Tag: Billy Andrade

The longest-running player-caddie partnership in golf is wrapping up its 27th straight season (and isn’t done yet)

It’s a longer-running player-caddie partnership than Phil Mickelson and Jim “Bones” Mackay or Jim Furyk and Mike “Fluff” Cowan.

LOS CABOS, MEXICO – The phone rang last Wednesday with the New York Yankees in free-fall in the fifth inning of game 5 of the World Series and Mark “Ziggy” Zyons answered it because that’s what you do when the boss calls.

Billy Andrade explained he had been extended a sponsor exemption into the World Wide Technology Championship from the title sponsor, who had signed him as its first player ambassador nine years ago.

“I kind of need a wingman,” Andrade said. “What do you say?”

After getting the green light from his wife, Ziggy said he was ready for one more week of lugging the bag for his meal ticket of the last 27 years.

“I had just gone fishing for a couple of days and was getting into vacation mode,” Ziggy said, but then again there are worse ways to spend a week than playing a PGA Tour event at the southernmost tip of the Baja California Peninsula. For Andrade, who turned 60 in January, it marks his 886th career start across the three major tours and first start in the big leagues, where he won four times, since he played in the 2014 Canadian Open at Royal Montreal at age 50.

Nearly all of them have been in the company of Ziggy, who is two months younger than his boss, since the 1997 Phoenix Open. That’s a longer-running player-caddie partnership than Phil Mickelson and Jim “Bones” Mackay or Jim Furyk and Mike “Fluff” Cowan.

“It has to be the longest,” said Ziggy, who got dropped off at the caddie yard at Kirkbrae Country Club in Rhode Island as a kid and seemingly never left. He developed into a pretty good player in his own right, winning the Rhode Island State Amateur in 1985 and pulled off the equivalent of the U.S. over Russia at the 1980 Olympics in hockey when he knocked off Andrade, the No. 1 junior in the country, in 19 holes in the semifinals of the Rhode Island Junior in 1981.

Ziggy caddied for club pro Eddie Kirby while he was still in college at the 1984 and 1987 U.S. Opens and when Kirby earned status on the 1990 Ben Hogan Tour, Ziggy took off on an adventure that still is going strong. He helped Jim McGovern win his lone title at the 1993 Houston Open, but by 1996 McGovern had decided to use his brother and Ziggy had found temporary work for Tim Herron at the Lincoln-Mercury silly-season event at Kapalua on Maui and they got paired with Andrade in the final round.

Billy Andrade chats with his caddie on the seventh hole during the second round of the Sanford International 2024 at Minnehaha Country Club on September 14, 2024 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. (Photo by Alex Goodlett/Getty Images)

As the story goes, Andrade squinted into the sun after hitting his tee shot on the first hole and wondered where it went. His caddie didn’t know, but Zyons offered up, “Just down the left side, nice little draw.”

Andrade, who was wrapping up his sixth season with veteran caddie Jeff “Boo” Burrell, took note of the way Herron and Ziggy communicated. He decided it was time to make a change and fired Burrell a few weeks later at the end of the season.

“So I called Ziggy up and said, ‘Hey, I’m coming up for Christmas to Rhode Island, let’s meet for lunch.’ So he came up to Bristol. We went and had lunch. Just said, ‘Hey, I’m looking for a caddie, and I know that you and Jimmy split up.’ ”

Ziggy signed on, and he met Andrade at TPC Scottsdale for the Phoenix Open in 1997 and has been by his side ever since. That first season together, Andrade enjoyed his best West Coast swing with a joint seventh at Pebble Beach and a joint 11th at San Diego, and ended up missing out on the top 30 and berth in the Tour Championship by the grand total of $4.95.

“I really felt a lot of pressure on me, that I had a prove to him that I was a good player, because I didn’t want him to go back to Rhode Island and bad mouth me,” Andrade said.

Asked for the secret of their longevity, Ziggy didn’t take long to answer. “I was never scared of getting fired,” he said. “That’s why it works.”

Andrade echoes that sentiment and adds, “too many caddies are too worried about getting fired when they should be worried about doing their job right.”

Like any great marriage, Andrade and Ziggy have had a few disagreements along the way, but it is a relationship built on trust and mutual respect.

“Sometimes I can be a jerk and he’ll tell me I’m being a jerk and to snap out of it,” Andrade said. “It’s a high-pressure job, you’re trying to hit golf shots and get the ball in the hole. He always speaks his mind, which is why I’m paying this guy and the reason he’s out there in the first place.”

That and he’s a pretty good wing man to have if you’re going to tee it up on the PGA Tour for the first time in 11 years.

Can Brett Quigley do Rhode Island proud? He’ll try at the 2024 U.S. Senior Open (in Newport)

Quigley will have an entire state behind him as he tries to make history.

NEWPORT, R.I. – While players in this week’s U.S. Senior Open can go just about anywhere on the property, the third-floor locker room at Newport Country Club is reserved for a select few who have USGA titles to their name.

Brett Quigley, winning of the 1987 U.S. Junior Amateur, is one of the select few who enjoy the privilege.

“It’s really cool to be up there in that little area,” Quigley said. “So yes, I would like to have another picture of the Senior Open trophy next to my name.”

Plenty of fans will traverse the property following and cheering their favorite players on, but Quigley – and fellow Rhode Islander Billy Andrade – will have an entire state behind them as they try and make history.

“I’ll definitely feel that pressure of the hometown, but I also feel it’s a positive where I know there’s going to be a bunch of people pulling for me and pulling for Billy and I love that,” Quigley said. “I love seeing everybody that I haven’t seen in a long time and feeling those good vibes and people cheering me on. It’s fantastic.”

While Quigley is one of the hometown guys, this week’s tournament doesn’t provide a home-course advantage you might think.

Growing up in Barrington, Quigley nurtured his game at Rhode Island Country Club – where father Paul, an RIGA Hall of Famer, was a member. Before uncle Dana was “The Ironman” of the PGA Senior Tour, he was the head pro at Crestwood Country Club and Quigley was there helping out in the shop, pulling carts and picking the range.

Plus, Rhode Island.

“You grow up in Rhode Island and if you drove 15 minutes, that’s a long drive,” Quigley said. “I grew up in Barrington and I wouldn’t go to Providence because that’s too far to go.”

Things have changed.

2023 Constellation Furyk & Friends
Brett Quigley poses with the trophy after winning the 2023 Constellation Furyk & Friends at Timuquana Country Club in Jacksonville, Florida. (Photo: Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

Over the last three decades, Quigley’s played more than a few casual rounds at Newport Country Club. When the USGA announced Newport would host the U.S. Senior Open in 2024 after having it taken away by COVID, those casual rounds turned a little more businesslike as he started mentally preparing for the tournament.

“I’ve gotten to play probably three rounds a summer here getting ready for this tournament the last couple of years,” Quigley said. “I’ve been trying to do my homework in those rounds.

“I love playing here – it’s a great walk, it’s a fun walk and it’s a great vibe.”

Quigley’s hope is the vibes get real high as the week goes on.

Wind will be the story of the week. If the wind doesn’t blow, the course can be picked apart. Since windless days in Newport happen as often as smooth beach traffic, it’s going to be the biggest challenge the players face all week. It’s going to be different every single day and, as Quigley noted, wildly different depending on what time someone is on the course.

“We played today, it was the north wind – I think – which is a different wind than typical here,” Quigley said. “A lot of the members we’ve spoken to said right at noon it changes to a south wind almost every day.

“We were on the seventh green and we played seven into the wind and it was about 11:50. We get to the eighth tee and the wind completely changed and comes out of the south.

“It’s going to play significantly different depending on the wind direction and that will be a part of the challenge.”

This spring’s rain provided enough saturation that Newport’s fairways and rough are more green than they usually are this time of year. There are still more than a few spots that are firmed up and crispy, which will force players to change how they attack.

“When you see it in the summertime fromnow on, it’s going to be brown and you know the ball is going to be bouncing,” Quigley said. “It’s a little more, not luck, but it’s a little more bouncing and just playing golf instead of more target golf.”

Quigley is excited for the challenge.

Last year Quigley closed major season off with a bang. He went t-4 at the U.S. Senior Open and backed it up with a t-9 at the Senior Players Championship. While he hasn’t started major season off great this year – finishing T-57 at The Tradition and missing the cut at the Senior PGA Championship – he likes where his game is at.

Newport Country Club might not technically be the home of Brett Quigley, but Rhode Island is and it should give him the push he needs as he tries to get the biggest win of his professional playing career.

“It’s a home week,” Quigley said. “And it’s still my home.”

Annika Sorenstam, John Smoltz and others dish on the time they did (or didn’t) drill a fan in a golf tournament

Even the best players in the world are prone to an errant shot every once in awhile.

Last month at the Valspar Championship, rookie Chandler Phillips was in contention to win his first PGA Tour event when his 4-iron at the par-3 seventh hole during the final round headed well right of the green and into a gathering of spectators.

A husband and wife were sitting next to each other and the ball beaned the wife, bouncing off her head and then smashing into the noggin of her husband, a rare two-for-one special.

When Phillips arrived on the scene he noticed he’d gotten an incredible break, his ball kicking out of trouble from a likely bogey to an easy up-and-down for par. That’s when he first saw the ice pack being applied to the husband’s head. A few yards away to the right, Phillips’s caddie, Braden Smith, spied the injured fan’s wife spread out on the ground on her back with a towel drenched in blood compressed to her head.

“Oh, my gosh, that’s not good,” he recalled thinking, and began digging into the bag to get a golf glove for his boss to sign, the go-to way for a player to say, “I’m sorry I hit you.” (Phil Mickelson was known to sign $100 bills.) “I didn’t know what else to do,” Smith said.

Phillips took the bloody scene to heart.

“After that, I wasn’t right,” he said.

Following the round, where he finished a career-best third at a Tour event, he said to the woman who suffered the direct hit, “If she’s seeing this, I’m truly sorry. Obviously I’m not meaning to do that.”

But it happens all the time at professional events. These players are good but they also aren’t immune to the stray shot. At the 2010 Memorial, Tiger Woods hit three spectators in a single day. Just this week at the RBC Heritage, Sepp Straka bloodied a spectator on the first hole at Harbour Town Golf Links and struggled to put it out of mind even if it was out sight.

“That was tough,” he said after his round. “Hopefully I’ll be able to reach out to him this afternoon and see how he’s doing.”

Smoltz: Just a bit outside

John Smoltz could throw a baseball with pinpoint precision from 60 feet, 6 inches. On the few occasions that he hit a batter, he admitted it usually wasn’t by accident.

“I’ve been given instructions to do that,” Smoltz said.

But with a golf ball, it’s a different story.

“I feel terrible if that happens,” he said ahead of playing last week’s Invited Celebrity Classic in Dallas on the PGA Tour Champions. “Luckily, I think it’s only happened one time in my life. And it happened in my very first kind of celebrity golf with Ken Green, Mark Calcavecchia and Lee Trevino. I was actually having the round of my life and I hit somebody who was walking towards the green. I was trying to reach a par five and two, and it hit him and the ball didn’t go on the green so I was a little disappointed about that. But then I saw that it hit somebody and he was laying on the ground and he ended up being OK, but yeah, that’s not a feeling I would even want to have happen.”

Andrade and a cast

Billy Andrade, a competitor in the pro portion of the Invited Celebrity Classic, has struck a couple of fans during his more than three-decade career, including a young girl in the arm at a tournament in Washington D.C.

“She came back the next day with a cast on it and asked me to sign it,” Andrade recalled. “So, of course I signed it, and I gave her like everything I had in my bag. And yeah, it happens and when it does it never feels good.”

Annika and her assistant take one for the team

World Golf Hall of Fame member Annika Sorenstam is considered one of, if not the, best ball strikers of all time. But you’d guess she would have a foul ball or two that’s pelted a fan at some point along the way, right? But Sorenstam claims that she’s never drilled a spectator in all these years.

“Knock on wood, I hope it stays that way,” said Sorenstam, who played in the celebrity division of the Invited Celebrity Classic, too. “But I’ve played in events where somebody has, and it’s not a fun thing. It makes me sick to my stomach.”

In fact, Sorenstam was playing in the LPGA’s Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions event when there was a backup on the par-5 15th hole. “I really didn’t know what was happening and then somebody said that somebody got hit around the green area. And I’m like, ‘Oh, bummer.  I hope they’re OK.’”

After they teed off, Sorenstam found out who got hit: her assistant, Crystal Davis, of all people was the victim. She was out watching her boss with Sorenstam’s daughter, Ava, and she was hit in the leg by a celebrity golfer trying to protect Ava. She succeeded in part of her objective but when her leg swelled quickly, Davis fainted.

“The ball was coming her way, so she jumped in front of (Ava), which is, you know, a case for a raise,” Sorenstam said.

Or at least worthy of an autographed $100 bill.

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After years of having Payne Stewart ‘bust my chops,’ Billy Andrade receives Payne Stewart Award

“To get the call was a shock and I’m just so honored.”

ATLANTA – When Billy Andrade made the PGA Tour in 1988, he was greeted by Payne Stewart, who called him “Rook,” and took him under his wing.

“He busted my chops and needled me for three straight years,” Andrade recalled. “His caddie, Mike Hicks, in 1991 finally said, ‘Enough is enough, Payne. You need to leave him alone. Billy’s one of the good guys,’ and after that we became good friends.”

One of the good guys, indeed. On Tuesday evening at the Southern Exchange in downtown, Andrade will be awarded the Payne Stewart Award, which is presented annually by the PGA Tour to a professional golfer who best exemplifies Stewart’s steadfast values of character, charity and sportsmanship. Stewart, an 11-time Tour winner and World Golf Hall of Fame member, died tragically 23 years ago during the week of the Tour Championship.

“It’s the highest golf honor of my life,” Andrade said.

Brad Faxon, the winner of the award in 2005, whose friendship with Andrade dates to their junior golf days growing up in Rhode Island, said Andrade has a bit of Stewart in him.

“If you think about Billy, he’s got a tremendous amount of ball-buster in him,” Faxon said. “He’s just a happy-go-lucky guy.”

Andrade, for one, took Faxon’s words as the highest of compliments and added, “I learned from the best,” a reference to Stewart.

But such high praise of being a needler on the level with Stewart, who was considered to be in a class of his own, demands an example and Davis Love III, winner of the 2008 award, supplied one from the first time they met at the Junior World Championships at Torrey Pines.

“We were 15 or something and I get paired with this kid I never heard of in the last round, Billy Andrade from Rhode Island,” Love recounted. “We get up on the tee and they introduced him with scores of 77-75-76. Then they introduced me with scores of 79-69-81. Billy goes, ‘Pretty F-ing consistent, aren’t you?’ It was the first thing he ever said to me and we’ve been friends ever since.”

Since the earliest days of his burgeoning pro career, Andrade, 58, has used his platform to give back to the game that has given so much to him.

“When you’re a rookie on the Tour you’re just trying to survive,” Andrade said. “But I played in a few pro-ams and experienced the power of the game, the way it can bring people together and raise money and help others in need.”

Andrade remembers playing in the Fred Meyer Challenge in Portland, a charity pro-am hosted by Peter Jacobsen. It made a lasting impression. Andrade also participated in charity fundraisers for the Ronald McDonald House in Cleveland and the Boys and Girls Clubs in Monterey, California. He thought, maybe I could do this in my hometown and adopted hometown of Atlanta.

Billy Andrade hugs Y.E. Yang of South Korea after their putts on the 18th green during round two of the Hoag Classic at Newport Beach Country Club. (Photo by Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images)

Andrade combined efforts with Faxon in 1991 to support charities in New England. The Andrade/Faxon Charities for Children has raised more than $25 million in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, supporting more than 60 children’s charities since 2002.

Andrade will never forget how the event got its footing. He tossed out the idea of a golf tournament to Bank of America CEO Terry Murray, who invited him to a luncheon with 25 of the region’s movers and shakers. Andrade pitched the idea and sold all 20 spots in the event for $5,000 per foursome.

The CVS Charity Classic routinely brought some of the sport’s biggest names to the Ocean State from 1999 until 2021. As an Atlanta resident, he started in 2010 another charity tournament with Stewart Cink with proceeds benefiting the East Lake Foundation. East Lake Golf Club will add his name next to the other Payne Stewart Award recipients on a plaque located in the clubhouse’s Great Hall.

“Giving back is good energy,” Andrade said. “It’s been a passion of mine that got contagious.”

“I thought it was just a perfect fit,” Jim Furyk, the 2016 award winner, said of Andrade’s selection. “Billy’s one of those guys that thinks about others first.”

When Love’s wife heard that Andrade had been chosen to win the award, she said, “Finally.”

“People don’t realize that it’s not just Brad Faxon,” Love said of the charity work the duo has done for New England charities. “For some reason, he gets more of the credit, but the two of them did so much for their community.”

Andrade conceded that seeing younger award winners in Zach Johnson and Justin Rose in recent years, led him to believe he had been “aged out” of the award. On the evening of the East Lake Invitational in May, Andrade had played golf all day with donors, and he had 200 people arriving for dinner at the club. The PGA Tour asked him to go upstairs and film an interview about the day’s event and the impact the annual event has made on the community. But it didn’t take long for him to realize something was up. His parents, who hadn’t left their Rhode Island home for two years because of COVID-19, were waiting there, expressionless. So was his wife, Jody, and his children, Cameron and Grace, all full of smiles.

“I thought I was in trouble,” Andrade said. “Like, what’s going on here? Is this an intervention? I felt like I was in grade school again. I just didn’t have a good feeling.”

That feeling soon washed away. His wife pointed to a big screen, and there was Tracey Stewart, the wife of the late Payne Stewart, and their two children.

“I was overwhelmed with emotion,” he said. “To get the call was a shock and I’m just so honored.”

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Dr. Andrade? Billy Andrade dishes on his Curb Your Enthusiasm cameo and reacts to Larry David’s congratulatory video, which is pretty, pretty, pretty good

Billy Andrade is good friends with Larry David.

ATLANTA – As congratulatory videos go, Larry David’s for Billy Andrade was, well, pretty…pretty…pretty good.

Andrade, 58, is set to receive the Payne Stewart Award, presented annually by the PGA Tour to a professional golfer who best exemplifies Stewart’s steadfast values of character, charity and sportsmanship, this evening.

The PGA Tour posted a video of David, presumably in his office, congratulating the award winner.

“I heard you won the Payne Stewart Award. That’s fantastic news. So well deserved,” David began. “And you know what’s interesting is you were one of the finalists for the Larry David Most Selfish Man of the World Award. It was right down to you and a couple of other people. Of course, I won it for the 35th year in a row. It’s tough to beat me there. You have to be a little bit more of an —hole. That’s the only advice I can give you. But we’ll invite you to the dinner.”

Andrade threw his head back in laughter as he watched the video.

It turns out that Andrade and David are good friends, originally meeting through the Farrelly Brothers, who are best known for the comedic hit movies “Something About Mary” and “Dumb and Dumber.” In fact, Andrade made a non-speaking cameo as a doctor during Season 6 of David’s hit HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

“They stuck me with a doctor’s outfit and a stethoscope. I was just in the background when (another doctor) said a very bad word and the look on my face was just utter shock,” he recalled. “Only two people called me and asked me if I was on the episode. It was John Huston who has never called me before, or maybe ever since, although we’re good friends, and my college roommate, Jerry Haas, the coach at Wake Forest. It was such a big appearance that I got two at least two calls.”

Andrade has played a bunch of golf with David and confirmed he remains obsessed with the game.

“Last time I went to his house for dinner in March I walked in and he had to show me this tip he’d gotten that day,” Andrade said. “He wanted to know if he should try it. It turned into a 10-minute lesson before we’d even had a drink. But it just shows how much he loves the game and just wants to get better like everybody else.”

And what’s it like to tee it up with David?

“It’s like being on the show,” Andrade said.

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A game: Stephen Ames, Billy Andrade tied for lead at U.S. Senior Open

Stephen Ames posted a 65 in the morning wave. Billy Andrade matched it late at Omaha Country Club on Thursday.

Stephen Ames posted a 65 in the morning wave at the 41st U.S. Open. Late in the day, Billy Andrade matched it and those two co-leaders will take a one-shot lead into Friday’s second round.

Andrade had five birdies and was bogey-free on Thursday. Ames had two bogeys but carded seven birdies, including four on the back nine.

Wes Short, Jr., also went bogey-free and he is in solo third, a shot back.

Alex Cejka, who didn’t play the Senior Players but won the first two majors of 2021, sits in a tie for fourth with Robert Karlsson after shooting each shot a 67. Cejka has now posted his ninth consecutive round of par or better in a major this year.

U.S. Senior Open: Leaderboard

Jay Haas, the oldest golfer in the field at age 67, shot a 69 on Thursday. Fred Couples shot a 1 under as well. Those two are among a group of eight golfers tied for eighth.

“I tied a 67-year-old man, so I’m tickled pink,” Couples, 61, joked on Golf Channel after his round.

There are 34 amateurs in the field. Two of them, William Mitchell and Jeff Wilson, posted even-par rounds of 70 and are T-16 after day one.

Omaha Country Club is hosting the U.S. Senior Open for a second time. Kenny Perry, who won the event there in 2013, is tied for 29th after shooting a 1-over 71.

There is a chance of some inclement weather rolling through the area on Friday.

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Paul Goydos, Brandt Jobe lead Charles Schwab Cup Championship

Paul Goydos and Brandt Jobe took advantage of perfect conditions on Friday in Phoenix at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship.

Record-high temperatures on Thursday gave way to cooler weather on Friday at Phoenix Country Club, where Michael Allen hit the first tee shot to open the 2020 Charles Schwab Cup Championship.

It was 99 on Thursday, the hottest day Phoenix has ever had in November. When the 81-man field hit the course for the first round on Friday, the group was greeted by overcast skies, no wind and a great golf course.

Paul Goydos and Brandt Jobe took advantage of the conditions, each firing bogey-free 7-under 64s. Both of them birdied the 527-yard par-5 18th and will take a one-shot lead over Mark Brooks, K.J. Choi and Kevin Sutherland into Saturday.

“I kind of got off to I wouldn’t say a slow start but maybe not the most confident start,” said Goydos. “I hit a sprinkler head or something on 3 and it caught a good break and it kicked somewhere I could get up and down, and hit a poor shot. Then I chipped in on 4 for birdie, which kind of got the thing started.”

Charles Schwab Cup Championship: Leaderboard

Goydos has now led or been the co-leader in tournaments on the PGA Tour Champions six times. Four of those came in the Charles Schwab Cup Championship. He won the event in 2016, the final time it was played at Desert Mountain Golf Club in Scottsdale. In 12 rounds at Phoenix Country Club, Goydos has nine rounds in the 60s and a 67.17 average.

Jobe has four top 10s this year. He is seeking his third PGA Tour Champions victory.

On Thursday, he was one of three golfers who wore microphones during the round, joining Billy Andrade and Tim Herron. Along the way, the group talked about dinner and the Dodgers winning the World Series but things got interesting on the 7th hole.

Charles Schwab Cup Championship
Brandt Jobe hits his tee shot on the sixth hole during the first round of the 2020 Charles Schwab Cup Championship on November 6, 2020 in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images

“Billy hits a 3-wood, pretty good shot, kind of right where he’s aiming and we couldn’t find it,” Jobe said. “So finally someone goes, ‘There’s a ball up in the tree.’ So a guy in the gallery takes his shoe off and we start throwing the shoe at the ball. Billy’s throw wasn’t real good though, but (PGA Tour Champions VP of Rules, Competition and Administration) Brian Claar hit it on like the second or third try.”

Andrade had to take an unplayable lie but he saved himself about 250 yards. He ended up taking bogey on the hole. He’s T-50 after his first-round 71.

About those greens

The putting surfaces at Phoenix Country Club have dominated the discussion so far this week. Players, caddies and tournament officials are all raving about the greens.

“The greens are embarrassingly good,” Goydos said. “If you miss a putt, you either misread or mis-hit it, there’s no way it’s not going to roll on the line that you hit it on. It might be the best Bermuda greens I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Phoenix Country Club golf course superintendent Charlie Costello has a lot of fans this week.

“Boy, the greens are so good,” Jobe said with a big smile on his face. “I’ve got to take my hat off to them, these greens are really good. They’re fast, they roll incredible. And when you have greens that good, if you get some opportunities, you’re going to make some putts.”

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PGA Tour Champions rules official throws a shoe to get a ball out of a tree

After Billy Andrade hit a golf ball into a large tree at Phoenix Country Club, a PGA Tour Champions rules official came to the rescue.

Who throws a shoe? Honestly?

Well, on Friday, it was PGA Tour Champions VP of Rules, Competition and Administration Brian Claar, who threw a shoe into a tree at Phoenix Country Club to get a ball down.

On the 7th hole, a par 5, Billy Andrade’s second shot went into a large tree and never came down.

After a few minutes were spent trying to confirm it was his, Claar ended up with a random black shoe from the gallery and so he threw it, dislodging the ball on his first try.

Has Claar ever thrown a shoe like that before?

“No,” he said with a laugh. “In college we threw a lot of stuff to retrieve clubs that were thrown into trees. I’ve thrown a rake once, but that was the first shoe.”

Andrade and his caddie were initially not able to say for certain it was his ball, which was marked with a red line.

“It looked like by the naked eye you could see something but it was just a pine needle, perpendicular to the ball that looked like a line, till you put the binocs on it,” Claar said.

It was important to identify the ball because otherwise it would have been a lost ball and Andrade would have to go back to where he hit his second shot. As it turned out, because he could identify the ball, he was able to declare it unplayable and take a one-stroke penalty and play his fourth from there.

He ended up getting a bogey on the hole.

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Ernie Els makes hole-in-one; Billy Andrade, Tommy Armour III in Ally lead

Els recorded his 17th hole-in-one and finished the day at 3-under, just three shots behind leaders Billy Andrade and Tommy Armour III.

It didn’t long after the restart of the Champions Tour season for Ernie Els’ bar tab to grow.

Els, who has a win and a place in his previous three Champions Tour starts, wasn’t particularly pleased with his opening round at Warwick Hills G&CC as part of the Ally Challenge, the senior tour’s first event back after the pandemic stop.

But on his next-to-last hole of the day, Els turned his fortunes around, dropping a hole in one — his first in two years and the 17th of his career — at the course near Flint.

“Ricci (Roberts), my caddy, said, ‘you know, that was a nice golf swing,’ ” Els said. “The ball was in the air and the next thing, it was in the hole.”

Els finished the day at 3-under, just three shots behind leaders Billy Andrade and Tommy Armour III.

Andrade got hot on the back nine en route to the top of the leaderboard. He shot a 32 after the turn, burying birdies on Nos. 10, 13, 14 and 15. Although he insisted that he had been practicing in advance of the trip to Michigan, Andrade said it took the realization that the Champions Tour was returning to get his competitive juices flowing.

“Well, I think the biggest thing was the first two or three months,
there was no starting point really. And once we knew, OK, hey, we’re going to start at the Ally Challenge, we hope, OK, so now you have a starting point and then you can start vamping up your practice. But we’re over 50. It’s not like we are practicing a ton. But it’s nice to have a goal to work towards versus when this pandemic started,” Andrade said.  “It’s like we are definitely not playing, so it’s very, I think very difficult for professionals to get jazzed up to go out and play if you have nothing to work for. You know what I’m saying?

“So I think once we knew we were coming here, we were so excited, let’s get this thing started, let’s get the ball rolling. And I think all of us are really, really excited about being here and getting back into playing again.”

Bernhard Langer,  Wes Short, Jr. and Tom Gillis are tied at 5 under while Jim Furyk is 4 under in his first Champions Tour event.

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Billy Andrade on quarantine life: ‘I’m going crazy. This is nuts.’

Billy Andrade needs to visit a barber and could put the razor to good use. His gin game is on the up-and-up, he’s conquered three jigsaw puzzles for the first time in his life, his sleeping habits have changed, and he’s recently rekindled his …

Billy Andrade needs to visit a barber and could put the razor to good use.

His gin game is on the up-and-up, he’s conquered three jigsaw puzzles for the first time in his life, his sleeping habits have changed, and he’s recently rekindled his profession by practicing and playing golf ahead of a hopeful return to his job.

Such is quarantine life in his home in Atlanta during a global pandemic.

The four-time winner on the PGA Tour winner and three-time victor on the PGA Tour Champions hasn’t played competitively since March 8 when he closed with a 67 in the Hoag Classic in California to finish 47th. Now he’s counting down the days until the PGA Tour Champions is scheduled to resume July 23 in the Ally Challenge in Michigan.

“I’m going crazy. This is nuts,” Andrade, 56, said in a chat with Golfweek. “Thank god we can play golf again. I didn’t play for a couple months, didn’t pick up a club. Last week, week and a half, I’ve played four times, hits balls a few times.

“It’s groundhog day, seems like every day. You wake up, you do the same thing, and you go to bed and you wake up and do the same thing again.”

But Andrade’s spirits remain high – a tribute to his glass-half-full approach to when the sun comes up. Still, he so misses the game he loves and has afforded him a grand lifestyle and led him and his top-notch mate, Brad Faxon, to donate millions to charity. On the flip side, however, he said it’s been a blessing to be able to spend so much quality time with his two children and wife.

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In a lively exchange – there is no other kind with Andrade – he touched on shelter-at-home life, golf’s anticipated return, his time spent battling Tiger Woods at his apex and then Bernhard Langer at his PGA Tour Champions zenith.

And he misses being out on the road, the camaraderie and chasing a trophy.

“That’s what we all love the most – being in the mix, being nervous and playing golf and trying to win tournaments,” he said. “You miss listening to your name on the first tee and being a little nervous.”

For now, he’ll keep staying up till 2 a.m. and thinking about days gone by. Good days. Days when he went up against the guy in the red shirt.

“In the year 2000, Tiger and I got paired together in the first two rounds six or seven times. I had a front-row seat to this greatness,” he said. “He was all business. I’ve never seen a player so focused. He wasn’t chatty-chatty on the golf course. He didn’t want to get really close to the top players; he just wanted to beat them all.

“I saw that stinger for the first time, on the fourth hole in the Bay Hill Invitational. It went about three feet in the air, straight down the fairway. I was in awe. And I had a tap on my shoulder and it was my caddie, and my caddie said, ‘Hey, you’re up. You have to hit.’ I was blown away. I had never seen a shot like that.

“He had no weakness. He hit it high, he hit it low, he putted as well as anybody I’ve ever seen. His short game was fantastic when he missed greens.”

And then Andrade had to face the Tiger of the PGA Tour Champions – Langer, the two-time Masters champion who won 42 European Tour events and then 41 PGA Tour Champions titles, including 11 majors.

“You talk about a player with no weakness,” he said. “He is an absolute machine and so dedicated. And he’s such a good guy.”

Andrade can’t wait to see that guy again. He hopes it’s not a long wait.

“Everyone wants to get back to normal, but normal’s gone,” he said. “It’s all a new normal. We on the Champions Tour are going to see how the PGA Tour handles the next two months, before we go back out.

“No. 1 for me is safety. If we can be safe and we can do this, that would be fantastic. But that’s asking a lot. I hope it all works out. I would love to play a tournament starting tomorrow. I think everybody would. But we want to keep our families safe, we want to be safe. Hopefully, all the sports can get back but I still think it’s a long shot.”

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