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WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Justin Thomas is among the few who have experience at Wilmington Country Club.
He was 20, still officially in college at Alabama, when he played in the 2013 Palmer Cup. Thomas didn’t recall much when he returned for the BMW Championship, the second stop in the FedEx Cup playoffs, except for the shape of the hole when he played a practice round.
He doesn’t remember his 2-and-1 win over Sebastian Cappelen of Denmark in Sunday singles or the team score, only that it was a big win.
Limited experience is still more than most at a pivotal juncture in the PGA Tour postseason.
The PGA Tour has never been to Delaware, though the BMW Championship was only 30 minutes away in 2018 at Aronimink outside Philadelphia, and last year was an hour down the road at Caves Valley outside Baltimore.
Still, no one has ever played it when every shot counts and $15 million is at stake. Patrick Cantlay is the defending champion and doesn’t feel like he needs a deep study of Wilmington.
“This golf course is definitely just like last year, extremely distance-biased,” Cantlay said. “You’ve got to hit it as far as you can and hit a lot of fairways. This course is a little narrower than last year, and I think most times you see when guys win they just got hot with the putter, which I did last year.”
There won’t be a repeat of last year, when Cantlay never looked like he would win until a birdie on the sixth playoff hole against Bryson DeChambeau before a highly charged crowd. That’s mainly because DeChambeau is among more than a dozen players who have signed on with Saudi-funded LIV Golf and have been suspended or resigned.
If they had been eligible for the postseason, they didn’t count in the standings.
That was a bonus for someone like Lucas Glover, who would have finished out of the top 125 in the FedEx Cup except that nine players ahead of him had played for LIV Golf. That meant Glover went from No. 130 to No. 121.
And then he tied for third in…
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Source : yahoo
