Tag: William McGirt

Schupak: On any given Monday, PGA Tour dreams come true

Mike Visacki’s week at the Valspar Championship, a tournament he played as a Monday qualifier, are a reminder that dreams come true.

PALM HARBOR, Fla. – Sam Burns took home the trophy and the seven-figure check, but Mike Visacki won the week.

The video of the Monday Qualifier’s teary-eyed phone call to his father after holing a 20-foot birdie putt to win a playoff for the last of four spots into the Valspar Championship has been viewed more than 12 million times.

The moment went viral because of its authenticity – a 27-year-old grinder who never gave up on his dream, even if it meant working at a driving range or living at home with his parents.

Visacki’s story came along at a time when the golf world was coming to terms with the PGA Tour’s Richie Riches getting even richer, divvying up $40 million in Player Impact Program money that pays for box-office buzz rather than how many birdies and bogeys they make. (Could a MQFer qualify for the PIP money grab because Big Mike is surging?)

Here was Visacki, whose father grew up in a home of mud and hay in Yugoslavia and bought his first pair of soccer shoes for $20 when his family immigrated to the U.S., giving voice to the little guy who’s trying to make ends meet on golf’s mini-tour circuit.

William McGirt can relate. He remembers how it felt to cash a $16,000 payday at the Cabarrus Classic on the 2007 Tarheel Tour and pay off his credit card. His big splurge? A GPS. McGirt struck it big, winning the 2016 Memorial Tournament and more than $10 million in career earnings. But he’s never forgotten where he came from or how fortunate he is that he made it.

“There’s a hundred guys on the mini tours who can beat my brains out on the right course,” McGirt said.

The line between success and failure is razor sharp. The futility of McGirt’s quest is memorialized in lipped-out putts on the final green to miss advancing to the final stage of Q-School in 2007 and 2008.

“You look back at it and you’re kind of like, I don’t know if it’s ever going to happen,” McGirt said. “But you keep busting your butt and you grind and all you want is a chance.”

Monday Qualifying is a tough road that can seem the longest of long shots to acquiring status, but 2018 Masters champ Patrick Reed is the poster child for how the dream can be real.

Just four years ago, Keith Mitchell was plying his trade on the Korn Ferry Tour when he was one of four qualifiers into the 2017 Valspar Championship. He finished T-11 in his PGA Tour debut and it spring-boarded him to play well the rest of the year.

“It let me know I could play out here if I had my best stuff,” Mitchell recalled. “I’d put it up there with the most memorable weeks I’ve ever had.”

By 2019, he was a Tour winner at the Honda Classic and has earned more than $5 million in his career. What did he make of Visacki’s story going viral?

“Four guys do it most every week. I’m glad the world got to see what it was like and the feelings that every single one of those four guys have usually,” Mitchell said. “He just happened to get on film.”

Kudos to the PGA Tour, pushed by the yeoman’s effort of Ryan French, Mr. Monday Q Info (@acaseofthegolf1), to shed light on mini-tour life, for being in Tampa last Monday to capture Visacki’s heartfelt exchange with his father, just as they had captured Nick Hardy’s fist pump in Phoenix. Any given Monday is the motto of those who chase the qualifying dream. As mini-tour pro Dominic Formato put it, Visacki served as a much-needed reminder to all the dreamers out there that “sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is closer that it seems.”

Visacki feels like this year’s Ho-Sung Choi, a social media darling who capitalized on his new-found celebrity to gain other sponsor invites. (Note to Big Mike: start writing letters to tournament directors.)

“I’m definitely going to try to do a lot more Mondays now, now knowing this experience,” Visacki said after shooting 74-71 to miss the cut. “It’s eye opening and it definitely makes me want to get out here and continue to be out here. This is amazing.”

Actually, it’s just another Monday on the PGA Tour.

[lawrence-related id=778101783,778101497]

William McGirt launches comeback from hip surgery at The Memorial, site of his lone victory

Sidelined for 22 months after hip surgery, William McGirt is set to make his PGA Tour return at The Memorial, site of his lone victory.

William McGirt can’t think of a better place to launch his return to the PGA Tour than the site of his greatest moment.

In 2016, McGirt won the Memorial for his only PGA Tour victory, defeating Jon Curran on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff.

“The crazy thing is I’ve never seen it. My parents had it on their DVR but they changed service and lost it,” he said.

But that’s OK because seemingly every memory from that week is not only saved but backed up in McGirt’s memory bank.

“On paper, I’d be the last guy you’d pick to win there. First time I’d ever broken 70 at Muirfield Village was on Friday when I shot 68. Then I go shoot 64 on Saturday and made only one birdie on Sunday and still got into a playoff,” he said. “I remember Jack asking me in the elevator on the way to the volunteer party, he said, ‘64 yesterday, huh?’ I said, ‘Woulda, coulda, shoulda, but I had two three putts. He said, ‘What? I’ve got to make that place harder.’ ”

[jwplayer bvqccpyX-9JtFt04J]

But in many ways, McGirt’s victory feels like a distant memory. A hip injury has sidelined him for more than 22 months. He hasn’t competed since missing the cut at the 2018 Northern Trust and bowing out of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Ten days later, he had hip surgery.

McGirt can’t pinpoint a specific shot that caused the injury, but remembers being in pain after the third round of the 2018 Arnold Palmer Invitational.

“It felt like someone had put my hips in a vice and tightened it down,” he said.

He took an injection to play out the string of the season when his doctor told him he couldn’t do any more damage before he went under the knife.

McGirt is a straight shooter and he’ll be the first to tell you about the perks to being home for the past two years, such as teaching both of his kids how to ride bicycles without training wheels and being their Uber driver. But after doing all the hard rehab work, he required a second surgery in August to remove a bone spur nearly twice the size of the original one. That’s when McGirt said he faced the harsh realization that he might never hit a golf ball let alone play competitively again.

PGA Tour events Tiger Woods has won more than anyone else

“I knew there was no chance I could go back and play the way I felt,” he said. “It’s been hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel at times.”

McGirt took his son to the Masters – he wanted to see Tiger Woods – and watched Tiger’s victory at the Tour Championship and some of the Ryder Cup, but he couldn’t bring himself to watch The Memorial last year.

“I love that place too much to sit there and watch those guys knowing I want to be there something awful,” he said.

McGirt has 29 starts under his medical exemption and he doesn’t want to burn any of them or take up a spot from a healthy player. His latest efforts at a comeback suffered another setback when he withdrew from two Korn Ferry Tour events in Florida.

“It feels like someone jammed a knife underneath the ball joint in my hip. I don’t know what the deal is. Until I post an 18-hole score I wouldn’t post this story,” he said after playing a practice round at the Korn Ferry Challenge at TPC Sawgrass. Then he spoke his worst fear of all: “Are we back to square one again?”

McGirt made one rehab start, missing the 36-hole cut at the KFT’s Colorado Championship by one stroke. Part of the reason he’s so anxious to return is he knows that at age 41, his window is closing. Playing in his first Korn Ferry Tour event since 2011 was an eye-opening experience.

“I walked up on the range and thought, Who are all these kids? I don’t know 15 people in this field,” McGirt said. “Good gracious, I’m looking out there thinking, ‘Are you old enough to drive yet? It must be nice to be young and flexible. Hope you don’t ever get hurt.’ ”

Here’s the crux of the matter for McGirt as he tries to make one more extended run on Tour: “I’m not getting any younger,” he said. “I need to play really well for the next five years to have any chance at the Champions Tour. The longer I’m out, the less likely that is to happen.”

All McGirt wants is to be able to rotate and find his left side again and have a fighter’s chance to compete. He’ll give it the old college try this week at his happy place. Of heading to Muirfield Village Golf Club this week, he said, “If you can’t fall in love with that place when you drive through the gates, you’ve got problems.”

[lawrence-related id=778054345,778054372,778054357,778054329]

PGA Tour players share memories of best Christmas presents they’ve received

Justin Thomas still has one of the treasured golf gifts he received as a kid.

[jwplayer i8EnQ5WH-9JtFt04J]

Editor’s note: This story originally ran on Dec. 22, 2017.

Back in the day, when golf manufacturers weren’t sending boxes upon boxes of goodies for free, William McGirt had to rely on Santa Claus for his next addition to the golf bag.

While the winner of the 2016 Memorial said most of his presents at Christmas were golf related, the gift he got when he was 15 stood out.

“I remember one year when graphite shafts first came out and I was dying to have a driver with a graphite shaft. I don’t remember the exact model of the shaft, but I do remember it was a Mizuno driver and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world,” McGirt said.

Only one problem.

“I couldn’t hit it very well,” McGirt added with a laugh.

Golfweek’s best of the decade

Comeback stories | Men’s college players | Women’s college players
PGA Tour players | LPGA players | Memorable quotes

A driver Brian Harman got worked very well.

“I got a TaylorMade Burner Bubble driver when I was 13,” said the winner of the 2017 Wells Fargo Championship. “That was the driver to have back then. And boy, did it work. It was great.”

With the holiday season upon us, some of golf’s best players in the world took a drive down memory lane to the times they unwrapped their presents hoping to see the latest golf equipment that would head straight to their golf bag.

“As a kid, I remember my first set of irons,” former world No. 1 Luke Donald said. “I was 12 years old and I got Seve (Ballesteros) irons and they were the greatest thing I ever saw.”

Justin Thomas still has one of the gifts he got as a kid. The 11-time winner on Tour said his mom and dad would play a little game of hide-and-seek with his “big” present hidden somewhere else in the house.

“I remember one year, I don’t know how old I was, but I was opening my presents. I was sitting on the floor and I (saw) a golf club box or whatever wrapped under the couch,” Thomas said. “I’m like, ‘What’s that?’ And they saw that I saw it and noticed I pulled it out. I think it was a Scottie Cameron that year that I still have. That was a pretty cool gift.”

World Golf Hall of Fame member Davis Love III didn’t have his own full set of clubs for years after he picked up the game. His bag was full of his mom’s leftover clubs, or his dad’s backup clubs. That changed as he unwrapped his presents when he was 15.

“I got a set of Hogan Apex irons from my dad, who was on the Hogan staff,” Love said. “I finally had my own clubs. When I got those Apex irons, it was great. And that’s exactly what I asked Santa for.

Patrick Reed said the best golf-related present he ever got was an early Christmas present gift he received from a friend of his. He got it a few weeks ahead of the 2016 Ryder Cup, where he played a starring role as the U.S. defeated Europe for the first time since 2008.

It was a golf bag, but not just any golf bag. No, his friend got a Callaway staff bag made specifically to honor Arnold Palmer at the Masters one year. Then his friend got the King to sign the bag for Reed.

[jwplayer 6iN1p3CP-9JtFt04J]

“I always wanted to get a bag signed by Mr. Palmer but I really was never around him much,” Reed said. “And I got it before the Ryder Cup and it’s in my office and I see it every time I walk into the office. It’s just great. Best golf present I’ve ever gotten.”

Justin Leonard can’t remember the best golf-related Christmas present he got. He said he obviously got plenty of golf presents as a kid but nothing, no matter how long he jogged his memory, popped up. Instead of a driver, a lightsaber stood out in his Christmas presents.

“Seriously, I can’t remember any golf equipment,” said the winner of 12 PGA Tour titles, including the 1997 Open Championship. “But I remember when I was 5, I got a sweet Stars Wars watch. That was the coolest thing I ever got.”

[opinary poll=”which-2019-rules-violation-was-the-most-” customer=”golfweek”]

[lawrence-related id=778017708,778012797,778017711,777966285]