Skinner leads PGA contingent with first-day 67

Skinner leads PGA contingent with first-day 67












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Sonny Skinner's 67 was the best first-round score by a PGA Professional since 2003.(Montana Pritchard/The PGA of America)

PGA.COM May 23, 2013 9:29 PM


By Bob Denney, The PGA of America

TOWN & COUNTRY, Mo. - Sonny Skinner drove 12 hours from his home in Sylvester, Ga., to Bellerive Country Club, a journey that he said allowed him time to "clear the mind" while preparing for the 74th Senior PGA Championship presented by KitchenAid.

"You listen to a lot of good music, and it allows you to refocus when you drive those 12 hours," said Skinner, who attended his daughter's high school graduation last Sunday and passed on a late search for a flight. "My game wasn't very good coming in here. I didn't play for seven straight days. That was on purpose, because my game felt sour and flat, and I was not confident."

The truth is Skinner's game was mostly sweet in Thursday's opening round of the most historic and prestigious event in senior golf. The 52-year-old PGA head professional at River Pointe Golf Club in Albany, Ga., posted a 4-under-par 67, featuring six birdies and a pair of bogeys.

It was the best first-round score by a PGA club professional in the Championship since 2003, when Mike San Filippo of Hobe Sound, Fla., turned in a 68. Skinner's performance, coming in his third appearance in the Championship, led a delegation of 42 PGA club professionals on a cool, overcast day that featured periodic drizzle in the afternoon.

It also left Skinner one shot out of the lead, shared by two-time Senior PGA Champion Jay Haas and Duffy Waldorf, making his Championship debut.

Mark Mielke, PGA head professional at Mill River Club in Oyster Bay, N.Y., had a 69 in his Championship debut. PGA Life Member San Filippo, playing in his 10th Championship; Jeff Coston of Blaine, Wash.; and Bob Gaus of St. Louis, a PGA teaching professional at Tower Tee Golf Center, each were at 71.

"It's a golf course that rewards you for hitting it in the fairway," said Skinner, the reigning Senior PGA Professional Player of the Year, who hit all 14 fairways Thursday. "That's always been part of my game. Round to round, I've relied upon being able to put it in play."

Skinner salvaged his round with a spectacular par-saving pitch on the 195-yard, par-3 sixth hole. Ranked the second-most difficult hole in the opening round, Skinner hit a 4-iron up into a plugged lie in the left greenside bunker and blasted from there across the green and down a bank.


He then chipped in from 40 yards out.

"I was just trying to make bogey and then I rolled it into the hole for a 3," Skinner said.

Beginning his round on the back nine, Skinner birdied 15, 17, 18, 1, 3 and 4, offsetting bogeys on the 11th and 16th holes.

Skinner's Championship trip was enhanced when his longtime caddie, Paul Yates, put him in touch with PGA Professional Craig Bollman of Edwardsville, Ill., who not only caddied but also has allowed Skinner to stay the week at his home some 50 minutes from Bellerive's gates.

"Paul called me a month ago and said Sonny is coming to St. Louis, and needs help, and asked if I would help him out? I said, 'Sure,' " said Bollman, a PGA teaching professional at GolfTEC-Des Peres in St. Louis, who is making his debut caddying in a tournament. "So, my family welcomed him in and he's an awesome guy."

Bollman said that he and Skinner exchanged several text messages before Skinner arrived Monday night.

"Sonny got in around 7:30, and I had to go to my son's baseball game," said Bollman. "I walked him into the kitchen, said, 'There's dinner, and see you tomorrow.' It's very easy to caddie for Sonny and it was a really great day for me today, too."

Bellerive reminded Mielke, 50, of several New York courses within the Metropolitan PGA Section, which added to his comfort level.

"The golf course set-up is almost exactly like what we play," said Mielke. "There are six tough holes here. I said going in, if I could just par those six holes and maybe make some birdies on some of the other ones, it might be all right."

Mielke had only two pars over his first 10 holes, a string that went birdie-bogey-par-birdie-par-bogey-birdie-birdie-bogey-bogey. He finished with birdies on Nos. 14 and 17.

Waldorf brings unique style to first senior major

Waldorf brings unique style to first senior major











PGA.COM May 23, 2013 10:26 PM.View gallery
Duffy Waldorf earned a top-10 finish at Bellerive during the 1992 PGA Championship.(Getty Images)By T.J. Auclair, PGA.com Interactive Producer
ST. LOUIS - There's just something a little funny about a 50-year-old being a full-fledged rookie. But that's exactly whatDuffy Waldorf is, as 2013 is his first full season as a member of the Champions Tour.
After the first round of the 74th Senior PGA Championship presented by KitchenAid, the relative rookie doubled as the grizzled veteran he is with a 5-under 66 at Bellerive to grab a share of the first-round lead with Jay Haas.
"It's a lot better than the last time I was a rookie I can tell you that, because I feel like I have about 25 years of experience of playing tournament golf," Waldorf said after his six-birdie, one-bogey round. "But it's nice. This is the best tour to be a rookie on, I think. Usually you're an experienced player, you can be healthier, you can be maybe more fit, you can be longer, I mean there's a lot of positives. I've been playing a bit on the Web.com and regular tour the last couple years and certainly it's good preparation for this tour."
Playing the back nine first, Waldorf picked up birdies on Nos. 12, 14 and 16. No. 16, in particular, proved to be a key to the round. Waldorf hit his tee shot on the 232-yard par 3 into a greenside bunker just short and left.
"I hit a 4-iron, came up just short into the bunker on the left and it's a pretty tough bunker shot," he said. "I had a lot of green to work with, but you're down low and you're blind and I hit a nice shot."
It wasn't just nice... it was in for an unlikely but much welcomed birdie.
"I didn't get to see it go in, but it's always nice when you get that crowd reaction and even my caddie was happy, so that's always good," Waldorf said.
After making the turn, Waldorf birdied the 522-yard, par-4 fourth hole to get to 4 under, but quickly gave the shot back on No. 5 with a bogey at the 468-yard par 4 after an errant tee shot got him in some trouble.
Waldorf bounced back with birdies on Nos. 7 and 8 with putts inside of six feet and parred No. 9 to close out the 66.
It seems the only problem he had on Thursday was a mysterious cut on his right hand that happened just before he teed off.
"I don't know how I did it," he said. "It was just a little scrape. I was reaching in to get something like a pencil or tees at the first tee box or No. 10. I started on 10. And I didn't even feel it hardly and then it was all of a sudden it was like, oh, just a slow little drip. My daughter could do a little makeup for a horror movie."
The cut also led to a rather funny - though almost not funny for Waldorf - situation on the eighth green. Being extra cautious so not to get any blood on his khaki pants, Waldorf gingerly reached into his right pants pocket all day for tees and his ball marker.
On the eighth green, though, he unintentionally emptied his pocket all over the place.
"I pretty much emptied all the contents of my pocket on to the green," Waldorf said. "I've been obsessed with not getting my pants bloody. So I've kind of been half digging in there, so I just dig in with my fingers and don't get my hand in there. I think I have been pulling up the pocket slowly and that time I just reached in with a finger and pulled up and the whole pocket came with me. So I'm very glad that it didn't roll on top of my actual mark, because it was kind of like, mark, and then they all fell like right behind. So at least I had a good idea which one my mark was."
In his days on the PGA Tour - which aren't over, by the way - Waldorf had four victories. One of his three top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour was a tie for ninth at the 1992 PGA Championship, which also happened to be right here at Bellerive.
So far, Waldorf has been a man of many tours in 2013. He finished 64th in late April at the Web.com Tour's South Georgia Classic; has played three times on the PGA Tour, including a tie for 48th at last week's HP Byron Nelson Championship; and had six starts on the Champions Tour prior to this week with his top finish being a tie for fifth at the Greater Gwinnett Championship.
"The golf courses can be a little different," Waldorf said. "We tend to play a little bit shorter course out here. So I feel like you tend to have more birdie holes. Sometimes you get courses on the Tour, pins are set hard, the conditions can be hard and you're like, it's hard to make a birdie. And you feel like it does tend to favor the longer hitter a bit on both those tours.
"Web.com, sometimes they're (courses) hard but, a lot of times they're not hard, it's almost the other thing, they're quite easy and then you got shoot 4 or 5 under every day or you got to be at 20 under par," he said. "Totally different kind of situation where you really need to just go low, low, low and that's a different style of golf and like the PGA Tour, I think is one style and Web.com is one style and out here on the Champions Tour, any style works, really."
On Thursday, Waldorf's style worked exceptionally well.

Sergio Garcia Playing Impressive Golf Despite Off-Course Drama

Sergio Garcia Playing Impressive Golf Despite Off-Course Drama











Adam Fonseca May 23, 2013 10:57 PM




COMMENTARY | Regardless of your opinion on Sergio Garcia the person these days, Sergio Garcia the professional golfer is playing at an incredibly high level.

Garcia managed an even par 72 in the opening round of this week's 2013 BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, the European Tour's flagship event. While not overly impressive at the surface, Garcia's round was impressive considering the pressure he has experienced due to his recent, well, extracurricular activities.

Garcia's play throughout the season has been even more impressive. He
is currently ranked in the top 15 on the Official World Golf Ranking; his highest ranking in years. As a member of both the PGA and European Tours, Garcia's statistics and performance place him squarely in the upper echelon of all players on either side of the pond.



On the PGA Tour side, for example, Garcia is ranked no. 39 on the FedEx Cup points list and no. 22 on the tour's money list. According to the Tour's website, he has made the cut in each of the eight events he has played and has finished in the top 25 seven times. He has managed four top 10 finishes during that stretch, including a third place finish at the WGC - Cadillac Championship. Thanks to a scoring average of 70.26, Garcia has already pocketed more than $1.3 million in tournament winnings on tour.

The story remains the same when looking at Garcia's performance on the European Tour this year. Garcia is currently ranked third in the Race to Dubai rankings, having earned more than 770,000 euros. He has played six tournaments on that tour - which includes the WGC - Cadillac Championship, WGC - Accenture Match Play and The Masters - and has not placed lower than seventeenth in any appearance. His scoring average on the Euro Tour (69.65) is almost a full shot better than his PGA Tour average.

The trend continues when you look at Garcia's performance stats. His driving distance average is over 287 yards on both the PGA and Euro Tours (287.7 yards and 292.44 yards, respectively). His driving accuracy is right around 60 percent on both tours (60.43 percent and 59.82 percent) while his Greens in Regulation percentage remain above average (67.90 percent and 77.08 percent).

What is Garcia's most impressive individual statistic this season? He boasts an astonishing .989 strokes gained while putting ratio on the PGA Tour, which is second only to his friend Tiger Woods.

All things considered, Sergio Garcia is having one hell of a season on the golf course. While he finds himself in the middle of the pack after his first round at this week's BMW PGA Championship - and six shots behind leader James Kingston at 6-under par - he is very much on pace to make the tournament cut and play on the weekend.

For Garcia's sake, it may be best to keep his nose to the grind for the time being and focus on playing some of the best golf of his career. He may also want to steer clear of any press conferences or microphones for a bit, as well.



Adam Fonseca has been writing about golf since 2005. His work can be found on numerous digital outlets including the Back9Network and SB Nation. He currently lives in Chicago with his wife. Follow Adam on Twitter @chicagoduffer.