Major Surprises
• John (?) Huh: The “Question Mark” was exactly that before the 2012 season started as he had only played briefly in Southeast Asia before making his way and qualifying at Q School. He left no question about his talent as the season motored on and confirmed our suspicions when he defeated Robert Allenby on the eighth playoff hole at Mayakoba. He made 22 of 28 cuts and had four top-10 finishes. Huh excelled on the greens (34th in total putting) and was 11th in driving accuracy.
• Brandt Snedeker: His season started with a DNS at Kapalua as he healed from hip surgery. I joked after his win at Torrey Pines that he should have surgery every offseason. After the way he closed 2012 as the FedExCup Champion and winning the TOUR Championship, he just might! He finished the FedExCup Playoffs second, sixth, T37 and first. Throw in 10 top 10s in 22 events as well, so if you were on “Opie Taylor” from day one, you should have had an excellent 2012. If you bailed on him because of his surgery, he’s now proven that he knows when he’s ready to come back and you shouldn’t worry!
• Jonas Blixt: With only one top-25 finish in his first nine starts, the rookie from Florida State was flying well under the radar and looked to be struggling. As the season went on the Swede started to heat up as he had his best run of starts in late April into May. He finished T13, T9, T13 and T10 before becoming injured after the Memorial. He missed two-and-a-half months with a rib injury. His return to the TOUR didn’t inspire confidence for fantasy players as he wrapped up the FedExCup season with T55, T46 and T20 as he was eliminated after the Deutsche Bank Championship. After another month on the sideline, Blixt destroyed the Fall Series and ramped up the money list. This didn’t help anyone in season-long leagues but it showed that he has the game for future investment. He was second on TOUR in eagles, 21st in birdie average, third in birdie-or-better percentage on par fours and was fifth on TOUR in birdie-or-better conversion. Why? He was second in stokes-gained putting and first in sand saves. Sure, he’s a bit crooked off the tee and doesn’t kill GIR but with a short game like that, it goes to show there are many ways to be successful on TOUR.
• Jim Furyk: Rebounded from a quiet 2011 ($1.5 million or so) to knock out 14 top 25s in 24 starts in 2012 (north of $3.6 million) without winning. He can only imagine “what if” in 2012 if he could have three or four holes to play over just one time. He finished P2 in a four-man playoff at the Transitions. His drive on No. 16 at the Olympic essentially cost him a chance at his second U.S. Open. He double-bogeyed No. 18 at Firestone on Sunday to lose out to Keegan Bradley at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Those three holes could have been another $3 or $4 million! Yikes! I think Furyk, Mickelson and Stricker are the 40somethings that still obviously have value in season-long or weekly games and all three of them proved that this season.
Keepers
Guys you would have been glad to have had from day one in 2012. I left off the obvious choices because we all know we’d like to have Rory, Tiger and Phil.
• Jason Dufner: Posted 14 top 25s in 22 events along with eight top 10s. He also broke his duck as he claimed his first two victories on TOUR and there’s no reason to believe that this won’t continue in 2013. His worst finish in the four majors was T31 and his best was T4 at the U.S. Open so he has shown he’s a player on the big stage (see: Ryder Cup). Now that he’s married, we’ll have to be alert for the “Pregnancy Watch!”
• Brendon de Jonge: From a fantasy standpoint, he's a gravy train. He plays tons of events (31, 30, 32 in his last three seasons) so he’s excellent to have in season-long leagues and in weekly leagues in “light” fields where birdies are necessary. “The Mustard Man” finished his last four events of 2012 second, T4, T4 and T19 so he should be ready to go for 2013.
• Keegan Bradley: Some guys win majors and disappear. Some guys win majors and springboard their careers. He finished No. 10 on the money list and had a win, second and third in 25 events. In TWO years on TOUR, he’s won three times and made almost eight million dollars so the phrase “flash in the pan” doesn’t apply here. I like guys with moxie and he showed plenty of that at the Ryder Cup as well.
• Louis Oosthuizen: He, like Furyk, had multiple chances to win in 2012 but just came up a few holes short. It started with a final-round 75 (54-hole leader) at the Shell Houston Open where he finished solo third. He backed that up the following week with a playoff defeat to Bubba Watson at Augusta. He showed real guts flying across the world to Indonesia to win the following week which didn’t even count towards his $3.4 TOUR earnings. If he’s only going to play around 19 events, make sure you remember that he had 12 top 25s in addition to his two seconds and a third.
• Bo Van Pelt: He’s had an amazing 23 top 10s in the last 3 years and has shown no signs of slowing down. The one “fantasy knock” on him is he doesn’t win enough. Winning on TOUR is obviously difficult but it’s the consistency of his play (and results) that keeps me coming back week after week, no matter the size or stature of the event. Gamers couldn’t ask for a better omen to 2013 as he won in his last outing in Perth holding off Jason Dufner.
• Robert Garrigus: A career-high year in earnings without winning was accomplished by a multitude of factors. He came into 2012 in shape and his iron play was just as fit (seventh in GIR). He had four runner-up finishes and doubled his career-high in earnings. He once admitted to smoking some wacky tobacky in a portable toilet at a tournament one time but those days are long gone. He showed me some guts playing consecutive weeks in China (T2, T51) and playing the following week in Disney (T2). If he stays fit, keeps striping irons and maintains his birdie average (fourth on TOUR), there’s no reason he can’t continue this form in 2013.
• Seung-yul Noh: Ah, to be young again. The 21-year old South Korean racked up 24 cuts in 28 events in 2012 and has been working with Sean Foley. Foley had a nice year with Tiger Woods winning three times, Hunter Mahan winning twice and Justin Rose winning once. Noh’s next step will be converting those cuts made into top 10s (only three this year) but when you put yourself in that situation time and time again, he can only get better. I like Noh because he’s not afraid to play a ton of events and he’s a cashing machine. For those of you who read this column regularly, this won’t come as a surprise as he was mentioned quite often in 2012.
• Scott Piercy: In a year of feast or famine, Piercy ate well on his way to a 15th-place finish in the FedExCup playoffs and a career-high money total. He finished No. 17 in the all-around ranking and won for the second-consecutive year on TOUR. In 23 events in 2011, he hit the top 25 five times; this year, in 28 events, he hit 14 times. He finished 2012 with 11 cuts made in his last 12 events so if you were patient, you were rewarded.
• Jason Day: New baby and a new residence in Ohio (a relocation from Texas) full-time is plenty of valid excuse for me for a below-average 2012. He just turned 25 earlier this month and should be settled in and ready to go for next year. His ankle injury leading into the Masters never allowed him to get started but he still ground out top 10s in four events and had eight top 25s in 13 made cuts. He’s super-long and a fantastic putter so I would expect a large bounce-back in 2013.
• Harris English/Bud Cauley: I started pairing them in columns early in 2012 so I figured I’d end the way I started. The young SEC boys showed their mettle and, for a time, there wasn’t much separating them. Every year, “can’t miss” rookies come through the ranks and this year was not any different. Cauley was 21-of-28 with six finishes in the top 10 and 10 in the top 25. English was 22-of-27 with three finishes in the top 10 and 10 top 25s. English also learned a valuable lesson at The Honda Classic where he shot 77 on Sunday after being the 54-hole leader. Both earned their cards quite easily.
Year 2012 was a season of ups and downs, young guys and old guys, long-putters and short putters.
There was the emergence of Rory McIlroy.
There was the resurgence -- almost -- of Tiger Woods.
“The Question Mark,” “Sweden,” “Opie Taylor,” “The Golf Boys,” “The Big Easy,” “Two Gloves,” “Olé, Olé, Olé,” "The Year of the Moustache” and “Lumpy” all made news in one way or another.
Each year, we are fascinated by trends, fashion, clubs, Twitter, caddies, whatever international team competition falls in that cycle and how the players playing the game react, adapt and excel throughout the season.
In this look back at 2012, I have one eye on the prize and one eye on what it means in our world of Fantasy Golf.
Strap on your helmets. Grab the last box of Twinkies. Buckle your seatbelt.
The Rotoworld Time Machine has been set to “Ludicrous Speed” but Ludacris is not coming with us on our journey so we’ll have to entertain ourselves!
Let’s see what we learned in 2012!
Major Adjustment
The four majors are the four times each season that our chats, emails and interactions with you the fantasy reader blow up in a good way. Sure, the World Golf Championships provide us with great fields but no matter how hard the PGA TOUR tries to shove those down our throats, the four majors are still the Don of the TOUR season.
We learned over the past few years that the majors were almost IMPOSSIBLE to project. Until Rory McIlroy won the PGA this year, there were 17 different champions in 17 majors dating back to Padraig Harrington’s British Open (i.e. The Open Championship, I know, calm down) and PGA Championship double in 2008. Of those 17 winners, 13 were first-timers. That’s almost impossible to believe, let alone project!
• This year started out like the last three seasons of majors ended with another first-time winner. Bubba Watson showed off all his shots at the Masters on a shot-makers course and showed plenty of nerve to win his first-ever major in a playoff over a former major champion, Louis Oosthuizen.
Remember, Watson faded down the stretch at Doral just a few weeks before this, losing out to Justin Rose at the WGC-Cadillac Championship. Watson also was second-best to Martin Kaymer in a playoff at the 2010 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits.
The interesting part about Watson’s victory was he was doing this in the middle of adopting a child!
#Bubbagolf went on to have an outstanding year as he made 16 cuts that resulted in 16 top 25s. He bought the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard. He made a ridiculous video with his buddies known as the “Golf Boys.” And he was building his new family. #Urwelcome 2012!
• After an incredible 2011, many felt that Webb Simpson would not be able to back up to those numbers. Well, they were right, but Simpson would trade the extra $3 million that he pocketed in 2011 for the U.S. Open trophy he won in 2012 in a heartbeat.
Simpson, of long putter, reinforced his “total game” résumé in a tournament that tests the entire bag and the entire brain. Simpson’s stats don’t jump out and tell the story but his victory on Sunday at Olympic Club was all the proof that was needed for me to believe that 2011 was not a fluke. Remember, he took almost eight weeks off in July and August to be with his wife for the birth of their second child so his number of tournaments was down in 2012.
• The madness continued through July. “The Big Easy” secured a victory for the “old guns” as he lifted the Claret Jug for the second time in his career.
The story about Ernie Els EARLIER in 2012 was that he wasn’t even eligible to play in the Masters. He had a chance at the Transitions Championship but faded down the stretch (T5) and led to THAT interview with Steve Sands. Awkward.
Els was also hanging around at the Arnold Palmer before a Sunday 75 knocked him back to T4. He had five top 10s through The Open championship and not one afterwards. However, as Els showed, with his excellent ball-striking (and, interestingly enough, his long putter), he could still be a factor in his 40s on TOUR. His T2 earlier this month at the WGC-HSBC Champions shows that.
• After 17 consecutive majors with a different winner, it’s no surprise that the double Player of the Year was the man to break the streak.
Rory McIlroy is now halfway to the career grand slam as he added the 2012 PGA Championship to his 2011 U.S. Open. He ended this season as the leading money winners on both the PGA TOUR and the European Tour. He ended as the No. 1 player in the world according to the OWGR. He’s dating a tennis superstar. Oh, and he’s won both of his majors by EIGHT shots.
His victory at Kiawah Island was another master class as his game was on another level. Remember, this was the same golfer that was “struggling” in May, June and July before he won his major and TWO events in the FedExCup Playoffs. The $200 million-Nike-to-be man found a “new” buddy in Tiger Woods this year but he, not Tiger Woods, is the “face of the franchise” now.
Major Surprises
• John (?) Huh: The “Question Mark” was exactly that before the 2012 season started as he had only played briefly in Southeast Asia before making his way and qualifying at Q School. He left no question about his talent as the season motored on and confirmed our suspicions when he defeated Robert Allenby on the eighth playoff hole at Mayakoba. He made 22 of 28 cuts and had four top-10 finishes. Huh excelled on the greens (34th in total putting) and was 11th in driving accuracy.
• Brandt Snedeker: His season started with a DNS at Kapalua as he healed from hip surgery. I joked after his win at Torrey Pines that he should have surgery every offseason. After the way he closed 2012 as the FedExCup Champion and winning the TOUR Championship, he just might! He finished the FedExCup Playoffs second, sixth, T37 and first. Throw in 10 top 10s in 22 events as well, so if you were on “Opie Taylor” from day one, you should have had an excellent 2012. If you bailed on him because of his surgery, he’s now proven that he knows when he’s ready to come back and you shouldn’t worry!
• Jonas Blixt: With only one top-25 finish in his first nine starts, the rookie from Florida State was flying well under the radar and looked to be struggling. As the season went on the Swede started to heat up as he had his best run of starts in late April into May. He finished T13, T9, T13 and T10 before becoming injured after the Memorial. He missed two-and-a-half months with a rib injury. His return to the TOUR didn’t inspire confidence for fantasy players as he wrapped up the FedExCup season with T55, T46 and T20 as he was eliminated after the Deutsche Bank Championship. After another month on the sideline, Blixt destroyed the Fall Series and ramped up the money list. This didn’t help anyone in season-long leagues but it showed that he has the game for future investment. He was second on TOUR in eagles, 21st in birdie average, third in birdie-or-better percentage on par fours and was fifth on TOUR in birdie-or-better conversion. Why? He was second in stokes-gained putting and first in sand saves. Sure, he’s a bit crooked off the tee and doesn’t kill GIR but with a short game like that, it goes to show there are many ways to be successful on TOUR.
• Jim Furyk: Rebounded from a quiet 2011 ($1.5 million or so) to knock out 14 top 25s in 24 starts in 2012 (north of $3.6 million) without winning. He can only imagine “what if” in 2012 if he could have three or four holes to play over just one time. He finished P2 in a four-man playoff at the Transitions. His drive on No. 16 at the Olympic essentially cost him a chance at his second U.S. Open. He double-bogeyed No. 18 at Firestone on Sunday to lose out to Keegan Bradley at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Those three holes could have been another $3 or $4 million! Yikes! I think Furyk, Mickelson and Stricker are the 40somethings that still obviously have value in season-long or weekly games and all three of them proved that this season.
Keepers
Guys you would have been glad to have had from day one in 2012. I left off the obvious choices because we all know we’d like to have Rory, Tiger and Phil.
• Jason Dufner: Posted 14 top 25s in 22 events along with eight top 10s. He also broke his duck as he claimed his first two victories on TOUR and there’s no reason to believe that this won’t continue in 2013. His worst finish in the four majors was T31 and his best was T4 at the U.S. Open so he has shown he’s a player on the big stage (see: Ryder Cup). Now that he’s married, we’ll have to be alert for the “Pregnancy Watch!”
• Brendon de Jonge: From a fantasy standpoint, he's a gravy train. He plays tons of events (31, 30, 32 in his last three seasons) so he’s excellent to have in season-long leagues and in weekly leagues in “light” fields where birdies are necessary. “The Mustard Man” finished his last four events of 2012 second, T4, T4 and T19 so he should be ready to go for 2013.
• Keegan Bradley: Some guys win majors and disappear. Some guys win majors and springboard their careers. He finished No. 10 on the money list and had a win, second and third in 25 events. In TWO years on TOUR, he’s won three times and made almost eight million dollars so the phrase “flash in the pan” doesn’t apply here. I like guys with moxie and he showed plenty of that at the Ryder Cup as well.
• Louis Oosthuizen: He, like Furyk, had multiple chances to win in 2012 but just came up a few holes short. It started with a final-round 75 (54-hole leader) at the Shell Houston Open where he finished solo third. He backed that up the following week with a playoff defeat to Bubba Watson at Augusta. He showed real guts flying across the world to Indonesia to win the following week which didn’t even count towards his $3.4 TOUR earnings. If he’s only going to play around 19 events, make sure you remember that he had 12 top 25s in addition to his two seconds and a third.
• Bo Van Pelt: He’s had an amazing 23 top 10s in the last 3 years and has shown no signs of slowing down. The one “fantasy knock” on him is he doesn’t win enough. Winning on TOUR is obviously difficult but it’s the consistency of his play (and results) that keeps me coming back week after week, no matter the size or stature of the event. Gamers couldn’t ask for a better omen to 2013 as he won in his last outing in Perth holding off Jason Dufner.
• Robert Garrigus: A career-high year in earnings without winning was accomplished by a multitude of factors. He came into 2012 in shape and his iron play was just as fit (seventh in GIR). He had four runner-up finishes and doubled his career-high in earnings. He once admitted to smoking some wacky tobacky in a portable toilet at a tournament one time but those days are long gone. He showed me some guts playing consecutive weeks in China (T2, T51) and playing the following week in Disney (T2). If he stays fit, keeps striping irons and maintains his birdie average (fourth on TOUR), there’s no reason he can’t continue this form in 2013.
• Seung-yul Noh: Ah, to be young again. The 21-year old South Korean racked up 24 cuts in 28 events in 2012 and has been working with Sean Foley. Foley had a nice year with Tiger Woods winning three times, Hunter Mahan winning twice and Justin Rose winning once. Noh’s next step will be converting those cuts made into top 10s (only three this year) but when you put yourself in that situation time and time again, he can only get better. I like Noh because he’s not afraid to play a ton of events and he’s a cashing machine. For those of you who read this column regularly, this won’t come as a surprise as he was mentioned quite often in 2012.
• Scott Piercy: In a year of feast or famine, Piercy ate well on his way to a 15th-place finish in the FedExCup playoffs and a career-high money total. He finished No. 17 in the all-around ranking and won for the second-consecutive year on TOUR. In 23 events in 2011, he hit the top 25 five times; this year, in 28 events, he hit 14 times. He finished 2012 with 11 cuts made in his last 12 events so if you were patient, you were rewarded.
• Jason Day: New baby and a new residence in Ohio (a relocation from Texas) full-time is plenty of valid excuse for me for a below-average 2012. He just turned 25 earlier this month and should be settled in and ready to go for next year. His ankle injury leading into the Masters never allowed him to get started but he still ground out top 10s in four events and had eight top 25s in 13 made cuts. He’s super-long and a fantastic putter so I would expect a large bounce-back in 2013.
• Harris English/Bud Cauley: I started pairing them in columns early in 2012 so I figured I’d end the way I started. The young SEC boys showed their mettle and, for a time, there wasn’t much separating them. Every year, “can’t miss” rookies come through the ranks and this year was not any different. Cauley was 21-of-28 with six finishes in the top 10 and 10 in the top 25. English was 22-of-27 with three finishes in the top 10 and 10 top 25s. English also learned a valuable lesson at The Honda Classic where he shot 77 on Sunday after being the 54-hole leader. Both earned their cards quite easily.
Creepers
Big names that were big disappointments in fantasy golf in 2012.
• Stewart Cink: If you thought his 2012 was going to be his bounce-back year after a very quiet 2011, you and everyone else thought wrong. After winning The Open Championship in 2009, Cink has amassed exactly four top-10 finishes since. After winning $1.5 million in 2010, Cink dropped to $900,000 in 2011 and $477,000 in 2012. Not to say his ship has sailed but the only way I include Cink in anything in 2013 is in week-to-week games, if that.
• Gary Woodland: After a monster rookie season in 2011, Woodland regressed in 2012 by $2.8 million. A (left) wrist problem combined with his work with Butch Harmon did not reward fantasy players who had him on season-long teams. He made 16 of 22 cuts this season but had only three top 25s and ONE top 10. That’s pyrite coming off a season like he had in 2011. The good news is that he is healthy again and Harmon thinks he’s getting close. He could be a nice value pick for 2013 in season-long leagues because he’s fully exempt off his win at the 2011 Transitions Championship.
• Y.E. Yang: Neck, back and shoulder injuries hampered the South Korean in 2012. Injuries are the one part of fantasy golf that you cannot predict and can completely ruin players for seasons at a time. Yang, who made 14 of 18 cuts in 2011 and included a second and a third, racked up over $2.3 million. This year, in 20 events, he only made 13 cuts with exactly ONE top 25 finish and zero top 10s. His excellent putting will always keep him in the conversation if the injury bug leaves him alone.
• Camilo Villegas: After a disappointing 2011 through the PGA Championship, Villegas looked to have turned the corner to a big 2012 as he finished T9, T6, T25, T6 and T4 to close out the year. That momentum never left January 2012. He started out T19, T22 in his first two events and only had two top 25s the rest of the year in 23 events. This was the first time since 2006 that he did not qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs. This was also the first time he did not finish in the top 125 on the TOUR's money list.
• Robert Allenby: I wrote back in January that I was going to be skeptical this season because he was just coming off a divorce and you never know how that affects people. Allenby made only 12 cuts in 27 starts and is now ranked No. 175 in the world (as of Nov. 18). The good news is that he’s never had a season anywhere close to this in the last 12 years; the bad news he’s 41 and 178th in total putting. Buyers beware in 2013.
• Nick Watney: The reason he makes this list is because he WAS a disappointment in season-long games that ran through the PGA Championship and did NOT count the FedExCup Playoffs. For those games that DID include the playoffs, his win was excellent but he backed that up with T20, T45 and 28th so that’s not what was expected from the FedExCup leader going into the 2011 playoffs. Watney’s rebound in the Fall Series and play in China (WIN, T16) has me optimistic for 2013.
• Aaron Baddeley: Another young player who had a monster 2011 who struggled in 2012 (see: Gary Woodland). In the same amount of events, Baddeley did not win nor hit the podium is his earnings wilted from almost $3.1 million to $1.2 million in the same amount of events. After abandoning the Stack and Tilt method and returning to his old swing coach from his junior days, gamers believed that
Badds would become “goods,” but that wasn’t the case as he only hit the top 10 in three of 22 events.
• K.J. Choi: After a monster 2011 it wasn’t surprising that Choi might have backed up a bit, but dropping from over $4.4 million to under a million in earnings was shocking. He was coming off a season where he had a win, a second, two thirds and four other top-10 finishes in 22 events. This year, the normally solid putter and ball-striker fell apart across the board statistically. Even though he cashed checks in 16 of 21 events, he found the top 10 only twice. Sometimes you think you have this entire thing figured out and sometimes K.J. Choi happens. That’s why we keep playing!
• Jhonattan Vegas: Another winner from the rookie crop of 2011 that didn’t fire in his sophomore season, Vegas played 25 events in 2011 and had only five top-25 finishes. But in those five top 25s were his first career win and a third. In 2012, he hit the top 25 only three times and his best finishes were fourth and seventh. Eight top 25s in 50 starts on TOUR is not what I’m looking for in season-long players or weekly gamers.
• Anthony Kim: Two cuts made in 10 events entered. All of that promise keeps running into injury problems. Anyone who gambled (raises hand) on him in season-long leagues without subs (raises hand again) couldn’t be pleased (am not). His Achilles injury will keep him out until mid-2013 and off my radar, thankfully.
• Ángel Cabrera: I feel like I’m piling on here but this is mainly for the newcomers to fantasy golf. If you are drafting Cabrera because he’s a two-time major champion, well, that’s your right as an American. It’s not very smart, but you are more than welcome to do so. He has had seven top 10s in his last 56 starts on TOUR. There’s a reason why you can get him cheap in most leagues/drafts.
Seasonal Affective Disorder
• Phil Mickelson: Adjusts his calendar to ramp up to the Masters. Almost half of his victories are west of the Rocky Mountains so that means early in the TOUR season. Mickelson struggled for three months after withdrawing following a 79 in the first round at the Memorial. He didn’t return to the top 10 until three months later with an impressive last three events in the Playoffs. Does his arthritis bother him? Is he not letting on how much pain he is tolerating? Wait, he won over $4.2 million this season. I’ve learned you gotta be patient with the really good ones as they almost ALWAYS come good.
• Kyle Stanley: He had his best two weeks in his third and fourth events of a 27-event season. He improved on his 2011 finish -- a win and a second will do that -- but missed the cut in three of four majors so that tells me he might not be ready for prime time just yet. He had five of his eight top 25s in his first six events so it’s an understatement to say he cooled off as the season continued. He also used three caddies on the season which doesn’t exactly scream “stability.” He hits it a mile and finds plenty of greens but his putter needs a bit of work (190th total putting in 2012). He’s from the West Coast and his best golf of the season was played out that way!
• Mark Wilson: After his two wins in in January and February in 2011, Wilson backed up his solid play in the beginning of the season again in 2012 with his victory at the Humana Challenge in Palm Springs. At that time, he had more wins on TOUR than anyone in the last calendar year. Unfortunately, the calendar doesn’t stop and waits for no one. Wilson had four of his six top 25s in his first six events, including two of his three top 10s. His only other top 10 in 25 events was in the McGladrey Classic in the Fall Series. He also missed the cut in all four majors.
Tiger Woods
There’s no question that this man moves the meter, so I’ll give him his own private wrap-up.
I learned this season that when he’s healthy, he’s more than capable of winning multiple tournaments. Sure, he fell apart on the weekend in the majors but he again proved why he has multiple victories on Arnie and Jack’s courses.
Sean Foley’s method is working as Woods is finding more consistency off the tee, but that method has also led to poor distance control with his wedges. Woods' budding friendship with Rory McIlroy is now the story; Woods' personal life is no longer front-page news. His injuries look to be in his rear-view mirror so his game will continue to have his full attention.
Woods won three times this year and was second on the money list WITHOUT a major, WGC or Playoff event. That’s pretty good for anyone else not named “Woods."
So what did I learn?
It’s hard to win on TOUR. Well over half of the 54-hole leaders FAILED to win on Sunday in 2012. There are too many good players and too many guys who are no longer afraid of trying to go low on Sundays. The days of being happy to cash checks are long gone. These guys have sponsors for everything and the payday is just gravy on the potatoes (Happy Thanksgiving!) so they aren’t afraid to take chances. Free your mind and the rest will follow.
I learned that what you don’t know is just as important as what you do know. Every year, rookies are going to make some noise. Every year, veterans are going to stink/get injured. There are too many great players on TOUR to put your eggs/feelings/money in one basket. Saying goodbye to old flames to check out the new merchandise is NOT a bad thing if you aim is to win. This is NOT real life! There are no consequences for ditching the older model for the brand-new ones! I’ve suggested before if you pick your weekly or season-long teams based on name recognition instead of form, you might as well just donate your entries to charity. It will do better and you will feel better about yourself!
I also confirmed my suspicion that big-time players have big-time results in big-time tournaments, period. End. Of. Sentence. Take a look back at the top 10 of all four majors and the three World Golf Championships if you don’t believe me. Sure, there’s a name or two in there that might not “belong” but the majority of those players are top-level Ryder or Presidents Cuppers. There’s nothing wrong with a dark horse here or there, but there’s no point in these big events to stray from the pack.
Finally, I learned that I enjoyed covering fantasy golf and interacting with you, the reader on a weekly basis for almost 11 full months. I’m hoping to have a better 2012 and will be adding a “One and Done” section for all of those who have been asking.
I’m back to kick off the 2013 year with my preview for the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in the first week of January.
I project that I will eat too much, drink too much and will be “extra” merry come 2013. I hope you and yours have a great off-season and holiday season as well! Cheers!