2010 PGA season ends with mixed feelings
The 2010 PGA tour ended with the Disney Classic last weekend, leaving the players with an assortment of feelings. Jim Furyk won the player of the year award for the first time in his PGA career whereas Matt Kuchar topped the money list and the scoring averages.
Where players like Kuchar and Furyk feel content due to an unforgettable year, 2010 will forever haunt Tiger Woods. The former number one, Woods, will not label this as a good memory since it was the first time since 15 years that he didn’t win a tournament.
Matt Kuchar, who is now atop the money list, had a very consistent season. He has eleven top ten finishes out of 26 tournaments. His earnings this year have totalled at $4,910,477, something Kuchar should surely be proud of. Not only is he is the richest
player in the circuit at the moment, but also has the best scoring average. Kuchar’s scoring average for 2010 is 69.61.
"For me to go from a guy that just wanted to keep his card a few years ago, to winning the Byron Nelson and Arnold Palmer Awards ... is pretty overwhelming," Kuchar said in a statement.
He said that it definitely would be difficult to carry this kind of consistency in the year ahead. Kuchar gave the analogy that if you post a 62 in the first round, it is not always possible to have the same score the next day. He said he is looking at 2011
in this sense and that achieving the same feats next year will surely be a difficult task but he is up for the challenge.
Matt claimed the third title of the PGA tour at the Barclay’s Tournament in August and hence struggled his way to earn the Arnold Palmer Award for topping the money list. Kuchar also defeated fellow American Steve Stricker in the scoring average race. Stricker
was just .05 higher with an average of 69.66. With such a narrow margin, Matt will be honoured by the Byron Nelson Award for the lowest scoring average this eyar.
Matt earned all those awards that had been earned by Woods in 2009. Little did the cat know that he won’t be the king of the golfing world the next year. Wood’s downfall started when November last year the news of his extra-marital affairs came out in the
public. Because of his infidelity, Tiger lost his beautiful wife and also his number one title that he had been holding on to since five years. Tiger and Ms. Elin Nordegren tried a lot of counselling to work on their marriage but called it quits and got divorced
in August. The personal tension in his life really affected Woods and his game and left him winless and at the number two position at the end of the 2010 season. This is the first time in his professional career that Tiger Woods hasn’t won a title. He only
played in 12 events this season and is 68th on the money list with $1,294,765.
Just like Matt Kuchar, Jim Furyk also took advantage of Wood’s declining form. Furyk won three times this year and hence claimed the player of the year award. Jim’s biggest achievement this year was his win at the Tour Championship. Along with the Tour Championship,
he won the Transitions Championship and Verizon Heritage. In total, Jim has sixty points whereas Kuchar and Stricker have fifty points. Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson have 46 and 42 points respectively.
Furyk’s point accumulation is not only attributed to his wins, Jim earned 18 points for ranking second in the money list and 12 points for finishing fifth in the scoring average list. The PGA player of the award was first won by Ben Hogan in 1948.
Overall, the 2010 PGA season was an interesting one filled with scandals and smiles. Players like Jim and Matt truly deserve all they have earned and will hopefully carry their brilliance in the year ahead. For others like Woods, they shouldn’t let one bad
year bring them down and hope to do better in 2011.
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