A leaderboard that lacks some star power at the halfway point at the 2022 Players Championship normally means that at least a handful of superstars have failed to play their way into the final 36 holes of the event. That’s the case this week as Sam Burns and Tom Hoge share the lead after the first two rounds of a weather-delayed tournament while Brooks Koepka, Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa and Patrick Cantlay all missed the cut to play the final two rounds.
The theme for most of the stars who missed was that they caught the bad side of the draw. The late-early tee times got a TPC Sawgrass corse that played three shots harder than the early-late draw thanks to windy and wet conditions. Koepka, Spieth and Morikawa were all among that group. Koepka shot 81 on Saturday in his second round in hellacious winds. Spieth wasn’t much better with a 79.
“No, it was just extremely hard,” said Koepka. “Yeah, I felt like I got some bad breaks along with not playing well. Kind of one of those things for me. It’s just tough, man.”
It was tough. While most of the other side of the wave completely sat out Saturday’s crazy weather because of the delays and the way the tee times fell, Koepka, Spieth and Morikawa played through the worst of it. Koepka dunked his approach on the par-3 17th both times he played it (he had to finish Round 1 on Saturday and play Round 2), and everyone in his group followed suit the first time around.
Morikawa was probably the biggest surprise of the bunch as he came in as one of the handful of tournament favorites. His 73-75 effort fell two strokes short of sneaking inside the cut line. It’s just the seventh worldwide missed cut of his stellar, young career.
2022 Players notable missed cuts
- Jason Day (+3)
- Collin Morikawa (+4)
- Justin Rose (+4)
- Adam Scott (+4)
- Webb Simpson (+5)
- Patrick Cantlay (+5)
- Gary Woodland (+6)
- Jordan Spieth (+7)
- Xander Schauffele (+7)
- Tony Finau (+7)
- Brooks Koepka (+9)
- Matthew Wolff (+9)
