Shriners Open gets commitments from major champions
The winners of both majors played during the 2020 PGA Tour season are bringing their games to Las Vegas next month.
Bryson DeChambeau, who dominated the U.S. Open last week, and Collin Morikawa, winner of the PGA Championship in August, are among golfers who have made early commitments to play at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open.
The tournament will be contested Oct. 8-11 at TPC Summerlin.
DeChambeau and Morikawa are among 13 major championship winners who will be on hand, joining Jason Day, Sergio Garcia, Francisco Molinari and Louis Oosthuizen.
Other prominent players already committed to the Shriners include Rickie Fowler, Matthew Wolff, Hideki Matsuyama, Tony Finau, Matt Kuchar and Paul Casey.
Players have until the Friday before the start of a tournament to formally commit to a PGA Tour event. At this point, 95 of the top 125 players from last year’s final FedEx Cup standings have signed on.
“This is a very strong field,” said Patrick Lindsey, executive director of the tournament, who hinted there are probably three or four other top names still to come.
“It’s strong now, and that might add some intrigue to those that are still out there,” he said.
Four of the past five winners will be in the field, including defending champ Kevin Na, DeChambeau (2018), Patrick Cantlay (2017) and Smylie Kaufman (2015).
The big draws are DeChambeau and Morikawa, who have been among the best players in the world since the tour returned from the Covid-19 shutdown in March. Both have two wins since July, with DeChambeau now ranked fifth in the world and Morikawa sixth.
Their commitments are not surprising. DeChambeau is a past champion who grew up not far from Las Vegas in Clovis, California. Morikawa graduated from Cal in 2019, turned pro and has made Las Vegas his home.
“It cements what we’ve been trying to do over the past five years,” Lindsey said of the field so far. “We’ve increased the competition with some of the best players in the world.”
Greg Robertson is a freelance reporter who covers golf for the Review-Journal. He can be reached at robertsongt@gmail.com .
