2020 Golf Season Starts...Then Stops

The 2020 golf season had already delivered surprising finishes, before COVID 19 ground it to a halt. The tournaments conducted during the first two months seemed to represent a changing of the guard, with players such as Nick Taylor and Sungjae Im winning some of the biggest prizes with wins at Pebble Beach and the Honda Classic.

Taylor, at 32, had missed cuts and then, knocked around various tours, and, out of nowhere, inexplicably wins Pebble Beach. As crazy as Taylor’s win was, someone we have never heard of - Maverick McNealy - managed to claw his way into the Top 5.

While Im’s a rising star, finishing behind him at the Honda Classic was Mackenzie Hughes, who somehow managed to sneak into the field, potentially with a falsified “player pass” and post a series of scores that landed him in 2nd, enabling him to cash a $763k check.

We want to be clear that while we do not condone whatever “tactics” Taylor and Hughes have employed to gain access to PGA tournaments, we applaud them for their fine play. Simply put, they kept it together.

148th British Open - the Ashton Turner show

Shane Lowry winning this year’s Open Championship by 6 strokes was certainly noteworthy. He’d missed the cut at this event each of the past four years. This year he basically wired the field and had to contend with very challenging weather conditions during the last day. Additionally, a British Open had not been played in Northern Ireland for 68 years so to have an Irishman win it made it special. But Lowry is no underdog. He’s the 17th ranked player in the world so posting Top 10 finishes and winning tournaments is rather expected.

While we do celebrate remarkable achievements of the game’s top players, we have a particular fondness for those players who are scratching and clawing for table scraps each week. When these types of players manage to break through and announce themselves, as Ashton Turner did on the tournament’s opening day, we take notice, particularly if they are players we’ve never heard of.

Coming into the week, Turner was officially the world’s 2,079 best golfer, which makes sense when you consider that he had recently missed the cut at an (alleged) golf tournament called the Motocaddy Masters (which raises a very good question: how is it that one can qualify for the world’s oldest and most prestigious golf tournament following a missed cut at a horseshit tour event?). Still, Turner’s -2 on his opening round is quite amazing, as was his 68 on the final day (which included an eagle). Going from failure at the Motocaddy Masters to the leaderboard at the British Open illustrates how fickle golf can be. You can also look at JB Holmes’ card for his final round and draw the same conclusion. It looks remarkably like a recent round of golf I played at the West Seattle muni course. Double bogeys every other hole. Or, compare Rory McIlroy’s first and second rounds (79 on day 1 and 65 on day 2). The game is inexplicable and defies reason.

Hannah Green, Chez Reavie & Zac Suchar keep it together

11 years ago Chez Reavie was considered a rising star. Then he disappeared. In the past year he had showed signs of regaining his form, and definitely served notice with his tie for 2nd at the PGA championship one week ago.

Seven days later he wins the Travelers.

"It means everything," Reavie said. "I went through some injuries, had some long years there in the middle. But it was great, because it gave good perseverance and good perspective of what life is and what golf is."

Hannah Green, who also battled injury problems over the past year, also shocked the golfing world with her 1st win on the LPGA — a major championship.

Perhaps the biggest shocker was the tie for 2nd place at the Travelers by Zach Sucher, who cashed a check for $633,000 exactly one week after missing the cut at a Web.com tour stop.