![]() ![]() ![]() On a week that should include the few studs in this field on the leaderboard, not to mention a few new names, I’m looking at this past champion as a guy who can return to the winner’s circle once again. On the weeks he can get the putter going, though, he can contend – and really, if he can get it going on just a few more weeks each year, I could see him moving from his current OWGR position of 74 th back to somewhere in the neighborhood of 23 rd, his best career position, which was achieved not long after that win here a half-decade ago. I still think Grillo owns a bit of star-power he’s the prototypical world-class ball-striker who struggles with the flatstick. Since then, the results haven’t been fantastic, but he does own three more top-30 finishes, with some potentially better placements undone by poor final rounds. Grillo won here in his first start, five years and two title sponsors ago. Whether it’s the host course or the fact that this is the season opener or maybe there’s just something about Napa, certain players have had a penchant for playing well at this one every year. I’ll start my picks with a player who’s still trying to break into that upper echelon. Last year’s champion Stewart Cink is taking this one off to attend his son’s wedding, but other big names in the field include Jon Rahm, Hideki Matsuyama, Phil Mickelson, Webb Simpson and Will Zalatoris. Let’s get right to the season-opener in Napa, the same event which has kicked off the schedule for years, only with a new name this time around. ![]() The negative is that it never goes away, so you never get a chance to miss it – just think how much you enjoyed NFL Week 1 after going seven months without seeing a meaningful game. The negative – and this is a big one that too often gets overlooked – is that there’s never any downtime to considering new, innovative ideas for these broadcasts, let alone implement them, which is why live television for other sports tends to advance at a quicker rate than in golf.įor the fans: The positive is that you almost never have a weekend without some semblance of the world’s best players competing, giving you varying degrees of entertainment value based on the given week. The negative is never getting a chance to rest – and while professional golfers can set their own schedules, it’s tough to remove the FOMO when peers are out chasing titles and you’re sitting at home.įor the TV rights holders: The positive is having more tournaments to show, rarely having to let stale debates dominate the weekend telecasts, but instead offering live programming. If nothing else, the never-ending schedule tells us something about ourselves, potentially answering the existential glass-half-full-or-glass-half-empty question which lingers deep within our souls.įor the players: The positive is more playing opportunities and more chances to earn money, secure points and all of the other spoils that come with great results. If you’re scoring at home, we’ll wind up going 11 full days between the final putt of last season’s Tour Championship and the first tee shot of this week’s Fortinet Championship, a number which only seems irrationally low when it isn’t compared with previous years, when there was no week-long break to separate the seasons. (With a little late-December break for everyone’s sanity.) Try this one: Starting this week, we’ll be able to watch the finale of a PGA TOUR event every Sunday afternoon for the next 11-and-a-half months. I read a handful of tweets this weekend celebrating the fact that we’ll be able to watch NFL games on every Sunday afternoon for the next five months. ![]()
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