During Saturday’s third round of the 2022 Senior Open Championship at Gleneagles Hotel Kings Course in Auchterarder, Scotland, the rain got heavier as the day went on.
The sound of rain thumping off umbrellas and sight of it dripping off caps were common, as the world’s top senior golfers meandered their way through the wet, cool conditions in the final senior men’s major championship of the year.
Playing golf in the rain may seem like fun on a Saturday afternoon with your friends, but it’s a lot different when there’s a major championship on the line.
Plenty of players are in contention as Sunday’s final round is right around the corner.
Here’s a look at some of the best photos from the 2022 Senior Open Championship.
Even Hall of Famers double-hit the golf ball on occasion.
Bernhard Langer has hit his fair share of incredible shots during his Hall of Fame career. Yet during the second round of Friday’s Senior British Open, his chip shot near the ninth green is one he or the golf world won’t soon forget.
The 64-year-old was just off the green when he attempted to pitch a shot over a ridge and settle next to the hole. Shortly after he hit his shot, the ball ricocheted left after it struck his club a second time.
There is no penalty for Langer double hitting his golf ball, though it left him with a long par putt. He settled for bogey on the hole.
Langer sits tied for third at 5 under after two rounds at Gleneagles in Scotland, trailing leader Darren Clarke by three strokes.
Darren Clarke didn’t stumble, but he did slip during Friday’s second round of the Senior Open Championship.
Darren Clarke didn’t stumble, but he did slip during Friday’s second round of the Senior Open Championship at Gleneagles Hotel Kings Course in Auchterader, Scotland â both figuratively and literally.
Clarke posted a pair of bogeys on the front nine, but rebounded with an impressive back and finished the day with a 67, good enough for the 36-hold lead at the event.
The Northern Ireland native sits at 8 under for the tournament, a shot ahead of Miguel Ăngel MartĂn, two up on Scott Parel and three ahead of Stephen Ames.
“Around the front nine today, I was so-so. I slipped. My right foot slipped a couple of times,” Clarke said. “But apart from that, I played really nicely. I’m trying to hit a lot of fairways and give myself decent looks. All the way around the back nine, I kept hitting nice shots. And could have been a few better. But, you know, it’s the way it is.”
Clarke, who grew up playing links-style courses, felt right at home on the James Braid-designed masterpiece that opened in 1919.
“There’s a few flags that were out there today as well that you just cannot go after. You’ve got to hit away from those as well. So they’re a little bit linksy as well,” he said. “With the fairways being as good as they are, as tight as they are, you can really nip one. I got a little bit too much spin on the second shot into 17. But if you’re striking the ball, you can still spin it quite a bit.
“So it gives you opportunity. If you keep it in the fairway around here, you can score. But if you start missing the fairways, it’s going to be a struggle because you’re playing for fliers and the ball is releasing as much, you never know how far or short of the green or whatever. But the fact is so far I’ve done a decent job to get them on the fairways.”
Clarke is trying to add a Senior Open to his single major, the 2011 Open Championship, when he edged Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson at Royal St George’s Golf Club. He also hasn’t won on the PGA Tour Champions since last September’s Sanford International.
Although inclement weather is in the forecast for this weekend, Clarke said he feels comfortable in the soupy stuff.
“I grew up in it. It should be all right,” he said on Thursday. “But you know, I think Gleneagles does such a wonderful job with the golf course getting it ready, it would be a shame to get that much rain but a little bit of rain and wind doesn’t hurt anybody. You have to control the flight of your golf ball, especially around here on some of those tighter tee shots.
“You’ve got to shape it a little bit and try and control your trajectory a little bit, so hopefully we’ll be able to do that over the weekend.”
“It was very unexpected how much attention we got, but she is really cute, so it is not too surprising.”
AKRON, Ohio – Jayni and Ryan Hershberger were “looking for something to do” Sunday afternoon in Akron.
With temperatures in the mid-80s and plenty of sunshine, the couple made the short walk to Firestone Country Club with their five-month old daughter, Marlowe, to watch the final round of the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship.
They also brought a hand-written sign that read “My first golf tournament” to Firestone’s South Course.
Bridgestone Senior Players Champion Jerry Kelly saw the sign and young Marlowe after he compiled a four-day score of 11-under-par 269 and met with the family.
Kelly handed the Hershberger family his hat that he wore Sunday, posed for pictures and even held young Marlowe, who wore a shirt that read “Little Wonder.”
“I got her smiling,” Kelly said. “She is cute.”
Kelly also signed the hat and the sign, which came from the inside of a Pampers box.
When asked when was the last time he held a baby that little, Kelly said with a laugh: “Yeah, that would be 22 years ago, almost 23 years ago, yes. Nieces and nephews, things like that, but no grandkids. “Soon, I hope.”
Ryan Hershberger said the “My first golf tournament” sign idea came from his mother.
“We love the tournament that comes here every year,” Ryan Hershberger said. “We live two blocks away and decided to come over. We are looking forward to the Akron Symphony afterwards as well.”
“I grew up five minutes away and used to come to the golf tournament here all the time with my parents,” Ryan Hershberger said. “Now, we have this one so we wanted to share the tradition with her.
“… This is very memorable for sure, especially getting to meet the one who wins the whole tournament. To have that moment with our daughter is definitely something we can treasure forever.”
“It will be fun to show her things that she didn’t even know she was experiencing,” Jayni Hershberger said. “When she gets older, it will be fun to show her ‘Yeah, you met that guy.'”
Marlowe Hershberger smiled as her parents spoke and fiddled around with her new toy, a signed Jerry Kelly hat.
“It was very unexpected how much attention we got, but she is really cute, so it is not too surprising,” Jayni Hershberger said with a laugh.
Stricker led wire-to-wire in winning the 2021 tournament and endured a life-threatening illness in the months that followed.
Who will win the final Bridgestone Senior Players Championship? It’s up for grabs, but players appear to be enjoying themselves at the fourth and penultimate senior major of the season.
Alker has four PGA Tour Champions victories, including the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship in 2022.
New Zealander Steven Alker is enjoying playing golf at Firestone Country Club for the first time.
Alker spoke Friday about the first time he visited Akron and walked the famed South Course â as a spectator in the late 1990s.
“Funny enough, a buddy of mine, Phil Tataurangi, who used to play the [PGA] Tour, I think he played here a couple times in the World event,” Alker said Friday after posting a 4-under 66 in the second round of the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship.
“So, followed him around a couple days and I knew the layout and I’ve seen the golf course, but in terms of playing it, no. I’m loving it. You’ve just got to golf your ball.”
Alker was playing the Canadian Tour at the time and said he drove down to Akron and spent a couple of days walking the grounds of Firestone.
Alker, 50, left Firestone on Friday in a tie for first with Tim Petrovic, Alex Cejka and Joe Durant at 6-under through the first two days of the Bridgestone Senior Players.
“It’s nice to have a bogey-free round at Firestone,” Alker said. “It’s that type of golf course, you’ve just got to keep going. But kind of everything, drove it in the fairway for the most part and hit a lot of greens except for the last few. I scrambled nicely the last couple holes. Overall, just a solid day. Kind of kept my nose clean and haven’t done too much wrong. A few more putts would be nice, but yeah, at Firestone, just fairways and greens around here.”
Alker has won four PGA Tour Champions victories â the TimberTech Championship during the 2020-21 season, and the Rapiscan Systems Classic, the Insperity Invitational the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship in 2022.
He also has seven international wins â the Fiji Open in 1995, the Tahiti Open and the Queensland Open (Australia) in 1996, the South Australian Open (Australia) in 1997 and the McDonald’s PEI Challenge (Canada), the Bayer Championship (Canada) and the PEI Challenge (Canada) in 2000.
Alker is also enjoying playing in a field of Hall of Fame golfers on the Champions Tour.
“Just getting comfortable in this company, I think that’s the biggest thing,” Alker said. “Just like learning to play my game. It’s been hard to watch these guys but just stay in my skin and play my game. And then learning the courses, these are all new. I like playing new courses, it kind of gets me up and going. So just everything, to travel to different places, just the whole package. It’s been fun.
“… I hadn’t played with a lot of these guys when I was on Tour or Europe or anything. So [Steve] Stricker, Vijay [Singh], Ernie [Els] and all those guys, I hadn’t played with them before. Just getting comfortable playing with them. And they’re super guys. Maybe get a little bit older and soften up, loosen up a little bit, I don’t know, but they’re very approachable and it’s a lot of fun.”
Michael Beaven can be reached at mbeaven@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow Beaven on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MBeavenABJ.
Rocco Mediate listens to wife’s advice to succeed in Bridgestone Senior Players Championship at Firestone Country Club.
Rocco Mediate is in search of the perfect swing on each shot.
Every golfer is.
Mediate has had his share through the years on the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour, but in recent years he has experienced what he calls “physical failures in the golf swing.”
Recent conversations with his wife have helped Mediate, 59, overcome a few shortcomings and increase his confidence.
“I’m getting a little better,” Mediate said Thursday after carding a 2-under-par 68 in the first round of the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship on the South Course at Firestone Country Club.
“I had some issues, I call them physical failures in the golf swing. I had a few things I messed with. But, you know, actually Jess, my wife’s kind of like, you know, you’ve been doing this for now 37 years now on tour, maybe you want to trust your muscle memory? Do you always have to keep screwing around with stuff?
Rocco Mediate reads the green on the 5th hole during the first round of the Bridgestone Senior Players Tournament at Firestone Country Club on Thursday. (Jeff Lange/Akron Beacon Journal)
“And it’s true, coming from someone who doesn’t play, she doesn’t play, she just watches. She’s like just go play. And I think that’s what I’m trying to do more. My attitude was like this is terrible, how am I going to get around with this? I think all of us go through it and it’s not really that bad. It’s just a matter of trusting â I call it trusting your shape. My shape does this. If I can’t trust it, no matter what’s over there, I’ve got issues. I’ve been trusting it more.”
Mediate finished Thursday’s first round four shots behind first-round leader Alex Cejka, who shot a 6-under-par 64 with six birdies.
Cejka started on No. 10 and made a birdie on Nos. 10, 12, 15 and 16 on the back nine. He then dropped in birdie putts on Nos. 7 and 9 on the front nine.Â
David Toms posted a 66 to sit in second place, and Jerry Kelly and Ernie Els are tied for third at 3-under-par.
“I had a reasonable Open, the week before I played OK in Madison and this was a really clean â just a couple loose ones, but we’re human, unfortunately,” Mediate said. “I don’t know where I got the idea that we never miss because I must have been thinking â I must have had a dream that I was someone else because we always miss. It’s a matter of fixing your â you know, making up for that short game. Jerry Kelly, he never misses, he never misses.”
Rocco Mediate plays out of the bunker on the 6th hole during first round of the Bridgestone Senior Players Tournament at Firestone Country Club on Thursday. (Jeff Lange/Akron Beacon Journal)
Mediate said it is important to not overthink and overanalyze.
“Pete Bender’s one of the best of all time [caddies],” Mediate said. “He goes, ‘The only time you ever play crappy is when you think too much. No kidding.’ And he’s right, he’s right. It’s like it cuts through the crap. It’s like you’re doing this because you’re doing that. So my swing key always used to be gather and go, gather and go and that’s all I thought about today. Most of them came off where I was looking.
“You know, I didn’t think of any physical thing, just get in behind it and go, that’s it. So it worked most of the day. Hit a few bad ones. But Mr. Short Game, that’s why we do all that crap that makes up for it. It’s just Golf 101, I guess. But around here, it’s a good one. It’s just relentless. We were talking about it, it just doesn’t stop. There’s no like walk in the park if you miss a shot. It’s a nightmare if you miss in certain spots, but it is a great place. It’s cool that we’re here.”
Mediate finished tied for seventh last year at Firestone with a 4-over 284 that earned him $96,000.
“I’ve loved this course since I [first] played it,” Mediate said. “I think my first NEC was ’91 and I had a couple of 1-under rounds maybe and it was just so hard, and it still is.
“This year the rough’s not up like it was and I hit it in most of the fairways. Missed a couple, which [was] much easier to play from the short stuff. Always tell people, you know what, fairway mowers are really, really expensive and make the fairways perfect. Rough mowers are cheap, they don’t need good mowers to mow the rough. This is another one of those courses where it actually rewards you for hitting in the fairway. I think most of us love that, I know I do.
“And if you miss, too bad, deal with it. I caught a horrible two lies on 16, but it’s rough. You know, I’m like, God, I wish this was a foot more to the right. I had a hard pick. It was hard. That’s the game. We have to deal with it. I love courses like this. And like I said, I wish we played twice a month like this. Not every day because then we would all go completely bonkers, but I love the hard â and I’ve always loved Firestone, it’s hard not to like it.”
Michael Beaven can be reached at mbeaven@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow Beaven on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MBeavenABJ.
Douglass won three times on the PGA Tour and 11 times on the senior circuit.
Dale Douglass, a former PGA Tour winner and U.S. Senior Open champion, died in Scottsdale, Ariz., after a long illness on July 6, according to the University of Colorado Sports Information Department; he was 86.
Douglass won three times on the PGA Tour (with three playoff losses), represented the U.S. at the 1969 Ryder Cup and was one of the early players to have great success on the Senior Tour (since renamed the PGA Tour Champions). He won 11 times on that circuit, including one major, as he defeated Gary Player by one stroke in the 1986 U.S. Senior Open in Columbus, Ohio.
Born Dale Dwight Douglass on March 5, 1936 in Wewoka, Okla., he grew up in Fort Morgan, Colo., where he graduated high school before enrolling at Colorado in the fall of 1955. Douglass was a three-time, first-team all-conference performer, in the Big Seven in 1956 and the Big Eight in 1958 and 1959. Â He was inducted into the schoolâs Athletic Hall of Fame in 2010, the second golfer to do so after Hale Irwin.
âDale was so very proud of being from Fort Morgan and the University of Colorado,â Irwin said. âHe wore the school colors proudly…Dale was like my big brother, and I was like his bratty little brother. We throw the word mentor around a lot, but in Daleâs case, I can elevate the word mentor to friend. Iâll miss him.â
Douglass became the first University of Colorado golfer to play on the PGA Tour, and went on to become just the fifth player in history to play in 500 tournaments when he reached the mark in 2003. He earned more than $9 million as a professional after turning pro in 1960 and earning his PGA Tour card in 1963.
“I was 27 years,” Douglass told Golfweek in 2010. “I was an assistant pro in Wyoming. I was a Monday qualifier. It was kind of fun, and yet we hated it. You wouldnât do anything else. If you wanted to play golf, thatâs what you did. Monday qualifying was a difficult way to do things. It allowed you to make the team every week rather than if you missed at the Q-school youâre out for the year.”
Irwin was in Charlotte at the 1969 Kemper Open and watched Douglass wrap up a four-stroke win over Charles Coody, his second Tour win at the time. In 1974, when Irwin won his first of three U.S. Opens at Winged Foot (Mamaroneck, N.Y.), both Irwin, Douglass (who tied for 18th) and their wives (Sally and Joyce, respectively) celebrated that evening with room service, one of countless dinners the couples had together.
Douglass joined the Senior Tour in 1986, where he would become a fixture for more than 20 years, playing in exactly 600 Senior/Champions Tour events through 2011, with 26 runner-up finishes and 151 top-10 finishes to go with his 11 victories.
“I had lost my game in the middle 1970s,” Douglass told Golfweek. “Playing the Senior Tour seemed like I had gone to heaven.”
He was preceded in death by his wife, Joyce. Services are pending but will be held in Colorado Springs.
“Golf has lost a real gentleman and a man who really championed golf throughout the country,” Irwin said. “He did so much for a lot of people, particularly in Colorado. There was never a bad word you heard from anyone about Dale Douglass.â
Cejka has finished inside the top 15 in three of his last four starts on the PGA Tour Champions.
As most eyes are across the pond for the Genesis Scottish Open on the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, the senior circuit is in Akron, Ohio, for the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship, their fourth major of the season.
Alex Cejka got off to a hot start Thursday birdieing four of his first seven holes of the day before rattling off eights pars in a row. He then got back on the birdie train, adding two more circles to the card over his last three holes to sign for a bogey-free, 6-under 64.
Cejka has finished inside the top 15 in three of his last four starts on the PGA Tour Champions. He was two wins on the senior tour, both majors.
Two behind the German is David Toms, who made six birdies and two bogeys on his way to a 4-under 66. Toms finished T-11 at last month’s U.S. Senior Open Championship.
Jerry Kelly and Ernie Els are tied for third at 3 under, while eight players, including Rocco Mediate and Miguel Angel Jimenez, are tied for fifth at 2 under.
Last year’s champion, Steve Stricker, played his first 18 holes at even par and is tied for 19th, six shots back of the lead.
Justin Leonard, making his PGA Tour Champions debut, carded a 3-over 73.
The Ohio Department of Transportation says: “Driving on the interstate should be limited to vehicles.”
When Matt Considine grew up in Akron, Ohio, he spent time as a student staring out of a third-story window while attending Archbishop Hoban High School thinking about his view of a perfect golf shot.
His vision was hitting a ball from the school across Interstate 76 onto the school’s football field.
Considine’s dream became a reality this week.
On Tuesday, Considine posted a video of a barefooted John Daly, in town this week for the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship, hitting the shot over Interstate 76, onto the football field.
Considine now lives in Chicago and is the founder of The NewClub Golf society.
John Daly hitting drivers over a highway and onto a high school football field in Akron, OH pic.twitter.com/jfKbWsUGB5
“He’s got way too much club, no more than a 9 iron to the first goal post and 3 iron to the second,” Considine tweeted. “All downhill with a crosswind that trends to help a draw.”
Daly is paired with Jesper Parnevik and Shane Bertsch for the first two days at Bridgestone.
Meanwhile, Ohio Department of Transportation spokesman Matt Bruning cautioned others about trying to copy Daly’s shot.
“Driving on the interstate should be limited to vehicles,” Bruning said. “Unfortunately thereâs no mulligan if a ball goes astray and hits a moving vehicle at full speed.”
