There’s a bit of a call out to the Palmetto State with T-shirts in Clemson University orange and the state outline.
RIDGELAND, S.C. – Checking in from the official merchandise tent at the CJ Cup and sticking with a familiar theme — there’s a bit of a call out to the Palmetto State with T-shirts in Clemson University orange and the state outline. All that’s missing is the popular area code or zip code shirt. #CmonMan
The CJ Cup originated in South Korea, the home country of the title sponsor, but COVID-19 and the global pandemic have kept it from returning there since 2019. While the previous editions of the tournament have been held stateside in Las Vegas, Congaree Club stepped forward to play host this year, and has made its distinctive logo for the private club available to the masses this week if you want to rock their emblem as if you were a full-blooded member.
The gear available for purchase at the merchandise tent is pretty conservative this week: Peter Millar, Straight Down and Level Wear are the primary apparel companies and all the usual trinkets and tchotchkes that your heart could desire are also available.
Here’s a selection of the gear that caught our eye:
“We will measure our success in terms of how many lives we can affect positively.”
RIDGELAND, S.C. – Riding on a shuttle to the CJ Cup in South Carolina, one of the passengers asked aloud, “Is there a golf course around here? Where the hell are we?”
One of them mimicked the dueling banjos from the movie “Deliverance” as a friend chuckled and replied, “If you want to go and hide, this is where you go.”
Yes, there is a golf course amid these 2,000 acres of lakes and longleaf pine forests in South Carolina’s Lowcountry and it’s a pretty darn good one. Congaree Golf Club is the brainchild of two of the wealthiest men in the U.S: billionaires Dan Friedkin and the late Bob McNair, who is best known for owning the NFL’s Houston Texans. McNair’s passing trimmed the number of members at the club to one.
Instead of members, Congaree boasts roughly 250 “ambassadors,” captains of industry who are lovers of the game, many of them flying in on their private planes to play the Tom Fazio design situated on an 18th-century rice plantation that also once served as a quail hunting preserve. The layout fits in wonderfully with its natural surroundings.
“Just the whole setting here, it reminds me of a couple of my favorite places that I’ve been,” said Jordan Spieth, noting Sandbelt courses in Australia and Whispering Pines in East Texas. “I love just these giant trees that shape the holes.”
PGA Tour pro Lucas Glover and World Golf Hall of Famers Nick Price, Mark O’Meara and Tom Watson are counted among the few, the proud who have paid the initiation fee – a donation to the Congaree Foundation – and lend time and money to a greater cause.
“I think it just means they know you’ll help out when needed,” Glover said of what being an ambassador encompassed. “I think that’s probably what that term actually means when we get down to it. That’s a pretty good thing to call the people involved here.”
And that’s the primary reason that it’s pretty cool the Tour is making its second somewhat unscheduled stop in this rural outpost of the Palmetto State. Congaree made an unsuccessful bid to host the 2026 Presidents Cup, losing out to Medinah, but the Tour kept it on its short list of potential future venues and when the 2021 RBC Canadian Open was canceled due to the global pandemic, Congaree stepped in to host the Palmetto Championship. The tournament was held ahead of the U.S. Open in June, a month when the club is typically closed. It should play faster and firmer this go-round after the CJ Cup, which originated as a PGA Tour event based in South Korea, pairing with the Zozo Championship for a two-week Asian Swing, elected to be played stateside again due to COVID concerns.
Gary Williams, the former Golf Channel “Morning Drive” co-host and current host of “Five Clubs Conversations With” podcast, came to Congaree Club for the first time in June 2018 for something called the Global Golf Initiative, a week-long training camp each summer.
“I had no idea that their goal was to enhance the lives of young people in Jasper County, which is the poorest county in South Carolina, and that’s saying something,” Williams said.
The Global Golf Initiative at Congaree offers a mix of educational, vocational and golf instruction. (Photo: Eamon Lynch, Golfweek)
He witnessed the kids receive access to the highest level of athletic coaching and fitness training from the likes of Top 100 instructor Jason Baile and academic tools to enhance their opportunities for success, including SAT prep.
“They have to fit a certain profile and the common denominator is they don’t have much,” Williams said.
Bruce Davidson, Congaree’s co-director of golf, told PGA Tour.com that the ambassadors have raised approximately $15.5 million for the Congaree Foundation.
The results since 2017 have been staggering: 138 program graduates, 48 age-eligible college golfers and 95 percent of participants have attended college.
“We will measure our success in terms of how many lives we can affect positively,” Davidson told Golfweek in 2021. “There’s never been any mention whatsoever of financial return. That’s what differentiates Dan Friedkin from anyone else I’ve ever met.”
The philanthropic heart of the club also extends to a club down the road. Sergeant Jasper Country Club, a public course where the green fee is $16 on weekdays and ticks up another dollar on the weekend, was on the verge of closing its doors when the Congaree Foundation bought the club in 2021 and is working to reinvigorate the course to provide a quality experience for aspiring golfers of all ages.
Forty miles from Hilton Head Island, where the PGA Tour plays annually at Harbour Town, and 90 minutes from Kiawah Island, where Phil Mickelson won the 2021 PGA Championship at the Ocean Course, is an equally impressive golf course where something special is happening. It’s also not a bad place to hide out for a week watching the PGA Tour.
Sergeant Jasper Country Club has new ownership, but it will still be open to the public. The Congaree Foundation acquired the nine-hole golf course in Ridgeland last year.
“It’s sort of like a heavyweight boxer losing a world title and it’s a journey to get that title back”
RIDGELAND, S.C. – Rory McIlroy has his sights set on returning to world No. 1 for the first time in more than two years as he defends his title at the CJ Cup in South Carolina.
McIlroy needs either to win this week and have reigning world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler finish worse than a two-way tie for second, or he can finish second as long as Scheffler finishes worse than 34th (out of a field of 78), to return to the top spot in the Official World Golf Ranking for the ninth different time in his career. To date, McIlroy’s spent a total of 106 weeks as king of the hill, relinquishing the throne on July 19, 2020, when Jon Rahm unseated him. (Scheffler has been No. 1 for 30 weeks since March 27.)
It’s been more than a decade since McIlroy claimed world No.1 for the first time after outdueling Tiger Woods to win the 2012 Honda Classic. It had been a goal of McIlroy’s ever since he had cracked the top five with a victory at the 2011 U.S. Open.
“I remember waking up the next morning and being like, ‘Is this it?’ You know, you sort of, you work towards a goal for so long and then you wake up the next day and you don’t feel any different after having achieved it,” he said. “So I think then it’s a matter of having to reframe your goals and reframe what success looks like. I think that’s one of the great things about this game, no matter how much you’ve achieved or how much success you’ve had, you always want to do something else, there’s always something else to do.”
For years, McIlroy has made a habit of checking every Sunday night the Twitter handle VC606, who has become an authority on the complex mathematical formula that weights tournaments played over the last two years on a sliding scale, so recent performances carry greater importance, and based on strength of field, for the latest movements in the rankings. Then he’ll log on to the OWGR website on Monday morning for closer inspection.
“I maybe don’t keep as much of a close eye on it as I used to, but still it’s a point of pride for all of us out there to be highly ranked and to get to No. 1 in the world at whatever you do is an unbelievable accolade,” he said.
To McIlroy, who won the FedEx Cup for an unprecedented third time in August, regaining the top spot would signify how far he has come since the PGA Tour resumed its season in July 2020 after a 90-day COVID-19 break. McIlroy slumped – for him – dropping as low as No. 16 in the world last August and entered the 2021 CJ Cup, which was played a year ago in Las Vegas, at No. 13. The low point? Last year’s Ryder Cup when the de facto leader of Team Europe played so poorly that he was benched for one of the sessions on Saturday for the first time.
“I think that was like the reset button for me to sort of…ask myself some tough questions, and thankfully I’ve come out the other side of it and I’m better for that experience,” he said.
What McIlroy has accomplished since his win at the CJ Cup – two more titles among 13 straight events of T-20 or better – is all the more impressive when you consider he’s become the unofficial spokesman for the Tour during its battle with Saudi-funded LIV Golf.
“The golf is one thing – we know how great he is – but the fact that he shouldered such a responsibility for the Tour, for the history of golf, for what he thinks golf should be and the fact that he took a stand of where the LIV money is coming from and was a leader, that was the most impressive thing to me,” said NBC/Golf Channel analyst John Wood. “To take on that responsibility and play great golf was phenomenal. It’s one of the most impressive seasons I’ve seen.”
As the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. For McIlroy, it began with his victory at the CJ Cup a year ago. Whether he achieves the feat of world No. 1 again or not this week, it’s the journey, he said, that he’ll cherish most.
“It’s sort of like a heavyweight boxer losing a world title and it’s a journey to get that title back,” he said. “I feel like that’s the cool part of it and that’s the journey that I’ve sort of been through over the past 12 months.”
“That’s the one thing I would say is just managing your time and not forgetting why you’re in this position.”
If you’re not a New England Patriots fan, this reference may go over your head — Tom Kim is impacting golf the same way Bailey Zappe is impacting Boston-area football, the people have the fever.
Over the last few months, Kim has become a household name thanks to a ridiculous win at the Wyndham Championship (he began the tournament with a quadruple bogey), an electric performance at the Presidents Cup and another victory at the Shriners Children’s Open.
He’s quickly risen to No. 15 in the world and is set to contend for another title this week at the CJ Cup in Ridgeland, South Carolina.
Among all the Tom Kim-fever affected fans is world No. 2 Rory McIlroy, who had some glowing things to say about the 20-year-old phenom.
“I think that the journey or the rise that Tom’s been on over the last few months has been incredible,” McIlroy said Wednesday. “He finished second at the Scottish Open, I think, and then winning the Wyndham and starting the way he did and winning in the style that he did was, I think it made everyone really take notice of the talent that he has.
“And then I got to play a nine-hole practice round with him in Delaware a couple of weeks after that, which was fun to just see him play in person.
“And then I was watching the Presidents Cup a lot. I think there’s a lot more Tom Kim fans in the world because of the Presidents Cup, right? He was really fun to watch, he showed a ton of emotion, he played great.”
McIlroy, Kim and Rickie Fowler are set to play the first two rounds together at Congaree Golf Club this week, with their first round getting underway Thursday at 10:20 a.m. ET.
As Kim waited for his turn at the podium, he took the mic and had a question for the four-time major champion.
“Rory, I have a question for you. What’s it like having so much success as a young player? Coming out and many years on tour, how do you manage all that?”
Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland talks at a press conference prior to the start of the CJ Cup at Congaree Golf Club on October 19, 2022 in Ridgeland, South Carolina. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
“I didn’t have as much success as you’re having at such a young age,” McIlroy said. “Like I think when you start to have success at a young age, you’re going to — I think the biggest thing that I realized is managing your time. You’re going to be pulled in so many different directions.
“You’ve got one, two, three, four, I can see five sponsors on you at this point, right? So it’s just trying to manage your time to realize what got you to this position, right? Why are you a two-time PGA Tour winner, why are you such a great player? And it’s the time that you put into it and it’s the practice, it’s not losing sight of that.”
“That’s the one thing I would say is just managing your time and not forgetting why you’re in this position and why you’re so lucky to get to play with me the next two days.”
Rory McIlroy gave Tom Kim a hug in the media centre at Congaree jsut now and Rory told him "I was screaming so hard for you at the TV" when Tom Kim drained that birdie putt to win his Saturday fourballs match @PresidentsCup with Si Woo Kim to beat Schauffele + Patrik Cantlay
The next few days should serve as another great learning experience for Kim, who currently sits fourth in the FedEx Cup standings.
McIlroy is both the defending champion and betting favorite (+700) and enters the week in fantastic form. After winning the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup, the Northern Irishman made three starts on the DP World Tour, finishing inside the top five in all three events.
Going back to the Masters, McIlroy has grabbed nine top fives in his last 14 worldwide starts (including two wins).
Not bad.
With a win Sunday, McIlroy would overtake the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking.
What would it mean to him?
“I think if I get back to No. 1 this week, it’s like my ninth time getting back,” he said. “It sort of illustrates you can have your runs and you can stay there, but I think the cool part is the journey and the journey getting back there. It’s sort of like a heavyweight boxer losing a world title and it’s a journey to get that title back.
“I feel like that’s the cool part of it and that’s the journey that I’ve sort of been through over the past 12 months.”
It’s not every day that the world No. 1 changes his equipment, let alone his putter, but this week he shall.
RIDGELAND, S.C. – The world No. 1 and reigning PGA Tour Player of the Year plans to insert a new putter in the bag this week at the CJ Cup at Congaree Golf Club.
Scottie Scheffler, who had been using a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 model, will be rolling his rock with a Cameron T-5.5 Proto mallet this week.
“I typically don’t like changing equipment at all, but I’ve been using it now for probably two, three weeks,” Scheffler said. “Late in the year I putted what felt like to me pretty poorly, I was really streaky. I was trying a few different things and that’s not really a way to improve when you’re kind of, felt like I was kind of blindly throwing darts just trying to find something. Sometimes I was lining the ball up, sometimes I wasn’t.”
Scheffler actually enjoyed his best putting year statistically last season. He improved from 117th in Strokes Gained: Putting (-.0.53) his rookie season in 2019-20 to 107th (+0.23) in 2020-21 to 58th last season (+.202). But when asked to name the last tournament he putted up to his high standard, he mentioned the Masters, where he won his first major despite a four-putt at 18.
“Obviously the results there were good,” he said. “My memory for stuff like that isn’t really good, I have a very short memory, so the Masters is obviously one that sticks out in my head. I’m sure there’s a few throughout the year where I putted pretty good.”
Scheffler’s putter went cold in the final round of the Tour Championship – he shot 74 and squandered the lead – in his last start and he struggled so much so at the Presidents Cup that he was seen putting under floodlights on Saturday night and getting tips from U.S. Assistant Captain Steve Stricker, who is regarded as an outstanding putter and trusted as a second set of eyes by no less than Tiger Woods.
“Sometimes it’s good to have a kind of different voice in your head,” Scheffler said. “Randy (Smith) and I have been working together for so long that it was kind of nice just to hear some different thoughts on how Steve approached putting, because I definitely was frustrated with how I was rolling it at the Presidents Cup. I wasn’t hitting my lines, I couldn’t get comfortable over the ball. If it was a stroke-play tournament, I would have been fine, I still would have been able to play good, but with it being match play, you’ve got to make those putts toward the end of the matches and I wasn’t able to do that. It was very helpful kind of picking his brain and just kind of learning from him.”
Scottie Scheffler appears to be making a putter change this week.
How did Scheffler settle on this particular model, which has done wonders for Max Homa, who has made it his gamer of late?
“I remember in junior golf I used kind of a mallet type putter head and I think it was the putter I used when I won the U.S. Junior and I won the (Sage Valley) Junior Invitational, which at the time were kind of like the two biggest junior tournaments. I grabbed this putter that I had at home that I tested a while ago. I set it up and I was like, man, this thing’s really easy to line up, I don’t feel I really have to work a lot to line the ball up correctly,” Scheffler explained. “I fooled around with that model, figured out what I liked and didn’t like and I talked to the guys at Titleist and they were able to get a putter to me in like a day from California. I kept using this one. For me it’s just really easy to line up, I feel like I’m more consistent with it. I feel like my ceiling’s still the same. I can get hot with the putter and make a ton of putts, but I felt like my floor was a little too low last year, so hopefully this will be one of those deals that will kind of raise the floor.”
To be determined if the sky is the limit for Scottie’s new Scotty.
Here are some of the best photos from the week at the CJ Cup.
After a week in East Asia for the Zozo Championship, a tournament eventually won by Keegan Bradley, the PGA Tour is back stateside for the 2022 CJ Cup at Congaree Golf Club in Ridgeland, South Carolina.
World No. 2 Rory McIlroy is the defending champion and betting favorite (+700), although he won at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas last season.
The field consists of 78 players, including 15 of the world’s top 20, and there will be no 36-hole cut Friday afternoon.
Congaree Golf Club is a par-71 track that will measure 7,655 yards.
Here are some of the best photos from the week at the CJ Cup.
“Man, I love Phil, but I don’t know what he’s talking about. I really, really don’t know why he said that.”
RIDGELAND, S.C. – To hear Jon Rahm tell it, Phil Mickelson has lost the plot.
Asked about Mickelson’s comments advancing a theory that the PGA Tour is trending downward, Rahm chuckled and said, “Man, I love Phil, but I don’t know what he’s talking about. I really, really don’t know why he said that.”
In case you missed it, here is what Mickelson said last week in Saudi Arabia during the LIV Golf event, which Brooks Koepka won.
“As I said earlier, for a long, long time, my 30 years on the PGA Tour, pretty much all the best players played on the PGA Tour, at least for the last 20 years,” he said. “That will never be the case again. I think going forward you have to pick a side. You have to pick what side do you think is going to be successful.
“And I firmly believe that I’m on the winning side of how things are going to evolve and shape in the coming years for professional golf. We play against a lot of the best players in the world on LIV, and there are a lot of the best players in the world on the PGA Tour. And until some of the – well, until both sides sit down and have a conversation and work something out, both sides are going to continue to change and evolve.
“And I see LIV Golf trending upwards, I see the PGA Tour trending downwards, and I love the side that I’m on. And I love how I feel. I love how I’m reinvigorated and excited to play golf and compete. I love the experience. I love the way they treat us.”
Back to Rahm, who noted that the Tour has made some changes, including elevating 13 events with higher purses that the best players all will be committed to play.
“There’s been some changes being made, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going down, right?” Rahm added. “I truly don’t know why he said that. Don’t know. I really don’t know.”
That makes five “don’t knows” if you’re scoring at home.
“I think there’s some great changes being made and great changes for the players on the Tour,” he continued. “I truly don’t know what drove him to say something like.” (Make that six don’t knows.)
What Rahm does know is he’s coming into the CJ Cup in South Carolina at Congaree Golf Club riding a heater of sorts. After a season that didn’t live up to his expectations – just one win on the PGA Tour at the Mexico Open at Vidanta and slipped from first to fifth in the world – Rahm finish T-2 at the BMW Championship and won the Spanish Open two weeks ago, firing a pair of final-round 62s at both events.
“I understand it’s not the strongest field, but it’s something that means a lot to me and sometimes controlling myself in the crowd can be a little hard,” Rahm said of winning in his homeland. “So for me it was a week to be proud of.”
Rahm credited a slight tweak to his setup that he made in August for his improved putting of late, and pinpointed when he re-discovered his groove.
“A lot of it with putting is confidence,” he said. “I think it was at BMW where after 27 holes I saw three putts go in and confidence went right back up and for the next few events I played amazing.”
Another thing Rahm knows: playing back home in Spain is the most draining week of his year, and this will be his only start on the fall portion of the 2022-23 FedEx Cup schedule. (He’s committed to play in the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas in December.)
“I can guarantee you next week I will not see a golf course,” he said.
Everything you need to know for the first round in South Carolina.
After a week out in Japan, the PGA Tour is heading back to the United States.
Congaree Golf Club in Ridgeland, South Carolina, plays host to the 2022 CJ Cup. The field is limited with 78 players, but it’s easily the best thus far of the fall season. It includes 15 of the top 20 players in the Official World Golf Ranking, including Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and more.
McIlroy won the event last year, which was hosted at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas. This year, Congaree will play as a par-71 layout measuring at 7,655 yards.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s what you need to know for the first round of the 2022 CJ Cup. All times Eastern.
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RIDGELAND, S.C. – During an off week spent at home in Dallas, Jordan Spieth experienced something he wasn’t used to – being the worst person in a foursome.
This wasn’t golf – that would be near impossible for the three-time major winner and former World No. 1 – but a doubles pickleball match with partner Scottie Scheffler in the Celebrity Battle of the Paddle exhibition in Frisco, Texas on Thursday. The PGA stars took on former Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki and John Isner, one of the top American tennis players during the Professional Pickleball Association’s PPA Tour Round Up.
“It was a really weird feeling going in front of a big crowd knowing you were the worst on the court, and I didn’t like that at all,” said Spieth, noting that Scheffler plays pickleball, a combination of tennis, Ping-Pong and badminton, nearly every day and he had played less than 10 times. “I’m fine in front of a crowd if I know that I’ve practiced and I’m good at what I’m going to do. But I wouldn’t say like I’m bad, but when you’re the worst of the ones that are going to be on there and there’s like 500 people there, you’re like this kind of stinks, I don’t really enjoy this.”
In case he didn’t make it clear, Spieth shared a conversation he had with caddie Michael Greller and a no-to subtle dig at his caddie’s golf abilities.
“So I asked Michael, is that what it’s like when you’re hitting shots at like 17 at Sawgrass or 16 at Phoenix? I’m like, is this kind of how it feels? He’s like, ‘Yeah.’ He’s like, ‘That’s why I’ll either hit it really close or I’ll miss the green.’”
The good news is, Spieth’s golf game has been trending in the right direction as he prepares to make his season debut at the CJ Cup in South Carolina at Congaree Golf Club. When he last competed, Spieth was a perfect 5-0 in leading Team USA to victory at the Presidents Cup, including his first victory in singles at either the Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup. (He was previously a combined 0-6-1.) Spieth, who won an hour’s drive away in April at the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head Island and enters the week at No. 13 in the world, said he has found more joy in the actual work involved in improving than he has in the past while conceding there is more work to be done to achieve the lofty goals he still has for his career.
“I had some inconsistencies this year. Sorry, this last season. I didn’t have a great putting season by any means, but I also felt that ball-striking was a little more inconsistent than the previous year, and I knew why and I just needed a few weeks at home to try and figure it out. I kind of got to work right after East Lake and really tried to nail a lot in pre-Presidents Cup,” he explained. “Then kind of the week leading in, I really started to kind of have things click a bit.”
He continued: “In the last couple years, I’ve really enjoyed the process, really enjoyed the work more than ever. Now I’m more enjoying my day-to-day work in getting to a place of freedom, getting to the feels where I’m like, man, I’m going to get there and then I’m going to stripe it all day. It’s that kind of excitement that I’m kind of finding in the ground that’s in the work, that’s probably what I see the biggest difference from even rookie year to when I was struggling to more recently. I’m appreciating the work and trying to maximize the time that I have when I am working and enjoying that process more than I would say the end benefit of winning a tournament or winning matches.”
Spieth said he plans to play a limited schedule this fall – he has committed to the Hero World Challenge and PNC Championship, both unofficial events in December – and chose to play the CJ Cup in order to try to jumpstart his 2022-23 season.
“I don’t want to start really behind like I have last two years come Kapalua (Sentry Tournament of Champions, the first event in January),” he said, “so it would be really nice to get off to a good start and have a strong finish here because I think this is probably the only FedEx Cup event that I’m able to play this fall.”
World Nos. 1, 2, 5, 8, 9 and 10 are ready for battle.
Fifteen of the world’s top-20 players are in South Carolina for the CJ Cup at Congaree Golf Club.
Rory McIlroy, the defending champion, is the betting favorite at +700. The world No. 2 hasn’t played on the PGA Tour since winning the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup but has made three starts on the DP World Tour, finishing inside the top five in all three (T-2, 4, T-4).
Jon Rahm, who won the Open de Espana on the DP World Tour two weeks ago, is +900 to take home the title while world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is +1200.
The field consists of 78 players, and there will be no cut after 36 holes.
Golf course
Congaree Golf Club | Par 71 | 7,655 yards | Tom Fazio (2018)
Aerial views of Congaree Golf Club in Ridgeland, South Carolina (Courtesy of the PGA Tour)
Data Golf Information
Course Fit (compares golf courses based on the degree to which different golfer attributes — such as driving distance — to predict who performs well at each course – DataGolf): 1. Quail Hollow Club, 2. Club de Golf Chapultepac, 3. The Old White TPC
Trending (of the players in the field, last three finishes): 1. Rory McIlroy (last three starts: T-2, 4, T-4), 2. Jon Rahm (T-15, T-2, 1), 3. Sungjae Im (T-2, 7, T-29)
Percent chance to win (based on course history, fit, trending, etc.): 1. Rory McIlroy (14.2 percent), 2. Jon Rahm (8.5 percent), 3. Scottie Scheffler (8.2 percent)
