It was by far the worst field of the PGA Tour season.
What you had at the Monday-finish Barbasol Classic was a bunch of players dangling to keep their PGA Tour cards, some old guys like Olin Browne and even a guy who came out of retirement, briefly and that would be Charlie Wi.
This one was plagued by constant rain at the Keene Trace Golf Club outside Lexington, Ky., which means they could basically throw darts along with the old lift-clean-and-cheat advantage as Ken Venturi used to call it.
To add to the misery, they had to go into a Monday finish and there were a bunch of guys who had a chance to win this. In the early going there were no less than seven guys at 19-under par, another three at 18, four at 17-under.
Billy Horschel was the most decorated player in the un-decorated field and he was the first guy to get to 20-under then promptly made bogey on his next hole.
In the end, it would be Troy Merritt who emerged with his second tour win. He shot 67 and he’ll look back and know the difference, the big shot, the winning shot, came at the par fourth eighth hole where he holed a wedge shot from 132 yards out for eagle. He finished 23-under and that eagle helped him edge Horschel, Tom Lovelady and Richie Werenski by a shot.
Bad news for Troy was that this “opposite The Open” event paid a piddly $630,000 to the winner while Francesco Molinari collected a fat $1,890,000 for winning The Open Championship.
Good news for Troy is that he gets to keep his tour card for two more years.
It was an unaccomplished field, for sure, but hey, even Wi, who now teaches golf, finished in a tie for 44th at 11-under.
The postscript on this one is that the girl played. Brittany Lincicome showed up, shot 78-71 — five-over and missed the cut by nine shots. Good news is that she made three-straight birdies in that second round, which, by the way, was played on Saturday morning. Which begs the question: can we say she made it to the weekend?
