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2024 John Deere Classic – GolfWRX

08.07.2024No Comments

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Just a little ways north and east of my hometown lies a cheerful town called Medina, NY. No one would ever call it a golfing mecca, but this week it certainly is. Why? The 2024 World Amateur Champion, Melanie Green, hails from Medina. It’s with a sense of regional pride that I salute #QueenMel, who emerged from 36 holes, medal qualification, and six head-to-head matches to win 2-up in the 36-hole final at Portmarnock. Miss Mel won the last three holes, including two birdies, to join the ranks of such great American winners as Babe Zaharias, Louise Suggs, and Kelli Kuehne.

Now let’s go through all the world tours this week. We’ve been following a national championship (Men’s US Senior Open) at the legendary Newport Country Club, the PGA Tour in Detroit, DP World in Italy, the LPGA doing the tandem thing around Michigan and the Korn Ferry to Illinois. We’re spoiled in these summer months, period. We might as well enjoy the riches.

PGA Tour at Rocket Mortgage

The results that came out of Detroit Golf Club on Sunday caused some heads to be scratched. Nowhere were the mid-60s numbers that were running like sunflowers across the rankings in Carmona. Also missing, as the sun disappeared from the sky, were the expected clutch performances from golfers gunning for victory.

We’ve grown accustomed to late-day birdies, and numbers like Bhatia’s 72nd-hole bogey, and Young’s closing five-five-five, seemed strange and unfamiliar. Bhatia’s insistence that he knows how to close tournaments, and that it just wasn’t happening on this day, was as much an explanation as it was compensation. Teachers teach well, writers write well, and golfers put the ball in the hole. That’s the measure of victory.

Lifting the tournament trophy was left to Cam Davis, who did what the others could not. He closed play with a 70 for -18 on the week, hoping for a second RMC in four years. Hot on his heels, all tied for second place at -17, were Davis Thompson, Min Woo Lee, Aaron Rai and Bhatia. Apart from Akshay, no one has tasted tournament success on the US PGA Tour. Davis birdied 17 and then waited. Thompson made a late rush, birdiing three of his last five holes. He needed one more. Lee took five strokes on the final hole; he needed one less. As for the double-gloved Rai, his even-par 72 on the day left him just one stroke shy of the play-off.

USGA @ Senior Men’s Open

Any hope Hiroyuki Fujita had of finishing the U.S. Senior Open in Newport was dashed, thanks to two unregistered opponents: fog and rain. The golfer who had played so brilliantly in three and a half days (16-under after 63 holes) was forced to consider the consequences of his situation. The golfer whose five cuts in regular tour majors included zero top-forty finishes was three shots clear of the field, with no guide to take him home. Sunday’s dawn proved him mortal, and the match was on.

No worse pursuer than Richard Bland could have appeared. The Englishman had won his last start in the US, and it was also a senior major championship. Bland won the Senior PGA Championship in late May, three strokes ahead of Australian Richard Green. The SPGA runner-up was also among the pursuers in Newport, but a top-five finish would again be his destiny. As for Bland, he did what experienced winners do. Back-to-back birdies on 14 and 15 on Monday indicated that it would not be an easy walk home for Fujita. The Japan Tour stalwart stumbled over the same series of holes, bogeying three of his first four holes on day five.

Just when it looked like Bland would wrap things up in regulation time, he bogeyed the 18th hole to fall to 13-under par. Fujita matched that number, and the pair advanced to the first two-hole playoff in U.S. Senior Open history and the first overtime since 2014 in Oklahoma. After two pars each in regulation time, they went to the single-hole elimination. They both bogeyed the 18th hole, but the fourth hole provided the answer. Bland made a sandy from the greenside bunker while Fujita failed to secure par. Congratulations to Richard Bland on a second senior major in 2024.

LPGA @ Dow Championship

Both Atthaya Thitikul (Thailand) and Yin Ruoning (China) will represent their countries at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The Olympic competition is individual only for golf, which is a missed opportunity. Working together to win medals for your country is the pinnacle of Olympic success. It is therefore somewhat odd that the two would find success in a team-style warm-up event on the LPGA circuit.

For most of the week, two U.S. golfers seemed destined for victory at Midland Country Club. Ally Ewing and Jennifer Kupcho completed 36 holes in 128 strokes. They gave one back on Saturday, with a 67, but came home with a third 64 for the week on Sunday. Despite an early string of birdies, they couldn’t save a single stroke in the final stretch. They finished 21-deep for the week.

With them, Thitikul and Ruoning also found par after par on their way home. On the watery 18th hole, Thitikul stopped her tee ball inside fifteen feet, then read the surface flawlessly and hit her target. The putt hit slightly to the right, into the middle of the cup. With that closing birdie, a play-off was avoided and an Olympic-caliber farewell party was in the making.

DP World Tour @ Italian Open

Sixteen months had passed since Marcel Siem had last tasted a DP World Tour victory. His triumph at the Indian Open in February 2023 was perhaps a bit far away to leave any lingering confidence. As he crossed the final arc of the Cervia course, his gaskets had come loose and oil was leaking everywhere. An outward 32 was undone by four bogeys from holes 11 through 17. The latter had taken him off the lead and only a majestic finish could give him a chance of salvation. After driving the fairway and reaching the green on the closing trace, Siem ruled a 22-foot putt for birdie and found cup bottom.

At that point, the round of 65 that Englishman Tom McKibbin had forged was no longer enough. He would have to do a bit more to secure a second Tour title. The duo returned to the final tee and Siem was again faced with a birdie putt. His approach was played brilliantly to about ten feet, but the putt drifted to the right. By the grace of gravity, it got far enough off the circle to fall down and a sixth career title was for the German champion.

Korn Ferry Tour @ MHC by LRS

Max McGreevy has tasted the bitterness of defeat and enjoyed a delicious victory on the professional golf tours. He has lost a playoff on the PGA Tour and has now won twice on the Korn Ferry course. This week, McGreevey overcame a narrow miss on the penultimate hole to seal victory on the 72nd green with an xxx birdie putt. He and runner-up Steven Fisk each earned a PGA Tour card for the 2025 season, based on their performance in 2024.

McGreevy on Sunday threw a 36-yard pitch within two feet of the hole on the par-five 16th. He cashed in the birdie putt to move one stroke behind Fisk with two holes to go. On 17, he played safely away from the tucked flag on the watery par three and fired his 55-foot putt to exactly the same distance (26 inches). And then he missed. Gone was the lead, and there were doubts.

As champions do, McGreevy regrouped and found his spot on the 18th fairway. His approach shot from 186 yards landed a dozen feet from the flagstick, and his read on the downhill slider was accurate. The putt fell, and McGreevy avoided overtime.

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