JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Steve Stricker’s roll through the PGA Tour Champions in the last 12 months has been termed “Tiger-esque” more than once.
Okay, let’s not get that carried away – because Stricker surely isn’t.
Perhaps because he understands the context and the setting of playing on the Champions tour (the courses aren’t too long, the 54-hole tournaments have no cut and there certainly isn’t the same pressure of facing a putt to win the U.S. Senior Open as there is the U.S. Open), Stricker is able to view his last 12 months with a healthy dose of perspective.
For example, is he a better player now, with nine victories since the fall of 2022 and 19 consecutive top-10 finishes (currently the fourth-longest streak in Champions history) than when he was on the PGA Tour?
“I don’t think so,” he said on Wednesday after playing in the Constellation Furyk & Friends Pro-Am at the Timuquana Country Club. “All of our abilities tend to deteriorate over time. I’m not hitting it as far, probably not as good a putter or chipper as I was when I was playing full-time [on the PGA Tour].”
Still … what he has done since he won the Furyk & Friends in his last start last season is mindboggling, whether it’s on the Champions Tour, PGA Tour, or a mini-tour.
Stricker is ‘driven’
Stricker will try to become the eighth player in Champions tour history to win seven or more times in one season when he opens his title defense on Friday in a group with tournament host Jim Furyk and Davis Love III.
Furyk’s two-shot victory over Harrison Frazar to win the 2022 Furyk & Friends ended one hot streak where he won three and finished third in a four-tournament stretch.
Stricker elected not to play in the 2022 Schwab Cup Playoffs and still finished third. Hunting season beckoned and family ties (such as caddying for his daughter in the Wisconsin state high school championship) pulled him away, perhaps understandable because it was a rough year. He didn’t play until May 2022 because of an illness that remains mysterious and once he recovered, he played 12 of the last 17 tournaments.
Completely healthy, Stricker began the 2023 season by winning the Mitsubishi Electric Championship in Hawaii and it’s been a one-man horse race since: six victories, three Champions majors (the Regions Tradition, the Senior PGA and the Kaulig Championship, which earned him a spot in the 2024 Players Championship) and nearly $4 million in earnings, already a…
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