In Avondale, Louisiana, the Zurich Classic is set to take place in New Orleans April 20-23, the only tournament on the PGA Tour to be played in a pairs format, with Edoardo Molinari, one of the vice-captains for Team Europe in the 2023 Ryder Cup, who will play alongside England captain Luke Donald.
Over the course of TPC Louisiana, in the 74th edition of the event, born in 1938 and held through 2016 in an individual format, nine of the top 20 world rankings in the field will be the top two defending champions, Patrick Cantlay (No. 4) and Xander Schauffele (No. 5). In a field of 160 competitors (80 teams of two players), they will face each other in alternating quadruple (first and third round) and quadruple (second and fourth) formulas, they will try, among other things, to prevent the appearance of the two Californians Max Homma (No. 7) / Colin Morikawa (No. 13), Brothers Matt Fitzpatrick (No. 8 and fresh from success at the former RBC Legacy) and Alex Fitzpatrick, Tom Kim (No. 19) / Se Woo Kim, Sungjae Im (No. 17) / Keith Mitchell, Kurt Kitayama (No. 20) / Taylor Montgomery and Sam Burns (No. 12) / Billy Hurschel. The latter is another of the race’s previous ten winners and one of eleven winners to have achieved the double, only four of them consecutively: Byron Nelson (1945/1946), Bo Winninger (1962/1963), Tom Watson (1980/1981) and Carlos Franco ( 1999/2000), while no one scored a hat-trick. The other seven to make it to the top of the podium are Ryan Palmer, Scott Percy, Jonas Blixt, Brian Steward, Seung Yul Noh, Jason Dufner and Nick Watney.
Donald and Molinari will act as competitors and watchful observers in light of the challenge with the United States, which will also be played by Zach Johnson, the USA Captain who will be paired with Steve Stricker, the 2021 Challenge winning USA Captain and now Vice Captain. Among the Continental players that Donald and Molinari will be able to watch include Thorbjorn Olesen / Nikolai Hoeggaard, Matt Wallace / Callum Schenquin and Victor Perez / Thomas Detry. Matt Fitzpatrick is out of the question, while the occasion is also good for studying the ‘competition’. The jackpot is valued at $8,600,000, with the first coin being $1,548,000.
Tournament on Discovery Plus and Eurosport 2 – The Zurich Classic in New Orleans is broadcast live on Discovery Plus and Eurosport 2. Days 1 and 2, 9-12pm on both platforms.
“Introvert. Avid gamer. Wannabe beer advocate. Subtly charming zombie junkie. Social media trailblazer. Web scholar.”
