OK, I didn’t actually watch the finish of the John Deere yesterday. Apparently I should have been tuned in. Making a 3 from that fairway bunker to win by 1 was flat out amazing.
This is going to have to go down as one of the best finishes of the year, if not the decade. Full video after the break.
The best putter on Tour is John Merrick. No you haven’t seen his name on top of many leaderboards and he only has one top 25 finish this year. In fact, his best ever finish was a 2nd place in 2009. But he’s the best putter so far this year on Tour.
You might say “He’s only 57th in putts per round.” True, but he’s leading the PGA Tour’s new putting statistic, “Strokes Gained – Putting“.
Defending champion Ian Poulter wasn’t feeling to good about being knocked out in the first round of the WGC-Accenture Match Play yesterday. Given that he wasn’t the only upset, he proposed a match with Tiger this weekend, and suggested that Paul Azinger could provide commentary. Steve Stricker might want in on this thing too.
Honestly a Poulter/Woods grudgematch would probably draw ratings as high as any other match left to play this weekend.
And on a side note, how good did Martin Kaymer look yesterday? If he keeps playing like that, it’s only a matter of time before the world #2 finds himself in the #1 spot.
As you might have noticed from my posts these past few weeks, I really like seeing the competition for tour cards in the fall. In some ways I think that it’s more compelling to see guys struggling to stay in the top 125 or 150, than compete for a top 10 world rankings spot.
This article on golfweek.com got me thinking. Failure on the PGA Tour is more lucrative than expected. In fact, in 2009 the top 125 cut-off was $681,631. Most people would kill to make that kind of money in a single year. But in 2010, Troy Merritt, who landed at 125 on the money list, made $786,977, an increase of $105k over last year.
What explains the jump in earnings at the lower end of the PGA tour money list? The total prize money increased slightly (by about $1.4m) but that’s not enough to skew these numbers. The big differences, in fact, were Tiger, Phil, and Steve Stricker.
