As expected, the LPGA has confirmed that they have cancelled two more events in Asia. The Honda LPGA Thailand in Pattaya, Thailand that was scheduled to be played between 20th and 23rd February and the HSBC Women's World Championship in Singapore the following week are both casualties of the Coronavirus scare.
It was great to see Graeme McDowell win again on the European Tour but had the tour applied the slow play rules more strictly come Sunday afternoon might it have been a different story? The Northern Irishman was carrying a ‘bad time’ after a transgression during his second round and playing in the final pairing come Sunday he and partner Victor Dubuisson became detached at the back of the field.
It’s Manic Monday, so here is a very quick round up of all the results and stories from the weekend on the, PGA Tour, European Tour, LPGA and Women’s European Tour. It was certainly a great day for the folk down under yesterday!
Alison Muirhead, from Scotland who last week won the Pre-Qualifier event came alive on day two of the final stage of Ladies European Tour Qualifying School. Firing a superb six-under-par 67 around the South Course at La Manga Club in Cartagena, Spain. Muirhead now leads by five shots from overnight leader Morgane Metraux who could only post a level par 73 around the South Course and Pia Babnik of Slovenia.
Call us old cynics but are the latest set of changes at the Golf Hall of Fame just a dressed way to get Tiger Woods inducted into the Golf Hall of Fame a few years earlier and boost the quality of the list of possible inductees for the 2021 draft? The rules were only changed some four years ago to move the minimum age from 40 to 50 and now it is being edged back to 45.
Ping Europe Ltd has lost an appeal against an infringement decision from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and £1.25 million fine. The CMA had originally ruled that the manufacturer had broken competition law by stopping retailers from selling its clubs on their websites.
A lot of us have old clubs languishing in the garage or in the attic gathering dust. Those of a certain age may also have a modern-day antique - a wood actually made out of wood! But there is a man who has not one but over one thousand woods tucked away in storage and all of them made from what was the holy grail of golf manufacturing materials – persimmon!
Berkhamsted Golf Club has decided to allow both sexes to compete in the Berkhamsted Trophy, a long-standing top men’s amateur in the UK. This is a world-first for elite amateur golf and has the backing of the R&A and England Golf. The event which is entering its 61st year – has transformed from being a men-only tournament, into one which invites both sexes to compete for the same prize.
GolfPunk Hall of Shame inductee Sergio Garcia has been chucking clubs again. This time he has jettisoned all his Callaway clubs and replaced them with a selection of PINGs along with TaylorMade fairway woods. Garcia announced ahead of this week's Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship that he has ended his two-year relationship with Callaway golf clubs and ball.
World number one, Jin Young Ko was the runaway winner of the Golf Writers Association of America (“GWAA”) Female Player of the Year. The South Korean star was the overwhelming choice with Nelly Korda way back in second place.
The gods were smiling on Justin Thomas in Hawaii on Sunday. Two clear, with three to go it looked like he had the Tournament of Champions in the bag. However, two sloppy bogies in his last three holes saw him have to win a play-off against Patrick Reed and defending champion Xander Schauffele.
The FootJoy folk never seem to stand still and the latest iteration is the Tour X which seeks to combine all that was good from previous tried and tested FootJoy models. The new Tour X has been born from the synthesis of 3 Tour-proven models, the DNA, Tour-S and Fury.
