Weekend Wrap

Autumn arrived with a vengeance this weekend, though that didn't get in the way of golf being played.  It did, however, require us to vernture into sections of the closet that haven't seen traffic recently...

New Kid In Town - The PGA Tour kicked off their 2015-16 season this week, with the Frys.com money grab:

NAPA, Calif. (AP) -- Given another chance, Emiliano Grillo was determined not to let

this one get away. 

Seven months after he missed a 3-foot putt that cost him a victory in the Puerto Rico Open and a PGA TOUR card, Grillo stood over a 3-foot putt to win the Frys.com Open in a playoff Sunday and was shocked to see it spin out of the left side of the cup.

"It was a very tough time coming back to the tee," Grillo said. 

Moment later, he threw his arms in the air after making a 10-foot birdie putt on the second playoff hole to beat Kevin Na and win in his rookie debut on the PGA TOUR. What really made the 23-year-old Argentine light up was one thought. He's going to the Masters.

For a while there it looked like we had a five-ball playoff in store, until Grillo dropped a long birdie putt on the home hole and sent Justin Thomas and  Tyrone Van Aswegan to their courtesy cars... there was no need for that last bit, but I just love that last name.  Stay tuned, we've got more great names for you...

Grillo seems like he'll be good fun to watch in the future, alternately draining long putts and missing short ones.  Grillo, the new Phil....Grillo is a member of the rather impressive Class of '11, as Doug Ferguson explains:

Along with the trophy, he added to what is already known as the "Class of 2011" -- a high school graduating class that includes Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Patrick Rodgers, Ollie Schniederjans and Daniel Berger, who was voted PGA TOUR rookie of the year.

And it's not just with the putter...earlier in the week, the eventual winner almost took out Rory McIlroy.  Bob Harig with the details:

Rory McIlroy had just chipped on the 17th green at the Silverado Resort on Saturday when a golf ball came whizzing by his head, missing him by a matter of inches.

The scary incident was a result of the par-4 hole playing at 296 yards, making it drivable during the third round of the Frys.com Open. 

Emiliano Grillo, who earned his way onto the PGA Tour this season through the Web.com Tour, hit the tee shot that nearly nailed McIlroy, the result of poor communication. 

Because the hole was playing short, groups were waving players up from the green. And that's what Grillo thought had occurred in this instance, although apparently McIlroy was unaware.

Kinda funny that it was Rors after that finish at the 2014 PGA....

One last related item, they'll be back:

The PGA Tour will hold a tournament at Silverado Resort for the next five years after reaching agreement with a new title sponsor, sources said Saturday.

Tournament officials are expected to announce the deal Sunday on Golf Channel, during the final round of the Frys.com Open.

The new title sponsor will be Safeway, the Pleasanton-based supermarket chain. The timing is curious, because Albertsons, which acquired Safeway in January, postponed its initial public offering last week in the wake of “recent market volatility.”

Curious, that last bit, but irrelevant for our purposes here... Shack had this little diss about the chnage in sponsors:

Ron Kroichick with a few details on today's PGA Tour telecast announcement: Frys.com is out and Safeway is in for five years of lightly-viewed fall golf. (SportsTVRatings says opening day of the 2015-16 PGA Tour season averaged 193,000 viewers Thursday).

The story suggests the Frys.com folks are still interested in hosting at The Institute, the ultra-exclusive club they've created near the tournament's old host, Cordevalle. I'm not sure anyone is on the edge of their seat to see that one, but nice to know they still care.

Like a Colossus bestriding the golf calendar.... I'll try to limit myself to a micro-rant, but are these people ever embarrassed?  You're running the most important golf tour on thew planet, but if you can't draw 200,000 eyeballs you're doing something wrong.  

OK, I lied, this is out last Silverado-related item...did you notice Jarrod Lyle in the field?  Of course not, you were watching football or baseball like any normal human being.  Lyle and his distinctive yellow bucket hat were in attendance, but it didn't go well:

The PGA Tour leader in inspiration can’t escape the cold, hard numbers. It doesn’t seem fair. The greetings are a little warmer, and the embraces are a little longer, and the cheers are a little lustier, but once he gets back inside the ropes Jarrod Lyle, the two-time cancer survivor, is judged just like every other player – by the cold, hard numbers on his scorecard. 

And after nearly five months away, Lyle’s numbers weren’t good enough this week at the Frys.com Open. He shot 69-77, a 2-over 146 total that left him well below the cut line. He now has nine more PGA Tour starts to earn $217,680, or else he’s out of a job.

But here's the gut-wrenching part:

Why not tee it up at Mayakoba, he was asked, because he has a stellar record there, with three top-10s in his last four tries? 

“It’s bad juju down there,” he said, a sad reminder that his past is never too far behind.

The Mexico event is where he found out that the cancer had returned, in 2012.

“I work in weird ways,” he said, “and I don’t want to go to a place where I’ve got nothing but bad memories.”

How can we not root for him?

Distaff Dispatches - We covered the most notable event of the week yesterday, Amy Yang's torching of the back nine in South Korea.  Lexi Thompson ultimately won the event, and Yani Tseng is getting some love for a series of Top-5's.

But I'll take you to the Symetra Tour, the ladies' version of the Web.com Tour, where they handed out ten LPGA Tour cards for next season:

Rachel Rohanna escaped to her husband’s truck as the last few groups finished up at the Symetra Tour Championship. She’d done the math in her head and figured she’d come up $100 short in her quest for a 2016 LPGA card. Rohanna was prepared to go out and shake Haruka Morita-WanyaoLu’s hand and congratulate the teen on a terrific season. Morita-WanyaoLu, for her part, spent most of the time in agony near the 18th green, crying off and on. 

It’s always an agonizing finish for a handful of players at the season finale. The top 10 players on the Symetra Tour money list earn LPGA cards. Rohanna came into the final week in 10th place and stayed there thanks to a birdie on the 72nd hole. 

Morita-WanyaoLu, who finished $284 short, likely will be thinking of the double bogey she posted on the 16th hole for quite some time. Not to mention more tears.

See, this is what our Commissioner Ratched and his sponsor-enablers don't get....  An event such as this with young players competing for their professional futures is inherently dramatic.  I'd much rather watch that than the early-season money grabs by the McIlroys and Roses.

Now that Rachel Rohanna doesn't fir the profile, as per this:

“Right now I just feel pretty numb,” said Rohanna, an Ohio State graduate who owns a beef farm with her husband, Ethan, back home in Pennsylvania. Rohanna bought a heifer after she won a Symetra event earlier in the spring. The couple have 100 head of cattle on the farm. Ethan stayed back to harvest their crop of soybeans and corn.

I can't wait until she makes a Solheim cup team... we can't accuse her of forgoing practice rounds for a manicure.

But Morita-WanyaoLu wasn't the medalist in best name either:

The winner of the Tour Championship, Sherman Santiwiwatthanaphong, vaulted 20 spots up the money list, to 20th, after her maiden victory. Santiwiwatthanaphong, nicknamed “Champagne” by her parents, can now bypass the second stage of LPGA Q-School and head to the finals in December.

The answer to your inevitable question is that she's Thai, but I actually find her given funnier than her surname....wassup with that Sherman?  Most importantly, does she know where to find the Wabac machine?

Willow Is The New Black -  This weekend featured our traditional superintendent's revenge tournament, in this case called Bert's Revenge.  Such is Willow Ridge that not only were the pin placements only slightly more draconian than an ordinary Sunday, that they left about half of them the same on Sunday (admittedly, given the weather, they may not have had ten players all day).  Oh, and the aforementioned Bert would like his name taken off the event...I know, truly a first-world problem...

With time on their hands during the week, our professional staff had this sign waiting for us on the first tee, an homage to Bethpage Black:

It goes without saying that the sign's instructions were ignored...

DVR Alert - Just a quick reminder that the ReMax Long Drive Championship will be on Golf Channel on Tuesday and Wednesday night.  Since converting this event to match play it's become quite the fun spectacle, and I recommend it highly.