But it certainly didn’t hurt.
It skirted that bush, found the fairway, and he went on to make eagle.
He played a no-nonsense chip from there and canned a 15-footer to send the crowd into a raucous.
Good breaks mean nothing, however, if you don’t capitalize on them.
He shaped second shots around trees.
He made putts when he had to.
He won the U.S.
Junior Amateur in 2013.
He became the top-ranked junior in the country in 2014.
He was Big 12 freshman of the year in 2015.
He was the Korn Ferry Tour’s player of the year in 2019.
Whether he has his best or not.
I was just able to grind it out, make a lot of putts.
I think I only had two bogeys this week.
Which is really, really around this golf course.
So I’m proud of that with my short game and putting.
Hoping to build on this going forward."
Good-guy move, to not pull out of that obligation.
The show rolls on.
The underdog story, a dying breed?
Brett White missed the cut by a million this week.
And yet he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face.
White grew up in Grand Rapids, Mich. and played hockey most of his life.
A few years into his pro golf journey, he ran into a nightmarish roadblock.
White was playing in the 2017 New Hampshire State Open when he noticed something off with his buddy.
He played well, though, losing in a playoff.
Still, he wanted to figure out what exactly as going on with his body.
“The last two rounds, my body started to ache,” Brett told me.
“I started feeling unwell.
Tired, I was probably sleeping like 12 hours a day.”
He went to an urgent care center and got a pretty standard diagnosis: mononucleosis.
He’d rest for a few weeks, and then he’d be back.
That’s all he could do.
“That’s what I did for the next week.
I rarely got out of bad.
That next weekend, six or seven days after bedrest, getting up the stairs got progressively harder.
I felt so, so tired, and I was gradually getting worse.”
His dad noticed his son clinging to the walls just to get up some stairs.
That sounded an internal alarm, but he had a follow-up appointment in a few days.
“I was just supposed to get some bloodwork, but I was really struggling.
I mean, I was sweating.
Then a nurse practitioner came down and said,let’s get him to the emergency room.
He doesn’t look right.”
White was admittedand he wouldn’t leave for a long time.
He kept deteriorating for three additional days as doctors administered test after test.
At first, they thought it could’ve been vertigo.
Medication for that didn’t help.
Then they started neurological testing and noticed something off.
Testing kicked into overdrive
“I had so many vials of blood taken.
I had to take a spinal tap, they had to get spinal fluid to test for certain viruses.
I’d been playing in Latin America and the Caribbean, and that’s when Zika was going around.
But every one of those came back negative.
The only thing that came back positive was for mono.
“That’s what I had; it was mono.
But my body just couldn’t fight off the mono.
And so it went into my brain.
When the brain swells, bad things happen.
And that’s a problem.”
That…that was a problem.
He had a bed alarm, so he couldn’t get out alone.
Once they did get the swelling down, it was time for rehab.
He transferred to an in-patient rehab center back home in Michigan.
“They had the swelling down, but the lasting effects were still there.
The rehab processit kind of reminded me of going to school.
It was like, classes.
He steadily progressed, and a month after his release he was back swinging a club again.
But he had to essentially re-learn the golf swing, for his coordination was all off.
“I let Scottie Scheffler play through on the sixth hole during a practice round,” White said.
“I got to shake hands with the Masters Champion.
We made the turn, I went and got lunch, and played the back nine with Jason Dufner.
He’s cool as hell.”
This whole story is cool as hell…but it might be a dying breed.
Only it’s not just Monday Q stories that would be in jeopardy with limited-event fields.
Because Nick Taylor never would’ve gotten in had this been a 70-man event.
Taylor entered the week ranked No.
I understand both sides.
The benefits of bigger fields are stories like Taylor’s and like White’s.
These are the stories that golf nerds like us cherish…but do they appeal to the larger audience?
The one “Full Swing” is trying to reach?
Let’s just hope the Brett Whites and the Nick Taylors of the world still get their flowers.
What to expect from Tiger Woods this week?
“I was impressed by a lot of things this week,” Mackaytold Golf.com’s James Colgan.
“Nothing impressed me more than how well Tiger played.
I was out there thinking,Oh my gosh, it’s a Ryder Cup year.”
Woods looked razor sharp from 150 yards and in that week in Orlando.
He looked, put simply, like a PGA Tour player.
It’s really that simple.
You’re then instantly given a sobering reminder when he begins to labor toward his next shot.
“That’s awesome,” said Max Homa upon hearing the news.
“I imagine we’ll be carrying him down the hill on 1 and up it on 18.
Which no one would mind.
But it’s awesome.
I’m really glad he’s back.
I think we’re privileged any time he plays now.
Obviously we don’t know his schedule.
Seems like he’s going to make a run at play the majors.
So it’s really awesome he’s playing a tour event.
One of my favorites.
So I’m stoked to see him back out there.”
Jon Rahm concurred: “He’s playing Riv?
Well I didn’t know.
After all he’s gone through.
It’s incredible that he keeps trying.”
He’ll have to try with everything he has.
But Woods, of course, will feel like he has a chance to win.
The odds are definitively stacked against him.
But that’s been the case time and time again throughout his career.
Rickie’s stock is on the rise, and so is JDay’s.
Day’s had a pretty unique careerhe reached world No.
1 in 2015 and held it for nearly a year from March 2016 into February 2017.
He once woneighttournaments in a 13-month stretch…but he was doing while sacrificing his body.
That’s no longer the case.
He’s now working with instructor Chris Como and has rebuilt his swing with his back in mind.
He still believes he can return to No.
1 with this new move, and his recent scores show he’s on the right track.
Day and Fowler played together on Sunday, and they fed off each other’s vibes.
“I’ve been good mates with Rickie for a long time,” Day said.
“We came out pretty much the same year.
I understand what he’s going through.
I think he understands what I’m going through as well.
I don’t think our head space was in the best of shape.”
We, the golf world, might owe the football world an apology.
The USGA was rightly proud for its efforts to help the country’s biggest sporting spectacle.
Only problem…it didn’t go well.
Like, it went horrible.
I thoughts it a curious choice, to consult the USGA for grass help.
Because golf-course grass comes loose.
Those are called divots.
That’s not what you want happening on a football field.
“Full Swing,” Netflix’s behind-the-scenes documentary on professional golf, debuts this Wednesday.
Episode 1, however, is on YouTube after Michelob Ultra and Netflix’s Super Bowl commercial.
This is a documentary about people.
What an electric, electric week that was in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area.
The thing about the WMPO, though, is that it peaks on Saturday.
Mark Hubbard brought out “The Snail” on TPC Scottsdale’s 16th on Friday.
And yet Stewart Cink gets the award for Best 16th Hole Performance.
My man immediately sprung into action after hearing Kevin Durant got traded to the Suns late Wednesday evening.
This week’s DPWT event is in Thailand.
Everyone knows there are not 50 players better than Dustin Johnson in the world.
But there are also rules about criteria for getting points, and LIV hasn’t followed them.
What I do know is there is less confidence in the OWGR than ever before.
I don’t pretend to have a solution, but this is only getting worse.
They’re now off for a month before restarting the season stateside in March.
Until next time,
Dan
