Tagged: Sergio Garcia
The Development of the Young Guns Tour
“I’ve never in my tenure seen so much buzz and interest about rookies and young players creating exciting performances.”PGA Tour Commissioner
– Tim Finchem, end of 2010
The PGA Tour is getting younger. This isn’t something that happened overnight but is something that has been slowly changing the tour landscape over the last twenty years.
So what happened twenty years ago? …Tiger Woods happened, but, much has already been written about Tiger’s epic and trailblazing career along with the correlating increases in tournament purses, tv money, player earnings, longer courses, etc. that his dominance brought to the game.
The development and emergence of younger players has taken the tour to a new level, one that thrives with or without The Big Cat. The first young gun that came on the scene post-Tiger was Sergio Garcia, who as a 19-year old kid was prancing down fairways at Medinah in the 1999 PGA Championship chasing Tiger. Eventually, Tiger held off Garcia, but this duel nonetheless started one of, if not the most dominant era of golf.
We all know this jump at Medinah from a baby-faced Garcia.
By the end of 2000, Tiger had defended his PGA Championship and was a few months away from completing the Tiger Slam. If you take a look at what the top 50 in the world looked like then, you’ll see an average age of 34.3, with 12 players in their 20’s, and one of them was under 25 years old (Sergio Garcia).
Fast forward five years later and the tour actually got older. At the end of 2005, the average age of top 50 in the world was 35.5. Only seven players in there 20’s and Garcia was still the lone member under 25 years old in the top 50.
Over the next five years, Tiger Woods won four majors, including the U.S. Open on one leg, but also missed significant amounts of time on tour due to injuries and that Thanksgiving 2009 incident. During that time, several up and comers including Anthony Kim, Camilo Villegas, Martin Kaymer, Rory McIlroy, and Rickie Fowler started winning tournaments and grabbing the attention of fans and sponsors alike.
At the end of the 2010 season, the average age of the top 50 players in world dropped to 32.06. Nearly three years younger than top 50 at the end of 2005. Now there were 20 players under the age of 30 in that group and five under 25! Sergio finally older than 25 was replaced in the top 25 by five guys.
In the last few years, players like Jordan Spieth, Hideki Matsuyama, Jason Day, and Dustin Johnson have joined the young guns by winning a lot and raising the bar. Actually they’ve lowered the age bar. Take a look at the current top 50 in the world at the end of 2016. The average age stayed relatively flat at 32.18, a group of 18 guys were under 30 but seven are under the age of 25 signifying that the best players in the world are getting younger.
Spieth, the poster child for young golf.
Not only are the best players in the world getting younger, but they are getting better! The data from the same years but looking at just the top 25 players is more of the same.
TOP 25 OWGR 2000 Average Age: 32.84 ; Under 30: 8 ; Under 25: 1
TOP 25 OWGR 2005 Average Age: 35.76 ; Under 30: 3 ; Under 25: 1
TOP 25 OWGR 2010 Average Age: 34.20 ; Under 30: 7 ; Under 25: 1
TOP 25 OWGR 2016 Average Age: 31.48 ; Under 30: 12 ; Under 25: 4
Look at how the average drops over four years since 2005! Almost, half of the best 25 golfers in world are in their roaring twenties. Four of them are younger than 25 led by 23 year old Spieth who already has a couple majors. Tim Finchem thought there was excitement in 2010 around the youth on tour. As he enjoys retirement, he has to be beyond excited and overjoyed with the current crop of young guns and youth on tour.
Deutsche Bank Championship — Who’s Number 1 in the World?
We got a Monday finish in Boston, which means that I got an extra day to write the preview this week! Taking full advantage. I was trying to figure out if there was a joke about a German bank sponsoring an event in Boston, but I couldn’t think of any. No wonder Barclays isn’t the sponsor this week. Not that the players care cause they get a bunch of money either way!
About the Sponsor
Another freaking bank sponsoring a golf tournament. Though there is something interesting about this. What’s a German bank doing sponsoring a tournament in Boston? I looked into this a little and turns out it isn’t exactly an easy question to answer, and the answer usually comes down to, “Cause they had the money and wanted to sponsor a golf tournament.” Funny sign of the times where banks have marketing departments with money to spend. Like all the banks are pretty much substitutable, so we pick the one that has a golf tournament named after it.
Here’s a logo to stare at while I research.
Since there really isn’t much to say about German Bank, I’m going to make a comment about the oddness of Deutsche Bank’s intro section in wikipedia. Pretty much every intro section in the history of the world has the same class of information — that of the introductory kind. But Deutsche Bank’s starts off reasonably. The first 3 paragraphs (out of 6 total) talk about that it’s a bank located in some countries that does some banking things. Cool. Exactly what I needed to know. But after that, we get three more paragraphs about the leadership structure of the bank since 2011. And then it goes back to being semi normal and talking about revenue and money under management to close out the section. Basically what I’m trying to get at is that it’s really confusing as to what should go in the intro section to a bank, considering pretty much no one goes there looking for an overview.
Oh, and the page doesn’t mention anything about golf sponsorship. Maybe I should add some later.
About the Tournament
Remember how I said that I didn’t want to edit Deutsche Bank’s wikipedia page? Well I didn’t say anything about editing the DBC’s Wikipedia page! While researching using my favorite resource that apparently isn’t correct all the time, I noticed that it said that Deutsche Bank extended its sponsorship through 2012. Since that was three years ago, I figured I should update it. And now I can rightly say that Deutsche Bank will sponsor this event at least until next year according to pgatour.com, which I correctly cited.
I wrote this. Check out that citation too.
WGC Bridgestone Invitational — Get your Bridge-stones and your Fire-stones ready!
A WGC Bridgestone Invitational without Tiger is like a Christmas without Santa. It just doesn’t seem right. But we’ll make do with a stellar field right before a major. Buckle up for the WGC Bridgestone Invite.
About the Sponsor
The week, we’re playing the Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone Country Club, which is cool since Bridgestone bought Firestone (the tire company) back in 1988!
Now in the golfing circle, Bridgestone makes kind of ok golf balls, and pays some guys like Brandt Snedeker, Matt Kuchar and Fred Couples some money to go on tv and talk about how they’re a golf company.
Well I’m sitting here thinking, how does a company that makes tires get into the golf bidness? So I’ll do a little investigating and get back to you. In the meantime, enjoy this not at all cheesy commercial brought to you by Bridgestone.
Hope you enjoyed that, and I’m back with the lowdown on the history of Bridgestone. Here’s a quick synopsis for you all, cause I care so much.
So Bridgestone was started in 1931 by Shojiro Ishibashi, who’s last name of “Ishibashi”, means “stone bridge”. A simple flip of the two words and you’re left with Bridgestone! Now Bridgestone’s primary business is making tires. Tires for cars, motorcycles, bikes, and airplanes, where it is the #1 manufacturer in the world. But along with just making tires, they’ve always led with innovation and being able to stay ahead of competitors with research, something that Japanese companies tend to do, and probably allowed them to stay on top for 80 some years now.
Golf On The Mind 