This article is part of our Weekly PGA Recap series.
Eight years into writing about fantasy golf, there haven't been many weeks that were unenjoyable. Check that -- they have all been enjoyable -- but they have been least enjoyable when I whiff*. Of course, with 40-plus golf tournaments a year, there are many whiffs, no matter how good your speculating skills are. But when you go on the radio and the Internet and they ask, "Who are you fading?" and you name one guy, and it's a guy some other people like, and then that guys wins …
Well, last week that guy was Rory McIlroy.
McIlroy hadn't won in 18 months, hadn't been as low as his No. 15 world ranking in more than a decade, and hadn't even sniffed a Saturday in two months. But all that was washed away across four brilliant days of golf at Quail Hollow Club, where McIlroy won the Wells Fargo Championship for a third time.
That's part of the Monday morning quarterbacking -- the warning sign about winning at Quail Hollow twice before. There's always the push and pull of current form vs. course history. McIlroy's course history was notable, as great as his current form was bad.
For much of the past 18 months, McIlroy was simply playing bad by his standards -- contending here and there, some near misses, top-10s and top-20s, the stuff most pros would sever an artery for. But then he started missing cuts at big events -- three of them, at Riviera, THE PLAYERS
Eight years into writing about fantasy golf, there haven't been many weeks that were unenjoyable. Check that -- they have all been enjoyable -- but they have been least enjoyable when I whiff*. Of course, with 40-plus golf tournaments a year, there are many whiffs, no matter how good your speculating skills are. But when you go on the radio and the Internet and they ask, "Who are you fading?" and you name one guy, and it's a guy some other people like, and then that guys wins …
Well, last week that guy was Rory McIlroy.
McIlroy hadn't won in 18 months, hadn't been as low as his No. 15 world ranking in more than a decade, and hadn't even sniffed a Saturday in two months. But all that was washed away across four brilliant days of golf at Quail Hollow Club, where McIlroy won the Wells Fargo Championship for a third time.
That's part of the Monday morning quarterbacking -- the warning sign about winning at Quail Hollow twice before. There's always the push and pull of current form vs. course history. McIlroy's course history was notable, as great as his current form was bad.
For much of the past 18 months, McIlroy was simply playing bad by his standards -- contending here and there, some near misses, top-10s and top-20s, the stuff most pros would sever an artery for. But then he started missing cuts at big events -- three of them, at Riviera, THE PLAYERS and the Masters, which in two months totaled more missed cuts than he had in all of 2019 and 2020 combined.
He openly admitted that something was amiss, wasn't quite sure what it was, wasn't in a great place on the course, had been affected by Bryson DeChambeau's all-out assault on distance. What, hitting 380 wasn't enough?
And then he revealed Sunday that he almost was a non-starter on Thursday because of a mysterious neck ailment he felt Wednesday night. Now, he's back to No. 7 in the world. Just like that.
There was always the belief that McIlroy would get it back, just like the golf world always believed that Jordan Spieth would do the same. But to think that he would solve his issues on the course so quickly, even at a favorite track, well, I wasn't going to fall into that trap. Sigh.
So at Quail Hollow, where McIlroy famously won by seven strokes in 2015, all he did was rank second in driving distance (behind only DeChambeau), third in greens in regulation, second in scrambling and third (THIRD!) in Strokes Gained: Putting. With all those stats adding up to one loud Rory-McIlroy-Is-Back pronouncement, perhaps his biggest accomplishment was totaling only five bogeys all week at one of the toughest courses on the schedule. Three of them came Thursday. And the last one came on the 72nd hole, where he had the luxury of a two-stroke cushion to still defeat Abraham Ancer by a stroke.
The winning score was 10-under-par, meaning this was real "Big Boy golf."
Now the question is, how fast do you – er, I – jump back on McIlroy? Is he going to win again real soon, like at the PGA Championship in just two weeks at the same Kiawah Island Ocean Course at which he already won the 2012 PGA in an eight-stroke runaway? The oddsmakers give him a good chance, as he is now the favorite to win that event, per golfodds.com, at 10-1.
The course will play so long it will make Quail Hollow look moderate. It'll be nearly 7,900 yards, a good couple of bounces from 8,000. If Quail Hollow favored the long hitters, it would stand to reason that Kiawah Island would favor the longest hitters.
All in all, Rory McIlroy is back. And the PGA just got a whole lot more interesting.
* Luckily, last week was not a complete whiff in the DraftKings picks. Viktor Hovland, who tied for third, was on the list. So was Matt Wallace, who finished T6 at a mere $7,500 on DraftKings. Ditto Aaron Wise, at $7,100, who tied for ninth.
MONDAY BACKSPIN
Abraham Ancer
It was kind of a three-man race for a good chunk of Sunday, and Ancer was not one of the three. Yet he notched the fourth runner-up of his still-winless career, sneaking home with a 66 thank to birdies on 15, 16 and 17. Impressive. Ancer had been playing good but not great until last week, when was fifth at the Valspar. He plays his best when his iron game is on, and it was on at Quail Hollow. He led the field in greens in regulation and gained more than seven shots on the field on approach. If you hit your irons like that, you can contend even on super-long tracks.
Keith Mitchell
Finishing in a tie for third was surely tough to swallow for Mitchell, who had a three-stroke lead on the front-nine. But having fallen to almost 250th in the world, this was a great week for him. Mitchell's lone PGA Tour win came at the 2019 Honda with a score of 9-under. And here he was 8-under. So these are the types of low-scoring tracks to consider Mitchell for your lineup, not that he had warranted much consideration since that win. A great driver with a terrible short game, birdie-fests are not his bag.
Viktor Hovland
For the second week in a row, a tie for third. Hovland has done everything in 2021 but win, with four top-3 finishes. That indicates a win is close.
Gary Woodland
Woodland had his chances until back-to-back bogeys on the back-nine relegated him to fifth place. For someone who had fallen outside the top-60 in the world and looked pretty awful for close to a year, this was a welcome and much-needed week.
Matt Wallace
After a slow start to 2021, Wallace has made five straight cuts, three of them top-20s and two of them top-6s after a T6 at Quail Hollow. Not a long hitter but a very good iron player, Wallace has the game to be in the conversation at Kiawah Island.
Xander Schauffele
Schauffele wasn't in contention to win this tournament, like he was at Phoenix and Augusta earlier this year. But he was on the periphery of a top-5. Just like in those two other tournaments, he inexplicably found the water late, leading to a double on 17. For good measure, Schauffele bogeyed 18 and wound up tied for 14th. Some very troubling late-game disasters for the No. 5 golfer in the world.
Tommy Fleetwood
It wasn't a good 2020 on the PGA Tour for Fleetwood, and 2021 didn't start out much better, as he fell from a top-25 spot in the OWGR. But he tied for 10th at Bay Hill, fifth at the Match Play and 14th at the Wells Fargo, offering hope that he could be a factor of some sort at the PGA in two weeks.
Bryson DeChambeau
When DeChambeau tripled his 35th hole on Friday to plummet to 3-over, his weekend plans looked sealed. Even after a closing birdie, he was still outside the cutline as darkness neared. But a very late shift moved the number from 1-over to 2-over, and DeChambeau stuck around. He then shot 68-68 on the weekend to soar into the top 10. This bodes well for him for Kiawah Island.
Cam Davis
Cam Davis lovers – there are lots of you and you know who you are -- you were sooo close to a great week. The big-hitting Aussie was staring down a top-10 until he was derailed along the Green Mile. Davis played the final three holes in 4-over – bogey-double bogey-bogey -- to plummet into a tie for 26th.
Hunter Mahan
Mahan was ranked outside the top-1,800 in the world – yes, that's two zeros – and had missed all 11 cuts in 2021. So just playing on the weekend warrants a spot in the recap for the former top-5 player in the world. Mahan was on the brink of a top-25 finish until imploding on the Green Mile. Double-double-par left him tied for 54th. Still, that was enough to zoom more than 500 spots in the world rankings – yes, that's two zeros – to 1,291st.
Phil Mickelson
For one glorious day, Mickelson returned to the spotlight – for the right reasons. He opened with an 7-under 64 at a brute of a track and thoughts of another PGA Tour win wafted in the air. But in a perfect example of why you should never get too excited about your golfers or your lineup on Thursday (or Friday or Saturday, for that matter), Mickelson proceeded to shoot 75-76-76 and finished 69th. Hey, he'll always have Thursday.
Patrick Cantlay
This is now four missed cuts in five events. Sure, still a very small sample size. But Cantlay hadn't missed four cuts in a calendar year since 2014. He missed only five cuts total in 2018, '19 and '20 spanning 60 events. There wasn't one part of his game working at Quail Hollow. He was outside the top-75 in greens in regulation and a disastrous 130th in SG: Putting.
Will Zalatoris
After playing 10 times in 12 weeks and having successful results almost the entire time, Zalatoris took a couple of weeks off to recharge and promptly missed a cut for the first time since October. So, don't take a break, Will.
Jon Rahm
Rahm opened with a 4-over 76 and couldn't claw his way back, missing a cut for the first time since last June's Charles Schwab, the first tournament after the resumption of golf. Hey, it happens.
Rickie Fowler
Fowler missed another cut. The only part of his game at Quail Hollow that could be considered good was his driving accuracy, which statistically is one of the least important factors a golfer can have. Other than Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, Fowler ranked outside the top-75 in the field in the other five SG categories.
Denny McCarthy
When McCarthy hits more than 72 percent of greens in regulation through two rounds, you'd think he'd be near the 36-hole lead. But one of the best putters on Tour over the past decade had an uncharacteristically bad week on the greens, actually losing more than a stroke to the field. He shot 77-75 and missed the cut by a lot.
