In three weeks, Patrick Reed will tee it up in the Masters as a former champion and extend his decade-long streak of consecutive major championships to 40.
That’s where it could end, though, according to a report by the Associated Press’ Doug Ferguson.
Reed, 33, who holds a lifetime exemption into the Masters as the 2018 champion, has fallen to No. 109 in the Official World Golf Ranking since he joined LIV Golf in June of 2022. He was ranked 36th upon signing with the Saudi-funded upstart tour and had been as high as No. 6 in the world order in 2020.
Meanwhile, Reed has chased ranking points on the Asian Tour, posting T-7 and T-15 finishes this year before last week’s fourth-place result at the International Series Macau. His best shot at a PGA berth, short of winning another green jacket, lies with a special invitation from the PGA of America ahead of the May 16-19 event at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky.
“If players are deserving, hopefully we would invite them,” the PGA’s Kerry Haigh said.
Reed, who has not won a LIV Golf title, has made six cuts in as many starts in major championships since he jumped to LIV, with one top-10, a tie for fourth at last year’s Masters. READ MORE
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Despite the attraction of No. 1-ranked Scottie Scheffler cruising to victory at the recent Arnold Palmer Invitational, TV viewership for the final round on NBC plunged 30 percent, to 2.29 million, compared with last year’s finale won by Kurt Kitayama, SportsMediaWatch.com reported.
It was the least-watched final round from the late Palmer’s longtime winter home at Bay Hill in Orlando, Florida, since 2017. LIV Golf attracted 208,000 viewers to its final round on the CW Network.
The PGA Tour has not registered a year-over-year increase in final-round viewership since amateur Nick Dunlap won the American Express title in January as golf fans react to the division in the professional game between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. READ MORE
Bernhard Langer, who said last month he will miss the Masters because of a “training incident” in which he tore an Achilles tendon, actually hurt himself playing pickleball, he said on the Musings on Golf podcast.
Langer, 66, the seemingly ageless two-time Masters champion from Germany, had said the 2024 Masters would be his final competitive appearance at Augusta National, where he won in 1985 and 1993. Now, that finale likely has been pushed to 2025.
“I play all sorts of sports to stay fit,” said Langer, who underwent surgery to repair the injury, “and this was part of my fitness regime.”
Langer, who holds the record for Champions Tour victories, with 46, hopes to return to competition in May on the 50-and-older tour. As the reigning U.S. Senior Open champion, he is eligible to compete in the U.S. Open in June at Pinehurst. READ MORE
Californian John Catlin, who has carved out a solid career overseas, won for the fifth time on the Asian Tour, largely on the strength of a third-round 59.
Catlin shot 11-under 59 on Saturday at Macau Golf and Country Club and then edged David Puig in a playoff Sunday to win the $2 million International Series Macau.
After holing a 20-foot eagle putt on the par-5 18th hole to reach the magic number Saturday, Catlin called it “pretty special.”
Or is it?
Catlin, 33, became the first sub-60 scorer on the Asian Tour, but the once-magical 59 hardly merits the “special” status it once held.
Since Al Geiberger shot 59 in the third round of the 1977 Memphis Classic at Colonial Country Club en route to victory, 11 more sub-60 scores have been posted on the PGA Tour, with Jim Furyk’s 58 in the final round of the 2016 Travelers Championship being the lowest. And Furyk didn’t even win.
Fifty-five sub-60 scores have been posted on virtually every major professional tour worldwide in recent years, according to a running tally kept by the Associated Press. Even LIV Golf, in only its third year, already has produced two sub-60s scores.
So, does that lessen the achievement of Catlin, who also has won three times this decade on the European Tour but might be best remembered for a slow-play penalty in the first round of the 2021 PGA Championship? Certainly not, but a standard that 50 years ago seemed untouchable has many fingerprints on it these days. READ MORE
The LPGA, which took last week off after a three-stop tour of Asia, returns to the continental U.S. this week for the Fir Hills Seri Pak Championship at Palos Verdes Golf Club in Palos Verdes Estates, California.
Pak, the World Golf Hall of Fame member who launched the golf craze in her native South Korea, will serve as host for a tournament that has attracted 18 of the top 25 players in the world, led by No. 1 Lilia Vu, an Angeleno. The tournament will be the first of 12 consecutive U.S. stops, through June. READ MORE
Kim Paez accepted a sponsor exemption into the LPGA’s Ford Championship in Gilbert, Arizona, tournament officials announced. Paez, a PGA professional from Peoria, Arizona, and a Ping player development director, won the 2023 Southwest PGA Section title. However, because she opted to play from tees that were only 85 percent of the men’s yardage, she was ineligible to receive the section champion’s customary exemption into the PGA Tour’s WM Phoenix Open. Paez was profiled last year in a story by Jim Nugent in GGPWomen. READ MORE
The LPGA boosted its season purse higher into record territory for the U.S.-based women’s tour with the addition of $225,000 to this month’s Ford Championship by The Thunderbirds civic group of Phoenix. The $2.25 million event will be played March 28-31 at Seville Golf and Country Club in Gilbert, Arizona, raising the LPGA’s 2024 prize fund to $119.8 million. READ MORE
Compiled by Steve Harmon