The Valspar Open is being played this week at the Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor, FL on the PGA Tour. This is also the event in which Jimmy Brandt,
the winner of Golf Channel's "Big Break Myrtle Beach" last year got his chance to tee it up with the Big Boys with a free entrance into this tournament.
The results were all too predictable. In a field of 144 golfers, Jimmy finished at eight over par and tied for 127th place. He was 14 strokes behind second round leader Brandon De Jonge who is in at -6. Needless to say, he failed to make the cut.
I don't mean to make light of this, because young Jimmy Brandt is no doubt a better golfer than anybody that I know, but there is being a good golfer, and then there is being a golfer good enough to compete on the PGA Tour, and to say that there is a world of difference between those two options is putting it mildly.
Back in December, when "Big Break Myrtle Beach" concluded, I wrote the following on The Grandstander:
In that championship match, Brandt defeated Peterson on the seventeenth hole, 3 and 1. It was a ragged match that at times it was a match that neither guy seemed to want to win. Winner Jimmy defied golf's oldest cliche that you "putt for dough" by butchering almost every opportunity he had with the flat stick. Still, he prevailed, and in addition to his cash and prizes, his Big Break will come in the form of an entry into the PGA Tour's Valspar Open which will be contested March 12-15 this coming season.
I will be tracking and reporting on Jimmy's performance in that event, but I will predict now that, based on how he performed on BBMB, he not only will not make the cut, he will be in the bottom five of those "missed cut" players. For his sake, I hope I'm wrong because he seems like a nice kid, but professional tournament golf is the ultimate meritocracy, and I fear that a cruel fate awaits the young man.
Okay, so he didn't finish in the bottom five (eleven golfers, including John Daly, posted scores higher than +8), but I can still say that I believe I had that.
Brandt came across as a nice young kid on Big Break, and I hope that he can overcome this and make a go of it on the Tour, but he's got a ways to go.
SPOILER ALERT: This post will talk about the winner of the Big Break Myrtle Beach. If you are waiting to watch this on your DVR stockpile, you may want to skip this and come back later.
The twenty-second edition of Golf Channel's signature program, The Big Break, concluded last week in a match between 31 year old Jimmy Brandt and 28 year old Toph Peterson. It was the conclusion to an interesting season that began with six men ands six women squaring off to achieve their Big Break. The most interesting part of the season was that one contestant, 19 year old Anthony Quezada, might have been the most loathsome person to ever appear on the Big Break. All shows such as this need a "villain", and Anthony fulfilled this role by violating every tenant of sportsmanship on which the game of golf prides itself. He made it to the Final Four, and fell to to the eventual champion.
In that championship match, Brand defeated Peterson on the seventeenth hole, 3 and 1. It was a ragged match that at times it was a match that neither guy seemed to want to win. Winner Jimmy defied golf's oldest cliche that you "putt for dough" by butchering almost every opportunity he had with the flat stick. Still, he prevailed, and in addition to his cash and prizes, his Big Break will come in the form of an entry into the PGA Tour's Valspar Open which will be contested March 12-15 this coming season.
I will be tracking and reporting on Jimmy's performance in that event, but I will predict now that, based on how he performed on BBMB, he not only will not make the cut, he will be in the bottom five of those "missed cut" players. For his sake, I hope I'm wrong because he seems like a nice kid, but professional tournament golf is the ultimate meritocracy, and I fear that a cruel fate awaits the young man.
All that aside, he is a Big Break Champion, and no one can take that away from him, so big CONGRATULATIONS to him.
