LOS ANGELES (AP) — David Carey only seems to get attention whenever someone posts a sub-60 score in golf. This time, the first word of another historic round came as a text from his mother.
“My mom sent me a message that said, ‘Now you have to shoot 56,’” Carey said.
Carey, a 27-year-old from Ireland, was in Dallas preparing for a slate of Monday qualifiers on the PGA Tour when he heard Cristobal Del Solar had matched his record with a 57 at the Korn Ferry Tour event in Bogota, Colombia.
Carey was the first player with a 57 on a tour that is part of the Official World Golf Ranking. He shot 57 — with pars on the final two holes — at the 2019 Cervino Open on the Alps Tour, one of the European circuits that is two levels below the European tour.
There were plenty of similarities — some 8,000 feet of elevation and a short course. Del Solar played the Pacos course at Bogota Country Club that measured 6,254 yards. Cervino Golf Club in Italy, at the base of the Matterhorn, is a par 68 that measured a mere 5,801 yards.
Carey’s friends began calling him, “Mr. 57,” and now it’s on his social media accounts. The PGA Tour has a history of overlooking golf outside U.S. borders, but Carey is the original.
He now has company.
“I knew at some point someone was going to do it,” Carey said.
The number of sub-60 scores in worldwide golf is evidence of that. Del Solar became the 53rd player to shoot in the 50s. The next day, Aldrich Potgieter made it 54 players when he shot 59 in Bogota. Neither won the tournament.
Anything in the 50s is special, regardless of the course or the conditions. Zach Johnson once shot 60 at East Lake in the Tour Championship, a year when conditions led there to be so little grass on the putting surfaces that all the pins were near the middle of the green. Asked if there was such a thing as a cheap 59, Johnson replied: “No. Hell, no.”
Carey feels the same way, and he takes no small pride in the fact no one else broke 60 in the four years the Cervino Open was on the Alps Tour schedule.
“It’s not that long, but you get to hit a lot of drivers,” he said. “It was mostly 3-iron, 4-iron and then a 9-iron into the greens. You’re placing your way around.”
More than four years later, he still remembers the day, mainly because of the number of the scorecard he signed. The lowest at that point had been 58 by Jim Furyk (PGA Tour), Stephan Jaeger (Korn Ferry), Ryo Ishikawa (Japan) and Jason Bohn (Canada).
“It does kind of stick in your head,” Carey said. “It was a very cold morning. I still think it’s my worst warmup anywhere. I started on the back nine, and the 10th is the longest par 3, 230 yards up the hill. I hit the front of the green to 35 or 40 feet and holed the putt. That set the trend for the day.”
He made seven birdies for a 27 on the back nine, added a few more birdies and then realized to par in would be a 59. He thought that would be cool. And then he made two more birdies.
“I missed from 10 feet on the 17th and lipped out on my 8-footer at the last,” he said.
No matter the score, it can always be better.
BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT
It’s safe to say Kevin Na is not a big fan of the format change at LIV Golf, in which all four players count toward the team score in the final round.
Na is captain of the Iron Heads, and his team of Danny Lee, Scott Vincent and Jinichiro Kozuma is not off to a great start. They combined to go 6-over par on the final day at Mayakoba and 7 over in Las Vegas. This is not a fearsome team.
“I don’t think it levels the playing field, honestly,” Na said. “I think making it three out of four (players) was really exciting because when you make all four scores count, it’s going to favor the stacked teams.”
As for his team?
“Our team is great. We can flat-out all play. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Na said. “But what I’m saying is when you’ve got a stacked team, I think they have an advantage. … There’s nothing wrong with one guy sitting on the bench where his score doesn’t count.”
And what would be Na’s definition of stacked?
“The team that they spent the most money on,” he replied.
TAYLOR’S TIMING
Nick Taylor went six years between his first and second victory on the PGA Tour, and then it was more than two years before his next one. With his playoff victory in the Phoenix Open, he now has two wins in eight months.
Winning is hard, and Taylor can speak from experience. It took a 72-foot eagle putt in a playoff at the Canadian Open last June, and birdies on five of his last six holes of regulation and the playoff to win in Phoenix.
“I still want to win more, obviously, but I think it’s never easy,” he said Tuesday. “You’ve got to be grateful when it happens and try to celebrate it.”
The timing could not have been better. This is a big year for two Canadians vying for a spot in the Olympics. With his second win — and with that a bonus in the world ranking for multiple wins in a 12-month span — Taylor moved to No. 28 in the world.
Corey Conners is at No. 47 and Adam Hadwin is at No. 52.
Olympic qualifying is based on the world ranking after the U.S. Open in June.
PIOT TO ASIA
James Piot seized on his U.S. Amateur title in 2021 by joining LIV Golf, and now he has been relegated out of the Saudi-funded league.
The Asian Tour starts this week with the Malaysian Open, and Piot is among those in the field. For Piot, his best path back to LIV would be the International Series on the Asian Tour. The leader of that series last year was Andy Ogletree.
Financially, it’s hard to question to Piot’s decision. His signing bonus with LIV was believed to be in the $6 million-to-$8 million range for the two years. He made just short of $4 million in LIV earnings in his two seasons.
As Piot wrote for Golf Digest in January 2023, “If you’re thinking about your legacy, you want to play the PGA Tour. But this is a great opportunity for a guy out of college with no financial security.”
DIVOTS
Tiger Woods starts his 2024 season with Lance Bennett as his caddie. His previous caddie, Joe LaCava, now works for Patrick Cantlay. Bennett has recently worked for Davis Riley and Sungjae Im, and before that Matt Kuchar. … Kazuma Kobori of New Zealand is off to a hot start this season. The 22-year-old Japan native won the New Zealand PGA as an amateur in 2019. He now has won three times in four weeks on the Webex Players Series on the PGA Tour of Australasia. … Nick Taylor won the Phoenix Open with five birdies over his final six holes of regulation and the playoff. It wasn’t for a lack of opportunities. His final five birdies had a combined distance of nearly 45 feet.
STAT OF THE WEEK
Tiger Woods is playing Riviera for the fifth straight time with Justin Thomas in the opening two rounds. The last time Woods played Riviera without Thomas in his group, he was with Brent Geiberger and Jonathan Kaye.
FINAL WORD
“We’re not the NFL. If you split the NFL, you would still have two amazing leagues.” — Harold Varner III of LIV Golf on the divide with the PGA Tour.
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
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