Tag: Fred Funk

Steve Stricker wins Ally Challenge for ninth PGA Tour Champions victory but says caddying for his daughter was ‘cooler than this’

It was just last week that Steve Stricker caddied for his daughter Bobbi at LPGA Qualifying.

A week ago, Steve Stricker was at Mission Hills Country Club not playing golf but instead working as the caddie for his daughter Bobbi in 100-plus degree temperatures at the first stage of LPGA Qualifying. She was among the 106 golfers to advance.

This week, he was back at work at his regular job and doing it quite well, shooting a final-round 67 to win the PGA Tour Champions 2022 Ally Challenge in Grand Blanc, Michigan, by a shot at 15 under.

“Our family’s been going through a lot of golf lately. I caddied for Bobbi last week and that was probably cooler than this,” he said after his win Sunday. “Just to be a part of what she did and to see the enjoyment and the excitement on her face knowing that she’s going on to the next stage means a lot to a dad. That was pretty cool. Like I said, I think that was cooler than today. We’ve had some fun the last few weeks and hopefully we can continue that going forward.”

Stricker said he’ll be back working as a caddie soon which will likely alter his Champions tour goals. But he’s cool with that.

“It’s always been to try to get up as close as I can to the Schwab Cup, right,” he said. “Now my daughter’s going on second stage of tour school so that changes things because I’m going to be looping and I’m going to be on the bag, so I’m going to probably miss a couple events in there, but I’ll keep playing as much as I can and hopefully keep playing well and get as close as I can.”

Stricker, making his debut in the Ally Challenge, has now won nine times on the senior circuit. Brett Quigley, closed with a 68 to finish second.

Jeff Maggert posted Sunday’s best round, a 65, and got it to 13 under which was good enough for the outright lead but it wouldn’t hold. He would finish solo third, two shots back.

Scott Dunlap, who tied the tournament record with a 63 on Saturday, started the final round leading by a shot on Stricker, Padraig Harrington and Brett Quigley. He closed with a 71 and finished tied for fourth along with Harrington, last week’s Champions tour winner.

Fred Funk, 66, beat his age by a shot on Friday and held the solo lead after 18 holes but ended up in a tie for eighth. It was the sixth time a golfer on the PGA Tour Champions shot his age or better this season.

Bernhard Langer, who turned 65 on Saturday, shot 70-69-72 to finish tied for 28th.

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Players Championship has had great Monday finishes: Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods among the winners

The two biggest stars in golf history over the last 60 years won the Players on a Monday.

Hal Sutton had the right club, on that day.

Fred Funk hit into a bunker he’d never been in before, then got a huge break on the lie.

Raymond Floyd schooled an up-and-coming PGA Tour star who would one day join him in the World Golf Hall of Fame.

And the two biggest stars in golf history over the last 60 years added Players Championships to their lengthy resumes.

And they all happened on a Monday.

The Players Championship will have a Monday finish at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass because of storms on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It will be the eighth Monday finish in the history of the tournament and the fourth at the Stadium Course.

No one – the Tour, players, fans and TV partners – is ever happy with a Monday finish. It’s made for longer weeks, cuts into preparations for the next event on the schedule, denies many fans who held Sunday tickets the chance to see the winner walk down the 18th fairway and results in lower ratings.

But in the case of The Players, the Monday finishes have resulted in some of the most memorable moments in tournament history and certainly among the most worthy winners.

Jack Nicklaus has won a record three Players Championships and two of them were on a Monday, at two venues, one in the summer and one in the spring.

Tiger Woods won the first of his two Players titles, closing it out two days after sinking his famous “Better than Most,” putt at No. 17 and holding off Vijay Singh – who executed perhaps the most stunning and inventive short-game shot in tournament history.

Floyd won on a Monday, the last year The Players was contested at the Sawgrass Country Club.

Both of Hal Sutton’s Players titles and Funk’s biggest professional triumph – yep, on Mondays.

That’s three members of the Hall of Fame, a major champion in Sutton and one of the most respected, blue-collar winners on the PGA Tour during his time in Funk.

Not a bad set of winners for any tournament, on any day.

Here’s the history of Players Monday finishes:

When he’s 64: Fred Funk joins Nicklaus, Snead & Watson in making PGA Tour cut at 64 or older

Fred Funk became just the fourth player age 64 or older to survive the 36-hole cut at a PGA Tour event and did so playing alongside his son.

Tom Watson, Jack Nicklaus, Sam Snead and … Fred Funk? One name doesn’t fit with the others. Even Funk would be the first to admit that but he joined that Hall of Fame trio as the only players age 64 or older to make a cut on the PGA Tour.

Funk, 64, shot 1-under 141 to make the 36-hole cut at the Bermuda Championship.

“Shoot, I didn’t know they were that old and still played a Tour event. I knew Watson had maybe. Wow, that’s pretty good,” he said. “Watson, Nicklaus and Snead? That’s really good. And then Funk. You throw that in there, it doesn’t sound right, does it?”

If making a cut wasn’t special enough, Funk did it while playing in a threesome that included son Taylor, who celebrated his 25th birthday by missing the cut.

“This guy is pretty damn good for an old guy,” Taylor said.

Indeed, he is. Funk, winner of the 2005 Players Championship among his eight PGA Tour titles, spends nearly all of his time competing on PGA Tour Champions, where he’s won nine times in all. But he played on a sponsor’s exemption last year at the inaugural Bermuda Championship and missed the cut.

“The whole time I was saying, why aren’t we playing together?” Funk said of last year when father and son played in separate groups. “It would just be so much fun to play together, and it was beyond fun to play with him. Yesterday and today was really phenomenal. Something you kind of dream about or think about. I don’t know if you actually can put it whether it’s really going to happen, the probability of it happening, but it did and it’s really special.

“The only reason I played this week was because I was in the field with Taylor. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to go yesterday the way I felt Wednesday in the pro-am. I said, I’m going to go and tee it up and see what happens. I played surprisingly really well.”

On a blustery day that made scoring difficult, Funk carded 1-over 72 despite averaging just 234.5 yards off the tee. He bogeyed three of his first six holes on Friday, but rallied with four birdies on the inward nine and overcame a double bogey at No. 5, his second nine.

“When he made that double on 5, I was like, ‘Oh, God,’” said Taylor, who approached his father after the hole and said, “I’m your cheerleader now, I’m 6 over. I was rooting him on and tried to keep him upbeat and keep his mind off his body aches.”

Taylor, a former member of the Texas Longhorns who is still seeking status on one of the professional tours, struggled to a 36-hole aggregate of 12-over 154.

“I wish it was flipped, I really do. I wish he was out there competing in the championship on the weekend,” Fred said. His son’s weekend off did nothing to diminish his own pride in his accomplishment.

“It feels good to know you can do it,” said Fred, who took just 24 putts in each of the first two rounds. “Not many guys even have an opportunity to play this late into their career on a regular Tour event.”

Fred capped off his day with a chip-in birdie at No. 9, which led to quite the father-son celebration.

“Yeah, he almost killed me. He horse collared me and I wasn’t ready for it,” Fred said.

“I went the other way and I was like, ‘I didn’t hurt you, did I?’ He’s very fragile nowadays,” Taylor said. “No, it was a cool moment to hug him after that. Looked like he was about to cry making the cut again.”

Bermuda Championship: Who could be this year’s Brendon Todd?

While the stars prep for Augusta National in two weeks, there are plenty of storylines for someone to grab the spotlight in Bermuda.

A year ago, Brendon Todd arrived in Bermuda as a down-on-his-luck journeyman PGA Tour pro winless since 2014. By Sunday he had blitzed the field at the Bermuda Championship, victorious by six strokes, won the next event too, and racked up another 10 top-25 finishes last season as he resurrected his career.

When asked how he would have responded if told prior to the start of last year’s tournament that he would improve from outside the top 500 to No. 41 in the Official World Golf Ranking this week and be the highest ranked player in the field, he said, “I probably would have laughed and said, ‘I’ll take it, give me more, right?’ ”

While much attention already is being devoted to the Masters, which begins in two weeks, for the 132-man field this week and next at the Vivint Houston Open, these starts mean everything. Todd, who is making his 200th career Tour start, took advantage last year making seven birdies in a row in the final round, beginning on the second hole, to coast to victory.

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“I felt like I was kind of walking on clouds and that’s a really special feeling to have,” he said.

For some of the special invites, this week could change the trajectory of their career. Take Camiko Smith, a 35-year-old native of Bermuda who is making his Tour debut after winning a 36-hole local qualifier played earlier this month. Until Todd came along and shot one of three 62s at last year’s tournament, Smith shared the course record of 64 with Adam Scott. Smith grew up along the fourth hole of Port Royal Golf Club in Southampton, so close to the Robert Trent Jones Sr. design, in fact, that a ball pulled left will end up out of bounds in his family’s yard.

“I actually hop over a fence and I’m right on it,” said Smith, who had been teaching golf in Orlando and Dallas prior to returning to Bermuda and working at a local glass company for the last four months. “I used to get kicked off for doing that, now I’m sitting here playing a PGA Tour event in my backyard, so it’s pretty awesome.”

Danish teen sensation Rasmus Hojgaard has already won twice on the European Tour, becoming its first champion that was born in the 2000s. The 19-year-old, who has PGA Tour aspirations, played in the U.S. Open in September and jumped at the chance to make another PGA Tour start.

“It was a no-brainer for me to come over here and play,” he said.

Left to right: Brothers Ben, Luke and Ollie Schniederjans enjoy a walk in Bermuda. Photo by Mark Williams/PGA Tour.

The Bermuda Championship also has a couple family affairs as 64-year-old former Players Championship winner Fred Funk and son Taylor, 24, are grouped together Thursday (12:15 p.m. ET tee time) while brothers Ollie and Luke Schniederjans, who also benefited from sponsor’s exemptions, will be playing in their first Tour field together. It didn’t hurt the chances for the brothers, who both attended Georgia Tech, that Bermuda Championship tournament director Sean Sovacool is also a fellow Yellow Jackets alum.

Ollie, 27, a former No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, lost his Tour privileges after finishing No. 180 in the 2018-19 FedEx Cup point standings and spent last season competing on the Korn Ferry Tour, while younger brother Luke, 22, is making his Tour debut. (Middle brother Ben has caddied for Ollie for the past year.)

“I always dreamed of us playing a PGA Tour event together,” Ollie said. “All three of us brothers out here walking around, it’s pretty incredible.”

Someone will leave Bermuda with a trophy, $720,000 added to their bank account, a two-year Tour exemption and a berth in the 2021 Masters among the spoils.

“There’s probably going to be somebody this week that finishes first or second who is a great player and has shown great form either in the last year or in a previous year that changes the curve of their career,” Todd said. “That’s what’s so cool about some of these events that don’t have the top-ranked guys in them.”

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