Different Strokes: Ewen Ferguson gets the last laugh as ISPS Handa World Invitational win silences Twitter troll

Payback can be the sweetest feeling of all, certainly in the case of Ewen Ferguson who continued his great rookie season on the DP World Tour by collecting his second win – in the ISPS Handa World Invitational – and which gave him the opportunity to have the last laugh on a Twitter troll.

The Scot had been criticised online by a Sunshine Tour caddie Chris Thiart after reacting angrily to a missed putt at the Soudal Open in May, with Thiart calling Ferguson a “brat” and of having a “short game on a par with Happy Gilmore”.

Ferguson clearly remembered the put-down and got some payback in posting Thiart’s original tweet with the retort, “HAPPY LEARNED HOW TO PUTT” and also posting a couple of clown emojis.

The latest tour win earned Ferguson a payday of €247,185 which lifted him to 17th in the updated DP World Tour order of merit and to 168th on the official world rankings.

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Jimenez’s seniors circuit proving lucrative

Not quite in the league of Bernhard Langer yet, but Spain’s Miguel Angel Jimenez is yet another example of how golfing longevity can be extremely lucrative.

Jimenez won the Boeing Classic on the Champions Tour for his third win of the season and the 13th of his career on the seniors circuit. It brought his season’s earnings on the Over 50s tour to $1,788,793 (€1,756,621) and his total prizemoney won to $11,847,986 (€11,634,899).

He still has quite a ways to go if he is ever to catch Langer, though. The German has netted some $32 million (€31.4 million) in prize money on the Champions Tour alone!

Word of Mouth

“It was pretty crazy. This course is where every shot you hit you’re on the edge of your seat. Add the nerves of competing for a tournament to that, especially for a playoff event and, yeah, it can get a little crazy”

– Sepp Straka, the fall guy in losing the FedEx St Jude Championship to Will Zalatoris after a wild sudden-death play-off that ended at the third hole where the Austrian found water off the tee and then sand with his third shot, while Zalatoris – whose own tee-shot finished on the rockwall of the Par 3 – made an up and down from the drop zone for a winning bogey to land his first PGA Tour title.

By the Numbers: 11 & 9

That’s the winning margin of Saki Baba in the US Women’s Amateur championship final over, the largest winning margin by a player making their debut since Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1946! Baba, a 17-year-old from Japan, beat Canada’s Monet Chun (the semi-final conqueror of Ireland’s Annabel Wilson) in the final.

On this day: August 16th, 1992

Finally, Nick Price found a way to win a Major. After several near misses in his career, the Zimbabwean got his hands on the Wannamaker Trophy when he won the US PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club in St Louis, where rounds of a 70-70-68-70 gave him a 72-holes total of six-under-par 278, three shots clear of a quartet of players.

Price had experienced heartache in losing out in the 1982 British Open (when he blew a three-shot lead with six holes to go where Tom Watson won at Troon) and again in the 1988 Open (at Royal Lytham & St Annes where he was the 54-hole leader but lost out to final day charge from Seve Ballesteros) but used those experiences to finally lay claim to the first of three career Majors.

“It was like getting a monkey off my back,” said Price of discovering the art of winning. “For the last 18 months I felt I was close to that special game, close to taking the next step. In this tournament, I think I took that next step.”

Price had started the final round tied-second with Jeff Maggert, two behind Gene Sauers. But Sauers struggled to a closing 75 to finish grouped in second place alongside Nick Faldo, John Cook and Jim Gallagher Jnr as Price kept patient and holed critical putts down the stretch.

Twitter Twaddle

– Thomas Bjorn gives his tuppence worth on the Aussie’s two stroke retrospective penalty in the St Jude.

– Leona Maguire, who posted her fifth top-10 finish of the season so far on the LPGA Tour. The Cavan golfer is due to return to competition at the Dana Open in Ohio in the first week of September.

– teenager Tom McKibbin who got a top-10 finish in the ISPS Handa World Invitational and who returns to the Challenge Tour this week in Sweden in his ongoing bid to earn a full tour card for the main tour next season.

In the Bag: Will Zalatoris (FedEx St Jude Championship)

Driver: Titleist TSR3

3-wood: Titleist TSR2 (13 degrees)

Irons: Titleist T200 (3), Titleist T100 (4-PW)

Wedges: Titleist Vokey Design SM9 (50 and 54 degrees), Titleist Vokey Design WedgeWorks SM9 (60 degrees)

Putter: Titleist Scotty Cameron Phantom X11 prototype

Ball: Titleist Pro V1

Know the Rules

Q

In stroke play, a player faces a blind shot to the green so his playing partner stands on the crest of the hill to indicate the line to the hole and remains there as the player makes their stroke. What is the ruling?

A

Under Rule 10.2b, the player gets a two-stroke penalty for his actions. The purpose of the rule is to reinforce the fundamental challenge of making a stroke and to limit the advice and other help a player may receive during a round. The rule ensures that aiming at the intended target is a challenge that the player must overcome alone.