This article is part of our Weekly PGA Recap series.
Tiger Woods! Jack Nicklaus! Arnold Palmer!
Hopefully, that got you excited, because we had to do something -– anything! -- to get you interested in reading this weekly golf recap. (We even shamefully resorted to using italics and exclamation points!!) We apologize for the trickery, but Woods, Nicklaus and Palmer have nothing to do with the past week in golf and will not appear again in this article.
Instead, we present to you: Andrew Landry, Trey Mullinax and Sean O'Hair.
Landry won the Valero Texas Open by two strokes over Mullinax and O'Hair on Sunday.
In all candor, it was a pretty impressive showing by Landry, a Web.com Tour grad who at age 30 is trying to make a late run at a career on the PGA Tour. He's just guaranteed himself two more years of trying.
Landry gave it a go in 2016, but missed the cut in half of his 18 starts and was relegated again to Web.com status.
We saw flashes of Landry earlier this season, quite a few flashes for a Web grad, actually, when he tied for seventh at the season-opening Safeway and for fourth at the RSM before finishing as the runner-up to Jon Rahm at the CareerBuilder in January. That was enough to secure his card for next season.
Still, he didn't so much as make another cut until April, the week before the Valero. Despite all his good play, Landry was reminding us once again why it took him so long
Tiger Woods! Jack Nicklaus! Arnold Palmer!
Hopefully, that got you excited, because we had to do something -– anything! -- to get you interested in reading this weekly golf recap. (We even shamefully resorted to using italics and exclamation points!!) We apologize for the trickery, but Woods, Nicklaus and Palmer have nothing to do with the past week in golf and will not appear again in this article.
Instead, we present to you: Andrew Landry, Trey Mullinax and Sean O'Hair.
Landry won the Valero Texas Open by two strokes over Mullinax and O'Hair on Sunday.
In all candor, it was a pretty impressive showing by Landry, a Web.com Tour grad who at age 30 is trying to make a late run at a career on the PGA Tour. He's just guaranteed himself two more years of trying.
Landry gave it a go in 2016, but missed the cut in half of his 18 starts and was relegated again to Web.com status.
We saw flashes of Landry earlier this season, quite a few flashes for a Web grad, actually, when he tied for seventh at the season-opening Safeway and for fourth at the RSM before finishing as the runner-up to Jon Rahm at the CareerBuilder in January. That was enough to secure his card for next season.
Still, he didn't so much as make another cut until April, the week before the Valero. Despite all his good play, Landry was reminding us once again why it took him so long to get to the PGA Tour. Heck, he didn't even gain status on the Web.com Tour until he was 27, which is entering middle age for some golfers' careers.
The victory at TPC San Antonio came in Landry's 32nd career PGA Tour start. On the surface, impressive. But the fact that Landry's 32nd career start didn't come until he was 30 years old probably tells us more about Landry than the victory. Sure, he wouldn't be the first golfer or athlete to come out of nowhere at an age when many are on the road back to nowhere. And golf surely lends itself to longer and later careers. Heck, just a few years back Ken Duke became a first-time winner at age 44 at the 2013 Travelers.
We're not comparing Landry to Duke, or 30 to 44.
Landry won a PGA Tour event and he'll have that forever, even though it came in one of the weakest fields in years, fall season or otherwise. He was paired with a two-time major winner in Zach Johnson on Sunday and he simply dusted him (more on what that tells us about Johnson coming up).
The way Landry looked on Sunday, we surely can envision more big paydays ahead, if not wins then top-10s. Even another win wouldn't be a total surprise. Nor would a string of missed cuts.
As fantasy golf players, our job is to figure out whether Landry and others will have a good week or a bad week.
We suspect that even Landry, coming off more than three months of substandard play, couldn't have predicted he was about to embark on a week so good it would change his life.
MONDAY BACKSPIN
Trey Mullinax
A funny thing happened to Mullinax on what appeared to be his way back to the Web.com Tour finals this autumn: He started playing well. The big-hitting Alabaman couldn't crack the top-125 as a rookie last year, and he couldn't keep full playing privileges via the Web.com Tour Finals. So he's been playing sporadically this season and, until last month, continued to struggle. But out of nowhere Mullinax tied for eight at the Valspar, tied for 22nd in the Dominican Republic and now tied for second TPC San Antonio. All of a sudden, he not only has secured his card for next year but he enters into fantasy consideration. We're not ready to jump on board yet after three good showings, two of which were in terrible fields, but you might be.
Sean O'Hair
The veteran hasn't won since 2011, but he has had five runners-up since then, including one each of the past four years. That single result every season has likely allowed him to keep his card all this time, and Sunday's result is no different. O'Hair is like so many golfers who meander through a season, maybe 25 to 30 events, and deliver meaningful results maybe a handful of times. O'Hair's other top-10 this season came last month at Bay Hill so, as with Mullinax, you have to ask yourself whether his game has turned a corner or this is just one of the few good weeks he'll have this season.
Jimmy Walker
Walker's uplifting story keeps getting better and better. Some people with Lyme disease have trouble getting out of bed. Walker is trying to play golf at the highest level. The 39-year-old Oklahoman finished fourth at TPC San Antonio, his best showing in 19 months (solo third, 2016 Deutsche Bank). Walker also tied for 20th at the Masters his previous time out, so the best news would be if he has figured out how to manage his illness to the extent that he could be an ongoing factor on the PGA Tour. That's a very big if.
Zach Johnson
There are a lot of good stories at the top of the Valero leaderboard; Johnson's isn't one of them. He entered the final round tied for the lead but wound up fifth. The old Zach wouldn't have come away empty-handed when trying to close the deal opposite such inexperienced competition in Landry and Mullinax. But Johnson is now 42, and he hadn't even sniffed victory this season until the Valero. Johnson is trying, somehow, to qualify for the Ryder Cup team. Not only did he lose out on so many valuable points, but captain Jim Furyk had to see a golfer who looked light years from his days as a two-time major winner.
Joaquin Niemann
Back to the bright spots from the leaderboard and, in the long run, this may be the brightest one of all. The 19-year-old Chilean and world's top amateur turned pro last week and promptly delivered twin 67s on the weekend for an eye-popping sixth-place showing. Not only did Niemann take a big jump toward securing Special Temporary Membership on Tour, but his top-10 gets him into the Quail Hollow field in two weeks, saving one of his sponsor exemptions. We'll all be watching as he takes a huge leap in class from the Valero to the Wells Fargo.
Charley Hoffman
We picked Hoffman in the RotoWire/DraftKings value picks last week, with one caveat: Hoffman has been playing a lot of golf. The Valero was his seventh start in eight weeks, and it showed. Hoffman never was a factor at a tournament he has played better than anyone else since it moved to TPC San Antonio in 2010, and he tied for 64th. In 13 starts this season, Hoffman has zero top-10s. He's even playing this week with Nick Watney at the Zurich Classic. Dang, Charley, take a break!
Sergio Garcia
It's one thing for Garcia to miss the cut at the Masters, where it's tough to return as the defending champion (plus, he was done in by that one hole when he shot a 13). But to trunk-slam in one of the weakest fields of the year and AT A COURSE YOU HELPED DESIGN? Garcia has had a lot of life-altering events in the past 12 months: won the Masters, got married, became a first-time father. You never know how these things affect a golf game; it's different for every golfer. We get to see the state of Garcia's game again this week, when he teams with Rafa Cabrera Bello at the Zurich. On paper, the Spaniards are one of the favorites. Also on paper, Garcia was the top favorite at the Valero.
Pat Perez
Perez has three top-10s this season, including a win at the CIMB Classic. Good, right? Well, the most recent one came the first week in January. Since then, Perez has managed only one top-25. He missed the cut at the Valero. We see golfers' fortunes turn on a dime all the time. This doesn't feel like one of the times it will happen.
Adam Scott
Scott continues to be hard to gauge because he hasn't played that much golf. The former No. 1 strung together a couple of top-20s during the Florida swing, but then failed to keep it going at some courses he's had great success at. TPC San Antonio is one of them, and Scott missed the cut last week. He had a double- and a triple-bogey during the second round, when he lost almost two strokes tee to green in a horribly weak field. Draw your own conclusions.
Luke List
List missed the cut at the Valero. It was bound to happen. List has been playing so well for months. One blip shouldn't change your viewpoint of him.
