Cameron

Tringale

The young Chilean currently ranks 19th in the OWGR, slightly down from his best of 15th following the Masters this spring. He’s played four full seasons on the PGA TOUR and made it to East Lake in each of the last three. He’s piled up 10 starts in major championships but never finished better than T23 in any of those starts. His commitment to LIV will knock him out of the Presidents Cup with Cameron Smith also making the jump today, removing two of the International team qualifiers. Playing in this week’s Boston event will result in a PGA TOUR suspension for both and last week’s TOUR Championship was the last we’ll see of them on the PGA TOUR circuit, at least for the foreseeable future. Other players to make the jump to LIV Golf this week include Marc Leishman, Anirban Lahiri, Harold Varner III, and Cameron Tringale.

Tringale shared the news on Twitter Sunday, one week after his 2021-22 season ended with a 63rd-place finish at the BMW Championship. The 35-year-old is the all-time leading money winner among players without a Tour win, racking up $17.3 million without hoisting a trophy. He joined the PGA Tour in 2010 and has maintained his card every year since with consistent play that has included four runner-ups, most recently at the ZOZO Championship last fall. Tringale was among a group of five players expected to depart for LIV according to a GolfChannel.com report over the weekend, and Tringale’s statement cited a desire to create “greater harmony with my family and the people and causes I care about at home.” According to the Golf Channel report, he is expected among the 48-man field for next week’s LIV event in Boston.

Tringale took advantage of calm conditions on Thursday morning when he carded a career-low 61 but failed to replicate that magic as the week went on. He regressed back to the field with rounds of 72-74-70 over the last three days. Today, he landed 12 GIR which was slightly better than field average but more impressive considering he split just 4-of-13 fairways and was not playing from the fairway for most of his day. His irons and putter were the key weapons this week. Tringale is projected to climb from 37th to 25th in the FedExCup race with this result but his search for a first PGA TOUR title continues.

Tringale looked sharp out of the gate with 4-of-5 fairways hit and 4-of-5 GIR which he converted into four pars and an eagle. It fell flat from there with just five GIR on his final 13 holes and his putter didn’t show up to bail him out. Tringale lost roughly two strokes putting today and swallowed six bogeys on the day. The Georgia Tech product was sleeping on his third career 36-hole lead or co-lead on the PGA TOUR. In those events he’s opened with three cumulative rounds of 24-under golf but shot a combined 6-over in the third round. Tringale is now four shots off the lead as he attempts to rebound and chase down his first PGA TOUR title.

Tringale fired a career-low 61 on Thursday so it was always going to be an impossible task to repeat that magic. While a day-two 72 doesn’t look all that great next to a ’61', today’s round was still 0.57 shots better than the field average. “Long putts, it’s so tough to judge how much the wind is going to hurt, and then you get a putt that’s where the wind is going sideways, and I mean, it might be a ball, two, a cup, even as close as seven, eight feet. It’s really tricky, and you know, hitting a lot of greens helps, and hopefully I’ll be able to do that tomorrow.” Tringale landed 13 GIR on day one but just nine today. This will go in the books as his third career 36-hole lead or co-lead on the PGA TOUR (T2/2014 Barclays; T9/2021 Valero Texas Open). He’s three shots clear heading into the weekend but shots can evaporate quickly in the type of windy and firm conditions they’ve faced this week.

Tringale didn’t have a single scoring chance inside of 15 feet on his first four holes but ended his day with eight looks from inside of that range. He converted on six of them while also splashing home a pair of birdie bombs from outside 37 feet. The highlight of his round was a six-hole birdie train that kicked off with a five-footer at the 10th. This will go in the books as his fourth time posting a first-round lead or co-lead on the PGA TOUR but the first since the 2017 Barbasol Championship. He’s finished T11, T7, and T6 in his previous events where he was FRL. Tringale has two rounds of ’62' on his PGA TOUR resume but this will be his first ’61' on the CV. From a strokes gained perspective, he’s currently gaining 9.7 strokes over the field which will likely end of being his personal best, as well (+9.6 SG:Total in R2 of the Valero Texas Open).

The first-time teammates were bogey-free, Tringale doing the most work with five of their seven birdies, but they needed something more along the lines of their R1 62, even that, however, wouldn’t have kept pace with leaders Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay, who fired a day-low 60. They’ll be in the third-to-last group on Sunday, beginning seven adrift, but just two short of current second-place holders Garrick Higgo and Branden Grace, which seems a more realistic goal, barring a collapse by the front-runners. Tringale, winless in 325 TOUR events, owns four runners-up, most recently a T2 on debut at this season’s ZOZO (in Japan), while Clark’s lone podium in 101 events is a playoff loss at last season’s stand-alone Bermuda.

Playing the tougher of the tough formats today, it was hard to tell just based on the scorecard. This duo scribbled six birdies and just one bogey. Even the bogey was just the result of a miss from inside of three feet so this could have very easily been a blemish-free round. Highlights included a 25'4" eagle splash from Clark at the 7th and a 59'7" birdie bomb from Clark again, at the 15th. These two look to have some good chemistry but this team was somewhat of a last-minute connection, “Our caddies are really good friends and both went to University of Oregon, both our caddies. They kind of teed it up and were like, hey, it would be fun if we were out there together, and he didn’t know if he was going to play and I signed up just because I love this event, and about a week ago or 10 days ago, he’s like, let’s go.”

Tringale has played in every Zurich since debuting a T28 in 2010 during his rookie campaign. Prior to it becoming a team event in 2017, he posted a pair of top 10s, highlighted by a still-career-tying-best 2nd in 2015, and also finished T5 two tries ago in 2019 while teamed with fellow Yellow Jacket Roberto Castro. Clark is making his third straight appearance, missing the cut on debut in 2019 (teamed w/ D.J. Trahan), and posting a T17 (of 33 teams) last year alongside first-timer Erik van Rooyen. Today, Clark did the majority of the heavy lifting, circling six on his own ball, two from between 16 and 18 feet, while Tringale chimed in with a pair of birdies and a big, bomb eagle-3 at 11 from 46'7".

This will be Clark’s third time playing in the Zurich Classic, each with a different teammate. Missing the cut in 2019 with Ben Crane, he partnered up with Erik van Rooyen in 2021, due to their caddies’ friendship, and finished in a tie for 17th-place. Clark arrives this year having made his last three cuts on the PGA Tour, two of which have gone for top-35 finishes. Looking to improve on these efforts, he has employed the help of Tringale who is also coming in off three straight made cuts. Finishing in a tie for 12th-place at the RBC Heritage, the Georgia Tech product brings not only form, but a long Zurich Classic history to New Orleans. This will be his 12th total start in the event as he finished runner-up to Justin Rose in 2015 while it was still stroke-play format. Since, he has missed the cut 3-of-4 times in the team event with his one weekend appearance going for a top-5 finish alongside fellow Yellow Jacket, Roberto Castro in 2019.