The Late, Late Mid-Season Review

By: Tony Dear


Er, this "mid-year" review comes with 32 of the 37 PGA Tour events in 2014 already in the books. Three of the four majors are complete, the Players Championship is one step further along its perpetual journey to major status, two of the three U.S.-based WGC tournaments have been won and lost, and we're just a few days from August. It's really more of an early-to-mid-second-half-of-the-year review.

A few years ago, the game's top players would be preparing for one last flourish at the PGA Championship before looking to wind it down for the rest of the year. But with the professional golf calendar these days you can be sure that, unless New Year's Eve corks are flying, there's still an awful lot of golf to come and much gold - not to say world-ranking points - to play for.

The PGA Championship at Valhalla falls next week and then, following the Wyndham Championship, we're on to the FedEx Cup playoffs. Then comes the late-season cash-grab when professional golfers travel the world in search of late-season bonuses playing in tournaments whose names they will struggle to remember a few months after winning them.

Somewhere In the middle of it all (two weeks after the Tour Championship and the end of the PGA Tour season to be precise) comes what for many is the most important event of the year, certainly the most exciting - the Ryder Cup.

So who, based on what has already transpired in 2014, can be content with their performances? Who would award themselves a passing grade, and who has let themselves down along with the corporate machine that relies on their results? Which team will head to Gleneagles in Perthshire at the end of September feeling the more buoyant? And what, in 2014, has filled the typical golf fan's head and Twitter feed?

Beginning with the majors, each of the sport's three biggest prizes were won by golfers who took command of the event so thoroughly the media spent the ensuing week(s) discussing whether or not that player was now replacing Tiger Woods as the game's dominant player. The conversation came to an abrupt halt each time, however, when it became clear they weren't.

After Bubba Watson won his second Masters, various analysts and commentators wondered if his high-flying, hazard-carrying cut shot wasn't just the most lethal weapon in the game, and asked how many green jackets he might end up winning in his career. The assumption seemed to be that Bubba was all set for a record-breaking year. There was talk that, despite his apparently noncompliant game (three missed cuts, just one top-10 in seven appearances), he could contend at the U.S. Open as Pinehurst No. 2's fairways were fully 20 to 30 yards wider than they had been in 1999 and 2005. But he missed the cut, having tied for 48th at the Players. Then Watson missed the cut again in the Open Championship at Hoylake.

After Martin Kaymer returned from a couple of years in the swing-change doldrums to win the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass following a brilliant opening-round 63, then the U.S. Open five weeks later with even more impressive matching 65s the first two days, it was clear the game had its new superstar. No, Kaymer wouldn't light the world up with his effervescent charisma, but a quiet humility, wonderfully dry sense of humor, and dispassionate Bernhard Langer-like efficiency on the golf course could work. And we'd sure be seeing a lot of it.

But Kaymer didn't win at Hoylake. He didn't even contend. He was nowhere to be seen in fact, languishing in 70th place, 25 shots behind the winner.

Rory McIlroy had been in some doldrums of his own. An unseemly and ever-worsening legal spat with his former management group and come-and-go domestic issues with his now former fiancée resulted in a good deal of ebb and flow in his game throughout 2013, with a good deal more ebb than flow. And 2014 seemed to be going in a similar direction as he dropped silently outside the world's top-10.

But then . . . bang! . . . not only did McIlroy win the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth at the end of May but the Open at Hoylake as well with golf so good it compared favorably with the stuff he used to win the 2011 U.S. Open and 2012 PGA Championship, each by eight shots.

We'll see how Rory progresses from here. But if history (and what just about all his peers are saying) is anything to go by, he'll most probably mix periods when the Golf Channel is at a loss to explain where his game has gone with those when he sets the bar a little bit higher than it was before and the rest of the field is left to just stand and gawp. You don't need to be Butch Harmon, David Leadbetter or, indeed, McIlroy's lifelong teacher Michael Bannon, to see how the Ulsterman's swing changes plane on the downswing and is therefore at risk of becoming a little inconsistent from time to time.

But when it clicks, it clicks louder than Earth Wind & Fire, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye and the Bee Gees snapping their fingers in unison. At moments like this, McIlroy becomes more or less unbeatable. As if the Golf Gods were showing a little compassion for the rest of the world, however, he appears not to have been given the ability to turn it on whenever and wherever he wants, and those times of near-perfect ball-striking and almost automatic putting last only temporarily.

In the Scottish Open the week before the Open Championship, for example, McIlroy faltered badly in the second round as he had been doing for much of the year (from the second week in March to the first in June he played in six PGA Tour events and averaged 75.00 in Round 2). At Royal Aberdeen, he followed an opening 64 with a 78 that gave him far too much to do over the weekend. It was evidence perhaps that when McIlroy is feeling a little out of sorts he can become a little prickly and lets things get away from him. One hopes his current form lasts until the end of the year, however, because McIlroy in full flight is a mesmerizing spectacle.

Who, though, besides Watson, Kaymer and McIlroy has given their fans reason to cheer this year? Who else is in the running for the FedEx Cup and/or making Ryder Cup captains Tom Watson and Paul McGinley sit up and take notice?

Tom Watson will surely be happy to have Jimmy Walker be a part of his team in Scotland. The 35-year-old from Oklahoma may have gone off the boil a little since winning three 2013-14 tournaments by the middle of February, but he still recorded top-10 finishes at the Masters, the Players and U.S. Open. And Walker maintains his lead in the FedEx Cup standings so is still in good shape to make the U.S. Ryder Cup team for the biggest golf event of his life so far. Rickie Fowler is another who can be very happy with his year's work by finishing T5 at Augusta, then tying for second at both the U.S. Open and Open Championship. Jim Furyk is putting together another solid, if unspectacular, year, finishing in the top-10 seven times since February, including three second-places.

And Jordan Spieth is set to make his Ryder Cup debut after representing the Red, White and Blue as a professional already as part of last year's winning U.S. Presidents Cup side. The Texan, just turned 21, has made 10 cuts in a row, had seven top-10s since January, was Bubba's main threat at Augusta, and played in the final group again at the Players. Sixth in the current FedEx Cup standings, seventh on the Ryder Cup list and 11th in the world rankings, Spieth has the look of a player who will contend at the majors for the next two decades and be a part of every U.S. team during that time as well.

Meanwhile, McGinley can expect to have the evergreen Dane Thomas Bjorn on his team along with Frenchman Victor Dubuisson, who has continued to impress since beating Jamie Donaldson, Justin Rose and Tiger Woods at the Turkish Airlines Open in Antalya last November. Sergio Garcia is very much a part of the European conversation, and Graeme McDowell played his way into the picture with his win at the French Open and a decent finish at Hoylake. On the outside looking in right now - but perhaps just a couple of strong finishes from making the team automatically - are Stephen Gallacher, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Joost Luiten and Ian Poulter, though it's likely match-play stalwart Poulter will be given one of McGinley's three wild cards whatever his position.

Another of those picks might be needed to accommodate Lee Westwood, a veteran of eight Ryder Cups but who, after a good run in April and May when he recorded top-10s at both the Masters and Players Championship and won the Malaysian Open, is currently spiraling out of control after missed cuts at the U.S. Open, Scottish Open and Open Championship.

As for players whose report cards have a whole lot of red ink and a big "F" at the top, I give you two names - Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. Woods, who has dropped from world No. 1 to 10 since May 18, has had a miserable time of it, his season apparently wrecked by back surgery he underwent the Monday of Masters week. In five PGA Tour events this year, he has a best finish of T25. He missed the third-round cut at Torrey Pines, where he usually wins, withdrew after 13 holes of the final round at the Honda Classic, and missed the cut at the Quicken Loans National following his three-month absence. Then, after an encouraging first-round 69 at Hoylake, wayward driving let Woods down and he wound up 69th out of 72 finishers.

Woods currently sits 61 places out of automatic qualification for the U.S. Ryder Cup team. He needs to find his rhythm and touch on the greens at Firestone - another place he usually wins - this week and Valhalla next if he is to salvage his season and make it into the top-nine. If he falls short, he'll have to rely on a pick from captain Watson. Jack Nicklaus has said he'd definitely choose Woods, adding Watson probably feels the same way. He probably does, or he might not.

Mickelson doesn't have back surgery to explain his failing to make the top-10 in 14 PGA Tour starts this year (his one top-10 worldwide came in Abu Dhabi in January), but it could be his arthritis has been bothering him. He's made no mention of it, however, so we just have to assume his famously capricious game has been a little less predictable than usual. Thanks to a number of great performances in 2013 (most notably his Open Championship victory at Muirfield), however, Mickelson stands 11th in the Ryder Cup standings so should qualify automatically with a good showing this week or next. Should he not make it, it will be very interesting to see if Watson picks him. Again, you have to assume he will . . . but he might not.

In the women's game, a handful of players have excelled, including two-time 2014 LPGA Tour winners Karrie Webb, Anna Nordqvist, Lydia Ko and Jessica Korda, and three-time winner Stacy Lewis. But the biggest headliners have been 31-year-old Californian Mo Martin, who did precisely nothing earlier in the year to suggest she was going to win the Women's British Open with a final-hole eagle at Royal Birkdale, and 24-year-old Michelle Wie who, after what seems like several years of disappointments and failing to live up to her potential, is having a stellar year at last with 10 top-10 finishes so far, including two wins - April's LPGA Lotte Championship and, at Pinehurst in June, the U.S. Women's Open. What Wie's first major win means for her confidence and career is anyone's guess, but for now at least she is surely enjoying a moment of peace from the naysayers, cynics and skeptics who doubted her.

As for the seniors, two players - two European seniors - are slugging it out for the Charles Schwab Cup. Colin Montgomerie is finally producing his best golf in America with wins at the Senior PGA and U.S. Senior Open championships, while Bernhard Langer continues to defy the laws of aging with another incredible season. The German has played 14 tournaments in 2014 and finished in the top-10 13 times. He has four wins, including two senior majors. Last weekend, he won the Senior Open Championship at Royal Porthcawl in Wales by 13 shots.

Thirteen shots! Thirteen! Is Paul McGinley watching?

Tony Dear is an Englishman living in Bellingham, Wash. In the early 1990s he was a member of the Liverpool University golf team which played its home matches at Royal Liverpool GC. Easy access to Hoylake made it extremely difficult for him to focus on Politics, his chosen major. After leaving Liverpool, he worked as a golf instructor at a club just south of London where he also made a futile attempt at becoming a 'player.' He moved into writing when it became abundantly clear he had no business playing the game for a living. A one-time golf correspondent of the New York Sun, Tony is a member of the Golf Writers Association of America, the Pacific Northwest Golf Media Association and the Golf Travel Writers Association. He is a multi-award winning journalist, and edits his own website at www.bellinghamgolfer.com.