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| The Detroit News
There’s plenty of Florida flavor on the PGA Tour this week as golfers leave the West Coast swing behind and head to the Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches as it tees off Thursday in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
And funny enough, the best place to start would be with Irishman Shane Lowry.
An adopted Floridian who makes his home in the town of Jupiter a few minutes away, Lowry is appearing at the Cognizant Classic for the ninth time.
The three-time PGA Tour winner might be considered the favorite at PGA National this week, and in fact, he came a hair away from winning in 2022. No players in this week’s field are ranked top-25 in the world.
“I really enjoy Florida golf,” Lowry said Wednesday. “It’s funny, when I moved here first or when I started coming, when I played the old Honda Classic as it was back when I started playing here, I couldn’t figure out how to chip around these greens. I wish it was overseeded back then.
“But I figured it out, I moved here, and you kind of learn how to deal with the Bermuda and the Florida grasses, and I do love Florida golf now.”
He loves it so much, in fact, that he’s playing the first three events of the Florida swing – this week, the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Players Championship – to make for a run of five straight weeks of competition for the 2019 Open champion.
Getting to sleep in his own bed makes that more feasible.
“I think if it was five weeks in a row and there was no home weeks in there, I wouldn’t play five weeks in a row,” he said. “I think the fact I’m saying at home this week makes it easier. I get to drive to Bay Hill next week, so there’s no flights. I get to see my family. … There’s a lot in there that makes the five weeks easier than sort of if you’re five weeks away from home.”
At the other end of the spectrum, Luke Clanton is happy to be home as well.
The 22-year-old Florida native played the Cognizant last year on a sponsor’s exemption while still attending Florida State. By making the cut, the up-and- comer earned the 20th and final point needed to earn a full-time card through the PGA Tour University system. He tied for 18th, shooting three rounds in the 60s.
Clanton played junior golf events at PGA National and also enjoyed coming as a fan.
“I came here since I was probably 8 years old with my best friend,” Clanton said. “We used to come here I think it was every Friday and Sunday. Our moms used to drop us off, and we’d go run around and be a bunch of idiots, but it was a lot of fun.”
The most accomplished player on the property, and the hometown favorite, will be one and the same: Brooks Koepka. The five-time major champ is making his third start in his return to the PGA Tour after his four-year stay with LIV Golf.
“This is a true hometown event,” said Koepka, who is from West Palm Beach. “… It’s just enjoyable to see faces you haven’t seen in a long time. Sometimes it’s the only time I see people is when I’m here at this event. It’ll be fun. I’m looking forward to it.”
The defending champion is Joe Highsmith, who won his first career title here last year. It’s also the last week for players to qualify for next week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational signature event via the Aon Next 10 or Aon Swing 5 points standings.
Chacarra given PGA Tour event exemption
After last playing in a LIV Golf tournament in 2024, Eugenio Chacarra of Spain will compete on the PGA Tour when he appears at the Puerto Rico Open next week on a sponsor’s exemption.
Chacarra, 25, signed with LIV when it launched in 2022. After the 2024 season, though, he did not qualify to return to the Saudi Arabia-backed tour and a free-agent deal to return was not reached.
The Oklahoma State alum was given a sponsor’s exemption into the Hero Indian Open on the DP World Tour last year and won the event to earn full status in Europe. He said his ultimate goal now is to earn full status on the PGA Tour.
“Obviously LIV didn’t exist when I was little,” Chacarra said. “I grew up watching the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour, and that’s what I dream of playing and winning, and that’s what my heart and my ambition was, so we thought it was the best for me to move forward and try to get on the PGA Tour.”
Chacarra’s only appearance on the PGA Tour was in the co-sanctioned Scottish Open.
Brooks Koepka left LIV Golf and returned to the PGA Tour this year through a newly created Returning Player Program. He qualified for the program as a recent major winner. Patrick Reed has also departed LIV and will return to the PGA Tour this summer.
Koepka has played in two events since returning and is entered in this week’s Cognizant Classic.
New Zealand’s Ko pursues Grand Slam
Three-times major champion Lydia Ko says the pursuit of golf’s rarest prizes is still enough to stir her competitive fire, even as her 13 years in the LPGA weigh more heavily on her body.
The 28-year-old New Zealander returns to this week’s HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore as defending champion, buoyed by a pair of top-five finishes in Thailand and the Tournament of Champions in Florida to open the season.
The former world number one has won a full set of Olympic medals and three majors among her 23 LPGA Tour titles but would like either a first Women’s PGA Championship or a maiden U.S. Women’s Open crown to complete the career Grand Slam.
The LPGA considers women who have won four of the tour’s five majors to be career Grand Slam winners.
“There might be the question in your head like, ‘OK, what’s next?’ And I’ve had that question in my career at multiple points, and even after winning the silver medal in Rio, that was such a big goal of mine,” Paris Olympics champion Ko said in Singapore.
“After that was done, I had lost a little bit of sense of direction in my career.
“I think the U.S. Women’s Open has always been a big star or key on the schedule in any season. I obviously haven’t won that. So that’s always a motivation.”
Though Ko took the world by storm as a 17-year-old world number one in 2015, she has often spoken of quitting the game at 30 to follow other pursuits rather than grinding on the tour into middle age.
She said she was no longer as resilient physically as before.
“To be honest, now that I’ve been on tour for so long, my body, I know, is not the same as 10 years ago,” she added.
“So my recovery is not as fast as I think it should be.
“Sometimes I think the fatigue catches up to me more than where I am mentally.
“So, I’m just trying to have a good balance of that.”
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