Posted by Jason Sobel
As I watched J.B. (Don't call me John) Holmes win the FBR Open in only the fourth start of his rookie season on the PGA Tour, I was reminded of an e-mail from reader Andrew Buckman, who wanted to extol Holmes' virtues and found my in-box to be an easy target.
A little more than a month ago, in response to an article in which I predicted Camilo Villegas would win rookie of the year honors and my fellow ESPN.compatriots chose Ryan Moore (who is not eligible for the award, it has since been ruled) and Bill Haas, Buckman wrote: "All this kid knows how to do is win. ... Holmes will make [Scott] Hend, [Hank] Kuehne, [Tiger] Woods and [John] Daly look like they're hitting mashies and niblicks. ... Essentially, because he is also so accurate he will make a ton of birdies this year without even rolling the flat stick well."
Andrew, my sincere apologies. At the time, I responded by writing that Holmes would struggle to hang with the big boys on tour and would be right around No. 125 on the money list at season's end. Instead, he's already in the top 10 just five events into the year while maintaining the third-best driving distance on tour. Though I'm sticking with Villegas (who finished T-2 in Scottsdale) for ROY honors, it's already evident that Holmes will be a mainstay in the big leagues for many years to come; he now owns full status on tour through 2008.
(An aside: Perhaps the greatest story to come out of Holmes' success this weekend was the fact that he earned 10 varsity letters in golf growing up in Kentucky. Yup, I did the quick math, too, and it turns out he was a member of the high school squad as a third-grader and was regularly beating competitive players nearly twice his age only two years later.)
Of course, Holmes is hardly the only rookie to make a splash in a season so young.
As already mentioned, Villegas notched his first career top-10 finish Sunday. He also came away with big points in my book earlier this season for shooting a wind-blown 6-under 64 in front of thousands of fans as Michelle Wie's playing partner at the Sony Open.
Nathan Green has some experience -- the Aussie is 30 years old -- but he's still a rook on the big stage. Even so, he scored top-five finishes in his first two starts of the season, including taking Woods and Jose Maria Olazabal to a playoff at the Buick before chunking a chip on the first extra hole for an elimination bogey.
Who is Henrik Bjornstad? Don't ask Woods. "I've heard of the name, yes," Tiger said before the Buick. "But as far as I've never seen him swing, don't know what he looks like." Well, so far he looks like a guy who has plenty of game. The first-ever PGA Tour member from Norway, the 26-year-old Bjornstad has made the cut in his first three starts of the season, with top-12 finishes in each of the last two events.
Troy Matteson set a Nationwide Tour money record with close to a half-million bucks last season and began his maiden voyage as a member of the big leagues with three consecutive finishes of 31st or better. Last year in the minors, he was 34th in driving distance, seventh in greens in regulation and eighth in putting average; those stats will translate to greater success if he continues in '06.
And then there's Bubba Watson. By all accounts, Bubba is 10 feet tall and drives the ball about 580 yards. OK, so the exaggerations are getting out of hand at this point, but Watson sure looks like the real deal. The 6-foot-3, 180-pound Bagdad, Fla., native currently leads the tour with an average driving distance of 324.9 yards. And though the booming tee shots certainly help the other areas of his game, he's no drive-for-show wannabe. Entering the FBR (in which he didn't play), Watson ranked ninth in greens in regulation and 12th in overall scoring average. He'll be a fan favorite of John Daly/Jason Gore proportions for years to come.
All this and we haven't even mentioned Moore (who's made only one of three cuts in what's technically not his rookie season; he finished 123rd on the money list as a Special Temporary Member last year) and Haas (who's earned only $70,239 while making the cut in two of three starts). They are among the brightest young stars in the league and should have an impact before too long.
Now that Woods is 30, there remains only one current player in his 20s (Ben Curtis) who has won a major. Though Sergio Garcia and Adam Scott endure as the next contenders to that throne, it's nice to see there's some talented new blood on the PGA Tour this year.
