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HONOLULU, HAWAII | Imagine waking up to an alert on your telephone that a ballistic missile was headed your way.
That’s what greeted PGA Tour players and others at the Sony Open in Hawaii when the emergency text message “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL,” popped up just after 8 a.m. Saturday morning.
The warning turned out to be a mistake, according to Hawaii officials, the result of someone accidentally hitting the wrong button. For about 10 minutes, however, things were scary.
Tour player John Peterson tweeted, “Under mattresses in the bathroom with my wife, baby and in-laws. Please Lord let the bomb threat not be real.”
J.J. Spaun tweeted, “In a basement under the hotel. Barely any service. Can you send a confirmed message over radio or tv.”
When it was over, Tony Finau tweeted a brief message. It read: “Phew.”
That seemed to sum it up nicely.
Cory Gilmer, caddie for Blayne Barber, was in critical condition in the neurological intensive care unit of a Honolulu hospital after falling and hitting his head Friday night, according to multiple reports.
After having dinner with Barber, Gilmer went to another restaurant, where he fell and injured himself, the reports said.
“A few people went and were able to see Cory tonight,” Barber tweeted in the wee hours of Sunday morning. “He’s still unconscious and sedated. He’s moving a lot in his bed but mostly from discomfort. They are monitoring the swelling in the brain from the impact of the fall. His family is coming tomorrow. Thanks for all the prayers!”
Before teeing off in the final round, Barber tweeted an update: "Small improvement this morning for Cory. Still in a critical stage but asked about his friends, said his last name, and asked the nurse to pray today. He’s got a long way to go but continue to pray! Specifically that the swelling would go down in his brain."
Barber’s brother, Shayne, replaced Gilmer on the bag.
Justin Thomas’ week at the Sony Open in Hawaii didn’t include a 59 like he had last year, but it was memorable nonetheless thanks to Alabama’s college football national championship victory against Georgia last Monday night.
With a gentle push, Thomas – an Alabama alum – and Georgia Bulldog Kevin Kisner agreed to a wager that required the loser to wear the winning team’s jersey on the 16th hole at Waialae Country Club on Thursday. The Tide’s 26-23 overtime win meant Kisner had to play the hole in a crimson jersey.
Kisner kept the jersey and is raffling it off to benefit his Kisner Foundation.
“Justin is good enough to let me do it and I’ll get him back in the future,” said Kisner, who lobbied to get the 3½-point spread included but Thomas refused.
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On Tuesday, Thomas called Alabama coach Nick Saban to leave him a congratulatory message and got a surprise.
“He actually answered, which I couldn't believe. So I was actually shocked to get to talk to him,” Thomas said.
“I just told him, 'Unbelievable.' He's a legend. To make that decision (to start freshman quarterback Tua Tagovailoa in the second half) on the biggest stage where, if it doesn't work out, the criticism he's going to get from that, not only from everybody else, but from the university, from the players. There's a reason he's – I mean, after that, probably the best college football coach of all time.”
Don’t expect Thomas to chirp too loudly about Alabama’s latest national championship.
“I know in my scenario, after last year, the Clemson fans, and they handled it well. You'll get that one fan that they haven't been there as often or you'll get a couple Auburn fans that they don't beat us that often so they feel they need to rub it in and this and that,” Thomas said.
“It hurts enough losing. It's not like I need to kick him when they're down. It was a heck of a game. I don't have the hatred toward Georgia that a lot of people do. Obviously, I am very happy that we won, but I would have been extremely happy for Kirby (Smart, Georgia’s head coach), more so Kirby than Georgia in itself. Not that I feel bad for them, but that's enough. I don't need to hammer it down their throats.”
Just when 2016 PGA champion Jimmy Walker was turning the corner in his recovery from Lyme disease, he found out his wife, Erin, also has the disease.
Walker said his wife had not been feeling well and when nothing specific showed up in her checkups, he suggested she get tested for Lyme disease because he had gone through a similar scenario.
“Sure enough, it pops right up,” Walker said.
Walker said there is no definitive answer on whether the disease can be passed from one person to another, though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no evidence it can be passed. He said his wife is struggling with the medication as he did last year, which he hopes is a signal the medicines are working.
The disease had a direct impact on Walker’s 2017 season. The medications he took made him extremely sensitive to sunlight and when he played the Players Championship, he developed blistering sunburn on his ears, hands and forearms despite heavy sunscreen.
He was unable to practice and struggled to get through tournaments.
“The worst part was just not being able to play with the kids and just be like a normal person," Walker said. "I've always been full of life and energy and running around, and I just didn't have any of that. You just kind of lose yourself in the disease a little bit because it just sucks the life out of you.”
Since September, Walker said he has gained 10 pounds and feels noticeably healthier.
“Throughout the day, I feel really good,” Walker said. “Every now and then I'll kind of get a little feeling, and then it just goes away. So I know it's getting better, where before it would last weeks on end, where you felt like that the whole time.”
Making his first start of the calendar year, Walker shot 74-66 and missed the cut.
Morgan Hoffmann, who made his first Tour start since his revelation last December that he has muscular dystrophy, shot 69-71 and missed the cut at Waialae.
In a piece published on The Players Tribune website, Hoffmann revealed the disease has caused his right pectoral muscle to atrophy but there has been only minimal effect on his left pec. Hoffmann said he underwent multiple evaluations before doctors determined he has muscular dystrophy.
Hoffmann, who finished 81st on the FedEx Cup points list last year, intends to continue playing the PGA Tour. He said he has made adjustments to his game in the past several months and there is no clear prognosis regarding the advancement of the disease. Hoffmann intends to use his presence on the PGA Tour to raise awareness of the disease.
Thomas and Jim "Bones" Mackay spent the week in Oahu working together while Thomas’s regular caddie, Jimmy Johnson, recovers from a bout of plantar fasciitis.
“It's fun just because it's different. It's different for him. It's different for me,” said Thomas, who finished T14 in his title defense.
“I'm so used to Jimmy, and obviously, I'd take Jimmy over anybody in the world, but it's just when you get used to something for 2½ years you get someone different, it's like – you know they do things differently. They say things differently. It's not that it's bad or good, it's just that it's different.”
The pairing worked, in part, because Mackay was already in Hawaii doing television work for Golf Channel. Thomas said he plans to use putting coach Matt Killen as his caddie at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and hopes Johnson will be back after that. If not, Thomas said he will consider his options.
This will be a different major championship season for Jordan Spieth for a simple reason – other than the Masters at Augusta National, Spieth has not played at the site of the other 2018 majors.
Spieth’s caddie, Michael Greller, has played Shinnecock Hills, site of the U.S. Open, but that’s not the same thing as first-hand experience. As for Carnoustie and Bellerive, Spieth will learn them on the fly.
“(Greller) told me I'm going to love (Shinnecock), but he kind of has to say that,” Spieth said. “Carnoustie, I could probably recite the back nine to you just by watching on TV. There's been so many memorable Opens there, famous and infamous, and just how difficult it is.”
Spieth intends to make a pre-tournament visit to Shinnecock and he will get to Carnoustie the weekend before the Open Championship to familiarize himself.
As for Bellerive, all Spieth knows is what he’s heard about it from relatives in the St. Louis area.
Spieth, whose opening 69 was marred by a quadruple-bogey 8 on the eighth hole at Waialae (his 16th hole of the day), finished T18 last week.
The past two years have been personally challenging for Jonathan Byrd, a five-time PGA Tour winner who played most of his golf during that stretch on the Web.com Tour.
Byrd, 39, won the Web.com Tour Championship last fall to lock down his spot on the PGA Tour again. Rather than wallow in his frustration, Byrd found a way to get back what he had lost.
“I had to make a huge attitude adjustment,” he said. “I felt like it was all attitude. You hear the quote: 'Attitude's everything.' For me, it was just more my mindset was everything because I did not want to be kind of a grumpy old Tour player who's saying the whole time on the (Web.com Tour), complaining about it's not like this on the big tour. People don't treat you like this on the big tour. Because if you go down that road, it's just endless. You just can't compare the two tours.
“There's a lot of great things about that tour, but like the courses just aren't the same. There's so many reminders every week that you're not where you want to be, and that was the big struggle. That's the big internal struggle is I'm not where I want to be. So am I going to let that – am I going to embrace the challenge, or I'm going to kind of let it just take me down with it?
“And then when you didn't have good weeks, you're starting to kind of play that mental game of like I'm measuring this time away from my family. Is it worth it? After the first year and after the second year, (I would) sit down with my wife and (ask) like how long am I going to keep doing this? Because I still have status on (the PGA Tour), but like I don't want to be out here. And we'd already said that, like after the first year, we said we can do this one more year, playing (the Web.com Tour).”
Byrd shot 10-under-par 270 and finished T25 in Hawaii.
Staff and Wire Reports