Tag: Insperity Invitational

Steve Stricker co-leads Insperity Invitational in first round since major health scare five months ago

About five months ago, Steve Stricker came down with an illness that he says his doctors still aren’t sure what it was.

Steve Stricker captained the U.S. team to a 19-9 victory over Europe at Whistling Straits, in his home state of Wisconsin, to capture the 43rd Ryder Cup last September.

A couple weeks before Thanksgiving, he was struck with an illness that is still a mystery to him and his doctors.

On Friday at The Woodlands outside Houston, Stricker fired a 7-under 65 in his return to competitive golf to tie for the lead with Ernie Els and Steve Alker after the first round of the PGA Tour Champions Insperity Invitational.

It’s been a rough few months for Stricker, who was asked Thursday if his doctors ever determined what the illness was.

“No. Still don’t know to this day,” he said. “There’s a couple theories out there that it was a virus of some sort that they weren’t able to put a name to it or a reaction to the vaccine potentially. Yeah, I had the shot about four weeks prior to me starting to feel kind of crappy and then it went from there. I’m really not sure what it was. I’m over it really and I’ve kind of moved on and I don’t really care what it was really. At this point I’m just trying to focus on moving ahead and I’m feeling better and just hope it doesn’t happen again.”

Stricker, 55, said he lost considerable weight while suffering from a condition that caused inflammation around his heart. He spent 11 days at UW Hospital with an ailment that simply started as a cough. He shared further details with pgatour.com:

A pain in his side was soon a temperature of 103, a “jacked up” white blood cell count, and inflammation around his heart. Hospitalized two weeks before Thanksgiving, he began having problems with his liver. That turned into jaundice, and before long, he said, he was peeing what looked like Pepsi. He didn’t eat for two weeks; he lost 25 pounds.

His cardiologist originally said it could be six months before he could return to competition, but Stricker managed to speed up that timeline by a few weeks. He said it felt good to be back between the ropes.

“It was more emotional right away at the start. Getting some hugs from players that I hadn’t seen for six months, Freddie [Couples] and Mark [O’Meara] on the first tee saying how nice it was for me to be back. You get all this outpouring of support from people,” Stricker said.

Stricker also has family nearby. His wife is working as his caddie and his daughters were in the gallery.

“You know, a lot of the pressure was really off me today I feel like just because I hadn’t been out here for so long and I didn’t put a lot of pressure on myself to perform and shoot a good round. That helped today, too,” he said. “I just kind of went with the flow and didn’t expect a lot and just kept putting my head down and trying to hit a shot. So I kind of downplayed all this in my own mind to just kind of go out and have fun with it. I’m thankful to be here, I’m lucky to be here and I’m happy to be back out here.”

The Insperity is his first Champions event since October when he played in the Constellation Furyk & Friends in Jacksonville. His last Champions victory was at the Senior Players Championship last June. He has seven wins on the senior circuit and 12 on the PGA Tour.

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Jesper Parnevik is rocking a new hairdo you have to see to believe

His hair has been compared to Mr. Brady in “The Brady Bunch,” and one of the patrolmen on “Chips.”

Move over, Cameron Smith.

There’s a new king of the bad hairdo in professional golf and his name is Jesper Parnevik.

The 57-year-old Swede, still fit as a fiddle, arrived in Houston for the Insperity Invitational this week with a head of lettuce that makes Smith’s distinctive mullet look tame. It almost distracts from the fact that he’s also rocking a nifty stache too.

The initial reaction to seeing a photo of Parnevik was best summed up on the Monday Q Twitter feed: “If you say you knew this was Jesper Parnevik you’re a damn liar.”

Parnevik looks as if he’s wearing a wig as a disguise for the TV show “Undercover Boss,” or has joined the witness protection program. His appearance has been compared to Mr. Brady in “The Brady Bunch,” one of the highway patrolmen on “Chips,” and an older version of Rickie Fowler. Golf writer Robert Lusetich noted a striking resemblance to a young Corey Pavin.

In a social media posting from PGA Tour Champions, Parnevik explained his new look: “It started as a bet that I couldn’t cut my hair until I won a tournament, and the bad thing is I haven’t played since September.”

Parnevik always has been one of golf’s odd-ball characters, known for eating volcanic dust as a dietary supplement, the flipped-bill hat, and disco-era trousers and other golf apparel back when he repped gear designed by Johan Lindeberg. The great Dan Jenkins once described his fashion sense as “the last guy to climb out of the clown car at the circus.”

Parnevik won five times on the PGA Tour, four times on the DP World Tour and once on PGA Tour Champions. That title came at the Insperity Invitational in 2016. If he truly isn’t going to cut his hair until he wins, Parnevik could be in for a hair-raising experience.

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After health scare that saw him lose 25 pounds, Steve Stricker is set to return to Champions Tour in Houston

Stricker said he lost considerable weight while suffering from inflammation around his heart.

The last 12 months have been something of a whirlwind for Steve Stricker, with the 12-time PGA Tour winner enjoying the thrill of captaining the American Ryder Cup to victory immediately followed by a health scare that left the Wisconsin native emaciated.

But Stricker, who said he lost considerable weight while suffering from a condition that caused inflammation around his heart, is slated to return to action next week at the Insperity Invitational, the Houston stop on the PGA Tour Champions.

Stricker spent 11 days at UW Hospital last fall with an ailment that simply started as a cough.

“I’m down 25 pounds. I’m freshman-in-high school weight. I lost all my muscle. I look like an 85-year-old man, dude. My skin is hanging,” he said back in January, soon after the incident. “I kind of have a feeling that (the Ryder Cup) could have had a part in it. It’s a letdown, right, after that happens? And then your immune system is probably down. It probably played a role in it somehow.”

“My heart is in rhythm now. It was jumping in and out of rhythm from Thanksgiving all the way to Christmas Eve.”

Stricker’s cardiologist originally said it could be six months before he could return to competition, but the University of Illinois product appears to be shaving about a month off that timeline.

And although a former golf coach suggested he simply sit on the sideline and enjoy this phase of his life, the 55-year-old Stricker — who has seven Champions tour victories, including three majors — said that simply didn’t sit right.

“That’s not my style, you know?” Stricker said. “I like to work at things.”

Stricker captained his U.S. to a 19-9 victory over Europe at Whistling Straits, in his home state of Wisconsin. Soon after, he took trophies from the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup, the other biennial match-play event between the U.S. and an international team, to a Champions event in Jacksonville.

Stricker became only the third man to captain winning U.S. teams in both competitions, joining Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.

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Mike Weir ends 13-year drought, wins Insperity Invitational on PGA Tour Champions

In his 14th start on the PGA Tour Champions, Weir snapped a winless streak that had stretched to 13 years, six months and two days.

In February, Mike Weir was in position to win for the first time—anywhere—in more 13 years. He led by four shots through eight holes during the final round at the Cologuard Classic in Tucson, Arizona, but Kevin Sutherland tracked him down to snatch away the victory and keep Weir’s winless streak alive.

On Sunday, at the Insperity Invitational at The Woodlands, Texas, Weir didn’t let another one slip away.

In his 14th start on the PGA Tour Champions, Weir snapped a winless streak that had stretched to 13 years, six months and two days.

John Daly briefly held a two-shot lead after he eagled the par-5 13th hole but Weir eagled the same hole a few minutes later, knotting things up at 10 under. Those two dueled from there but after smoking a drive on 18, Daly, playing a hole ahead of Weir, came up short on his approach shot and splashed down in the lake in front of the green. He would close with a double bogey 6 and a final-round 69.

Weir, who stuffed several approach shots on Sunday, did so again when he needed to the most on the final hole. He then two-putted for par to seal the win by two over Daly, Tim Petrovic and David Toms.

Daly, who turned 55 four days ago, earned his lone Champions win at the Insperity four years ago.

Toms was trying to make it an LSU double on Sunday. Just a couple hours earlier, Sam Burns earned his first PGA Tour win at the Valspar Championship. Toms, a mentor and friend to Burns, shot a final-round 71.

The Insperity was reduced from 54 holes to 36 with most of Friday and Saturday impacted by heavy rain. It was the first Champions event to get cut to 36 holes since the 2018 Principial Charity Classic in Des Moines, Iowa. Second-round leader Tom Lehman was declared the champion there after thunderstorms throughout the final day.

Hey Jordan Spieth, think you won’t play on the PGA Tour Champions? ‘Yeah, you will. Everybody does.’

The joke, as Jim Furyk likes to tell it, is that everyone is thrilled to be on the PGA Tour Champions. Just thrilled.

The joke, as Jim Furyk likes to tell it, is that everyone is thrilled to be on the PGA Tour Champions. Just thrilled. I mean, who wouldn’t want to know their prime is behind them, right?

“We all just get really excited about getting older and turning 50,” Furyk joked earlier this week. “It’s awesome.”

Snark aside, Furyk and a strong field will be lacing up their spikes on Friday to take part in the Insperity Invitational, a lucrative stop on the PGA Tour Champions at The Woodlands, just north of Houston.

Forget the whole field, just Furyk’s pairing has quite the pedigree. In fact, Furyk, Ernie Els and Colin Montgomerie — who open their first round on Friday at 11:40 a.m. ET — have amassed a combined 96 titles on the PGA and European Tours.

So the competition should be fierce at Insperity, the first of three straight weeks of PGA Tour Champions action. And while Furyk, Els and most recently, Phil Mickelson, might not be thrilled about moving to the senior circuit, they’re also realistic about their chances.

Scott McCarron poses with the trophy after winning the Insperity Invitational at The Woodlands Country Club on May 05, 2019, in The Woodlands, Texas. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

As reigning champion Scott McCarron said on Wednesday, what once might have been thought of as a step down becomes a wonderfully viable option as players get longer in the tooth, but shorter off the tee.

“You’ve got to remember, almost everyone that played the PGA Tour and was successful played out here. There’s only a couple guys that didn’t and those guys were guys that had a lot of other extracurricular stuff going on. They had businesses and they put their competitive juices into that. But the guys that still want to compete, they all come out here,” said McCarron, who won three times on the PGA Tour but has 11 move victories to his credit since moving to the Champions loop.

“So when I look at the Jordan Spieths and Rickie Fowlers and all these guys that have a long time before they get out here and they all say, ‘Well, I’m not going to play out there.’

“Yeah, you will. Everybody does.”

A total of 11 World Golf Hall of Famers will be on hand this week, with Els and Montgomerie being joined by Retief Goosen, Tom Kite, Bernhard Langer, Davis Love III, Sandy Lyle, Mark O’Meara, Jose Maria Olazabal, Vijay Singh, and Ian Woosnam.

And while Furyk might joke about not being ecstatic about meeting the age threshold, he’s certainly thankful for the comforts the tour brings. And the purse — at over $2.2 million, or nearly $700K more than last week’s at the Chubb Classic in Naples, Florida — doesn’t hurt to bring up the group’s spirits.

“I enjoy being out here. I enjoy the carts, I enjoy as far as the practice rounds, carts in the pro-ams, only three-round events. It’s more much a track meet. It’s not a marathon out here, it’s a track meet. You’ve got to get out there and make some birdies and shoot some low scores,” Furyk said. “I get to see some friends that I wasn’t seeing for, say, the last five to 10 years. There’s this misconception, and I talked to some of the younger players on Tour, that everyone’s out having a beer and a glass of wine, no one’s practicing. It’s not really quite that way. Guys are shooting 15, 16 under every week.

“The range is usually packed and full of guys working on their games and working hard, and you’re seeing that even though we’re 50 and over, there’s a lot of guys that are really competitive and playing some great golf.”

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