Editor’s note: In “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) kept saying, “Who are those guys?” That line reminds me of the PGA Tour some weeks, including this last one.
LUKE DONALD WON IN DRAMATIC fashion in Florida. Yani Tseng collected her seventh LPGA title of the season in her native Taiwan. And Sergio Garcia torched the European Tour field in Spain for his first win in three years. Not a bad week in golf for so late in the season.
But I’m left wondering this: Who is Bill Lunde?
Lunde is the cat who took home the $1 million for winning the Kodak Challenge. The Las Vegas Review-Journal explained the season-long sideshow. “The competition consists of 30 PGA Tour holes—one at each of 30 tournaments throughout the season. The player with the lowest score on his best 18 Kodak Challenge holes wins the $1 million.”
Lunde collected the trophy and check yesterday at the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals Classic, even though he missed the cut. As you might imagine, Lunde was pretty tickled about the whole thing. “I’m just very relieved it’s over and I don’t have to worry about it anymore,” he said. “We’ve been looking at new houses, and this will make an easier decision.”
If you’re in the dark about Lunde like I am, here’s the sheet on him.
Lunde won the 2010 Turning Stone Resort Championship. (I obviously wasn’t paying very close attention.) So even though Lunde finished 130th on this year’s money list, he is exempt for the 2012 season. Lunde’s best finish in 28 events this season was a T12 at the season-opening Hyundai Tournament of Championship.
A San Diego native who now lives in Las Vegas, Lunde helped UNLV win an NCAA Championship in 1998. He said it was his biggest thrill in golf. (But maybe that changed yesterday.) He played the Nationwide Tour in 2008 before moving up to the PGA Tour on a full-time basis the last three seasons.
By the way, the two guys Lunde beat to win the Kodak Challenge are Fabian Gomez and Cameron Tringale. We’ll have to fill in their bios another time.
−The Armchair Golfer
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