Jake Yono

7/5/23

JY Journalism

Recapping the 2023 Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club 

Welcome everybody, this is my first article about golf and only golf, I wrote about the masters with the NCAA march madness tournament. But in this article, I will be genuinely writing about the Rocket Mortgage classic In Detroit at the Detroit Golf Club. I was a standard bearer for the weekend rounds and I watched it after my shifts today I will be giving a recap on it and my experiences.

To start off this was the fifth year of the Rocket Mortgage Classic, the tournament is a lowly ranked on the PGA Tour. Only 4 of the top 10 players in the FedEx Cup standings were in the tournament, and the course was not challenging at all with the winning score at -24 which means that the 3 players who went into the playoff hole were all at that score which is an Average of -6 per day.

Let’s talk about my experience first before we talk about the actual tournament. I was a standers bearer at this year's event. I became a standard bearer by signing up to volunteer. If you want to be as close to PGA tour action as possible you should consider volunteering. I know that not all events take volunteers on the PGA tour but most of them do. Also being a volunteer gets me 4 tickets and parking passes for the whole tournament, also in the volunteer headquarters I got complimentary breakfast and lunch. My job was holding a sign with the score of a group of golfers on it. On Saturday I held the sign for Davis Thompson and Scott Stallings. David finished 24th and Stallings 56th. On the final round Sunday I had a group of 3 for Ryan Palmer, Kyle Reifers, and the 5th ranked FedEx Cup ranked player Keegan Bradley. Bradley finished 21st with a score of -15, Reifers finished 52nd with a score of -9, and Ryan Palmer finished with a score of -12 which put him in 33rd place. I liked my Sunday group way better than my Saturday group because of Keegan Bradley and because it was a featured group on ESPN+ and I got on TV a ton of times which created a more fun atmosphere for the group and everyone around it. I will attach some pictures below. Also, another perk of doing this is that a got signed golf balls and gloves from the PGA Tour players. The only other volunteer position that gets that opportunity is the walking scorer that walks with me the entire round. Overall I recommend the Walking Scorer/Standard Bearer volunteer experience to any PGA Tour Fan when they have this opportunity.

Now let’s talk about the actual tournament and the top players on the leaderboard. In the final round, there was a 3-way playoff between Adam Hadwin, Collin Morikawa, and the winner Rickie Fowler. But before that, I would like to talk about significant players who have not been cut which are Justin Thomas, and the defending Rocket Mortgage Classic champion Tony Finau. Some surprises were Aaron Rai and the Monday tournament qualifier Peter Kuest both finishing in the top 10. In the final round on the back 9 through 17 holes Rickie Fowler was at even par. Rickie could have put the tournament away earlier in the day. Put he birdied 18 and sent the field to a playoff on 18. Morikawa and Hadwin pared 18 after Rickie made the winning birdie putt. I wanted Rickie to win as it was a storybook ending as he is the Rocket Mortgage Ambassador and has played in the tournament for all 5 years and had earned his first PGA Tour win since 2019. 

In conclusion, I love the Rocket Mortgage classic because I get the ultimate sports fan experience by watching and volunteering. I would also like to say that on the final playoff hole I used my volunteer credentials to sneak on the 18th hole to get an amazing view, and on Sunday when I was volunteering the caddy for Kyle Reifers was “Fluff” the greatest caddy in PGA Tour history. Finally to close out this article congrats to Rickie Fowler was winning his first event since 2019 which is the 2023 Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club.