Zurich Classic to become team event in 2017

By Will Gray

GOLF CHANNEL.COM

The US PGA Tour's Zurich Classic of New Orleans will reportedly switch to a two-man team format in 2017, becoming the Tour's first team event in nearly 40 years. According to Golf Channel reporter George Savaricas, the event will feature 80 teams of two. Both members of the winning team will receive the two-year Tour exemption that typically accompanies a victory in an official event, and each winning player will receive 400 FedEx Cup points. A regular tournament offers 500 points to the winner and 300 to the runner-up. The top 80 qualifiers will be allowed to choose their own team-mates, with the caveat that their partner must have at least some US PGA Tour status this season. If not, the selection will require the use of a sponsor invite. Savaricas reports that play will include one round of foursomes (alternate shot) and one round of fourballs (best ball) before the 36-hole cut. A US PGA Tour official declined to comment on any proposed changes to the tournament's format. Should the changes be implemented, it will mark the overhaul of an event that sometimes struggles to draw an elite field and often battles inclement weather delays during its late spring slot on the schedule. This year it took until Monday to complete 54 holes at TPC Louisiana, where the truncated event was won by Brian Stuard in a play-off over Jamie Lovemark and Byeong-Hun An. Next year's event will be held April 27-30. The most recent official team event on Tour was the Walt Disney World National Team Championship, which featured a two-man format from 1974-81 before reverting back to individual stroke play in 1982. For further details on the proposed changes, tune into "Golf Central" at 6 p.m. ET.

 Fraser Davren leads Alabama intercollegiate

By COLIN FARQUHARSON
Fraser Davren from Glasgow, a freshman student at Eastern Florida State University, leads the field of 55 players by two shots after the first round of the CACC-WPCC Intercollegiate at Willow Point Country Club, Alexander City in Alabama.

Davren, pictured,  shot a 70 over the par-72 course which measures 7,272yd.
His closest rivals are bunched on 72.
Another Eastern Florida State student, Brad Bawden, a sophomore from Hockley, Essex (?), is in T16 position after a 78.
Central Alabama (295) lead the nine-team field with Eastern Florida State (301) in second place and Calhoun CC (302) in third spot.

Padraig Harrington on mindset, party tabs 

and why loneliness can be a factor in USA

By Dan Kilbridge

GOLFWEEK.COM

Padraig Harrington, pictured at the 2016 Scottish Open. (Getty Images)

It’s easy to forget that professional golfers are real human beings with real thoughts running through their heads. Luckily, guys like Padraig Harrington are candid enough to share real insight on those thoughts from time to time.
The three-time major winner joined Irish talk show host Ray D’Arcy last week and said reading sports psychologist Dave Aldred’s book, ‘The Pressure Principle,’ helped keep him on an even-keel to win the Portugal Masters last month.
“The language, what you’re saying to yourself out there on the golf course, try not to make things so absolute,” Harrington said. “There’s a lot of times golfers will think, ‘If I hit a golf ball out of bounds, I can’t win.’ That’s not true. … I hit four golf balls in the water (in Portugal). I three-putted three times. … I was very mindful of how I was stating things (in my head). What I saw from that was my physical posture change.”
That speaks to an overall mindset Harrington tries to maintain throughout every round.
“You don’t have to act like you own the place, but you’ve got to walk around and in your head, you’ve got to believe you’re the man,” Harrington said. “Your ego has to be there. … You don’t necessarily have to be obnoxious about it, but you’ve got to believe in yourself.”
You also have to change the way you think about things like luck.
“You have to remind yourself to smile. You have to remind yourself you’re lucky. If I hit it down the fairway on the first hole and it went in a divot, I could go, ‘Wow. I’m lucky it’s in a divot on the first hole and not the 72nd hole.’ … But you have to work on it.”
Anyone who has ever picked up a club knows that’s much easier said than done, but it’s a unique and interesting way to consider those bad breaks on the course. And in those pressure-packed moments, like Harrington’s 3-and-a-half foot putt to win the tournament, sometimes you just have to fake it.
“Going up to it, the greens were bumpy,” Harrington said. “They’re soft, lots of heel prints, I’m the last guy to putt on it. It’s downhill, it’s outside the hole. Everything you wouldn’t want from a short putt. Of course you don’t want to miss it in the spotlight, but I kept telling myself, ‘Every time I watch a guy win in a tournament he taps that putt in on 18 from 3-and-a-half feet.’ And I just had it in my head, ‘Well, that’s what’s going to happen today.’”
COSTLY WIN: That putt netted Harrington just over $360,000, but might have come with a steep price. Harrington explained that every year the Irish players and caddies on tour have a Christmas party, and whoever had the best year has to pick up the tab. Shane Lowry looked like he’d be on the hook after a second-place finish in the U.S. Open at Oakmont and was planning to host it in Las Vegas, but the two agreed that Harrington’s win in Portugal put him over the top.
“(Lowry said) ‘Well, that’s good, Padraig. If I was thinking of Vegas, what are you going to come up with?’”
Rory McIlroy is the top Irishman on tour, of course, but it sounds like he generally skips the holiday festivities.
“I’m going to work really hard on trying to get Rory to turn up, cause he’s obviously had a better year than the rest of us,” Harrington said.
By the way, this party sounds legendary.
LONELY LIFE: Going back to the point of pro golfers as human beings rather than par-saving robots, Harrington had some really interesting comments on every-day life for European players on the PGA Tour. Sure, they’re competing for purses worth several million and playing the best golf courses in the world each week. But there is another side to tour life after the sun has set and the fans have gone home.
Harrington said he goes out to dinner four or five times a week with other Irishmen and thinks it’s important to have that communication and familiarity, because the alternative can be pretty bleak at times.

Said Harrington: “Most Europeans who have struggled in the U.S. have struggled because they’re lonely over there. It’s a very lonely place. … Everything’s so convenient. In the States you can get in your car, drive down the road, you can see a restaurant and you know exactly what experience you’re going to have in that restaurant and for what price.
" Everything about it you know, whereas in Europe, you better ask somebody where there’s a good restaurant because you could get a bad restaurant. You have to talk to people. We share cars in Europe. You stay in lovely, different hotels.
"In the States you could actually stay every week in the exact same room. Pick a Marriott, you could stay in the exact same-looking room every week of the year. It might be convenient, but it actually ends up as being very lonely.”
This is why we listen when Harrington speaks. He’s one of the funnier guys in professional golf, but throughout the laugh track there is usually some really interesting perspective from a real human being.

Top 20 finish by London student at Northwestern


By COLIN FARQUHARSON
Ryan Lumsden from London, a second-year student at Northwestern University, Illinois, finished T18 in a field of 51 players at this week's Gifford Collegiate 36-hole stroke-play tournament at Silverado Golf Club's North Course (Par 72, 7171yd) at Napa Valley, California.

Lumsden, pictured, had rounds of 74 and 69 for a total of 143 - 11 strokes behind the winner, Rico Hoey (Southern California) 65-68.
Another Southern Cal player, Jonah Texeira finished second on 134 (67-67).
The world's top-ranked amateur, Maverick McNealey (Stanford) finished third with 67 and 69 for 136.

The teams then went into a two-day match-play tournament.
QUARTER-FINALS
Southern California 5.5, Wisconsin 0.
Northwestern 3.5, Colorado 2.5
Stanford 5.5, Southern Florida 0.5
Washington 4.5, UCLA 1.5
SEMI-FINALS
Southern California 4, Northwestern 2
+Ryan Lumsden lost to top seed Rico Hohey 3 and 1.
Stanford 3.5, Washington 2.5
FINAL
Southern California v Stanford
 

LINK TO MATCH-PLAY RESULTS

CLICK HERE 

For the latest US college women's golf news, switch over to www.kirkwoodgolf.co.uk

Jay Monahan approved as incoming US PGA Tour commissioner, replacing Tim Finchem

By Jeff Babineau

GOLFWEEK.COM

Jay Monahan is officially the next USPGA Tour commissioner. (Getty Images)

Tim Finchem turns 70 in April, but the US PGA Tour’s commissioner since 1994 hasn’t been in any mad dash to head for the door at US PGA Tour headquarters, primed to step into a slower-paced life in retirement.
Finchem holds a contract extension through June 2017, but he also has spent hours pondering this consideration: He wants the Tour’s next man up, Jay Monahan, a leader in whom he has great confidence, to have the same opportunity to enjoy a run as long and (hopefully) fruitful as he has had. Basically, the time has arrived for the 46-year-old Monahan, prepped under the US PGA Tour umbrella since 2008, to take the wheel.
That move became official on Monday, as the Tour’s nine-member Policy Board gave unanimous approval to making Monahan the fourth commissioner in the Tour’s history. Monahan takes over January 1, at which time Finchem officially will retire.
“It would be really good if whoever it is goes 20 years,” Finchem said of his replacement at the Tour Championship in Atlanta in September. “I think that continuity creates a lot of good things that happen. He (Monahan) has got the passion for the sport, the focus, the family support that will allow him to do that. And getting him going is the right thing to do. It just feels good.”
In a statement released by the Tour on Monday, Finchem said, “I have the highest regard for Jay and have total confidence in his ability to lead the PGA Tour well into the future.”
This much is clear: Monahan has plenty of support. Having entered the arena initially in a sports marketing role with the Massachusetts-based EMC Corporation, Monahan moved on to be director of a start-up PGA Tour event outside Boston (getting the Deutsche Bank Championship off and running in 2003) and later filled various roles at the PGA Tour that would give him valuable experience in key areas:
 He served as executive director of The Players Championship, senior vice president of business development, became the Tour’s chief marketing officer, was named deputy commissioner and added the title of chief operating officer in April.
“Jay has proved himself to be an outstanding leader who has developed an intimate knowledge and understanding of the PGA Tour and a clear vision for the future of the organization,” said Victor F. Ganzi, chairman of the Tour’s Policy Board.
Monahan always has been driven to achieve success. Upon taking over as the Tour’s chief marketing officer, he described his aspirations to CMO.com in 2013: “One simple goal: to be the best sports marketing operation among any league or property,” he said. “That means the best people, ideas and resources. If we achieve that, the business results will follow.”
Monahan is a man of thick New England heritage, having grown up in Belmont, a Boston suburb. It took a good deal to pull him away from a dream job with the Fenway Sports Group, which had allowed him to work daily with his beloved Boston Red Sox. But in 2008 he would be pried away, and only because a game he loves, and a special brand, came calling.
“There’s only one thing I could leave the Red Sox for,” Monahan, who played golf at Div. III Trinity College, told writer Jim McCabe in a 2014 interview with Golfweek, “and that’s golf.”
So at Tour headquarters, the familiar face in the big office may change, but many of the challenges will not. Monahan will inherit an organization that is enjoying a significant amount of momentum. It has pretty much a fully sponsored tournament lineup, will play for $339 million in prize money in 2016-17 and is a highly tuned charitable-giving machine (crossing $2.3 billion total in the Tour’s lifetime). Sure, there is much work ahead, but mainly Monahan and the team he assembles will be charged with keeping things speeding along.
“Under Tim’s leadership, the PGA Tour has made remarkable progress, even in the most difficult economic times,” Monahan said in a statement released Monday evening.
 “We are now entering a very important time in our organization’s history, and I know our executive team and I will draw upon and be inspired by the invaluable experience of working with Tim as we take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities, as well as face the challenges, that are ahead for the Tour.”
In 2002, Mark Steinberg, now a partner at Excel Sports Management and Tiger Woods’ longtime agent, worked for IMG and convinced Deutsche Bank to come onboard to start a late-summer PGA Tour event outside Boston. One huge challenge: He needed just the right man to lead it. Monahan, who was director of global sponsorships at EMC, was handpicked by Steinberg to be that guy.
“Jay really didn’t have experience in running a golf tournament, but he wasn’t necessarily the tournament director … we needed a face of Boston,” Steinberg said. “When you can get that, which he was, and you get all the other benefits of just the type of businessman – the type of man – he is, it was a no-brainer for me. I had to do everything I could to get him.”
In the tournament’s first three years the fledgling Deutsche Bank Championship raised $4.5 million for its main charity, the Tiger Woods Foundation. The Tour thought so much of the event and how smoothly it was run that when it looked to start up the FedEx Cup in 2007, DBC became one of four playoff events.
“He’s unbelievable,” Sternberg added of Monahan. “He became a friend over the years, somebody I grew to admire.”

People who know Monahan marvel at his depth of quality relationships, his work ethic and his ability to get things done. Finchem’s recommendation that Monahan succeed him carried considerable weight with the PGA Tour Policy Board. Monahan always was his five-tool player. When he would take over? That was always a little hazy. But in identifying Monahan as the one to succeed him, Finchem had no doubts.
“What was prime in my mind was that he was the guy,” Finchem said. “And the question became, what was the right time frame? We didn’t even think that much about it for the first year, and then we started honing in on it. There are a variety of factors that led to the track that he currently was on.
“But I knew it needed to be him.”
There were other quality candidates. Why Monahan?
Said Finchem, “He doesn’t have a negative moment in his day. I mean, he is a total glass-is-half-full individual, and I think you’ll see that as we go forward. … Fifteen years from now, we will look back and say, ‘Wow, look what the US PGA Tour has done.’ ”

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