Brian

Gay

The straight shooter has been splitting his time between the PGA TOUR and Champions Tour, with a WD last week at the U.S. Senior Open. He’s just 2-for-8 on the big stage this season with one top 50, a T11 at the Bermuda Championship. Gamers can keep him off their fantasy radar.

Gay is a five-time PGA TOUR winner but spends most of his time on the Champions circuit now. The 51-year-old has made five starts on the main stage this season, missing the cut or WD’ing in four of them with a T11 at the Bermuda Championship in the fall. He’s gone 47 straight PGA TOUR starts without a top-10 finish so gamers can safely remove him from their radar.

Gay made two starts in the fall, a T11 at the Bermuda Championship and a missed cut at the RSM. Splitting his time between tours now, he stayed busy with 18 starts on the PGA TOUR last season and 16 on the senior circuit. He was set to make his 21st start at the AmEx but has missed the cut in seven of his last eight tries which kicked off right after his 2013 win in the desert. Gamers should remove him from all weekly consideration this week and expect to see his 2023 schedule more heavily weighted toward the Champions circuit, most likely.

Gay won this tournament two years ago, and in three prior trips to Port Royal GC he has finished no worse than T-12. The 50-year-old now plays mostly on PGA Tour Champions but does tee it up on shorter courses that suit his style of play, and this week’s layout clearly ticks those boxes. Gay’s score line has been consistent, as he has turned in a round of 5-under 66 each of the first three days. He’s alone in fifth at 15 under, three shots behind co-leaders Ben Griffin and Seamus Power as he looks to win on Tour for the sixth time. With only three prior editions of the tournament, no player has raised the hardware in Bermuda more than once - but Gay could change that with another low round on Sunday.

Gay plays most of his golf on PGA Tour Champions these days, but he still has a soft spot for Port Royal GC where he won in 2020. He has never finished worse than T-12 at this event, having also gone T-3 in 2019 and T-12 last year, and he’s again in that range after consecutive rounds of 5-under 66. At 10 under, he’s tied for 15th and four shots behind leader Ben Crane. Gay withdrew from the Wyndham Championship in his most recent PGA Tour start, and this marks his first made cut on Tour since a T-51 result at the RBC Heritage in April.

The 50-year-old, who’s been moonlighting on the Champions Tour with three top 10s in eight events, arrived 184th in the FedExCup standings so his season on this stage is over. He’s fully exempt thru next season (2022-23) from his playoff win over Wyndham Clark at the 2021 Bermuda (Nov. 2020) as a pre-tourney 200/1 outright, and ends this campaign with five made cuts in 18 starts and no top 10s. The Central Florida resident’s WD, his 10th mid-tourney WD in 644 events, will leave Nick Taylor and Danny Willett as a 2-ball on Friday.

Gay, who recently turned 50 in December, admitted it was “really strange” to play the Champions and yet one thing remained the same: the caliber of golf needed to win. “It’s great to see a lot of old, familiar faces, which is neat,” he said last week. “Same thing as anywhere though, you got to play good golf, period. Doesn’t matter.” Gay posted three sub-par rounds at Tiburon, where he ended with a bogey-free, 3-under 69 on Sunday to finish six shots behind winner Bernhard Langer. He said his plans are to stay with the PGA Tour for at least the next six weeks, but he’s considering another Champions start in April in Texas. In 10 previous appearances at PGA National, he’s made six cuts with one top 25 – finishing T-20 in 2019. Gay, who played college golf at Florida, finished T-46 in last year’s Honda Classic.

There are few courses these days on which Gay can contend, but Waialae Country Club fits the mold of a good fit. Garnering a career scoring average of 68.60, the recently turned 50-year-old has a great opportunity to start of his new year off on the right foot. 16-for-18 on weekend appearances in Honolulu, Gay will hope for much of the same as he lacked consistency in 2021. Missing 19 cuts in total and withdrawing from the Shriners Children’s Open, Gay should take solace in where he played well. Collecting a top-15 finish at the Bermuda Championship and a top-40 result at the RSM Classic, the skillset which aided him in those two starts should do the same this week. He is set to begin his Sony Open alongside Si Woo Kim and Patton Kizzire at 12:50 p.m. EST tomorrow.

The long-time Florida resident celebrated his 50th birthday Dec. 14th and is now eligible for the Champions Tour. It’ll be interesting to see what his schedule will look like going forward, as he’s still fully exempt on the PGA TOUR thru 2022-23 from his most recent of five victories, a sudden-death playoff version over Wyndham Clark at the 2020-21 stand-alone Bermuda Championship in his 602nd career event at the age of 48. The Fort Worth native has not recorded another top-10 finish since the win, but did post a T12 four starts ago at the Bermuda as defender, despite a travel related, late arrival, and an opening 4-over 75 (75-67-64-68), which proves he can still be competitive against the younger crowd.

“I haven’t even been out here to get my head in the game, so I guess I’ll try to get in that mode a little bit this afternoon with a little bit of practice, try to get my head on straight about what I want to do when I come out tomorrow morning and start the tournament,” Gay to media on Wednesday. This will be the third start of the season for Gay, who turns 50 in December and becomes eligible for PGA Tour Champions events in 2022, but he’s yet to see the weekend after missing the cut in the Sanderson Farms Championship and withdrawing after three rounds at the Shriners Children’s Open. Last year, the Florida alum won the Bermuda Championship for his fifth career victory and first since 2013. Gay shot a final-round 64 to come from two strokes back to force a playoff with Wyndham Clark at 15-under 269, and he won with a birdie on the first extra hole. Gay finished 89th on the regular-season FedExCup standings to qualify for the playoffs for the fifth year in a row and 12th time overall. He finished 95th on the FEC standings, making 18 cuts in 27 starts with the win in Bermuda makring his only top 10. In one other previous appearance at Port Royal Golf Course, Gay finished T-3 in 2020 event.