Golf Notes for a wintery December 13th

Christmas is just a dozen days away, winter has finally arrived with the thermometer in and around -12*c, and the first snowfall has insured a white Christmas. Golf continues down under where it is summer, and on the European/Sunshine tour in South Africa, but by in large most pros are off until 2018.

Q SCHOOL: All four Canucks at Web.com Q school earned status of some sort.  Ryan Yip from Calgary T10th at -18 (73-65-67-65), so he starts 2018 with guaranteed starts for the first 12 events meanwhile  Albin Choi from Toronto and  Stuart Macdonald from Vancouver T23 -16, while Seann Harlingten also from Vancouver T30th -15.

Those 3 Choi, Macdonald get exempt status for the first eight events: .

LOU MARSH: Joey Votto had another banner year for Cincinnati at 1st base and he was awarded this year's Lou Marsh trophy.

With 8 top 10's and 2 wins Brooke Henderson was on the ballot but was in strong competition with the likes of Votto, Sid Crosby, Rachel Homan (curler) and Alex Harvey (skier), and I'm sure her day will come.

BEST CANADIAN AMATEURS: Josh Whalen (22) (Napanee) and Maddie Szeryk (21)  (dual citizen), are Canada’s top male and female amateur golfers for 2017

Josh was 3rd at the Canadian Men’s Amateur Championship, T6 at the Sunnehanna Amateur and had six NCAA top-20s in his senior year with the Kent State Golden Flashes.

Maddie won for the 3rd year in a row winning the B.C. Women’s Amateur and Women’s Western Amateur Championships, as well as the NCAA’s Dr. Donnis Thompson Invitational playing for Texas A&M.

NO MORE TV VIEWER CALLINS: Every governing body out there finally got together and have come up with a new set of protocols for video review when applying the Rules of Golf. Basically you can stop calling in if you think you saw a ball move a hair or any other minor infraction. Here's what they are doing.

Assign one or more officials to monitor the video broadcast of a competition to help identify and resolve Rules issues as they arise

Discontinue any steps to facilitate or consider viewer call-ins as part of the Rules decision process

In addition, they have approved the adoption of a Local Rule to eliminate the additional two-stroke penalty for failing to include a penalty on the score card when the player was unaware of the penalty.

TIGER'S RETURN: Whatever your opinion is of Tiger Woods, the biggest news for the pro game, in particular for the PGA Tour and it's sponsors is that during the off season he competed adequately at his Hero World Challenge, came through the 4 rounds without pain, and as such will be announcing his playing schedule for 2018 at some time soon.

TV ratings dropped by 30% in his absence, and that 30% who don't normally watch golf will be paying attention whenever he gets back. Despite their collective brilliant play, the new crew, Rory, DJ, Rickie, Jordan, Jason etal simply don't move the needle and while they are all better than Tiger by now, the affect and the size of his shadow is something we will be debating again next year, as his mere presence will become more important than the guys who are actually winning the event.

Bryan Angus