so bad at approach shots with short irons and wedges?
On those huge greens they are left with 40-90 foot putts after a wedge from 100 yards. On my dinky little courses, a miss like that would put you in the adjacent tee box.
I found this statistic: “PGA Tour pros average approximately 1 to 20 feet from the hole on short approach shots from the fairway (30–125 yards).” Maybe the bad ones just stand out in your mind more than the “routine” good ones.