Tag: 2024 Cologuard Classic

Photos: 2024 Cologuard Classic by Exact Sciences on PGA Tour Champions

La Paloma has three courses and parts of all three were combined to make a composite layout.

TUCSON, Ariz. — The PGA Tour Champions returned to Southern Arizona for the Cologuard Classic but at a new venue.

La Paloma Country Club, a Jack Nicklaus design that opened in 1984, hosted the senior circuit for the first time in 2024 after nine years at Tucson National. Cologuard came on as title sponsor in 2018.

La Paloma has three 9-hole golf courses and parts of all three were combined to make a composite layout for the tournament, which played at 6,856 yards and had a par of 71.

It’s the first year of a three-year deal for the venue, which is also famous for being used for some of the scenes in the hit golf movie Tin Cup.

The total purse is $2,200,000 with the winner earning $330,000.

Steve Stricker says some LIV golfers want to come back to PGA Tour; are player transfers an option?

The golf conversation continues to be dominated by the PGA Tour-LIV Golf rift.

TUCSON, Ariz. — While player movement at the top level of men’s professional golf usually involves LIV recruiting yet another PGA Tour player, Steve Stricker said he knows that some LIV golfers want to return to the PGA Tour.

“I know that for a fact,” he said Thursday after his pro-am round ahead of the 2024 Cologuard Classic at La Paloma Country Club. “And so it’s kind of a wait and see game.”

With much of the golf conversation dominated by the rift, there doesn’t see to be much oxygen left to talk about the other tours but players on the PGA Tour Champions are paying attention to the goings-on in the world of professional golf.

“Of course I’m very interested in what happens,” said Stewart Cink, who turned 50 last year but still plays on both PGA Tour circuits. “I hope that we can get back together as like one sport in golf, but it’s a complex situation.”

With the PGA Tour holding a big-money signature event at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and LIV Golf playing for a fourth time in 2024 in Hong Kong, the Champions circuit is about to stage the first of three straight West Coast events.

“Ultimately, I hope someday we all can play nice together again and have the best players in the world playing and competing against one another,” said Stricker. “I think that day will come and I think there will be some circumstances, you know, where those guys that left are going to have to do something, I don’t know, a penalty of some sort, I don’t know what that means. I hope some day it all comes back together and the guys are playing all together again.”

Whether the rival tours coexist, merge or simply allow some crossover, many feel that there should be no easy path back to the PGA Tour for those who left.

“I wouldn’t let the LIV guys come right back, I don’t think. I think there needs to be some way of, you know, just another way to say thanks for the guys that didn’t leave and just kind of abandon our standards and rules,” Cink said. “I think there needs to be some form of like delayed, I don’t know if it’s delaying some of their performance bonuses or if it’s some kind of a suspension that maintains itself, I don’t know exactly, but something.”

Big names on the PGA Tour leaving for LIV Golf is having a ripple effect on the Champions tour.

“It’s unfortunate, because when [Phil] Mickelson came out, it was a jolt for our tour and it was great,” David Toms, the defending champion of the Cologuard Classic, said during a media day Monday at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California, for the upcoming Galleri Classic.

Mickelson won his first two – and four of his first six – starts on the PGA Tour Champions in 2021 but seven months after rolling in a birdie putt on the 18th hole at Phoenix Country Club to end that season, he was off to London for the first-ever LIV Golf event.

“And so then all of the sudden he’s not a part of us anymore. So that’s unfortunate,” Toms said.

The drain of veteran golfers with name recognition means the Champions circuit also lost out on Lee Westwood, who turned 50 in April of 2023 and it won’t be able to welcome Ian Poulter, who turned 48 in January 2024, nor Henrik Stenson, who turns 48 this April, in the coming years. The PGA Tour losing a bit of name recognition eventually means a weakened Champions tour.

As long as the PGA Tour and LIV exist, perhaps there’s some middle ground that can be found.

“I’m not against, you know, some sort of a transfer back and forth. I played (Mexico Open) there on the PGA Tour a couple weeks ago, and I’m sure they would have loved to have Abraham Ancer play. So I’m not against having a small amount of invites, and that cuts both ways,” said Padraig Harrington, who compared the situation to the rivalry the PGA Tour used to have with the European Tour. “When the European Tour is in Spain this year, we would love to have Jon Rahm play the Spanish Open. I’m not against a small amount of transfer of players playing events and maybe a couple of invites going each direction. Maybe an outside team playing every week in LIV, why not.

“But again, not too sure how they’re going to come together as one tour, so why not have an agreeable two tours where there’s a bit of rivalry.”

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Padraig Harrington insists his instructional videos can get ‘every golfer in the whole wide world to a single figure handicap’

“It’s hard to be a scratch golfer, but to get to 9, it’s not that hard.”

TUCSON, Ariz. — For golf nerds, Padraig Harrington is a must follow on social media.

If you watch his instructional videos enough, you might even get really good at the game.

“I should be able to get every golfer in the whole wide world to a single figure handicap. I think that’s a very reasonable goal,” Harrington said after his pro-am round at La Paloma Country Club, host venue for this week’s Cologuard Classic on the PGA Tour Champions.

“I’ve always liked coaching,” he said, his words coming from a place of truly trying to help the “weekend warriors” get better as this difficult game. Harrington started making videos during the COVID shutdown. He was actually kept from traveling home to Ireland for several months during 2020, so he just kept playing golf but he also started pointing the cellphone camera towards himself to create content that just might help someone out there learn the game.

Cologuard: Steve Stricker says ‘it’s fun thinking about’ pairing up with Tiger Woods for team event in New Orleans

“I tried to post a video every day, then obviously we expanded to now doing it on YouTube on Paddy’s Golf Tips. It’s enjoyable. It’s a great way to get access to the public directly.”

Chris DiMarco, a five-year veteran of the Champions circuit, says it’s “fun watching them and it’s not just something he’s doing to be funny.”

But is it realistic to turn Joe Sixpack, who goes through two sleeves of balls each round, into a single-digit handicapper?

“I think that’s a very reasonable goal,” he insists. “It’s hard to be a scratch golfer, but to get to 9, it’s not that hard.

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“When I say it’s not that hard, there’s some simple things you can do to get there and that’s what my videos are mainly focused on. I’m really just trying to help the weekend warrior get to a level where if you’re a single figure golfer, you can walk into any clubhouse with your chest expanded. It’s a level of achievement.”

Shedding bad habits is one thing. So is ignoring the so-called tips that everyone has heard.

“When it comes to golf, people who come to golf, especially athletes who come to golf, they seem to have some crazy ideas about keeping your head still or keeping your head down or swinging slowly. God, they’re like 100 percent, I think, it won’t be 100 percent, but 99 percent of golfers would be better off doing the exact opposite of what they think would be better. Just swing away, that’s probably the best advice you could give. You’ll just get used to it and time it after that rather than to try and get good too quick, too early.

“We could talk about this all day,” he said.

His playing competitors sometimes notice, too. Harrington says he was stopped by a Champions tour colleague Thursday morning about a recent video.

“I was literally walking out the door, the pro said it was really helping him,” he said before continuing his thoughts in instructor mode. “I just did a recent one with stepping in your swing, try and get the proper sequence in at the movements. Remember, I said movements. You don’t stay still when you’re swinging a golf club, you’ve got to move.

“I’m not trying to make these lessons for my fellow pros,” he added. “I’m trying to make them, as I said, for beginners and people who are kind of stuck in the game, who aren’t improving and trying to get them across that threshold of, you know, being able to break 80, be a single-figure golfer.”

Steve Stricker says ‘it’s fun thinking about’ pairing up with Tiger Woods for team event in New Orleans

So, what if Stricker formally asked Tiger, might he accept?

TUCSON, Ariz. — Tiger Woods has already made it known he’s facing a future of playing a limited schedule of the majors, the Genesis and probably the signature events when he can.

But what about the lone team event on the PGA Tour, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, alongside good buddy Steve Stricker?

Stricker floated the idea on a recent Golf Digest podcast, saying he’s a “huge Tiger fan, and I want to see him playing as much as he can.”

He then floated out an amazing prospect.

“I thought about asking him to see if he wanted to play in New Orleans at the team event,” Stricker said.

Since then, a few days have passed for Stricker to marinate on the idea. In Tucson this week for the PGA Tour Champions Cologuard Classic, he was asked to confirm whether he in fact did ask Tiger to play.

“I haven’t, no,” he said after his pro-am round at La Paloma Country Club.

Was the idea of it just something he’d thought about, not actually considered?

“We had some great times being teammates on some of those [Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup] teams over the years. I guess I blurted it out loud when I was on a podcast with somebody, I said wouldn’t it be cool to get the band together one more time, for him and I to play again,” he said, adding “I don’t think that will happen, he’s got other issues than playing with me, but it would be fun, and it’s fun thinking about it.”

Stricker is coming off a PGA Tour Champions season in which he won six times, including three majors. One of those, the Kaulig Companies Championship (formally the Senior Players), guaranteed him a spot in next week’s Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.

So, what if Stricker formally asked Tiger, might he accept?

“You know, I’ll see him next week at the Players, hopefully he’ll be there and I’ll be there, hopefully play a practice round with him. Yeah, I’ll ask him,” he said.