Tony Finau having to miss Utah tournament to be with son in a national PGA tournament
The PGA Tour is returning to Utah for the first time in 61 years, and the most famous active player from the Beehive State will not be there. Tony Finau has a good excuse.
Finau will be in Frisco, Texas, with 12-year-old son Jraice as Team Utah competes in the 13U PGA Junior League Championship. Finau said he was “under quite a bit of pressure” to play and he plans to be at the Black Desert Championship in the years to come.
“But I can't miss my son's tournament,” he said at the Presidents Cup.
Finau has been his only coach, except for a few lessons with Boyd Summerhays, but he said Jraice is getting to an age when Finau might need to find him a permanent teach.
“He's not listening as well as he did when he was younger. That’s exactly how it works. I know exactly how it was,” Finau said with a smile. “He's right at that age now where old man doesn’t know what he’s talking about anymore.”
Being the son of a famous father is never easy in golf, mainly because the children often have more comforts to lean on when the work starts getting tedious. Finau said the most important lesson he has taught Jraice is hard work and preparation.
“He’s very natural when he plays," Finau said. "But I told him, ‘If you’re ever going to be great, like talent takes you to the doorsteps, to ever go through, your work ethic is what’s going to get you there.'
“I had to work hard and do those things because I was in a different situation,” he said. “I felt the pressure as a kid, my parents giving up everything they had for me to perform. My kids don't feel that pressure. So teaching grit, I don't know if there is such a thing. But I try to apply enough pressure as a parent to keep him accountable for what he wants to accomplish.”
Finau also said social media can be an obstacle because kids tend to see video of greatness without seeing all the years of work that went into getting there. Finau, a six-time PGA Tour winner, has played in two Ryder Cups and three Presidents Cups.
“We’re working at the course and we can go eat at a steakhouse later and he sees the glamorous life that we live,” Finau said. “But he didn’t see what I went through 25 years ago.”
This week in Texas, it's about fun and competition. Finau finished speaking and headed back out to the course at Royal Montreal. His son is passionate about golf, and Finau is passionate just talking about his children.
“I could do that all day,” Finau said.
Return of the Belgian Bomber
Second place can be worthy of a big celebration, and such was the case for Nicolas Colsaerts.
Colsaerts, the free-wheeling Belgian best known for single-handedly beating Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker in fourballs at the 2012 Ryder Cup, went toe-to-toe with Tyrrell Hatton in the Dunhill Links Championship before narrowly missing an 8-foot birdie putt on the final hole.
Disappointed? Yes.
But consider that it was nearly three years ago when Colsaerts went to a hospital in Dubai with swollen ankles and discovered he had blood clots and fluid in his lungs from a rare kidney disease called primary membranous nephropathy.
He once told of looking out the hospital window thinking, “Is this where I’m going to die?”
Colsaerts recovered. His game did not.
He made two cuts in 2022. The European tour gave him a full medical exemption in 2023 and he had one top 10. He was leaning on sponsor exemptions this year and it paid off with his runner-up finish that will secure a card for 2025.
“This has been my life for over 20 years now,” Colsaerts said. “I don’t know, it looks like we’re going to go back on the merry-go-round.”
Most happily, for sure.
Ding’s Decision
Wenyi Ding could join a list of golfers who turned down amateur exemptions into majors to turn pro.
Ding, who played the U.S. Open last year as the U.S. Junior Amateur champion, earned exemptions into the Masters and British Open with his one-shot victory at Taiheiyo Club Gotemba.
One problem: His plan was to turn pro after the Asia-Pacific and take a European tour card through the “Global Amateur Pathway.”
“I think more likely I should take the card,” Ding said.
Fred Biondi, who won the NCAA title at Florida, chose to turn pro and gave up his spot in the Masters this year. Biondi missed six of his last eight cuts on the Korn Ferry Tour this season and is currently No. 607 in the world.
British Amateur champion Christo Lamprecht played in the Masters this year, but he turned pro after the NCAAs and tried qualifying for the U.S. Open. He didn’t make it. Lamprecht has missed the cut in seven out of 10 Korn Ferry events this year.
Colt Knost qualified for a Masters invitation when he won the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Amateur Public Links in 2007 and turned pro. He finally made it to Augusta National in 2011 as part of the CBS broadcasting team.
And then there was Tom Scherrer, the U.S. Amateur runner-up in 1992. He also turned pro, and the following April found himself staying in a grungy hotel and paying for range balls as he tried to Monday qualify for a Nike Tour event in Louisiana.
“I was like, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’” Scherrer said years later.
This had a happy ending. He won the Kemper Open in 2000, finished 35th on the PGA Tour money list and finally made it to the Masters.
Sponsorship news
Wayne Sanderson Farms announced two months ago this would be the final year as title sponsor of the Sanderson Farms Championship in Mississippi. Then it decided last week to extend that for another year.
If nothing else, that gives tournament officials more time to search for a replacement. Sanderson Farms had planned to stay on through 2026 as a major supporter.
Jim Furyk also got some good news last week when Constellation Energy extended its title sponsors of his PGA Tour Champions event through at least 2030. The tournament has one more year at Donald Ross-designed Timuquana Country Club.
Divots
The Black Desert Championship in Utah will use robotic fairway mowers, the first time for any PGA Tour event. ... Farmington Country Club in Charlottesville, Virginia, will get the 2027 U.S. Women's Amateur Four-Ball. It last hosted a USGA championship in 1993 for the U.S. Senior Amateur. ... Aldrich Potgieter at 20 years, 23 days is the second-youngest player to earn a PGA Tour card through the Korn Ferry Tour. The youngest was Jason Day, who was a month younger (19) in 2007. ... This was the third straight year the Sanderson Farms Championship was decided by a playoff.
Stat of the week
Of the 12 first-time winners on the PGA Tour this season, Aaron Rai of England at the Wyndham Championship was the only one in the top 50 in the world (No. 48) when he won.
Final word
“I don’t think they are going to decide the future of golf in five hours around Carnoustie. I know Carnoustie is pretty bloody hard. Not much time for talking." — Matt Fitzpatrick on the Dunhill Links Championship pairing of PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi's Public Investment Fund.
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
