Tag: Camilo Villegas

Alex Noren leads, Camilo Villegas back in the mix and more from Saturday at 2023 Butterfield Bermuda Championship

Catch up on Saturday’s action here.

Alex Noren has 11 international wins, he has played in the Ryder Cup and he has represented Sweden at the Olympics. But come Sunday, he’ll have a chance to do something he has never done before — win on the PGA Tour.

After rounds of 61-66 over the first two days, Noren shot a 4-under 67 around Port Royal Golf Course on Saturday and holds a one-shot lead at the 2023 Butterfield Bermuda Championship with 18 holes to play.

The Swede, who tied for third at the Shriners Children’s Open a month ago in Las Vegas, kept the bogeys off the card during his third round. Despite only hitting eight fairways (T-43 in the field), Noren was crisp with his irons, missing just four greens (T-12).

In 27 previous starts this season, Noren has six top-25 finishes and three top-10s. His last worldwide win came at the 2018 HNA Open de France.

If you missed any of the action on Saturday, no worries, we have you covered. Here are some takeaways from the third round of the 2023 Butterfield Bermuda Championship at Port Royal.

‘Meant to be’: Erik van Rooyen wins 2023 World Wide Technology Championship for terminally-ill friend

“He used to play to not get embarrassed. It’s gonna take a little bit to let the predator out.” The predator came out on Sunday.

LOS CABOS, Mexico – As soon as Erik van Rooyen struck his 2-iron into the fairway at the par-5 finishing hole, he turned to his caddie Alex Gaugert and said, “One more of those,” implying he planned to use the same club again for his next shot.

Van Rooyen was tied for the lead on Sunday at El Cardonal at Diamante and when he heard he had 272 yards to the front and 304 yards to the hole, he said, “Perfect for the 2-iron.”

Gaugert had another idea.

“I’m like, Dude, I don’t mind something landing front edge and getting back there,” he said.

He started to run through a series of reasons why van Rooyen would be better off using a 17-degree 3-hybrid. He reminded him of the beauty he hit with the same club at 14 just a few holes earlier and the one at the first hole on Friday that set up an eagle.

“Oh, hell yeah,” van Rooyen said with a glint in his eye.

“Clear and committed,” Gaugert said.

Then as he had done on every shot all day, van Rooyen thought of their college teammate at Minnesota, Jon Trasamar, who had texted them on Tuesday with the news that he had about six weeks to live due to stage 4 melanoma.

“Then I flushed it,” van Rooyen said.

“Be as good as you look,” Gaugert barked at the ball and it more than obliged.

It stopped 20 feet past the hole and van Rooyen removed any doubt by rolling in his third straight putt of that length for a birdie-birdie-eagle finish.

“There’s nothing quite like it in life,” Van Rooyen said of his clutch 3-hybrid to the 18th green. “Yeah, that shot will be with me forever.”

Van Rooyen stormed home in 8-under 28 at the course Tiger Woods designed and erased a two-stroke deficit with three holes to play to win the World Wide Technology Championship.

How did he pull off an improbable two-stroke victory over Matt Kuchar and Camilo Villegas? To Gaugert it was simply meant to be.

“That should be the headline of every news article that’s written because there’s no reason he should have won this golf tournament. There’s no way to describe it other than it was it was meant to be,” Gaugert said.

It was meant to be even after van Rooyen opened with a bogey on a par 5 after dumping his approach in the front bunker and failing to extricate himself on his first attempt.

“The start we got off to today made you want to puke,” Gaugert said.

But then van Rooyen rolled in a 35-foot birdie at the second and thought to himself, “this is a silly game so just keep playing.”

But by the seventh hole, van Rooyen turned to Gaugert in the fairway and said it was time to press. Gaugert, who remains a good enough player that he was a Monday qualifier for the 3M Open in July, talked him out of it and advised him to stay patient, “let it happen,” as he put it, and stay disciplined. Van Rooyen listened, agreeing it was too soon to hit the panic button.

“And then I sprayed (my next shot) right of the green. So it’s funny how that works. Hit a really good chip,” he said.

Meanwhile, Villegas made birdies on four of the first six holes and Kuchar reeled off five in his first 12 holes to assume the lead.

This was a big week for van Rooyen. The 33-year-old South African native entered the week ranked No. 131 in the FedEx Cup standings and his two-year exemption for winning the 2021 Barracuda Championship was expiring in a few weeks if he didn’t have a good finish. He suffered through a stretch of seven missed cuts in a row from early May to early June and in 27 previous starts on the season had more missed cuts (14) than he had made (13). He began working with instructor Sean Foley, who helped him more with the mental game than the golf swing during their hour-long conversations. Van Rooyen’s final-round 63 marked his 13th consecutive round of par or better. Gaugert went so far as to send Foley a text six weeks ago thanking him for his efforts.

Foley’s response speaks volumes: “He used to play to not get embarrassed, and it’s gonna take a little bit to let the predator out,” Gaugert recalled Foley wrote.

The predator came out on Sunday. Van Rooyen birdied four of the first five holes on the back nine and then came to the difficult par-4 15th, where one day earlier Kuchar had a five-stroke lead before making a quadruple-bogey 8 there.

Van Rooyen aimed his 9-iron about 10 yards right of the flag and tugged it five yards left of it. “It was a putrid shot,” Gaugert said. Yet it defied gravity and stayed on the fringe.

“I have no clue how other than our buddy Jon was with us,” Gaugert said. “Erik’s ball should have never ever stayed up there.”

“We both kind of looked at the sky and we were like, maybe it’s written in the stars,” van Rooyen said. “When that happened, I was like, ooh, we might have a chance.”

That wasn’t Gaugert’s only thought. He told van Rooyen that etiquette be damned, they needed to play their next shot before the ball rolled down the slope. Van Rooyen sheepishly asked Kuchar if he could play out of turn.

“He was very nervous to do so. And I go, ‘Ask him now.’ The wind was picking up, if the wind gives us any sort of gust his ball is going down,” Gaugert said.

They left the green with a par and then van Rooyen rolled in back-to-back 20-foot birdie putts to tie for the lead. On his ball, van Rooyen had written the initials “JT,” for Trasamar, the first person he met when he arrived from South Africa to attend Minnesota, his roommate of three years and his best man at his wedding nine years ago. Despite job security for next season being shaky at best coming into this week, van Rooyen and Gaugert had booked a flight on Saturday afternoon to fly home to Minnesota on Monday morning to go see their ill friend Tuesday. Depending on how the final round played out, they had a reservation to Bermuda that would arrive at 11pm on Wednesday and they would tee it up on Thursday without seeing the course in advance.

“We ain’t playing Bermuda now,” said Gaugert.

It was meant to be that the win will allow them to spend more precious time with JT.

After van Rooyen sank the winning eagle putt for a 72-hole aggregate of 27-under 261, he and Gaugert embraced in one of the longest bro-hugs ever on the 18th green. Van Rooyen said that Gaugert, usually the stoic one who keeps the more volatile van Rooyen in line and helps balance him out, simply cried. But Gaugert also had a memory flash through his head. During his senior season in 2013, their pal Trasamar earned Big Ten Golfer of the week honors after placing second at the Barnabas Health Intercollegiate. It included a career-low 66 in the second round.

“He beat me by a stroke with a back-nine 28, just like Erik,” Gaugert said.

It turned out Gaugert’s memory was off by a stroke. Trasamar had shot a back-nine 29, but that only made Gaugert smile.

“He just wanted to give Erik an extra stroke,” he joked.

Sometimes it’s just meant to be.

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Camilo Villegas turns into birdie machine, Matt Kuchar hearts Mexico among World Wide Technology Championship second-round takeaways

At 41, Camilo Villegas says his memory isn’t what it used to be.

LOS CABOS, Mexico — At 41, Camilo Villegas says his memory isn’t what it used to be.

“Don’t ask me my birdies because I don’t remember them,” he joked after the round with a member of the media.

It’s doubly hard for Villegas because he’s made so many birdies, shooting his second straight 64 on Friday at El Cardonal at Diamante, a course designed by Tiger Woods and the host of the PGA Tour’s World Wide Technology Championship.

Competing on a sponsor exemption, Villegas began his second round on Friday with an eagle-birdie-birdie start and finished with three birdies to boot. In doing so, he set his career-low 36-hole score on the Tour with a total of 128, two strokes better than Matt Kuchar and three better than Justin Suh, who made a career-high nine birdies in the second round, and Stephan Jaeger, who aced the 11th hole in the first round.

Villegas also was two strokes better than his previous best start to a Tour event at the 2020 RSM Classic. It marks Villegas’s eighth 36-hole lead and first since the 2010 Honda Classic.

Asked to recall the last time he had such a hot start to a tournament, Villegas showed his memory isn’t totally shot, recalling a Hooters Tour event in Orlando in 2004 that he won by 10 strokes shortly after flaming out of second stage of Q-School.

“I shot 61 first day, 62 the second day,” he said. “It was like a bittersweet win.”

It’s been more than nine years since Villegas, a four-time winner on Tour, has claimed victory and being in the hunt for another title couldn’t come at a better time. He entered the week ranked 223 in the FedEx Cup standings and had missed the cut in his last three starts.

But that was then — this week he’s made so many birdies it’s hard to keep track of them all.

The second round was suspended due to darkness at 5:52 p.m. local time (8:52 p.m. ET) with three players still on the course. There were 74 players who made the cut at 5-under 139. The field started with 132, including three amateurs, none of whom made the weekend.

Here are four more thing to know about the second round of the World Wide Technology Championship.

Camilo Villegas to make broadcasting debut at 2023 Wyndham Championship for Golf Channel

“This is the perfect event for Camilo to provide his expertise to Golf Channel’s viewers.”

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Former Wyndham Championship winner Camilo Villegas will make his broadcast debut this week on Golf Channel’s coverage of the PGA Tour event in Greensboro, North Carolina. Villegas, a 41-year-old four-time Tour winner who ranks 223rd in the FedEx Cup standings, will work in the booth as the main analyst alongside host Steve Sands.

Last year, Sands served as emcee at Villegas’s charity golf tournament, a fundraiser for Mia’s Miracles, when Sands told him he thought he could have a bright future doing golf commentary on TV. Sands wondered, “Would you like to do a week and see how it goes?”

Villegas looked Sands straight in the eyes and told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t interested.

“As a competitor, as a golfer, you never want to be done. When you start looking somewhere else and you’re 41 and you haven’t been performing, that was my first reaction,” Villegas explained.

But after giving it some thought, the former University of Florida golfer and Colombia native called Sands back and apologized for his knee-jerk reaction.

“For him to think I could do a good job on TV was actually an honor,” he said.

Asked to explain why he thought Villegas would excel as a broadcaster, Sands said, “He has always been accessible and a terrific communicator.”

Villegas wasn’t quite ready to jump into the booth but after talking with his agent, he determined he didn’t want to close a door on a great opportunity without exploring whether he liked the job or could determine if he was any good at it. He agreed to do a one-week trial this year, and it made sense to do so alongside Sands, who pitched him on the concept, and at a tournament where he has not only competed regularly but has tasted great success.

“This is the perfect event for Camilo to provide his expertise to Golf Channel’s viewers,” Sands said.

Villegas has struggled with injuries since winning the 2014 Wyndham Championship with bookend rounds of 63, and then dealt with the death of his 2-year-old daughter, Mia, in 2020. This season, he made just nine starts on the PGA Tour and hasn’t recorded a top-10 finish since the 2021 Honda Classic. But Villegas says he’s not hanging up his spikes just yet. He began working with instructor Jose Campra, who also caddies for Sebastian Munoz, on a major swing overhaul and Villegas says he’s seeing signs that he is making progress.

As for prepping for his TV try-out, Villegas shadowed Sands and analyst John Cook when they were in the booth during the first round of the RBC Canadian Open in June. He said he’s been watching more television than he’s used to and conceded he’s a little nervous about his TV debut.

“I just want to be myself,” he said.

Asked if that would include being comfortable enough to criticize players that he still competes against regularly, Villegas said, “I guess we will find out soon. I’m going to call it like I see it. I’m a very analytical guy. I have a very structured approach to the game of golf. I want to share with the viewer a little of what I’d be feeling, thinking while someone is hitting a shot…I don’t have a problem disagreeing with players’ decision or approaches or strategy.”

Villegas doesn’t have any TV plans beyond the Wyndham Championship but he sounded open to the possibility of doing more TV work in the future.

“I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I need to find out if I like it,” he said. “I’m going to continue to play golf. If I really like it and they think I have potential, could there be weeks where I hop into the booth and fill in? We’ll see. I don’t know. Too many moving parts to know where this thing will go.”

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PGA Tour’s baby boom: Camilo Villegas on being a father again while Max Homa announces he and wife are expecting

“So much perspective incoming.”

The PGA Tour is experiencing a Baby Boom.

Add Max Homa to the list of soon to be papas.

In the last two years, Tour pros from Rory McIlroy (Poppy) to Jon Rahm (Kepa) to Rickie Fowler (Maya) to Jordan Spieth (Sammy) have all joined the first-time father club.

It stretches beyond the big names. Mark Hubbard (Harlo), Hank Lebioda (Henry), Luke List (Harrison) and Harold Varner III (Liam) are proud papas too, and the list goes on. PGA Tour Daycare, or what the kids call Golf School, is going to be busy. But perhaps the happiest of the baby announcements was that of 40-year-old Camilo Villegas, who welcomed son Mateo on Dec. 21.

Villegas and wife Maria suffered the loss of daughter, Mia, who was 22 months old when she died of cancer in 2020. When Villegas spoke to Golfweek in October 2020, he expressed hope that he and his wife would have another baby.

“My wife was nervous at the beginning. We talked to the doctors and they said it was just a bad lottery ticket. There’s nothing that suggests this would happen again,” he said in the earlier story. “We’re looking forward. It took us a while to get pregnant. In the meantime, we’re going to help others, remember the good, and focus on what’s coming.”

Mexico Open: Tee times | Odds and picks | PGA Tour Live on ESPN+

https://www.instagram.com/p/CcEefkEr8iG/

Ahead of the Mexico Open at Vidanta, Villegas spoke about being a parent again. “He’s great. He’s fun to be around,” Villegas said. “Mateo’s four months old and the family is doing good. Obviously 2020 was a tough year for us, but to have Mateo in our life is pretty special.

“We have Mia’s Miracles Foundation to just kind of add to the joy of giving back and helping others and giving a little purpose to our life and why we’re here and how we can once again give back. It was a tough experience, but without it we wouldn’t have Mia’s Miracles. And obviously we truly, truly miss Mia, but we’re going to do some great things for others and try to make the best of it.”

Villegas is embarking on a stretch of playing five straight weeks and noted it is difficult to be away apart for so long. “I’m missing him and I can’t wait to just play some good weeks and head back and just give him a hug,” he said.

On Monday, Homa announced on social media that he and his wife Lacey are expecting a boy. They did their “reveal” by having their dog run out with baby-blue balloons attached around its waist and a scarf that read, “Big sis.”

“So much perspective incoming #babyboy”

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Internationals captain Trevor Immelman names four assistants for Presidents Cup

Trevor Immelman will captain the 2022 International squad in Charlotte.

Making his debut as captain of the International team for the upcoming Presidents Cup, Trevor Immelman can call on plenty of experience from his coaching staff.

Immelman, a South African who played in the Presidents Cup twice and was an assistant to Ernie Els in 2019, named his four vice captains Wednesday: Canadian Mike Weir, South Korean K.J. Choi, Australian Geoff Ogilvy and Colombian Camilo Villegas.

The U.S. leads the series 11-1-1. The Americans came from behind on the final day in 2019 at Royal Melbourne in Australia to win, 16-14. This year’s matches are Sept. 22-25 at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Weir, who competed in the Presidents Cup five times and is one of five International players with 10 more match wins, will make his third appearance as a vice captain. He has eight PGA Tour titles, including the 2003 Masters, and one PGA Tour Champions victory.

Choi, who played in three editions of the Presidents Cup, will be making his third appearance as an assistant captain. He has won eight PGA Tour titles, including the 2011 Players Championship, and one PGA Tour Champions victory.

Ogilvy, who played in three Presidents Cups, has eight career PGA Tour victories, including the 2006 U.S. Open, and won two of Australia’s biggest titles – the 2008 Australian PGA and 2010 Australian Open.

Villegas will make his debut as an assistant. Villegas is the only player from Colombia to compete in the Presidents Cup, doing so in 2009. He’s won four times on the PGA Tour.

“The comradery that continues to grow within this team is irreplaceable,” Weir said in a release. “We can all sense the momentum that is building, and it’s been exciting to see Trevor’s incredible dedication and focus on his role. I can’t wait to see what tournament week holds for us and to be a part of the 2022 team.”

Said Ogilvy: “After getting a glimpse into the future of our team in 2019, I am very excited to return as a captain’s assistant. The collection of international players has only had time to improve and that is evident when you look at guys like Cameron Smith, Hideki Matsuyama and Joaquin Niemann, who have had tremendous success on Tour in the last year.

“I can’t wait to see what they bring to the table under Trevor’s captaincy.”

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Wyndham Championship odds, picks and PGA Tour predictions

We look at the 2021 Wyndham Championship odds and make our PGA Tour picks and predictions to win.

A relatively weak but highly motivated field is at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, this week for the Wyndham Championship. The event precedes the beginning of the FedEx Cup Playoffs next week. Below, we look at the 2021 Wyndham Championship odds and make our PGA Tour picks and predictions to win.

The top 125 golfers in the FedEx Cup standings after this week will advance to The Northern Trust at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, New Jersey. That will begin the three-week playoff stretch culminating with the Tour Championship from Sept. 2 to Sept. 5. There’ll then be just a one-week interlude before the start of the 2021-22 PGA Tour season.

Louis Oosthuizen is the top player in the field at No. 2 in the Golfweek/Sagarin world rankings. He enters the week at No. 8 in the FEC standings and is also the top golfer in attendance by that measure.

Some of the biggest names in the field in need of points in order to advance to The Northern Trust include Rickie Fowler (130), Tommy Fleetwood (136), Justin Rose (138) and Francesco Molinari (140).

2021 Wyndham Championship picks – Favorite

Odds provided by Tipico Sportsbook; access USA TODAY Sports’ betting odds a full list. Lines last updated Tuesday at 1:25 p.m. ET.

Will Zalatoris (+3000)

No one is in greater need of a win this week than Zalatoris. Despite racking up 1,270 points that would have him ranked 26th in the season-long standings, he won’t qualify for the playoffs without a win under Special Temporary Membership status.

The 24-year-old’s accomplishments this season include a T-6 finish at the 2020 U.S. Open, a runner-up at the 2021 Masters and a T-8 at the PGA Championship. He tied for eighth at last week’s WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational and will face a much weaker competition at Sedgefield.

Zalatoris missed the cut in this event in 2018, but he averaged 1.06 Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee per round and lost 1.28 strokes per round on the greens.

2021 Wyndham Championship picks – Contender

Mackenzie Hughes (+6000)

Hughes struggled to a 50th-place finish at the Olympic golf competition in Tokyo, but he previously tied for sixth at the British Open to extend his streak to four straight made cuts. He didn’t play this event last year; however tied for 22nd in 2019 and for 66th in 2018.

The Canadian struggles with accuracy off the tee, but he’s as good of a putter as there is on Tour when he’s on. He’s an excellent value at these odds in one of the weaker fields he has competed against this season. He has four top-10 finishes since the beginning of the fall swing and enters the week 67th in the FEC standings.

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2021 Wyndham Championship picks – Long shot

Camilo Villegas (+20000)

Villegas is 129th in the FEC standings despite rising from 404th to 249th in the Official World Golf Ranking since the end of last year. He enters this week on a streak of five straight made cuts and finished in a tie for eighth against a stronger field than this at the Honda Classic earlier this year.

He has played 26 career rounds at Sedgefield CC with an average of 0.92 strokes gained on the field per round. He tied for 16th in his last appearance here in 2017 while ranking fourth among all golfers who made the cut with 2.15 SG: Putting per round.

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Schupak: 2020 was stranger than the morning sky in Napa during the Safeway Open

Senior writer Adam Schupak chronicles the moments that made covering the golf scene in 2020 a year unlike any other.

Covering golf, at every level and on every tour, in 2020 was unlike anything our writers have experienced. Through the end of the year, our staff is looking back on what will forever stand out from the season of COVID – a season during which every aspect of the game we love was impacted by a global pandemic. Read the whole series here.

I was staying in a boutique hotel in Brussels after the 2018 Ryder Cup when I read a quote on, of all things, a Trip Advisor ad that spoke to me: “Traveling—it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”

I looked it up and it’s attributed to Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century Moroccan explorer and scholar. Those are words I’ve very much lived by covering 20-plus tournaments a year for more than a decade, which have taken me to far-flung places such as Singapore, China, Turkey, Israel, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The list goes on but you get the idea.

All of that came to a screeching halt in March when the PGA Tour and the golf world in general went on hiatus due to a global pandemic. I never left the country this year and avoided flying, well, like the plague. I don’t know about you but I haven’t exercised at a gym, gone to the movies, shaken hands or seen most of my family members, other than via Zoom calls, since March.

Plenty of love for Jordan Spieth at the Waste Management Phoenix Open in late January before the pandemic prevented fan attendance at most PGA Tour events (Adam Schupak/Golfweek).

But there were a few early-season trips before the world changed that provided stories worth telling, including to the desert for the Waste Management Phoenix Open. It seems a lifetime ago that 20,000 drunk people ringed the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale like the Romans at the Coliseum. The highlight of that week was a wide-ranging discussion with Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee that exploded into a three-part Q&A.

From there, it was on to Pebble Beach, and it doesn’t matter how many times I visit the Monterey Peninsula, it never gets old. The weather even cooperated. I got to break bread with some of my favorite folks that week and squeeze in 18 at Pacific Grove and take a test spin around TPC Harding Park. One evening, I was packing up my belongings from the media center and ready to hit up a sushi joint I discovered during the previous year’s U.S. Open visit, when a local writer that I had been chatting with at breakfast stopped by my desk and invited me over to his house to join his family’s dinner. That was an incredibly kind gesture. Traveling to exotic locales to play or watch golf doesn’t suck, but life on the road isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Having a good home-cooked meal and better conversation hit the spot and I appreciated it even more when the world soon after went into lockdown.

In the year 2020, even Donald Ross was wearing a mask (Adam Schupak/Golfweek).

I flew the red eye home from California and I’ll never know for sure if I had coronavirus or just the run-of-the-mill flu but I was as sick as I’ve been for a long time the next two weeks and even had to WD from covering the Honda Classic with a high fever. This was pre-masks, hand sanitizers and runs on toilet paper. What a year!

The other meal I can’t help but think of is the annual Asado night at The Players, held on the eve of the tournament. It began at the Masters and was co-hosted by Spanish golfer Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano and the Argentine Golf Association. I remember one year telling Gonzo, who wasn’t yet eligible for the Masters, that he needed to win and a lot of people were depending on him so we could have asado. He smiled and told me, don’t worry, we’ll do Asado night at the Players if I don’t make the Masters. And that’s been the tradition ever since.

Hideki Matsuyama tied the TPC Sawgrass course record only to have the Players canceled later that night due to the global pandemic (Adam Schupak/Golfweek).

It is a gathering of two-dozen or so golf industry leaders from Latin America and elsewhere (including R&A chief Martin Slumbers and his wife) with R&A regional director of Latin America Mark Lawrie as grill master. Held at their oceanside rental property in Ponte Vedra under a tent, it’s become one of my favorite nights of the year – I think I’m still full from all the beef, Argentine wine and dulce de leche – but it became memorable as the last big dinner party I’ve attended. After the ceremonial drive of a few glow balls into the ocean, I drove home just shortly before 10 p.m. and was greeted with news that the Tour had come to its senses and canceled the Players. Not long after, the Masters was postponed and we’d endure a 91-day hiatus before another tournament round was contested. Remember how desperate we were for live competition that we were watching marble races?

During these uncertain times, golf was my salvation. Living in Florida, the courses remained open – though the beaches shut down for a while – and so Gary Koch would have declared my quarantine was better than most. With some extra time on my hands I decided now was the time to learn to hit a baby cut. I’d only been playing a boomerang draw – I prefer not to use that other four-letter word – for 40 years. Trying to overhaul my swing by digging it out of the dirt Hogan style has been an adventure. I remember bragging that I had it down pat but when I went to play Palatka Golf Club with colleagues Julie Williams and Jason Lusk, I kept hitting left of left. It reminded me of the old Bugs Bunny skit where the singing frog only lets out a ribbit in front of a crowd. If you don’t know that one, check it out below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsROL4Kf8QY

I recorded 75 18-hole scores in 2020, which doesn’t include some hit-n-giggle team events and that many of those rounds combined two evening nines. All told, I’m guessing I’m well over 100 days of golf this year. So, 2020 hasn’t been a total loss. My game is still fragile and for all the effort my handicap has gone down a whopping 0.4 strokes … but it didn’t go up this year, so I’ve got that going for me.

Camilo Villegas surprised members of the media with news that his daughter Mia had cancer during a tearful press conference (Adam Schupak/Golfweek).

During the lockdown, I dove into the old Rolodex and did a series of Q&A’s (Quarantined and Answered) with some of my favorite talkers: David Duval, Sean Foley, Jim Furyk, Tony Jacklin, Vijay Singh, Charles Barkley, Johnny Miller and Tom Weiskopf. For all the Microsoft Teams and Zoom calls that helped us do our jobs, there’s no replacement for being present at a tournament and personal contact. So, I drove 12-plus hours with a pit stop at Sweetens Cove to cover the WGC St. Jude Invitational in Memphis and a Sunday duel between a resurgent Brooks Koepka and Justin Thomas, who had Jim “Bones” Mackay fill in in on the bag and paired with one Phil Mickelson and brother Tim. Yeah, I missed that.

The importance of simply being there couldn’t have been more evident a few weeks earlier when Camilo Villegas broke into tears at the start of his press conference ahead of the Korn Ferry Challenge at TPC Sawgrass as he detailed that his 18-month old daughter, Mia, was battling cancerous tumors in her brain. A little more than a month later her fight was over. I was in Jackson, Mississippi in October when Villegas sat down with me and opened his heart about dealing with loss and how it was his mission to make something good come from Mia’s death. This time, I was the one holding back tears. To hear him talk about seeing one of Mia’s beloved rainbows on the first tee at the RSM Classic and contend for the title until Sunday was almost too good to be true.

Lisa Cink congratulates son Reagan on a job well done on the bag for his father Stewart Cink after his victory at the Safeway Open in September (Adam Schupak/Golfweek).

But there was another feel-good story in the fall season that delivered a full payoff. Seeing Stewart Cink end his 11-year victory drought at age 47, and with his son Reagan on the bag, gave me all the feels. I remember speaking to Cink after his wife, Lisa, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016, and here she was cancer-free, a one-woman cheering section for her guys at a spectator-free tournament as Stewart showed he could still close on Sundays. Color me inspired and thank you, Stewart, for these words I’m going to try to live by in 2021: “I just try to squeeze every little bit of juice I can out of my golf game, out of that lemon.”

Let’s all make some lemonade in 2021 out of the lemon that was 2020.

My favorite photo of 2020: Tiger Woods enjoys some quality father-son time watching Charlie practice after the first round of the PNC Championship from the comfort of his golf bag (Adam Schupak/Golfweek).

The 2020-21 PGA Tour season is where winless streaks go to die. Who could be next to end victory drought?

Stewart Cink ended an 11-year winless streak at the Safeway Open and he’s not alone in getting off the schneid during the 2020-21 season.

That winning feeling never grows old.

Robert Streb, 33, was the most recent PGA Tour winner, nearly holing out his approach to win a playoff over Kevin Kisner at the RSM Classic at Sea Island Resort. It was his first victory in six years and 165 starts. … since the 2014 RSM Classic, or what was then known as the McGladrey Classic.

It continued a current trend of Tour winners finding the winner’s circle after a long dry spell.

Streb’s victory drought was nothing compared to Stewart Cink, who was ranked No. 319 in the world when he claimed the season opener at the Safeway Open. Cink was the first and Streb the latest of five players in the first nine tournaments of the wrap-around season who were ranked outside the top 300 in the world at the time of their victory and hadn’t tasted victory in several years.

For Cink it had been 11 long years since he had won the 2009 British Open, while Martin Laird and Brian Gay had waited seven years respectively between wins (Laird at the Shriners Hospitals to 2013 Valero Texas Open and Gay at the Bermuda Championship to 2013 Humana Challenge). That itch for victory can make the reward even more gratifying, even if the payoff for all the hard work took only half the time for Hudson Swafford, who won the Corales Puntacana Open (2017 American Express) and Sergio Garcia, Sanderson Farms (2017 Masters).

Stewart Cink celebrates with the trophy after winning the Safeway Open at Silverado Resort on September 13, 2020 in Napa, California. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

“We’re all so close out here,” Cink said. “If you just elevate a couple of little areas in your game and just get a little bit better, then you find yourself in contention or winning. If you go the other way, you find yourself on the outside of the cut or having a bunch of 50th-place finishes. It’s just that close.”

40-somethings

Early-season winners also feature the 40-something brigade. Garcia (40), Cink (47) and Gay (48) turning back the clocks could be just the inspiration these golfers need to get over the hump and hoist another trophy:

  • Lucas Glover (41), last win: 2011 Wells Fargo Championship
  • Luke Donald, (42), last win: 2012 Transitions Championship
  • Kevin Streelman (42), last win: 2014 Travelers Championship
  • Rory Sabbatini (44), last win: 2011 Honda Classic

“It would be huge,” Sabbatini said of what win No. 7 would mean to him at this stage in his career. “I’m in that dwindling stage of my career. To be out here and still be able to compete is something I’m very happy about.”

A quartet of late 30-somethings also are trying to knock on victory’s door again. Hunter Mahan (38), a six-time Tour winner who reached No. 4 in the world in April 2012, hasn’t won since the 2014 Barclays while Camilo Villegas (38), has suffered a similar drought (2014 Wyndham Championship) and would be the sentimental choice after losing his daughter to cancer in July.

Has it really been since the 2012 Barclays that Nick Watney (39) has KO’d a field? And yet his time without a victory is eclipsed in this week’s Mayakoba field by K.J. Choi (50 – 2011 Players Championship), Bo Van Pelt (45), whose only title was at the long-defunct 2009 U.S. Bank Championship, and D.J. Trahan (39), who won so long ago that Bob Hope’s name still adorned the tournament title: 2008 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.

Martin Laird celebrates with the trophy after winning the Shriners Hospitals For Children Open at TPC Summerlin on October 11, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada to end his seven-year winless drought. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

What pro may have the best chance to get off the schneid this week at the Mayakoba Golf Classic?

How about Harris English (31), who will try to pull a Robert Streb and win at the same tournament he last won only seven years later to top Streb’s six-year wait. It was at the 2013 Mayakoba where English captured his second Tour title and the world seemed like his oyster. The only other player 25 years old or younger at the time with two Tour titles was Rory McIlroy. English, however, took a step back as he went through a myriad of swing instructors looking for a quick fix. He revived his career last year and recorded his fifth top-10 finish in the past 12 months at the RSM Classic (T-6) since finishing fifth at Mayakoba a year ago. He’s surged to No. 33 in the world, which is counter to the trend of world No. 300 and above winning, but all that’s left for him to achieve is that elusive victory.

“If I keep getting myself in these positions, it’s going to happen,” English said.

Maybe even this week and at the site of his last triumph.

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RSM Classic: Camilo Villegas, two back, trying to win for Mia

Camilo Villegas shot 6-under 66 in the second round of the RSM Classic and trails by 2 strokes just four months after his daughter’s death.

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Camilo Villegas has been chasing a little white ball around and trying to get it into a hole long enough to know that only half the work is over at the RSM Classic and half is still to come. He’s taking a very pragmatic approach to chasing his first PGA Tour title since 2014.

“A lot of golf to be played,” he said. “We’ll do the same thing tomorrow, come out here, try to be free and just add them up at the end of the day.”

On Friday, the scorecard added up to 6-under 66 at the Plantation Course and combined with 6-under 64 a day earlier at the Seaside Course at Sea Island Resort, Villegas enters the weekend at 12-under 130 and two strokes behind 36-hole leader Robert Streb. For the 38-year-old Colombian native, it marks his career-low 36-hole score on Tour.

Bronson Burgoon, who made six birdies in a seven-hole stretch en route to 63 on Friday, played with Villegas and came away impressed with his performance.

“I tried to just get behind, do what he was doing,” Burgoon said. “He made it look pretty easy yesterday. Made a few putts today.”

RSM CLASSIC: Leaderboard | Photos | Tee times, TV info

It’s all the more remarkable given that it was just four months ago that Villegas’s daughter, Mia, lost her battle with cancerous tumors in her brain at the tender age of 22 months. Villegas and wife Maria have a wonderful attitude about life and are committed to making Mia’s legacy live on through their foundation, Mia’s Miracles.

Earlier this week, Villegas, who wears a rainbow ribbon on his hat when he plays in his daughter’s memory, spent time with sports psychologist Gio Valiante, author of “Fearless Golf,” and someone who he’s had a relationship with since his days at the University of Florida.

“It was perfect to have him,” Villegas said. “We spent some nice time, had a couple meals, talked some crap and a little bit of golf. Obviously, you know how it is with golf, it’s all about being free and I think he’s helped me to be a little more free these last couple days.”

Villegas played his first 28 holes without a bogey, but it was how he played after the bogey that he was most proud of.

“I was patient in the middle of the round. I know I was playing good and I just didn’t take advantage of that 8th hole and 9th hole and 10th hole and then I made kind of a silly bogey on 11,” he said. “You start adding those and it’s two, three shots and you feel like you’re leaving some out there. At that point you’ve just got to be patient, know that you’re playing good.”

It all came together at the last hole, the par 5 at the Plantation Course, where he made eagle to cap off the round.

“I got a little lucky to be honest,” he said. “I pushed my drive, it bounced on the cart path. I only had 9-iron in so I was able to be a little more aggressive to a front pin that’s in a tough place with the way it was playing downwind.”

Can Villegas win one for Mia? It’s the type of story that would bring tears to the eyes of the biggest curmudgeon. Villegas, for one, said he feels his confidence building, but reiterated that he has a long way to go to Tour title No. 5.

“It’s not a two-day thing, it’s a process,” he said. “The swing feels good, the speed is better than it was and I’m pain free, so that’s good.”

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