Wayne Riley
The US Open at Pebble Beach was a great spectacle and it produced a great champion. Heading into the week, I genuinely had no idea who would prevail as it’s a course that isn’t particularly suited to any type of player. If you look down at the list of past winners, it’s quite a disparate collection of golfers with different attributes – Woods, Mcdowell, Watson, Kite and so on. It’s not a horsesfor-courses place.
I interviewed Gary Woodland on the Friday after he’d taken the lead and asked him how he felt about the fact the golf course had taken away his biggest strength – power hitting. He actually felt the opposite – that because he could hit long irons further than most on a course that required placement off the tee, he had an advantage. And so it proved!
Last year at the Memorial I stood and watched Woodland on the range and he was very impressive indeed. I remember thinking at the time that it wouldn’t surprise me if he went on to win a Major. He looked so calm and composed over those last 36 holes, which is impressive given he hadn’t really been in that position before. I was following him both days and he never looked like he was going to buckle. One of the things I do when I’m on the ground is look into a player’s eyes and I felt a confidence when I gazed towards Woodland. He would have been nervous but he dealt with it admirably.
He played some great stuff, even if he did have the occasional slice of luck, and holding off Brooks Koepka is very
commendable. I’m thrilled for him, because he’s a lovely person and he’s been through some tough times in his personal life, with his wife giving birth to a stillborn girl in 2017. He’s a delightful fella.
Something I feel warrants discussion is the Major schedule. I couldn’t help but feel the US Open came too soon, and the Open Championship might be done and dusted by the time you read this. This season, a 14-week span has covered all the Majors. That’s too condensed. The USPGA moving to May has jammed everything up between The Masters and The Open, like a big old roly-poly.
I’m not sure it makes sense to have all the Majors between April and July when professional golf is essentially played all year round. In the long run, I feel having them all sandwiched in there so close might take away from the Majors a little bit. Like a fine wine, the schedule could do with being left to breathe a little more.
The other way to look at the Major schedule is to focus on the positive knock-on effects for the European Tour. The Fedexcup Play-offs used to finish in September but now they come to a conclusion in August, so the new date for the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth looks a fantastic one. The later tournaments on the European Tour schedule really have the potential to attract great fields, as players will be able to take some time off after the Tour Championship and make sure they’re refreshed for a big run between September and November.
In that span, there are multiple European Tour Rolex Series events, the Finals Series, the WGC in China and some new high-purse Asian events on the PGA Tour, so that part of the golfing calendar looks poised to be as strong as ever before. I genuinely believe we’ll see some big American names competing in European Tour events between September and November, and even if it’s only two or three, that sets the wheels in motion for more over the coming years.
And in terms of home players, Justin Rose has already committed to the BMW PGA and the Italian Open and Paul Casey has spoken about the fact he’ll be playing some European Tour events later in the year. Keith Pelley must be pretty happy about how things are shaping up.
The move to offer vastly increased prize money for the winners in Turkey, South Africa and Dubai – the latter coming with a winner’s cheque of £2.3m – also looks like an excellent one to me. You’ll recall I mooted that as an idea in a previous column, not long before the announcement came from the European Tour. Great minds and all that!
“Like a fine wine, the schedule could do with being left to breathe a little”