A tale of two rounds of golf

The day dawned and it was a beautiful day for golf. It can get pretty cold this time of the year in our northern-most climates, but in idyllic locales such as Palm Beach Gardens or Vidanta Vallarta, the courses are in great shape and the temperatures are perfect for golf.

Regardless of the ambiance, it wasn't necessarily a pictureperfect day on the links for Jake and for Charlie. They had seen better days and yet the one at hand was going to be nothing short of a massive struggle. Jake had been playing well of late, but it just didn't seem like his day. He had an especially difficult time off the tee, struggling with his sweeping hook. He would only find two out of 13 fairways. He would only hit nine greens in regulation. He would start out slowly making bogey on two of his first three holes. It would be a struggle.

The game was even tougher on Charlie. He had a couple of early round hiccups and then he got to the watery 7th hole. Like Jake, he struggled to find the fairway and because his golf balls couldn't swim, he started to accumulate penalty strokes. When all was said and done, he had to have his marker put down the score of 12 for him. While it was still early in the round, the day was essentially over. It would be a struggle with his game and with outside influences.

Last week Jake Knapp, a 29 year old rookie on the PGA Tour won the 2024 Mexico Open while fighting his driver, missing half the greens in regulation, and relying on a superb short game to win for the first time on golf's center stage. He would take home $1.45 million, receive a two year exemption on the PGA Tour. The win would stamp his ticket for entry into the Masters and the PGA Championship, allow access to the tour's big money signature events, and rocket him to 52nd place in the Official World Golf Rankings.

Knapp is from Southern California and is part of a golfing family. His older brother played collegiate golf at the University of California-Irvine. Jake played on the golf team at Estancia High School and received a golf scholarship to play for UCLA. While still in college he worked his way through two levels of qualifying to get into the 2015 United States Open at Chambers Bay. He turned professional the

following year and spent the next seven years playing mini-tour golf with uneven success. In 2019 Knapp won twice on the Canadian Tour, capturing the Canada Life Open and the British Columbia Open. He didn't win in Canada for another three years, taking home the CRMC Championship in 2019. Along the way he took on all kinds of odd jobs to supplement his golf including serving as a bouncer in a nightclub. It's hard for me to believe that the 5'11” 180 pound Knapp was all that much an intimidating force.

He did make it onto the Korn Ferry Tour in 2023 and had a solid enough season to graduate onto the PGA Tour this year. As is the case with most rookies in the world of signature golf events, Jake had a three week run in January where he played in the Hawaiian Open, the Desert Classic, and at Torrey Pines in San Diego. He finished in third place at Torrey. He was on the sidelines for two weeks before playing in Phoenix and was once again inactive to two weeks before coming through last week in Mexico. He carded rounds of 67-64-63-71 to win by two strokes over another rookie, Sweden's Sami Valimaki, a European Tour regular.

Meanwhile 15 year old Charlie Woods, the son of 15 time major champion Tiger Woods, entered pre-qualifying in Florida in an attempt to get into this week's Cognizant Classic. The Cognizant is a new name to an old tournament that used to be called the Jackie Gleason and then was known for more than two decades by its corporate name, the Honda Classic.

Charlie Woods has been on golf's radar for the last four years, partnering up with his famous father in the PNC Championship in December, a parent-child tournament that is contested in the scramble (better shot) format. Charlie has won a handful of junior tournaments locally and played in the AJGA's Notah Begay III Junior Golf National Championship last summer where he finished in a tie for 17th place in the 14-15 year old boys age bracket. He is currently a sophomore at The Benjamin School, a private high school in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Charlie was on a very good high school golf team this past autumn that won the Florida State High School Boys Team Championship.

As earlier mentioned, Charlie had a tough day at the pre-qualifier and carded a +16 over par score of 86. Obviously he failed to advance to the Monday morning qualifying level into the Cognizant Classic. Aside from the fact that a 15 year old boy going to a pre-qualifier (something St. Helena High School's Ryan Johnson did several years ago in an effort to get into the Fortinet Championship at Silverado in Napa) shouldn't be overtly covered as if it were golf's version of a Taylor Swift sighting, Charlie's tough day on the links was mired by the unacceptable behavior of a larger than expected gallery. Although spectators were expected to stay on the cart paths to watch play, many ignored that rule and walked alongside the young Woods. Some people asked for autographs in mid-round and others got into beefs with the two person security crew that included a deputy sheriff from Martin County.

I went to Chicago Amateur Qualifying when I was 15 years old back in 1968. I didn't have a security force following me around, no one asked for autographs, and no one of note knew or cared what I shot. When my dad got home from work that evening his only comment was “that Jackson Park Golf Course is in a pretty rough area, isn't it?” Everywhere is rough in Chicago

This is a tale of two golfers, one barely known to fans of the game who has an immediate future at the Masters next month and a bright future now that he has fought his way into the PGA Tour's hierarchy. The other is about a teen-aged boy who isn't even old enough to drive a car. He doesn't deserve the glaring spotlight and the plethora of negative fan behavior. Yet as long as he plays golf in junior tournaments, for his high school team, and in events like pre-qualifiers, it's going to be a major part of his existence. In today's world of immediate media, Charlie Woods has it much tougher than the children of Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus.

I have a funny feeling that the game has become that much more enjoyable for Mexico Open champ Jake Knapp. I do hope that Charlie Woods can get some sort of enjoyment as well.