Furyk now has three wins since joining the senior circuit last fall.
Jim Furyk is adding another trophy to his packed case.
The 51-year-old won his first senior major championship on Sunday, cruising to a comfortable three-shot lead at the 2021 U.S. Senior Open at Omaha Country Club in Nebraska. Furyk entered the round with a cushion and after a final-round 1-over 71 left with the trophy.
Mike Weir and Retief Goosen finished T-2 at 4 under, followed by Rod Pampling in fourth at 3 under. Rounding out the top five were Bernhard Langer and Kevin Sutherland, who tied at 1 under.
Since joining the PGA Tour Champions last year, Furyk now has three wins on the senior circuit after winning his first two starts, the Ally Challenge in August and September’s PURE Insurance Championship via a playoff against Jerry Kelly.
Furyk, one of five past U.S. Open champs in the field (2003 at Olympia Fields), is the eighth player to win both the U.S. Open and the U.S. Senior Open. The Pennsylvania native and Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, resident racked up 17 wins in his PGA Tour career, including the 2010 Tour Championship and FedEx Cup.
Cameron Beckman came from three strokes back with a 4-under 68 Sunday to claim his first PGA Tour Champions win.
ENDICOTT, N.Y. — Cameron Beckman came from three strokes back with a 4-under-par 68 Sunday to claim his first PGA Tour Champions victory in the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open.
A 51-year-old Texas resident making his 15th start on the senior tour, Beckman made eight closing-round birdies at En-Joie Golf Course and sidestepped a bogey at the 18th to top Ernie Els by a shot.
Beckman finished 12-under to Els’ 11-under, with five sharing third at 10-under.
Els, leader by three through 36 holes and by two at the turn Sunday, shot even-par 72 with three birdies and three bogeys. He was offered wonderful opportunity at the 18th when Beckman drove in a hazard left of the fairway, but left his second from 94 yards in the fairway well short and two-putted.
Beckman, whose most recent win came in 2010 on the PGA tour, had two previous top-10s on the PGA Tour Champions. Sunday’s victory qualified him for next week’s U.S. Senior Open.
A three-stroke advantage will be in Ernie Els’ capable, proven, world-class hands to begin the final round of the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open.
ENDICOTT, N.Y. – A three-stroke advantage will be in capable, proven, world-class hands to begin Sunday’s concluding round of the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open.
Ernie Els backed an opening 68 with Saturday’s bogey-free, 7-under-par 65 at En-Joie Golf Course in Endicott and is well-positioned at 11 under to secure his third win of the 2020-21 PGA Tour Champions season.
Cameron Beckman made birdie at the 18th to close a round of 69 for solo second at 8-under, with Darren Clarke and Miguel Angel Jiménez co-third at 7-under.
“Well, I hit a lot of greens and when I hit the greens, I made some putts, so that was a good key for me,” said Els, who has 12 top-10 finishes in 23 PGA Tour Champions starts. “The conditions were quite tough. Rain and wind kind of came and went so you kind of had to keep the ball in front of you. Finishing on 16 making a good par save and making a birdie on 18 was big.”
Els made five consecutive birdies beginning at the second and another at the ninth. He strung together pars on the back before thumping a tee ball perilously near but clear of the penalty area left of 18 fairway, approached from 95 yards and rolled one in for his seventh birdie of the afternoon.
“I felt like I needed to kind of get a good round going and I had a nice start,” he said. “I played the front nine really well and I just tried to keep it going. I parred every hole on the back nine except for 18. It wasn’t all clean sailing, I had to make some good par saves and so forth, but to make the putt on 18 was big.”
Beckman, whose most recent win came in 2010 on the regular tour, was bogey-free in a 3-under round.
“I hit the ball nice today and I missed — I had a bunch to capitalize on and get a little further under today, but anytime you go bogey free … I hit a lot of greens and just a lot of great shots, so I’m excited for tomorrow.”
Jimenez was 4 under through 12 but made bogeys on the 15th and 18th around a long putt for birdie at 16.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been playing very well, very solid and I only make only one putt on 18 holes really, on the 16th, but solid from the tees, lot of chances for birdie, finished with 3 under par today,” he said.
Clarke is four back following rounds of 69 and 68.
The late additions of Ernie Els and Jim Furyk give the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open field a boost of pizzazz for its return to PGA Tour Champions action.
ENDICOTT, New York – Two late additions give the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open field a boost of pizzazz for its return to PGA Tour Champions action following a dormant year.
Ernie Els and Jim Furyk were among the last to commit to the $2,050,000 event to be contested July 2-4 at En-Joie Golf Course in Endicott.
Els, 51 and a 19-time winner on the regular tour, sits third on the money list ($1,792,179) on the strength of two wins among 11 top-10s. Most recent of those top-10s was a T4 in the Regions Tradition that concluded May 9.
Furyk, 51, was a 17-time regular-tour champion. He won in his first two senior starts — The Ally Challenge and PURE Insurance Championship in the summer of 2020 — and has eight top-10s in 13 tournaments.
Jerry Kelly, eight-time senior tour winner at present perched atop the money list ($1,927,667), committed to play in Endicott only to withdraw, as he did in 2019. He shares fifth with Els, Furyk and others on rounds of 69-70 through 36 holes of the Bridgestone Senior Players in Akron, Ohio.
The Dick’s Open field also features:
Doug Barron, defending champion who defeated Fred Couples by two strokes in his second start as a senior.
Alex Cejka, 50-year-old who debuted on Tour in February and proceeded to win major championships in his third and fifth starts.
Darren Clarke, winner in consecutive starts (Nov. 1, Jan. 23) in the 2020-21 season.
Retief Goosen, driving distance leader who sits sixth on the money list.
Tim Herron, a Tour rookie whose first top-10 was a third-place finish in last month’s Principal Charity Classic, in which he was 36-hole leader.
Miguel Angel Jimenez, sixth-place finisher here in 2019 and fifth on the current money list.
Bernhard Langer, age 63, 41-time PGA Tour Champions winner who topped the 2014 Dick’s Open field.
Colin Montgomerie, seven-time Champions Tour winner who has second- and third-place finishes this season. He shared fourth here in 2019.
“We’re obviously excited,” said tournament director John Karedes. “It’s Ernie’s first trip ever to Endicott, Furyk has been here I think three times (most recently for the 1998 B.C. Open). We’re certainly excited to have these 50-year-old rookies coming as well as Darren Clarke, Alex Cejka, Tim Herron. I mean, what a great set of rookies that is going to be joining us.
“I’ve always said, when a guy is a rookie on the PGA Tour we don’t necessarily know who he is. But when a guy is a rookie on our Tour, which is a great thing about the Champions Tour, you know him. And if you look at that list of names, that’s sure proof.”
The 81-player field will be rounded out with Tuesday’s Open Qualifier at The Links at Hiawatha Landing— from which Barron emerged to win last time at En-Joie.
Dick’s Sporting Goods Open
Where: En-Joie Golf Course, Endicott
Purse: $2,050,000 ($307,500 to winner)
Defending champion: Doug Barron
Television: Golf Channel. 12-30-2:30 Fri.; 3-5:30 Sat. and Sun.
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“Golf does a great job of contributing to the community. Maybe we haven’t always done a great job in the social justice area. I don’t see any reason we can’t.”
Last August, Kirk Triplett put a Black Lives Matter sticker on his bag for the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship.
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Triplett was prompted to show support for the cause of racial injustice because of his son Kobe, who is African- American.
“I was thinking about my son, who is 18 years old and could be driving a car in the wrong situation,” Triplett said Friday after the second round of the $3 million PGA Tour Champions major. “I wanted to make sure that’s not his responsibility to deescalate the situation.”
But Triplett knew displaying the sticker was not really taking action. An interview at Firestone Country Club and some that followed helped him discover a way to accelerate change.
One of his comments — “I actually Googled what can a white guy do?” he said — caught the attention of Hall of Fame safety Donnie Shell, who emailed Triplett and told him he had an answer to his question. The former Pittsburgh Steeler is a board member of Dedication To Community (D2C), a national non-profit that educates and empowers communities on diversity, belonging, and equity. Triplett’s partnership with the organization was announced in February.
“Putting a Black Lives Matter sticker on your bag is just kinda, ‘That’s a problem.’ But you hope people migrate from that to solutions and that’s the reason for Dedication To Community on my bag,” Triplett said. “Their main focus is law enforcement training. It’s guys that came through the NFL, worked heavily with them on their conduct policy, and the founder is [M.] Quentin Williams, he was an FBI agent and a prosecutor.
“These guys have one solution. Training law enforcement, training the communities, helping people understand each other better. Really what they work on is communication and not letting these situations escalate.”
Triplett, who lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, and his wife Cathi have four children — twins Conor and Sam, 25, daughter Alexis, 21, and Kobe, the latter two adopted. Alexis is Latino; Kobe’s biological father is Black, his mother Japanese.
Before Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree murder in the May 25, 2020, killing of Floyd, Triplett said he had several conversations with Kobe. Chauvin received a sentence of 22.5 years on Friday.
“We’ve discussed that fairly regularly,” Triplett said of the Chauvin case. “This is not a great deal of interest to him. It became a great deal of interest to me when I talked to him and said, ‘If you get stopped by the police, you need to do this, this and this.’ I’ve got three other kids and that conversation looked completely different with them than it did with him. I thought, ‘Here’s where the patent unfairness comes in.’
“When people say systemic racism or system inequality … it’s something that’s really hard for me to visualize and understand because I’ve never faced it. When I’m having that conversation with him, I just get the little, tiniest inkling of what this might be like. I think that’s the first step, everybody understanding what sometimes these people face.”
Triplett said Kobe got the message. The Tripletts also participated in relationship training through D2C.
D2C has a partnership with the Miami Heat, training Miami patrol officers the Heat sponsor, and is involved with other professional sports.
“They have an agreement with Joe Gibbs Racing and they train the organization there. They do some stuff with the NHL,” Triplett said. “The NHL is like golf, there’s not a lot of racial issues in those sports because they’re so white, for lack of a better term, there’s not a lot of diversity.
“Most sports today that lack diversity want to create opportunity. It’s not an overnight process, but some of it starts with funding and finding ways for young people to look at a sport and instead of saying, ‘Oh, that’s the white man’s game,’ they think, ‘Here’s this APGA,’ [a non-profit tour to prepare African-American and minority golfers] or ‘I can go to school at a HBCU.’ There’s a pathway to participate in the sport.”
Triplett sees progress in that regard.
“Phil Mickelson made a large donation to HBCU golf teams,” he said. “The PGA Tour is trying to help minority access to golf through the APGA. Billy Horschel has also sponsored a tournament for the APGA. Access to health care, access to economic opportunity, all of these things.
“Golf does a great job of contributing to the community. Maybe we haven’t always done a great job in the social justice area. I don’t see any reason we can’t.”
Phil Mickelson’s victory at the PGA raised questions of how it would play out in the minds of his peers who are about to turn 50.
ARKON, Ohio — Phil Mickelson becoming the oldest major winner in PGA Tour history at age 50 could have a ripple effect on the PGA Tour Champions.
Mickelson’s triumph in the PGA at the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island last month will likely postpone his return to Firestone Country Club, which now hosts the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship after last staging the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational in 2018.
But his victory also raised the question of how it would play out in the minds of Mickelson’s peers who are about to turn 50.
Joining the Champions tour later this year are four-time PGA Tour winner Robert Allenby (July 12) and three-time major winner Padraig Harrington (Aug. 31). Australian John Senden (April 20) competed in this week’s Senior Players; Stuart Appleby (May 1) did not.
Former British Open champions David Duval (Nov. 9, 2021) and Justin Leonard (June 15), former PGA Championship winner Y.E. Yang (Jan. 15), as well as Brian Gay (Dec. 14, 2021) and Notah Begay III (Sept. 14) can join the Champions circuit in 2022. Duval, Leonard and Begay now work as television analysts.
Bridgestone’s agreement to host the Akron tournament runs through 2022.
While some like Jim Furyk and Steve Stricker have been able to straddle both tours, Mickelson’s success seemingly would prompt some PGA Tour players to hang on longer before making the leap to the senior circuit.
But Furyk, Stricker and Fred Couples consider Mickelson unique and don’t envision a Phil factor disrupting the Champions Tour.
“Phil’s a little bit of an anomaly,” Furyk said Wednesday. “He’s won 45 times, so other than Tiger [Woods] and maybe Vijay [Singh] in their 40s, no one else is really at that level in our era.”
Furyk, 51, said he’s been competing against — and losing to — Mickelson for decades. So he’s probably in no rush to see Mickelson come back to Firestone, one of Furyk’s favorite courses.
“He’s always been the guy at our age level that we had to beat,” Furyk said. “When he was a junior golfer, he was good enough to win in college. When he was in college, he was good enough and did win at the PGA Tour level. Then he went on to win all those events.
“I really take what he does with a bit of a grain of salt. Like if we were always comparing ourselves to him, we basically always got our butts kicked along the way.”
Stricker, 54, said players must listen to their bodies and consider how they’re playing when they approach 50.
“Phil’s a unique player, a special player, and he’s still got that flexibility and that length that most guys when they turn 48, 49, even before that they’re losing distance, and he picked up distance. He’s worked hard at it,” Stricker said. “For him to be able to do that was something extraordinary.
“I think you’ve just got to see where you’re at with your own game. Guys are going to see that and they’re going to say, ‘Hey, it’s possible,’ for sure, and maybe work towards that. But everybody’s a little bit different, especially the older we get.”
Furyk measured his driving distance against others on the PGA Tour to help him decide. He’s now fully committed to the Champions Tour save for occasional venues where he’s performed well.
“The longest I ever averaged in my career was 282 off the tee,” Furyk said of the 2015 season. “No. 100 [on the PGA Tour] was 289, so I was giving up seven yards, which is not a big deal. Cut to 2020, my last full year. At 50 I averaged 281, I was one yard off my all-time distance, but No. 100 was 298. Now, instead of giving up seven yards, I was giving up 17. I’m giving up two or three irons a hole for an entire week.
“That season I led the Tour in greens saves, but it’s a lot harder to be close when you’re giving up that much distance. So it was apparent to me there are courses I really feel I can compete, but to do it for an entire season was harder. And I really enjoy being out here. My wife and I now have a Champions tour event, so it made it even that much easier to support this tour 100 percent.”
Couples called Mickelson “a unique” individual and doesn’t expect PGA Tour players to try to copy his feat.
“I don’t see many 49- and 50-year-olds saying, ‘I’m going to win a PGA,”’ Couples said Wednesday. “Can Steve Stricker? Of course he can. Can Jim Furyk? Yeah. But I think as they get a little older, they’ll fall into [what’s] out here and love it.”
Jerry Kelly, 54, who won his first senior major last year in Akron, feels no pull to the PGA Tour, especially with a game built on accuracy, not length.
“I don’t have any kind of ego necessity to be out there at all,” Kelly said Tuesday. “I did well while I was out there. I would have loved to do more. But the things I want to do to make my career, win a major, things like that…
“That was incredible that Phil did that, but those majors are not in my cards. If they ever went back to Merion [in Haverford Township, Pennsylvania] again, I’d love to play in that one. But the distance, the way they’re setting up golf courses is not conducive to me. Really the last eight to 10 years was not conducive to me winning a major. That’s the only thing I could take away from playing consistently on the PGA Tour.
“Plus just hanging around the top 125, you wouldn’t get into the majors. My best way to get into the majors is playing here. I’m totally fine with where I’m at.”
A continued draw
The Senior Players offers a unique carrot that should continue to draw players to Akron. Since 2006, the winner has earned a spot in the Players Championship the following year. That event offers a $15 million purse, the largest on the PGA Tour, with Justin Thomas earning $2.7 million for his victory in March.
“I’d love to get back there and this is the way to do it,” Kelly said. “That course is right up my alley.”
Furyk talked to several players about when they knew it was time to choose the senior tour.
Hale Irwin initially split his tournaments 50-50, but that lasted less than a year. Players like Davis Love III and Vijay Singh, of whom Furyk said, “They weren’t wedge- and putter-type guys, they were guys that were built on power. … Davis always said, ‘If I putt well enough to win on the Champions Tour, I feel I putt well enough to win on the PGA Tour.’ He did at Greensboro.”
In 2015, at age 51, Love captured the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, firing a 6-under 64 on Sunday to become the third-oldest winner in PGA Tour history, a designation that still stands.
Stricker planned on playing more on the Champions tour in 2021, but then the U.S. Ryder Cup captain saw the competition postponed by COVID-19 until this year. That forced a change in his schedule because he wanted to stay close with potential members of his team.
But the senior tour’s stars are not concerned about the Phil factor convincing some in the class of 2021, 2022 and beyond to push back their commitment to the Champions tour.
“Guys are realizing that the competition on this tour is good enough to be able to say goodbye,” Kelly said.
Steve Stricker continued his run during the early going on Saturday of the Senior Players but showed signs of loose wheels later on.
AKRON, Ohio — Steve Stricker is either going to join Arnold Palmer and Bernhard Langer as a wire-to-wire winner or author a collapse of unimaginable proportions during Sunday’s final round of the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship at Firestone Country Club.
He showed signs of both on a sunny and windy Saturday.
Stricker continued his assault on the famed South Course during the early going on Saturday but showed signs of loose wheels in the later going and teetered on the brink of a stunning collapse.
A third-round 72 left Stricker still on top of the leaderboard at 7-under 203, but reigning champion Jerry Kelly crawled up Stricker’s back and is just four shots behind.
Only a birdie on the 625-yard 16th stopped the hemorrhaging and might have saved the day – and the tournament — for Stricker.
“It was a tough stretch of holes in there from 12, 13, 14, 15,” Stricker said. “I had a five-shot lead starting the day, I’ve got four now, so all in all I didn’t give away too many. But had an opportunity to kind of distance myself; that was the plan today. Go out, get going, be aggressive and make some birdies and get out ahead. But kind of got sidetracked there in the middle.”
He was able to right the ship with the birdie on 16.
“Yeah, I think so. It was a good drive, a good 4-iron that I hit there and a nice, chip, good putt. I played the hole well, played the next hole well, just got a gust of wind at 17, and played 18 well. I’m fine, I just I wish I didn’t have the little hiccups there in the middle.”
Stricker, 54, opened the third round with a 5-shot lead and birdied the first three holes to eventually make the turn at 2-under 33.
But he made three bogeys and one double-bogey on the back and tumbled back to the pack.
What had been a seemingly insurmountable 9-shot lead dwindled to four by day’s end as Kelly showed some heart with a third-round 2-under 68 to end 54 holes at 3-under 207.
Palmer led from start to finish in winning the 1985 Senior Players at Canterbury Golf Club in Beachwood, and Langer, who has won 41 events on the Tour Champions list, followed suit in winning in 2015 at the Belmont Club outside Boston.
Stricker, 54, suffered his first two bogeys of the tournament on the fourth and 10th holes and stumbled to a double-bogey on the par-3 12th, but his three consecutive opening birdies extended his lead to a whopping nine strokes, seemingly leaving the field in his wake.
Contenders Paul Broadhurst, Ken Duke and Marco Dawson – or anyone else, for that matter – were not able to mount any challenge to the U.S. Ryder Cup captain.
Broadhurst, a two-time Senior major winner who started the day in second place, five shots behind Stricker, bogeyed two holes on the front and fell into a tie for eighth with Dawson at 2 over, nine shots off the lead.
Dawson also bogeyed two holes to start and added another on the 12th.
Duke was the lone contender able to maintain an even level and eventually pulled into sole possession of third place, five shots behind. He made the turn at even-par and added a birdie on the 12th by making a putt from just off the back edge of the green.
Jim Furyk, Ernie Els and David Toms are tied for fourth at even par, seven shots behind Stricker.
Kelly, who won here last with a final score of 3-under 277, began the day eight shots behind Stricker. He bogeyed the first but rebounded with two birdies and eventually to 3-under.
“I enjoy the chase,” Kelly said. “I’d rather be in the lead and stretch it, that’s everybody’s ideal. But, I don’t mind the chase.”
Now that he is in the hunt, Kelly showed some renewed vigor.
“It feels great,” he said in answering a question as to how it felt to be in the hunt. “I feel the swing is getting better and better each day. I still feel good putting and the short game. I mean, I’ve just got to go out and play. These conditions are tough. It’s going to be even tougher tomorrow. Yeah, it’s going to be a dogfight.”
Steve Stricker fired a second consecutive bogey-free round that kept in front at the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship.
Bogey-free golf.
Three of the sweetest words a player can hear.
Throw in a birdie or nine and it is golf nirvana. Maybe not the state of perfect happiness but it’s darn close.
Steve Stricker might not be feeling nirvana-ish but he has to be feeling pretty good about himself – as well he should – after a second consecutive bogey-free round that kept him semi-comfortably in front of the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship at Firestone Country Club.
Stricker’s 2-under 68 was not as dazzling as his opening 63 but it got the job done. His two-day total of 9-under 131 left him with a 5-shot lead over Englishman Paul Broadhurst (67-69) and a 7-shot bulge over Marco Dawson (69-69) and Ken Duke (67-71) at the halfway point of the $3 million event, one of five majors on the PGA Tour Champions schedule.
He is the only man in the 78-player field without a bogey.
Stricker’s five-stroke cushion matches the largest 36-hole lead in tournament history. J.C. Snead led by five after two rounds in 1992 but closed with rounds of 72-75 and finished tied for second behind Dave Stockton. And, it is the largest lead through 36 holes at a Champions Tour major since Bernhard Langer led by seven midway through the 2014 Senior Open Championship.
“You know, it was a little bit more of a grind today,” said Stricker, who parred the first nine holes before cashing in with the first of his two birdies on the 400-yard 10th. “I didn’t make a bogey, but I made a couple good saves for pars that kept the round going. But, overall, you know, really good, solid round again.”
That the 55-year-old Broadhurst is in contention is stunning. The winner of the 2016 Senior Open Championship revealed Friday that he has been suffering from vertigo for the past two months. The symptoms come and go, he said, after starting with an ear infection a few months ago.
“I’m just hoping my health holds out on me so it’s nice to find a bit a form and put a few good rounds together,” said Broadhurst, from Walsall, England. “It’s been tough. Putting’s so difficult, ball’s moving, you’re moving. I’m not swinging how I would like, balance is still not right through the ball. So I’m getting away with it at the moment, but as long as I stay OK for the weekend, I’ll give it my best shot.”
Broadhurst had four birdies and three bogeys to remain in contention in hopes of making a fourth top-10 this season. He said he fears that Stricker will have to come back to the field rather than the field catching Stricker.
“How impressive is what he’s doing?” Broadhurst asked rhetorically. “It’s not a course where you can shoot 6-under but then he shot 7-under yesterday so he proved that theory wrong. That’s what we’ve come to expect from Stricks. He continues to amaze us with some of the scores he puts on the board.”
Stricker, who will captain the Ryder Cup team in three months, had two close calls to having his bogey-free display disrupted.
On the 460-yard 14th he was able to save par after escaping the left rough and avoiding tree trouble from 116 yards. He had hoped to give himself a makeable putt from 10 to 15 feet, but a masterful 8-iron shot stopped about three feet from the hole.
“I wasn’t sitting too well after two shots and just tried to chop an 8-iron, keep it underneath the tree limbs in front of me and try to gauge it coming out of that rough properly. It was a lucky shot. It was like stealing one.”
Stricker hit 3-wood off the tee on the 395-yard 17th but ended up in the right rough, again with a tree in front of him. His 5-iron shot avoided the tree but bounced into some thick rough just off the back of the green, leaving him with a testy chip. He ran his third about four feet past but made the slightly uphill come-backer to keep his streak intact.
His lone birdies came on the 400-yard 10th when he made a 12-footer and on the famed 625-yard 16th. A 3-iron shot from 220 yards found the back bunker but he blasted out to two feet and made the putt.
“It’s a tough test,” Stricker said of the South Course, which is playing to an approximate length of 7,136 yards for the over-50 group “So, I’m happy to get out of here with another bogey-free round. And, if I can continue to do that I’ll be all right.”
Ernie Els, who finished in a tie for fifth here last year after a strong weekend, turned in the day’s lowest round at 3-under 67 and is one of six players tied for fifth at 1-under 139.
Marco Dawson posted his second 69 and shared third place with Ken Duke, each at 138. Dawson, from Freising, Germany, won the 2015 Senior Open Championship but has not had a top-10 finish on the Tour Champions since September of 2020.
Fast starts and low rounds at Firestone Country Club are nothing new to Steve Stricker.
AKRON, Ohio – Fast starts and low rounds at Firestone Country Club are nothing new to Steve Stricker.
But, if the Ryder Cup captain gets any faster or goes any lower during the final three rounds he’ll likely leave the field distantly in his rearview mirror as the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship unfolds.
Stricker, 54, birdied five of his first nine holes on Thursday, including three in a row to close out his front nine, and went on to shoot 7-under 63 to take the first-round lead.
The 63 was Stricker’s personal best on the South Course, bettering the 64 he shot on two other occasions. It also was the lowest first round in Bridgestone Senior Players history.
Stricker’s nines of 33-30 gave him a 4-shot lead over two relative unknowns to Firestone fans. Ken Duke (35-32) and Englishman Paul Broadhurst (32-35) shared second place.
Reigning champion Jerry Kelly, who was paired with Stricker, was one of four players tied for fourth at 1-under 69 after nines of 35-34. The others are Marco Dawson (33-36), Bob Estes (34-35) and Gene Sauers (35-34).
Fast starts and superlative rounds on the South Course are part of Stricker’s Firestone DNA.
In the 2020 version of the Senior Players he opened with a 2-under 68 only to shoot 11-over during his final three rounds to finish at 9-over 289 and in a tie for 23d.
Part of that 68 including a hole-in-one on the par-3 seventh hole that helped get him to 5-under at one point.
In 2019, when Retief Goosen won by two shots, Stricker opened with a 6-under 64 then failed to break 70 the rest of the way and finished at 1-under 279.
He also laid a 6-under 64 on the field during the final round of the 2012 World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational. That lifted him into a tie for second place with Jim Furyk, each one shot behind winner Keegan Bradley. The 64 followed three consecutive rounds of 68.
“I have gotten off to good starts here before so I’ve got to continue with that,” he said, while acknowledging he is winless on the South Course. “Just have to keep playing with the confidence level that I played with today and keep trying to hit the shots I hit today.”
Stricker, who has been toying with his putter, its grip and how he holds it, needed just 22 putts on 14 holes and was not required to make many monsters as he hit the ball close to the hole all day. His longest birdie putts were 20 feet on the 17th and 15 feet on the 18th. His other birdie putts were close to or less than 6 feet.
“I’ve been struggling with my putting, the consistency of it,” he said. “I just haven’t been feeling that great on the greens lately and today was a good day. I putted well. I cleaned up nicely. I made all the little three, four, five-footers and those are what keeps the round going.”
After a roller-coaster front nine in which he had three birdies and three bogeys, Duke settled in for the final nine holes. He birdied three of his final four, including a chip-in from just off the 18th green for his seventh birdie of the day.
Broadhurst, who won the 2018 Senior PGA and the 2016 Senior Open Championship at Carnoustie, was nearly as steady as Stricker. The 55-year-old birdied the eighth and ninth holes that led to making the turn at 3-under, then reeled off nine consecutive pars to shoot himself into contention.
Stricker began play on the 10th hole on a sunny and windy day in which the winds grew progressively stronger as the day wore on.
“It got obviously windier as the day went on,” Stricker said. “There was a little bit of breeze right at the start and then it kept picking up, especially on our second nine. Coming down the stretch it was blowing pretty good.”
That win was Cejka’s first win in 2,254 days. His next win came just 21 days later, as he shot a final-round 67 Sunday to beat Tim Petrovic by four shots shots.
“This trophy is really big,” he quipped in a post-round interview with Golf Channel’s Jimmy Roberts.
Cejka started the final round at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one shot behind Stricker but Cejka would build a lead as big as five on the back nine. That was in part to Stricker backsliding. He opened bogey-double bogey, missed a lot of putts and ended up shooting a 7-over 77.
Cejka’s only hiccup came on the 13th hole, when he yanked his second shot in the water. He was up four on Petrovic at the time and took a bogey but he later birdied the 17th and cruised to the finish line.
Cejka is the first Champions rookie to win two majors since Jack Nicklaus did it 1990. He’s the first Champions player ever to win his first two majors on the circuit.
“I’m the same guy, I’m trying to play the same golf. I just seem to get luckier breaks, make more putts, drive it better since I turned 50,” he said to Roberts. “It’s a blast. The last couple of weeks have been incredible. I can’t even describe it in words how that feels.”
Retief Goosen and K.J. Choi tied for third at 3 under. Mike Weir, who had a four-shot lead after the second round, finished in a tie for fifth with John Riegger and Bob Sowards.
Bernhard Langer finished 10 over, his worst finish in 60 Champions majors.
Five Champions majors in 2021
Two down, these three still to come:
Bridgestone Senior Players Championship
June 24-27, Firestone CC, Akron, Ohio
U.S. Senior Open Championship
July 8-11, Omaha Country Club, Omaha, Nebraska
The Senior Open Championship
July 22-25, Sunningdale GC (Old Course), Berkshire, England