Woods closer to Ryder Cup team
British Open finish gets Tiger into world Top 50
So you’re saying there’s a chance. After finishing tied for sixth at The Open Championship on Sunday at Carnoustie, Tiger Woods jumped from 31st to 20th place in the latest Team USA Ryder Cup standings.
Woods’ fourth top-10 finish of the season also bumped him to 50th in the Official World Golf Rankings, qualifying him for the World Golf Championships Bridge stone Invitational at Firestone Country Club, an event he’s won eight times.
Three events remain (including the WGC-Bridgestone) for U.S. players to earn Ryder Cup points, with the final event being the last major of the year, the PGA Championship at Bellerive in St. Louis. After the PGA, the top eight players in the standings automatically make the U.S. team. The last four positions are selected by captain Jim Furyk.
Woods, a 14-time major champion, will undoubtedly be a favorite at the WGC-Bridgestone, which offers 1,600 Ryder Cup points to the winner. One point is awarded for every $1,000 earned, but at the PGA, two points are awarded for every $1,000 earned by the winner. The rest of the field earns 1.5 points for every $1,000.
According to the Ryder Cup website, if Woods were to win both the WGC Bridge stone and the PGA Championship, he has an outside chance to qualify for the team on points alone.
Back in February, Furyk named Woods a vice captain for the 2018 Ryder Cup at Paris’ Le Golf National, a position he held for the 2016 event when Team USA defeated Team Europe on home soil at Hazeltine in Minnesota.
“My goal is to make the team, but whatever happens over the course of this season, I will continue to do whatever I can to help us keep the Cup,” Woods said in a statement. “I’m excited about the challenge.”
While his 13-17-3 (wins, losses, halves) overall record at the event isn’t great, he’s dominated in the final day singles competition, sporting a 4-1-2 record.
Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and Webb Simpson are the current top eight.
Final major of year for Champions
The Champions Tour has its final major of the year at St. Andrews this week for the Senior British Open, and it’s been a year of spreading out the victories. Miguel Angel Jimenez won the Regions Tradition in Alabama. Paul Broadhurst won the Senior PGA Championship. David Toms won the U.S. Senior Open in Colorado. Vijay Singh won the Senior Players Championship two weeks ago in Chicago. Missing from the list is Bernhard Langer, who has won majors each of the last four years. For the last six years, at least one player has won multiple senior majors. The last time the five majors were won by five players was in 2011, when they were won by Tom Lehman, Tom Watson, Olin Browne, Fred Couples and Russ Cochran.
NBC Sports adds PGA executive
Pete Bevacqua has left the PGA of America to accept a newly created position of President of the NBC Sports Group. Bevacqua will still be heavily involved in golf, as his duties include overseeing all golf businesses as well as programming, marketing, digital and the NBC Sports Regional Networks under the NBC Sports umbrella. He’ll report to Mark Lazarus, Chairman of NBC Broadcasting and Sports. Bevacqua was CEO since 2012 of the PGA of America, which oversees the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup and has more than 29,000 members. Most recently, Bevacqua led the move of the PGA Championship from August to May beginning in 2019, giving what was traditionally the final major of the year a stronger place on the golf calendar.
British Open sets attendance mark
The R&A reported attendance for the week at the British Open at 172,000, a record for Carnoustie. The previous mark was 159,000 in 1999. By comparison, the 2018 Waste Management Phoenix Open drew 719,179 fans for the week. The Open’s weekly mark of 172,000 was eclipsed twice by the daily attedance at TPC Scottsdale (Friday, 191,400 and Saturday, 216,818) earlier this year.