BOCA RATON — Memo to the PGA Tour Champions players: If you want to stop Ernie Els from winning the TimberTech Championship, dump some nails or metal on I-95.
The World Golf Hall of Famer almost was disqualified from the tournament on Thursday when he got a flat tire commuting from his Palm Beach Gardens home; he needed a tournament employee to pick him up so he could make his 8:50 a.m. pro-am tee time. Under PGA Tour Champions rules, a player is DQ’d if he misses the pro-am, though Els could have tried to find a player to take his morning spot and played in the afternoon.
That would have been a tough way for the TimberTech Championship to lose a man who has two wins and nine top-10 finishes in 11 starts and leads the Charles Schwab Cup standings with almost $1.36 million. And it would have cost Els a rare home game in golf.
“I started making calls right away, let’s put it that way,” Els said after he had to pull off I-95 in Delray Beach. “I heard the car hit something and all of a sudden the alarms started going off. Fortunately, I was coming down early to have breakfast beforehand, so I had extra time.”
As is the case for most players turning 50, the PGA Tour Champions has breathed new life into Els’ game. It had been seven years since Els’ last win – at the 2013 British Open – but he has become a fixture on the tour’s leaderboards this coronavirus pandemic-interrupted season.
Ernie Els tees off during Thursday’s Pro-Am.
Els leads the tour in scoring average (68.29), greens in regulation (77.6 percent) and eagles per hole (62.1). He is second in putting average and third in driving distance (295.4 yards, a lethal combination.
The game again looks easy for the Big Easy, the way it looked when he won four majors, 19 PGA Tour titles and 74 tournaments around the world.
“I’ve had a pretty nice go so far, with the two wins and quite a few close calls,” Els said. “To win out here, you have to really be on with every aspect of your game.”
Els admits he was disenchanted with playing golf in his late 40s. It’s easy to see why: Since 2015, he has had only one top-10 and three top-25 finishes in 92 starts on the PGA Tour while missing almost half his cuts (44).
Els was stuck in golf’s no man’s land – too old to contend on the PGA Tour and too young to play on the PGA Tour Champions. The job had become stale.
“When I played on the other tour, I don’t want to say it got boring, but you’ve seen the golf courses so many times and there’s nothing really exciting about it anymore,” Els said.
Now, almost every tournament Els plays in is on a new course, like the Old Course this week, which allows his creativity and feel to shine through. The 51-year-old Els also reunited with his longtime caddie, Ricci Roberts, who was on Els’ bag for almost 30 years and all four of his majors.
“Once you’re winner, you’re always a winner. That doesn’t go away,” Roberts said. “He still hits it a long way, so that’s an advantage on this tour. It’s hard to compete with the young kids on the other tour.”
Els has remained active off the course, helping to establish the Els School of Excellence in Jupiter after his son, Ben, was diagnosed with autism.
Ernie Els (left) fist bumps Jesse Singh, the CEO of AZEK, the parent company of TimberTech, during Thursday’s Pro-Am at Broken Sound. Photo by Scott Halleran.
But now that Els is once again filling his trophy case, he wants to concentrate on golf and enjoy the sport that has made him rich and famous. He makes it clear he has enjoyed it.
“I’m playing with a big group of guys that I played a lot of golf with for many years, so that’s really cool,” Els said. “And we’re playing golf courses that I kind of play at my club. We’re not playing golf courses that are very, very long or high rough or stuff like that, so you can actually play almost normal golf, which is nice.”
