NAPA, Calif. – Mark Hubbard celebrated a day’s good work at the Procore Championship by wolfing down one of Silverado Resort’s famed burger dogs and then split a second with his wife. He carded nine birdies but made one bad blunder, a triple bogey at No. 17, his eighth hole of the day, but it still added up to 5-under 67 at the North Course on Thursday and two shots off the early lead set by David Lipsky.
When was the last time you made nine birdies and a triple, Hubbard was asked.
He didn’t have to think long. “Never,” Hubbard said.
But that beat the alternative – Hubbard almost missed playing in one of his favorite tournaments on the PGA Tour and it was all his fault. Hubbard missed last Friday’s 5 p.m. ET deadline to register for the Procore Championship, the first event of the FedEx Cup Fall.
“I missed the commitment deadline on Friday by about 23 minutes,” Hubbard explained Monday afternoon to PGA Tour.com. “Had some technical difficulties with my phone; I dropped it in a cold plunge on Thursday, so I didn’t really have it for a while, but at the same time I probably should’ve committed a long time ago. I was pretty frustrated after Memphis (FedEx St. Jude Championship) and really just needed to check out from golf, and I did that, and it was a good thing for me mentally and physically for my game, but this is one of the things that fell through the cracks unfortunately.”
There weren’t any sponsor invites available, so Hubbard did the next best thing and decided to go and play the Monday qualifier, where he paced the field with a 7-under 65 at Yolo Fliers Club to secure the first of four available spots in the Procore field, just a couple of hours away from where Hubbard attended college at San Jose State.
“It’s an area that kind of feels like a second home. My wife’s from Sacramento, so all of her family comes out,” he said. “I just have a lot of friends and family in the area too. It’s Napa too. I like wine; we call it one of the wives’ majors. It’s just a great week.”
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As Hubbard ran through the highs and lows of his opening round, veteran pro Russell Knox, who was the last man into the field when Hubbard forgot to register, walked by.
“He’s the guy I let in with my blunder,” Hubbard said. “He did come up to me and say if he had a good week, he’d send me a case of wine.”
Hubbard’s first round encapsulated his whole week: the triple bogey was missing the deadline and the nine birdies was the Monday qualifier. After the round, Hubbard complained that his brother Nathan showed up at an inopportune time.
“You only saw me hit bad shots,” Hubbard said. “I went 5-5-6 when you showed up.”
That included the triple at the par-3 17th, where he blocked his tee shot to the right into the pond.
“I had a little red ass on my tee shot on 18, I went after that one a little more than normal, but by the time I got to that ball there I was completely over it and I hit a great 3-wood, good chip and good putt there and off I went,” he said.
Indeed, he did. He proceeded to birdie five of the next six holes. He credited a putter change for his strong performance.
“I went back to my old black beauty, my Odyssey No. 9 that I putted with since 2014,” said Hubbard, who had been using a TaylorMade Spider mallet model. “I switched back to that for the Monday qualifier and obviously that went well and I carried over into today.”
Lipsky, who entered the week at No. 165 in the FedEx Cup, carded eight birdies and shot 65 to lead by a stroke over Martin Laird. Lipsky spent a couple of weeks at his alma mater, Northwestern University, working with his former coach, Pat Goss, and said being around the current members of the team helped him reset his attitude.
“Sometimes you have to realize golf can be fun and I think I sort of forgot that along the way as I’m grinding it out week in and week out,” he said. “Sometimes you’ve got to put things in perspective, take a step back. Sort of did that, seems like it’s working out.”
Despite his rollercoaster of emotions of being left out of the Procore Championship and then the exuberance of playing his way in, Hubbard’s mental approach to playing this week is also working out.
“As bummed as I was on Friday when I missed the deadline and didn’t think I would be playing this week, because I love this tournament, I love Napa, I feel like I rebounded really quickly,” he said.