GOING INTO OVERDRIVE
PGA Championship marks beginning of a great run of golf
The calm before the summer storm is over.
The Masters awakens our golf souls from their winter slumber, sending fans into the garage or basement to dust off clubs, count golf balls, and prepare for the season ahead.
But on the PGA Tour schedule, the month after the Masters is full of tournaments usually only enjoyed by the true golf sickos among us. It's hard for Joe Sports Fan to get pumped about the Zurich Classic, the Mexico Open, or the Wells Fargo Championship. That all ends this week with the PGA Championship at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The next month or so features the PGA Championship, the Colonial in Fort Worth, Jack's tournament at Muirfield Village, the RBC Canadian Open at St. George's, and the U.S. Open.
From this Thursday until July's Open Championship at the Old Course in St Andrews, the golf season is a sprint: Three major championships in 59 days. If there were ever a time for a player to catch fire, it's now.
Golf has often been described as a metaphor for life, and who among us hasn't looked up at some point in August and wondered where the summer went. For every great golfer not named Scottie Scheffler, the clock starts now on the 2022 season.
THE LEADING MEN
The producer of Top Gun 2 recently said that the movie studios are still asking for a movie with the same leading men that were box office gold when the original Tom Cruise fighter pilot flick came out. I want to laugh but probably shouldn't considering Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson will quite likely be the biggest pre-tournament stories this week in Tulsa.
Woods arrived at Southern Hills on Sunday and hit the course for some early preparations. The 15-time major champ won the PGA here in 2007 and will be making just his second start since his car accident. All eyes will be on the physical improvements he has made since his surprise return at Augusta National just over a month ago.
We still don't know what the future of Tiger will look like, both from a competitive standpoint and his schedule. We know he's not planning to play even the limited schedule he was playing in his early
40s, but he certainly can't expect to only show up for the majors and contend, can he? This week, his best chance for success is if the weather stays hot and dry, and the golf course plays firm and fast. Any golf course that demands precise shotmaking into firm greens is a course Woods can take advantage of with his legendary iron play.
Mickelson was destined to be the biggest story of the week until the rather shocking news broke last week that the 51-year-old won't be at Southern Hills to defend his stunning 2021 win at Kiawah
Island. By now, everyone knows how we got here: Phil made very harsh comments about the PGA Tour, then it came to light that he played a significant role in the planning of the Greg Norman-led LIV Golf league, then capped it off with flippant remarks about the “scary motherf--ers” he was seemingly happily in business with in the Saudi government.
Now that we've got that out of the way, it's a damn shame Mickelson isn't playing this week. Granted, a week that should have been a victory lap for one of the game's all-time
most popular players would have been much more complicated, but it also might well have worked out just fine. My guess is that Phil would have found a golf public that is far more forgiving than the U.S. national sports media. It wouldn't have been the unabashed love-fest that he has experienced over his career, but three decades of treating the fans right wouldn't have been forgotten by the spectators at Southern Hills.
I have no idea where Mickelson's head is, or what exactly he's going through, but it probably wouldn't have hurt for him to feel some love, something he probably won't feel if his first start back is in England at the LIV Golf debut.
CHIP SHOTS
Once we get past the aging superstars, the biggest attraction this week leading into the PGA Championship is likely a trio of Texans. Jordan Spieth is hunting for golf immortality with a win in Tulsa earning him the career grand slam, a feat only accomplished by five men: Tiger, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Gary Player and
Gene Sarazen. Scheffler could also secure a spot a few pages further up in golf's history book with a win this week. The world No. 1 has a chance to win the season's first two majors, a feat accomplished by Spieth in 2015.
Bryson DeChambeau looks set to give it a go this week with his surgically repaired left hand. The big hitter said he will make his return at Southern Hills as long as there are no major issues during preparation ... There are three Canadians in the field this week: Corey Conners, Mackenzie Hughes, and Adam Hadwin. All three are PGA Tour winners itching for that second win and have posted good results recently. With the Presidents Cup coming up in September, there is added incentive for the Canucks to have a busy and productive summer.