World golf wrap

There’s a bit going on in the professional and amateur golf world at the moment that’s worth an overview. Let’s start with the amateur circuit and some Kiwi glory.

Regular reader “NZgolfer” made mention in the previous post comments to this fantastic effort by Danny Lee to win the US Amateur championship. He completely killed the course and his opponent in the final matchplay rounds knocking in 13 birdies out of the 32 holes played. Interestingly, this is the same course where Michael Campbell won his US Open. If you have a spare minute, check out the list of past US amateur champions. There’s some big names but it would also be interesting to know where some of the others have ended up.

Speaking of Michael Campbell, he finished tied for 8th at the weekend’s European event, the KLM Open. This will surely bolster his world ranking which sat at 402 before the tournament. Good to see Darren Clarke get a big win and is now in Faldo’s thoughts for a Ryder Cup berth.

Last week saw Australian golfer Katherine Hull (pictured) capture her first LPGA victory at the CN Canadian Open and has backed it up this week with a tie for 4th position. She’s in the Aaron Baddeley mould and is not afraid to say it. There’s been big wraps on her after dominating many events in college and we’ll see much more of her in future.

So where do we sit in the FedEx Cup Playoff’s? It’s the PGA Tour’s attempt at a finals-like finish to the season and the first tournament was won by Vijay Singh, knocking off Kevin Sutherland and Sergio Garcia in a playoff. It means Vijay now sits in first position. There were 24 players who did not finish in the top 120 players based on FedEx cup points and were eliminated.

After next week’s Deutsche Bank Championship, 50 will go home and we will be left with 70. You need enough points after the BMW Championship to make the final 30-player field who compete in the final event. The winner of the FedExCup will be the player who has accumulated the most points throughout the Playoffs, not necessarily the winner of the final event of the playoff’s, THE TOUR Championship.

It’s a little complicated but the concept worked quite well last year and adds something to the end of the season which is bereft of majors.

*Photo courtesy of the ALPG Tour website.