The Loop
Missing Links: Rory McIlroy's goals for 2015? 'Green Jacket'
Stories of interest you might have missed…
"As he picked up the European money list trophy for the second time in three seasons on Sunday, Rory McIlroy had two words to say when asked for his goals for 2015: Green Jacket,'" this Reuters story by Matt Smith says.
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The Australian Masters is not the most popular tournament Down Under, but it is among the most unpredictable, John Huggan writes in the Scotsman. He recalls that on the eve of the 2009 Masters, tournament director Andrew Langford-Jones received a call from a Tiger Woods representative asking for "some background on the course before his press conference," Langford-Jones said. "I told him how February is the best month for golf on the Melbourne Sandbelt, how we were in the middle of a bad drought and how the greens were running at 12 on the Stimpmeter. Half an hour later, [Tiger] repeated everything I said almost word-for-word."
Stacy Lewis on Saturday evening opened a fortune cookie that read, "Good news of long awaited event will arrive soon." That was one prescient fortune cookie. "Lewis carried the fortune in her pocket all day Sunday. It was a pretty good omen," Greg Hardwig of the Naples Daily News writes. Lewis went on to claim the LPGA's money title, the Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average and the Rolex Player of the Year award.
"Suzy Whaley is taking another crack at golf's old boy's network. More than one decade after becoming the first woman to qualify for a PGA event in 58 years, the 48-year-old Whaley became the first female officer in the PGA of America's history. She's on course to become the organization's first female president in 2018, too," the Associated Press writes.
Lydia Ko of New Zealand, only 17, earned $1.5 million for winning the CME Group Tour Championship and the CME Race to the Globe on Sunday. "People will run out of superlatives by the time her career is over because the platform has been built for her to become the greatest player the women's game has ever seen," Daniel Richardson of the New Zealand Daily Herald writes. "Hyperbole? Maybe, considering she's only had one season as a professional but when you factor in her work ethic, drive to succeed and freakish abilities it just seems to fit."