Rickie Fowler is probably the golfer at the top of the “best player not to win a major” list, or at least he’s the player golf fans root so hard to see finally win one.
He’s gotten so close at all four majors but has fallen just short and lately, he’s been struggling: he’s missed two cuts in 2021 and finished no better than 20th in any tournament he’s played in since September.
Which brings us to what Sir Nick Faldo said on Twitter about Fowler who — per Golf Digest — is currently on the outside looking in on making the cut to play in the 2021 Masters.
Faldo said this in response:
Good news is if he misses the Masters he can shoot another six commercials that week! 😳 https://t.co/kgGcmaZUJO
That is savage. That is Shaq calling out Donovan Mitchell during an interview-level awkward. It feels like Faldo didn’t have to go there. But he called it “motivation.”
Sir Nick Faldo made a longshot pick to win the Genesis Invitational, and he’s leading after the first round.
Nick Faldo won six major championships and 43 titles in all. Was a Ryder Cup stalwart. Got inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1997. Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2009.
Not bad in the broadcast booth, either.
Seems he’s a pretty good prognosticator, too.
During Thursday’s broadcast of the first round of the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club north of Los Angeles, Faldo disclosed his pre-tournament pick to win the star-studded affair featuring eight of the top-10 players in the world that is played in the shadow of Hollywood.
Sam Burns.
Sam Burns? The guy ranked 149th in the official world rankings? Was 100-1 shot to win? Is winless on the PGA Tour and a winner of one Korn Ferry tournament?
“He’s a ball-striker and this is a ball-striker’s course,” Faldo said. “He’s played well lately and yes, I picked him before the tournament started.”
Well, Burns looked really good and made Faldo look good.
Keyed by an eagle on the first hole from 19 feet and then finishing with three consecutive birdies, Burns posted a 7-under-par 64 to stand two clear of the field when he signed his card. His two bogeys were more than wiped out by the eight red numbers.
“It’s a great compliment,” Burns, 24, said after the round when told Faldo picked him. “Anytime a guy like that says you’re going to play well, it’s always a good sign, I guess.”
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Burns has touched contention in each of his three previous starts but couldn’t keep up his good play on Sunday. He quickly put whatever disappointments hit him at Pebble Beach last week behind him and was ready to go once he drove into the parking lot at Riviera.
“It’s golf, man,” he said. “It will eat at you if you let it. I think just forgetting the bad ones and learn as much as you can. I think we just hope to keep putting ourselves in that position.”
Burns gave credit to his caddie, Travis Perkins, for his solid round.
“Travis did a great job of putting us in the right spots,” he said. “I think a lot of this good play goes to him. He’s been really good out there and he’s kind of kept me calm and amps me up a little bit when I need it.
“I think we were just pretty consistent throughout the round. We knew we were going to have a tough stretch there to kind of start the back nine. I think just being patient out here. This golf course at times doesn’t offer you a lot of opportunities, so I think just with that mindset going in we were just going to kind of take what we could get.”
If you’re a golf fan and spend your weekends watching PGA Tour events on TV then you probably know how embarrassingly bad the CBS broadcasts have been over the years and how they are somehow getting worse each week.
That was never more evident than this past week at the PGA Championship when CBS shared the event with ESPN, with Scott Van Pelt and Co. handling the morning/early afternoon coverage before sadly handing it over to Jim Nantz and Co., who went out of their way to make things really hard to watch. ESPN’s coverage was absolutely perfect, with a steady mix of fun and seriousness along with letting the golf be the star of the show. CBS’ coverage was the exact opposite of that and left fans begging for ESPN to take over.
There was a brief savior for CBS, however, and his name was Phil Mickelson. In a rare brilliant move, the powers that be at CBS somehow got Lefty into the booth for about an hour after he finished his third round and it didn’t take long for everyone watching to call for Mickelson to take over Nick Faldo’s job as the lead analyst and save a golf broadcast team that continues to be tough to watch.
Remember CBS’ lead football team of Nantz and Phil Simms? It was brutal. Then they swapped in Tony Romo for Simms and it became the best in the game thanks to Romo’s incredible ability to predict plays before they happened and teach the viewers about what they were watching. It’s also clear that Romo has fun doing his job, which adds to the enjoyment of the broadcast.
Mickelson proved Saturday that he can do all of that for CBS and the executives in charge of stuff for them should just give Phil all the money he would need to take over that gig.
Mickelson jumped right in and instantly burned Faldo with a great joke that led to an incredibly awkward moment. He then broke down shots before they happened, told viewers how things would play out and laid out exactly what a player should be thinking about with each shot.
He also had more fun at Faldo’s expense, joking about how he didn’t get Faldo’s jokes and how he wouldn’t want to shorten his swing, as Faldo suggested, because then he would “hit it like (Faldo).”
Phil’s energy gave the whole broadcast energy, something it desperately lacks every week.
It was awesome.
The biggest issues with CBS’ coverage continues to be the amount of commercials, the missed shots, the delayed shots, the not showing of key shots, and many more that you’re aware of if you watch each week.
Could Mickelson fix all of those things? No, probably not. But his presence on the broadcast sure would make it more enjoyable for the viewers.
It could be really easy for him, too. Mickelson wouldn’t even have to travel with CBS to events if he didn’t want to. Faldo and others have done most of the events from a studio in Orlando, so Mickelson could get set up with a nice home studio and gleefully call the events that he’s not playing in. Working from home is the new normal and it would work perfectly for Mickelson and CBS.
Mickelson is also 50 years old now and I don’t see him spending a lot of time on the Champions Tour. He’ll still likely be playing a lot of PGA Tour events but CBS could easily find room for him in their broadcasts when he isn’t contending or not in the field.
Is this something that could happen? I’m not sure but Saturday did feel like an audition, one that Mickelson absolutely flushed.
And now, there’s Rory McIlroy’s F-bomb that same tournament on Friday after an errant shot went right, and Nick Faldo had a great reaction to it: “That means … that’s a technical term, it means ‘keep blocking it right.'”
Good recovery right there. Here’s the video (and, as you’d expect, a WARNING: NSFW language ahead!):
At the RBC Heritage, the second event on the PGA Tour’s revised schedule, Rory McIlroy said he’s not concerned about Sundays.
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – Worried about Rory McIlroy having a bad case of the Sunday blues?
Don’t be. He’s not.
The world No. 1 has notched nine top-5s and a tie for ninth in his most recent 12 worldwide starts, including PGA Tour wins No. 17 and No. 18 in The Tour Championship and the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions last fall.
But a few stumbles on Sundays have many in golf circles wondering if anything is wrong when the final round rolls around even though McIlroy has won four majors, three PGA Tour player of the year awards and the FedExCup twice.
Cases in point this year: He was three back with 18 to play at the Farmers Insurance Open in January but bogeyed three of his first four holes before rallying for a tie for third. He was tied for the lead with 18 to play in the Genesis Invitational in February but tripled the fifth, bogeyed the sixth and tied for fifth. At the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March, he was tied for the lead with 14 holes to play but lost six shots to par in the next eight holes and tied for fifth.
And then in last week’s Charles Schwab Challenge, he was three back with 18 to play but went out in 41, shot 74 and tied for 32nd. This prompted CBS lead analysts Nick Faldo to say McIlroy doesn’t have a Plan B when things go wrong.
McIlroy didn’t take Faldo’s comments personally and has just moved on to this week’s RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links, where another loaded field awaits, one that includes the top 6 players in the world.
“You’re going out there trying to shoot a good score, and that’s about it. That’s what you try to do every day. Some days you play better than others,” said McIlroy, who has played the RBC Heritage just once, finishing in a tie for 58th in 2009. “I remember everyone kept asking me about Fridays six years ago in 2014 when I had bad Fridays. Geez, a few Fridays in a row where I didn’t play well.”
By the way, McIlroy won the British Open, PGA Championship, BMW Championship and WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in 2014. Finished the year world No. 1, too.
“I don’t think it’s this thing,” McIlroy said about his recent play in the final round. “I try to go out there every day and shoot the best score I can, and the best score I could shoot on Sunday was 74. Hopefully, tomorrow I go out and try my best and shoot something a bit lower than that.
“Just each day, just try to go out there and do your best.”
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McIlroy admitted he was disappointed in his Sunday performance in the Arnold Palmer Invitation. But last week, when he finished outside of the top 10 for the first time since last September, McIlroy said he just played like crap. Even the best in the world have days like that.
“That was really it,” McIlroy said. “It was anything to do with the position I was in or I got off to a really bad start and got into the rough on the front nine and hit decent shots that ended up in a bunker or a bad lie or whatever. It’s one of those things where the momentum just started going the other way.
“I played OK last week. It was a good gauge to see where I was at and what I needed to practice and what I needed to do going into the next few weeks. Obviously disappointing not to shoot a good one on Sunday, but it was fine.
“It’s not like I’ve necessarily shot bad scores on Sundays. I got off to a couple of bad starts in some final groups, but I still was able to come back and shoot scores in the 60s. So, no, I’m not worried about anything.”
Paul Azinger is the perfect chap to meet for a round of cocktails at the 19 th hole. Face it, the guy likes to talk. Likes to laugh. Is passionate and intense. And does he have stories. In a life spanning 60 years now, Zinger won the 1993 PGA …
Paul Azinger is the perfect chap to meet for a round of cocktails at the 19th hole.
Face it, the guy likes to talk. Likes to laugh. Is passionate and intense. And does he have stories.
In a life spanning 60 years now, Zinger won the 1993 PGA Championship, 12 PGA Tour titles and two more on the European Tour. Captained the U.S. to victory in the 2008 Ryder Cup. Played on winning Ryder Cup teams in 1991 and 1993. Spent 300 weeks in the top 10.
He held his own against the best in the world, including Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Greg Norman, Jose Maria Olazabal, Ernie Els, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and his late best friend, Payne Stewart.
And he kicked cancer’s butt.
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Now Azinger talks a great game as the lead analyst for NBC and Fox.
“Well, I love golf,” Azinger said in a chat with Golfweek. “I can’t tell you how much I love the sport and how much I love watching it. I love playing the game.”
While he’s “chomping at the bit” to get back to work, Azinger has kept busy sheltered at his home in Bradenton, Florida, since the COVID-19 global pandemic halted play on the PGA Tour in March.
“I just don’t let myself get bored as much as anything,” Azinger said. “Self-isolating isn’t too bad. I’ve done a lot of work around the house. I’m neater than I think I am. I can clean if I want to.”
The current state and the fear of the unknown concerning the coronavirus is mindful in some ways to Azinger’s successful battle against cancer that began in 1993 when lymphoma was discovered in his right shoulder blade. Chemotherapy and radiation treatments as well as Azinger’s perseverance conquered cancer.
“When I first heard the words, ‘You have cancer,’ immediately it was sort of a similarity to hearing there is a virus going around and we’re all going to have to shelter in place,” Azinger said. “When I heard what the treatment was for (cancer), that’s when I knew it was a big deal. This, you’re just trying to avoid the treatment.
“It’s a weird situation. For a long time there, we all but wondered if we could get it and could it make us sick enough that we could succumb. And that’s just a terrible feeling. And that was similar to the feeling I had when I had cancer, for sure.”
On a lighter note
Azinger’s love for motorcycles: “It’s a feeling of freedom.”
Playing against Tiger Woods at the zenith of his powers: “We were watching something we thought we would never see.”
His love for the Ryder Cup: “The whole patriotism aspect.”
Johnny Miller, Paul Azinger and Dan Hicks in the NBC booth during the third round of the 2019 Waste Management Phoenix Open. Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
Azinger also addressed comments he made about Tommy Fleetwood and Lee Westwood ahead of the final round of this year’s Honda Classic that turned him into a European Tour punching bag. One word – that – got Azinger in trouble when he said you have to win on the PGA Tour. Fleetwood, a five-time winner on the European Tour, was trying to win his maiden PGA Tour title.
“A lot of pressure here,” Azinger said on the broadcast. “You’re trying to prove to everybody that you’ve got what it takes. These guys know, you can win all you want on that European Tour or in the international game and all that, but you have to win on the PGA Tour.”
That European Tour. Oops.
“I’m sure I’ll be some bulletin board material for them at the Ryder Cup,” Azinger said. “I respect all wins. I try to use good grammar when I’m in the booth and I failed big-time on that one. And it didn’t come off quite as I hoped.”
Eventually, Azinger will get back into the booth and is a long way from sitting in a rocking chair and reminiscing about a good life lived.
“I’m still looking to make today a great day, tomorrow a great day,” he said. “I want to continue to try and achieve in charitable ways, be better as a person. I want to contribute to the game of golf in whatever capacity I can. Try to make the game grow and help the game come back from this devastating virus.”
Scroll up to watch Steve DiMeglio’s discussion with Paul Azinger.
Nick Faldo doesn’t see how golf can resume without fans. The PGA Tour aims for the season to resume in June.
A Ryder Cup without thunderous, nationalistic legions of fans?
A Masters without patrons and roars echoing through the Georgia pines?
A U.S. Open and PGA Championship played in silence?
“I don’t want to visualize that,” Sir Nick Faldo told Golfweek this week about the possible soundless scenarios due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. “I think matches or games or some tournaments are fine without fans, but finals? I would deem the Ryder Cup a final, just like the Super Bowl and the World Series. And the major championships fall in that line, too.
“You have to have fans for the atmosphere, I would think.”
The lead golf analyst for CBS Sports and member of the World Golf Hall of Fame knows of what he speaks. He won the Masters three times (Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Faldo are the only players to win back-to-back green jackets). Won the Open Championship three times. Lost in a playoff in the U.S. Open to Curtis Strange in 1988. Tied for second in the 1992 PGA Championship.
And Faldo played in the Ryder Cup 11 times and was the captain of Europe when the U.S. won in 2008. He’s been in the CBS tower analyzing the play before him at scores of majors.
Nick Faldo of England wears the green jacket after winning the US Masters at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, on April 14, 1996.
“Fans are really more than the atmosphere. They are part of the event,” Faldo said. “I laugh thinking when Tommy Fleetwood does his famous celebration in the Ryder Cup when he holes his putt, he’s going to look around and see nobody and he’s screaming to birds at Whistling Straits? Or Tiger fist-pumps after a huge putt and hears crickets?
“I get when sports starts and finding a way to do it without fans for the safety until we get things organized and people can really be well tested safely. But I can’t see, what I call them, finals, when you really do need the atmosphere to make it something special, to be held without fans.”
But if the finals are conducted without fans?
“If they do go forward without fans, then everybody is going to have to be really adaptable to anything,” Faldo said. “If you’re going to go play tournament golf and you’re really inspired by the atmosphere of the fans, you better get used to ramping up your own adrenaline and your own intensity. And you better learn quick or don’t go and play.
“It will come easier for some guys and harder for others, who are trying to figure out when to fist-pump or how to get motivated in silence. It will be a weird feeling coming down to the last holes and people are doing great things and your playing partners are going, ‘Yeah, nice putt, mate,’ and there’s no other noise.”
The current plan for the PGA Tour’s restart scheduled for June 11 at the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, is for the first four events to be played without fans. Faldo, 62, will have to get used to the silent ways as he’ll be in the CBS tower for a solid two months if the PGA Tour is able to restart in June. He’s confident he’ll adapt, just as he has for the past eight weeks since he’s been sheltered at home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
“This is probably the longest period in my golf career, probably since I was 18, where I’ve been in one place,” he said. “Starting on eight weeks now. The longest before that was five, which was 16 years ago.
“At times, I struggled to get two weeks in one place. And it looks like we’re definitely going to go at least another six weeks. But we’re very fortunate. Life in Ponte Vedra is very good. We’re really disciplined doing the shelter at home.”
Now he just has a different routine.
“I have a routine on the road. You get up, go to the gym, eat breakfast, then go to the golf course,” he said. “I see the course, see some players and get the story for the day. Then it’s off to the tower and you get yourself set up and the CBS crew in the tower is great and it’s good fun. And then the great Jim Nantz arrives and off we go. And there are no two rounds alike so that’s great. You don’t know what’s coming. So we rattle away for whatever time it may be.”
Now, he says, he’s really busy doing nothing.
“But I have been doing a lot of brainstorming, thinking about what shows I want to film, lots of business ideas as well,” he said. “So, it’s between chilling and educating ourselves. Watching a lot of smart TV shows. Doing new exercises trying to lose an inch or two on the waistline. And trying to look past the bar to have a quick drink on the hour.
Six-time major champion and World Golf Hall of Fame member Nick Faldo stepped out of the CBS tower to star in two different series.
Get ready for some Monday Night Faldo.
Six-time major champion and World Golf Hall of Fame member Nick Faldo – Sir Nick Faldo, that is – stepped out of the CBS tower to star in two different series premiering on Monday night.
The lead golf analyst for CBS Sports expanded his wings with an adventure series titled “Days & Knights with Sir Nick,” which debuts on CBS Sports Network on Monday at 7:30 p.m. ET. Immediately following at 8 is Faldo’s other 30-minute program, “Faldo Formula – Mind. Body. Swing,” where he went back to his instructional roots. Days & Knights will air four consecutive weeks while Faldo Formula has a 10-week run. CBS’ main network will air two “Days and Knights with Sir Nick” later in the year.
All episodes were filmed before the COVID-19 global pandemic took hold. Faldo, however, did have to do some voice-overs for the shows while sheltered at his home in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, the past eight weeks.
“The goal was to show people the world that I see and have some fun out of it,” Faldo said in a phone interview with Golfweek. “Hopefully it’s some good harmless entertainment.”
Faldo said he stepped a little outside his box in Days and Knights, which is sort of a Where’s Faldo instead of Where’s Waldo? The show chronicles various escapades Faldo experienced around the world and his conversations with various celebrities, including those while caddying for Clint Eastwood, joking with Bill Murray and cooking with Iron Chefs Cat Cora and Michael Symon.
Nick Faldo and Cat Cora. Photo courtesy 18Pars Entertainment
“I’ll be doing some crazy things,” as Faldo said, which, among them, is his stab at making a margarita.
“I travel the world and content is king and I’m in a new phase of my life,” said Faldo, 62. “Thought it would be quite a fun project to document what we are doing. We got a camera crew and we went to different places and met different people and we edited it into a show. I had a lot of fun with it.”
As he did with the Faldo Formula, where he teams up with coaches Kjell Enhager, Garth Milne and Dr. Craig Farnsworth to deliver swing tips, mental and physical exercises, lessons and course management strategies.
“I reboot my golf instruction to where we are in 2020 and people are more open to the mental side of the game and obviously the physical side,” Faldo said. “We’ve had 20 years now of Tiger and Rory and Brooks elevating the physical side of golf and Bryson DeChambeau going on another level to who knows what? I wanted to redo all of that once again.”
Hall of Fame golfer Sir Nick Faldo. Photo courtesy 18Pars Entertainment
And Faldo, who wasn’t the chattiest of players en route to his more than 40 wins worldwide, barely stops talking while giving a playing lesson over 18 holes.
“It made me play great,” Faldo said.
“I did a running commentary before and after every shot and I shot 7 under and I haven’t shot 7 under for moons.”
The Masters will always be Tiger’s best chance to win a major every year, and now he gets more time to prepare his troublesome back.
Editor’s note: CBS will replay the 2019 Masters from 12:30-6 p.m. Sunday.
Last month, after the Masters became one of many sporting events to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, it didn’t take long for astute fans to realize one of the fascinating unintended consequences of the decision:
Tiger Woods would remain defending champion far longer than usual.
When Augusta National announced earlier this week that it was moving the Masters to Nov. 12-15, it became clear that Tiger’s 14-year wait between Masters victories, and nearly 11-year drought between majors, would be rewarded with another seven months to reign as the king of the green jackets.
It will be almost Thanksgiving by the time Tiger is no longer Masters champion – unless he wins again, which means he would have less than five months before April 2021 to try to do it again.
And, while we’re looking ahead, consider the 2022 Masters, when Tiger will be 46, the same age that Jack Nicklaus was when he so improbably won the Masters in 1986.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This long, uncertain break as the nation has shut down due to the pandemic has to be helping the oft-injured Tiger gear up for what very well could be the most bizarre golf season we have ever seen.
If American life starts to get back to some semblance of normal by this summer, we could see the PGA Championship in early August, as it’s scheduled now, followed by the most interesting back-to-back timing on the golf calendar in memory: the U.S. Open, then the Ryder Cup, one week to the next in mid-to-late September.
Tiger has barely played this year, finishing ninth at the Farmers Insurance Open in January and 68th at the Genesis Invitational in February. Last month, he missed the one round of the Players Championship that was played because his back was “just not ready,” he said.
But he said this week that he would have been ready for the Masters had it been played as usual in April. “Night and day,” he told GolfTV of the change in his health over the past month or so. “I feel a lot better than I did then.”
Tiger Woods on the 18th green during the final round of the 2019 Masters Tournament at Augusta National. Michael Madrid/USA TODAY Sports
However, because he has played so little so far this year, there is no certainty that he could have recaptured the form that delivered the sports comeback for the ages, his fifth Masters victory, on April 14, 2019.
It was so fitting that Woods – who endured a jaw-dropping personal scandal in 2009 and four surgeries on his back, including spinal fusion two years earlier – ended his major drought in Augusta, where he won his first major in 1997 as a 21-year-old.
The Masters will always be Tiger’s best chance to win a major every year. When he’s 50, as long as he’s healthy, his name will rise onto the leaderboard one day or another, just as has happened with Fred Couples and Bernhard Langer. Tiger was made for the Masters, and vice versa.
Remember what happened last year, when one competitor after another fell by the wayside that final day — not one, not two, not three but four of the men in or near the lead hit shots into Rae’s Creek in front of the par-3 12th hole Sunday. It was as if the gods of golf had come down from the heavens and personally cleared Tiger’s path to victory.
Tiger, of course, believes he would have been in prime position to do it again this spring because he always thinks he will win every tournament he enters, but this break will serve him well. He needs the time and even more important, his back needs the time.
As things stand now, he would have a little more than a month between the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open, but then no time off at all between the Open and the Ryder Cup, which could be a challenge for him physically. But then comes good news: he would have six weeks until the Masters.
For now, he’s practicing social distancing, and golf, at his home course in Florida, and spending time with his kids at home.
“I go back to what my dad used to say,” he said in the interview this week. “Just take it one meal to the next. So you go at it until the next meal, and you figure it out.”
He sounds content, and he should be. He still owns the title that means the most to him. He remains Masters champion.
The Official World Golf Ranking was introduced in 1986. Since its introduction, 21 different players have been ranked No. 1 in the world.
The Official World Golf Ranking was introduced in 1986.
The ranking takes into account a golfer’s performance over a rolling two-year period. The ranking is updated each week.
Since its inception, there have been 21 different players who have earned the No. 1 spot in the world ranking. You can probably guess who holds the title for the most weeks in the top spot. Some of the other names on this list may surprise you.
Here is the complete list of golfers who reached No. 1 in OWGR history and how long each of them was ranked in the top spot.
