The Meteoric Rise of Jimmy Walker
I
t took Jimmy Walker 188 starts on the PGA Tour to collect his first win. After he holed out
a five-foot putt on the 18th green to clinch the 2014 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, Walker bagged his third win in eight starts, mak- ing him a lock to make his first Ryder Cup team. Walker picked up his first win just an hour up the road during the season-opening
Frys.com Open at CordeValle in October, and left Pebble Beach as the undisputed hottest player in golf. Throw in Walker’s win at the Sony Open in January and he’s already got three this season. To put that in perspective? In the last 20 years, only
Jimmy Walker
Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and David Duval have won three times in eight starts. So how exactly has Jimmy Walker carved out a spot
among the Mount Rushmore of golf titans? Sports Illustrated’s Alan Shipnuck points to last April,
when Walker sought out the help of Butch Harmon. Walker broke through in October at Cordevalle, firing 62-66 on the weekend to earn his first Master’s berth. –Kevin Merfeld
CALIFORNIA DREAMING
Jimmy Walker is also incredibly comfortable in California. Here are the 35-year-old Oklahoman’s stats in the Golden State: • He’s made 45% of his career earnings in the state, despite making only 15% of his career starts there.
• When he tees it up in California, his weekly paychecks average $143,763.
• He’s had 23 top-10 finishes in his career, and 10 of them have come in California.
• He’s nearly a full shot better per round in California than outside the state.
• After seven starts at Pebble Beach, he’s up to No. 6 on the tournament’s all-time earnings list. Everyone ahead of him has made more than 17 starts there (except for No. 2 Dustin Johnson, a two-time winner who tied for 2nd in 2014).
• In his last 15 starts in California, he’s only missed one cut, in January at the Farmers Insurance Open, where he was battling illness.
Lydia Ko at the 2012 U.S. Girls’ Junior at Lake Merced
16 /
NCGA.ORG / SPRING 2014
Lake Merced a Breeding Ground for LPGA Greats
A
s a frequent and generous host of USGA qualifiers and
two USGA major champi- onships, Lake Merced Golf Club has become a check- point to greatness. Yani Tseng and Natalie
Gulbis both survived qualifi- ers for U.S. Women’s Opens at Lake Merced, making their return to Daly City April 24-27 for the Swing- ing Skirts LPGA Classic full of nostalgia. “I have great memo-
ries here,” recalled Gulbis, who won the 2007 LPGA Evian Masters. “This is a great course. It’s going to play 6,500 yards, and in San Francisco, it’s quite a bit cooler, so the ball doesn’t fly as far as some places we play. The greens out here are small. It’s a good shot- makers golf course.”
The history of women’s
golf at Lake Merced can be traced all the way back to the 1941 San Francisco Women’s Open Match Play Championship, which was won by the legendary Babe Didrikson Zaharias. A 14-year-old Lydia Ko
competed at Lake Merced two years ago in the U.S. Girls’ Junior as the No. 1 amateur in the world, but her result was memorable for a different reason. Ko was knocked out in the semifinals that year, although she would bounce back to win the U.S. Women’s Amateur less than a month later, and then the LPGA’s Canadian Women’s Open just two weeks after that—even though she was still an amateur. Ko pulled off an unprecedented repeat last year at the Canadian
PHOTO: MONTEREY PENINSULA FOUNDATION
PHOTO: USGA
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