By The Numbers

- As in under, as in the number of strokes Andrew Pranger sailed below par to win the Metropolitan Amateur Championship at Glen Echo Country Club in 2022. Pranger’s final-round score of 3-under 68 took him 6-under for the championship and catapulted him three strokes past runner-up Ryan Sullivan. Most notably, it made Pranger the first three-time winner of the championship. And this summer, when the “Metro” is conducted at Persimmon Woods for the third time, Pranger will have a chance to join David Estes and Kyle Weldon as the only players to win the title in back-to-back years. That accomplishment would also give Pranger a fourth Metropolitan Amateur, which might be one of those achievements that never gets matched.

7 - The number of players who have lost their spots on the LIV Tour as the 2023 season begins. That’s right, LIV doesn’t just add players, it also subtracts them. So while the alternate tour recently has gotten press for signing more PGA Tour players like - Thomas Pieters, Danny Lee and Brendan Steele - it also had to make room by dropping players. Those who lost their place on LIV for 2023 are Wade Ormsby, Laurie Canter, Sadom Kaewkanjana, Phachara Khongwatmai, Hennie Du Plessis, Adrian Otaegui and Turk Pettit. These players will be competing mostly on the Asian Tour going forward, but it wouldn’t be a major surprise if a few of them found a temporary spot with LIV at some point during the coming season.

21 - The number of holes available at “The 21,” a new piece to the Cabot Citrus Farms property, north of Tampa, Fla. The layout actually is two courses in one. That is, an 11-hole short course called ‘Aces’ will feature stops that are no longer than 125 yards. And to go along with that, a more traditional 10-hole routing called ‘Ten’ will present a number of short par 4s to go with one par 5.

Architect Mike Nuzzo is designing the course to complement the renovated, more traditional 18-hole tracks - Cabot Barrens and Cabot Oaks. The project is scheduled to debut in December on the 1,200-acre property formerly known as World Woods Golf Club. However, when it opens, the new track will not be the first 21-hole course in America - that distinction belongs to Parkersburg Country Club in Vienna, W.V. The par-73 club is formally an 18-hole gig, but it offers three practice holes that members can play all in one round if they so wish.

23

- As the 2023 season gets under way, 23 was the number of PGA Tour wins belonging to Rory McIlroy. The Northern Irishman’s first PGA Tour win came at the 2010 Quail Hollow Championship. His most recent, i.e. his 23rd, was at the 2022 CJ Cup in South Carolina. McIlroy is 28th on the all-time list of PGA Tour wins and his 24th victory will tie him with Dustin Johnson and Gary Player on that same list. If he gets a 25th win, he’ll be alongside Johnny Miller, Tommy Armour, and Macdonald Smith.

86

- This is the number of strokes that separated Tiger Woods and the next best player in the four major championships Woods won in succession in 2000-01. Woods won the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach by 15 shots, finishing 12-under par to Ernie Els’ score 3-over par. Following up, Woods won the British Open at St Andrews – becoming the youngest player to complete the career Grand Slam – and the PGA Championship at Valhalla in the same year before adding the 2001 Master to complete the “Tiger Slam.” He became the only player in history to capture all four majors in succession. His combined score in those four majors was 86 strokes better than the next best player, as he topped each field by an average of more than five shots.

April 29-30

Old Warson Cup

Old Warson Country Club