Jim “Bones” Mackay said last week he will return as a full-time caddie, taking the bag for Justin Thomas.
The 2017 PGA Championship winner had worked with Jimmie Johnson since coming onto the PGA Tour in 2015. But the two announced a split earlier in the week.
“It came out of left field very recently. I have just tremendous respect for (Thomas) as a person and a player,” Mackay told Golf Channel on Thursday. “It was an incredible phone call to get and I said, ‘Yes.’ ”
Thomas posted on Twitter that he and Johnson agreed to separation. “I 100% did not fire him, as Jimmy came to me after the Ryder Cup and told me he has decided to pursue other opportunities,” Thomas wrote.
Also last week, Bubba Watson announced he and his long-time caddie Teddy Scott will go their separate ways after 15 years. Scott was on the bag for both of Watson’s Masters wins.
Englishman Lee Westwood says he will make two significant changes to the qualification system if he captains the 2023 European Ryder Cup team at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club near Rome.
The bookies’ favorite also suggested he still is undecided on whether he would accept the job at this stage of his career.
The 25-time European Tour winner says he prefers four captain’s picks rather than the three available to Pádraig Harrington. Westwood also said he thought it was wrong to conclude the qualification process at a tournament as prestigious as the BMW PGA Championship.
“My first thought would be four, four and four,” he said. “Four off the European points list, four off the world list and four picks.
“There’s got to be some sort of qualifying because you want your players to play under pressure. But I just feel like Wentworth is a massive tournament which should stand on its own and shouldn’t have the distraction of it being the last qualifying event.”
It is widely expected that the Ryder Cup committee, chaired by David Howell and also including Harrington and fellow past captains Darren Clarke and Thomas Bjørn, will ask Westwood to captain the next European team. However, the Englishman is reticent about accepting the job.
“I don’t know. I love playing,” he told Sky Sports after beating Harris English by one hole in singles to record his 21st victory in a Ryder Cup career that began in 1997. “I don’t know if I’d miss it too much. I feel like I’ve still got the nerve and I proved it today.”
Those comments were made at a time when emotions were running high and differed from a previous statement the Englishman made in early 2019: “I’d love to have it (the captaincy) in Italy. I’ll be 49 and that’s the ideal time to be captain as far as I’m concerned. I’ll still be playing out here. I’ll still be in touch with the players.”
Former European Tour player Mike Clayton is the latest pundit to suggest the Presidents Cup should become a mixed-team event.
Speaking on the latest edition of Golf Australia’s Inside the Ropes podcast, the respected course designer said it might be the only way to give the biennial contest the same status as the Ryder Cup.
“I think the only way to make the Presidents Cup more interesting is to make it a mixed event with each team comprising six men and six women,” the 64-year-old Australian said. “It’s always going to be the poor man’s Ryder Cup in its current format. I don’t think there is any doubt making it a mixed match would make it much more interesting.
“It would showcase women’s golf. It would show how great they are. It would be something everyone would watch.”
Clayton believes introducing women would make the Presidents Cup more competitive. Since its inauguration in 1994, the international team has won just once. Adding women into the equation would enable the international team to choose from an impressive list of players including South Koreans Jin Young Ko, Inbee Park, Sei Young Kim; Japan’s Nasa Hataoka; Australia’s Minjee Lee; Thailand’s Patty Tavatanakit and the Jutanugarn sisters, Ariya and Moriya; New Zealand’s Lydia Ko; Canada’s Brooke Henderson; and Yuka Saso from the Philippines.
Bryson DeChambeau wound up with a seventh-place finish at the Long Drive World Championships last week in Mesquite, Nevada.
The 2020 U.S. Open winner and U.S. team member at the Ryder Cup fell 6 yards short of a place in the final four on Friday. His long-drive mentor, Kyle Berkshire, won the event.
“I was super excited to get to the final eight,” he said. “I never expected that in my first competition. I think I have shown the world that I can perform at these high speeds and still go play golf on the PGA Tour.”
Spain’s Alejandro Del Rey became the first golfer to shoot a 14-under-par round of 58 on a major golf tour last Friday at last week’s Challenge Tour event at Golf Saint Apollinaire.
Jim Furyk (PGA Tour), Stephan Jaeger (Korn Ferry Tour), Ryo Ishikawa (Japan Golf Tour) and Seong-Hyeon Kim (Japan Golf Tour) all previously shot rounds of 58 but they were achieved on par-70 golf courses, whereas Del Rey’s record round was on a 7,374-yard, par-72 course.
Del Rey carded closing rounds of 68 and 70 to finish tied for 10th place, seven shots behind winner Marcus Helligkilde from Denmark.
The ballot for tickets to the 150th Open Championship closes today at noon in Great Britain after which applications will be reviewed. Successful applicants will be informed by late October or early November.
The R&A introduced a ticket ballot for the first time to allow as many people as possible to register for tickets for the 2022 event at the Old Course in St. Andrews. More than 1.2 million applications have been submitted since July.
Thanks in part to a marathon golf session by New York golf professional Brad Gardner and his general manager at the Edison Club, Craig McLean, more than $400,000 was raised last month for the Folds of Honor charity and local academic scholarships.
Beginning at 2 a.m. on Sept. 9 by using glow-in-the-dark golf balls, Gardner and McLean completed 384 holes. Gardner made 28 birdies and four eagles along the way. He now has played 1,107 holes for the program in the past four years.
A private concert featuring country music chart-topper Lee Brice also contributed to the money that was raised.
TAP-INS
Ticket availability began for the 2022 Presidents Cup, scheduled for Sept. 20-25 at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina (READ MORE). … The PGA Tour announced last week that the 2022 Farmers Insurance Open will shift to a Wednesday-Saturday schedule (READ MORE). … The USGA has opened up the nomination period for the 2022 Bob Jones Award, which will be announced in February (READ MORE). … PGA Tour Latinoamérica announced its schedule for qualifying for the 2021-22 season, with two events in Florida and one each in Mexico and Argentina (READ MORE). … The Ladies European Tour lost a key member of its management team when commercial director Emma Allerton died unexpectedly at age 49 (READ MORE).
Staff and Wire Reports