Tag: 2020 Safeway Open

Watch: Graham DeLaet nearly chips in twice using one hand

Graham DeLaet, who has struggled with the chip yips, is finding success chipping with just his right hand.

NAPA, Calif. – Graham DeLaet has played just five PGA Tour events in the past three years due to a back injury that required surgery. During his layoff, DeLaet became both a grill master cooking with his Green Egg and quite proficient at chipping with just his right hand — as he showed off during the first round of the Safeway Open.

“I’m just trying to get it as close to the holes as I can,” DeLaet said of his unique chipping style. “I had four or five of them today that were all pretty good results. I’d rather be using two hands but I’ve gotten pretty good with one and that’s what I’m doing now.”

DeLaet suffered from the chip yips in 2016, and withdrew from the Memorial and took a break from golf due to “extreme anxiety.”

“It’s been pretty well documented that I was having some issues but when I use one hand I don’t get those thoughts and the anxiety,” DeLaet said. “I’ve put in time with practicing and feel pretty comfortable and calm doing it. I’d like to get back to two hands but I almost chipped in twice.”

DeLaet played in the Sony Open in Hawaii in January, but hurt his back again at the Farmers Insurance Open and withdrew. He shot 2-over 74 on Thursday at Silverado Resort and Spa’s North Course.

“It held up pretty good today,” he said. “It’s never going to be 100 percent. At some point, I had to give it a go. I knew it was going to take a little while to get my feet wet. I was a little nervous the first few holes.”

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Russell Knox, after missing FedEx Cup Playoffs by 2 strokes, comes out of the gate with 63 at Safeway Open

With a new coach and renewed purpose, Russell Knox came out of the gate hot with a 9-under 63.

NAPA, Calif. – Russell Knox looked up from his cell phone and told his caddie, “Good gracious, you find out how many friends you have when you have a good day.”

To which Bradley Whittle, never breaking stride, retorted, “Better than having them cheer you up for a bad one.”

Well, there was plenty of reason for friends of Knox to text words of congratulations after shooting 9-under 63 at Silverado Resort & Spa’s North Course to grab the early first round lead at the Safeway Open.

Knox, 35, missed the FedEx Cup Playoffs by a matter of two strokes, finishing No. 127 in the regular-season points standings after struggling following the resumption of play in June. (He missed 10 straight cuts between AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February and the 3M Open in July.)

“I mean, I deserved to not make it,” he said.

Safeway Open: Leaderboard | Tee times, TV

But Knox didn’t sit at home and stew. Instead, he made a significant change, hiring a new coach, Mark McCann, and attempting to dig it out of the dirt.

“I don’t see myself as a golfer who should be missing the Playoffs, but I just had a weird year, weird couple years, got into a little funk. It’s hard, you’ve got to fight out of it,” he said. “I’ve worked as hard as I ever have the last two weeks before this event. So, it’s really nice to see something good happen immediately. I definitely feel like my game is heading in the right direction.”

Knox’s bogey-free round included playing 4 under on a three-hole stretch starting at No. 4, an eagle at the par-5, fifth hole. The Scot drilled 3-hybrid from 229 yards to 14 feet and rolled in the putt. Knox turned in 31 and tacked on four more birdies on the inward nine, including a 31-foot birdie putt at 12 and birdies at two of the last three holes.

 

“When you have a good round like this, putts like that go in,” Knox said of the lengthy putt at 12.

Knox isn’t attempting to chase distance – he’s been down that road, he said – but rather get back to what he does best.

“I got away from kind of my DNA, I guess, of what’s made me be able to play on the PGA Tour. I’ve just tried to tighten it up and get back to hitting it straight, hitting on the fairways and then allowing my iron game to take over, which has fortunately always been kind of there for me. Then if I make a few putts, then I can have a good round,” he said. “I can’t worry about the big boys sending it. For me, I’ve just got to get it in play and take it from there.”

Brendan Steele is simply getting back to one of his favorite stomping grounds. The two-time Safeway Open winner (2016, 2017) posted a bogey-free 7-under 65.

“It kind of reminded me of my first round, I shot 63 maybe in 2016 in the opening round and it was very stress free, felt very comfortable, hit a lot of good shots,” he said.

So, what’s his secret to success at Silverado?

“People have been asking me that for years,” he said. “I really have a good sense of where you can be aggressive out here, where you need to be conservative, where you can miss it to different pins. I just kind of understood it right away, which is nice. And being from California, I’m comfortable on the greens.”

Steele trails Knox, who tabbed himself a notoriously slow starter at tournaments and couldn’t remember if he’d ever held a first round lead in his nine years on Tour. It turns out he was co-leader of the 2013 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

“I’ve struggled first rounds for so long I feel like, so one of my main goals this season was to get off to a better start,” he said. “I didn’t quite expect this, but nice to shoot a good score.”

And nice to get congratulatory texts from all your friends, too.

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The sky at the Safeway Open was a sight to see

A combination of a heavy marine layer and smoke and ash turned the sky into something out of the movie Apocalypse Now.

NAPA, Calif. – Based on the weather forecast, you might not want to “bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun.”

PGA Tour pros woke up to one of the strangest skies in recent memory, a heavy marine-layer mixed with smoke and ash that was straight out of “Apocalypse Now.” The bright lights still were shining at the driving range at 10 a.m., as the sky turned brilliant shades of yellow and orange.

“Just strange. I mean, waking up and it was like the sun just wouldn’t come up today it felt like. It was dark for a long time,” Jim Furyk said. “When there was a touch of light, the sky’s just been a really awkward yellowish-grayish color. There was about a 20-minute window this morning where it was quite red, where you couldn’t really grab a picture of it on your phone, but I saw one of the photographers show me and a couple players the camera work that he got out of it and it was stunning actually. The picture was quite impressive. But it’s been — it just hasn’t felt real, that’s the best — a little bit like you’re on a movie set, to be honest with you.”

It felt like the movie set for a re-make of “Mars Attacks.” The iPhone forecast called the weather here “smoke,” and ash floated in the air and left a thin film in the Silverado Resort swimming pool. The air smelled like a campfire, and the temperature dropped more than 30 degrees from triple digits to barely cracking 70 degrees.

Wildfires are raging throughout Northern California in parts of Fresno and Big Sur as well as parts of Oregon and Washington. It was just a few weeks ago that destructive blazes near populated areas of wine country threatened the viability of hosting the tournament.

Sergio Garcia compared the sky to playing in the Australian Open in December, when bushfires near Sydney caused havoc and complaints of burning eyes and coughing fits.

“It’s very similar to that. I guess it was a little bit dark throughout the day today, but it’s kind of like a combination of clouds and smoke and, you know, a little bit of ash and stuff,” Garcia said. “But, you know, they’re saying that the winds are supposed to kind of change, start from the south and it should blow all of these away and then it will be fine. But today was definitely a little bit cooler than it’s been and a little bit darker throughout the practice round.”

Kevin Chappell, who hails from Fresno, had similar fires on his mind, although they’re burning southeast of Napa. He pledged to pony up $250 for every birdie and $500 for any eagle made this week to the Red Cross Creek Fire fund, which he announced via social media.

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Struggling Sergio Garcia comes to Safeway Open in search of ‘good mojo’

Sergio Garcia hasn’t won since the 2017 Masters and missed the FedEx Cup Playoffs. But this is a new week and a new season for the Spaniard.

NAPA, Calif. – Sergio Garcia took his wife, Angela, to Theorem Vineyards in nearby Calistoga on Tuesday and planned to hit up a couple more wineries ahead of the opening round of the Safeway Open on Thursday. It’s what you do here, but make no mistake about it: this is a business trip for the 40-year-old Spaniard who missed the FedEx Cup Playoffs for just the second time in his career.

Sure, Garcia was motivated to make his first appearance at Silverado Resort and Spa, the kickoff event of the PGA Tour’s 2020-21 season, but he also was anxious to continue the quest to rediscover his game, which has been missing in action practically since the crowning moment of his career, when he won the Masters in 2017. It’s hard to fathom but Garcia has recorded just one top-10 finish in his last 18 Tour starts and is winless on Tour since donning the Green Jacket.

He’s here, in part, because his season ended prematurely after the Wyndham Championship, leaving Garcia three weeks to spend with daughter, Azalea, and son, Enzo, play some tennis and decompress. But now he’s recommitted to bringing his best to a season unlike any other, with six majors, a Ryder Cup, and 50 Tour events in all. He would like to jump-start his season this week.

“It definitely would be nice to get some good mojo,” he said during his pre-tournament press conference. “I feel like my game, it feels pretty good. It’s just a matter of kind of getting things going in the right direction, getting the ball rolling nicely and kind of riding that good wave.”

Garcia, who has tumbled to No. 44 in the Official World Golf Ranking as well as the Golfweek/Sagarin Rankings, is way too talented to struggle for too long. To what does he blame his on-course funk?

“Well, it’s quite simple,” he said. “The last couple of years some of my decisions when it comes down to equipment and stuff like that didn’t help me. Obviously took some of my confidence away. This year has been trying to find myself back a little bit, trying to find my feelings, my good feelings that I had in the past. I feel like I’m starting to get there, I feel like I’ve been playing much better, I feel like I’ve been hitting the ball much better. I just need to tweak a couple little things here and there and just get some good confidence going, some good things happening and then I feel like I can start doing some beautiful things again, which I’ve done pretty much my whole career.”

Nicholas Gross, participant in the boys 10-11, shakes hands with Sergio Garcia in 2018. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

Garcia has experienced the occasional lapse in performance before and emerged the better player for it. As for his very un-Garcia-like performance of late, 50-year-old Tour sage Jim Furyk, one of the Tour’s steadiest players of the last two decades, called it “surprising,” but said it happens to even the best of them.

“I think that everyone goes through periods — even think about like Jack Nicklaus, pretty much the greatest player of all time, went through some periods of his career where he struggled. When I say periods, I’m not talking like a month or two. He had a year where he struggled and maybe, you know, put his nose to the grindstone, went back to visit his teacher, started throwing some extra effort in. Eventually, when you do that, you keep working at it and you keep grinding, things come around,” Furyk said. “Sometimes the truth hurts. You want to overlook maybe the weaknesses, what’s ailing you, but really going to work on getting back to basics, going to work on the parts of your game that are struggling. Sometimes just being real honest with yourself, why am I not playing as well? I know everyone goes through that and I know that he’ll come out of it.”

A good week at the Safeway Open could be just what Garcia needs to turn the corner and be ready for next week’s U.S. Open at Winged Foot, and so he is here for more than just the red wine and some world-class meals with his wife. Garcia still has his eye on the biggest prizes in golf.

“I didn’t want to go into the U.S. Open without playing for four weeks,” he said. “So, at least get a little bit of competition energy going, competition like fluids coming into your body, you know … hopefully some good feelings, playing well and get some good confidence going into Winged Foot.”

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