5 things for Shriners Children’s Open: Patrick Cantlay, Tiger Woods nostalgia, golf’s newest star

The 2022 Shriners Children’s Open will again be contested at TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas, Nevada.

From Patrick Cantlay, to Tiger Woods, to Tom Kim, here’s what you need to know about this year’s tournament:

Cantlay Headlines Field

World No. 4 Cantlay will tee it up again this week at a golf course that clearly suits his eye. The 2021 PGA Tour Player of the Year won this event in 2017, following that result with back-to-back runner-up finishes in ’18 and ’19, and an eighth-place finish in 2020. Cantlay vs. the field might not be the worst bet made in Las Vegas this week.

If you were to make that bet, there are a couple other names you’d want to keep an eye on as play gets underway at TPC Summerlin.

Max Homa is in the field, and he comes in as one of the hottest players in the world. Homa won the first event of the wraparound season, the Fortinet Championship, then proceeded to go 4-0-0 at the Presidents Cup in his first professional appearance representing the United States in a team event.

Sungjae Im was on the losing side at the Presidents Cup, but should have fond memories of Vegas. Im is looking to win on Tour for the first time since the 2021 Shriners Children’s Open, when a final-round 62 left Im four shots clear of the field. 

Nostalgia

Woods made history when it took him 91 holes over the course of five days to capture an iconic victory that will forever live in the minds of golf fans. No, it wasn’t the 2008 U.S. Open. It was the 1996 Las Vegas Invitational, where Woods captured the first of his 82 Tour victories.

This event used to be a 90-hole marathon, but even that wasn’t enough for Woods and recent victorious U.S. Presidents Cup captain Davis Love III. Both 27 under in regulation, Woods emerged victorious after just one playoff hole, and set into motion one of the most remarkable careers the sporting world has ever seen.

Just six months later, Woods would win the first of his 15 major championships, overcoming a first-round, front-nine 40 at Augusta National to win his first green jacket by a resounding 12 shots.

Golf’s Newest Star

There were two winners at this year’s Presidents Cup: the United States and Tom Kim. The former may have captured the cup, but Kim captured the hearts of golf fans around the world. Magic moments and a youthful exuberance had us glued to our TV’s Saturday afternoon as his putter fell to the ground and he unleashed a ferocious hat-throw the likes of which we haven’t seen since Woods.

Kim will let it fly at TPC Summerlin in his first start of the season, with his most recent Tour start coming in the FedExCup playoffs at the BMW Championship. It’s been quite the come-up for the 20-year-old, who didn’t even have full Tour status prior to his come-from-behind victory at the Wyndham Championship in what would have been his final start of last season, if not for the victory.

Shriners Children’s

Shriners Children’s is a unique health care system with a reputation for finding answers and giving families hope. At locations in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, children receive excellent care for orthopedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries, and cleft lip and palate, regardless of the families’ ability to pay or insurance status. Since opening their first hospital in 1922, the health care system has improved the lives of more than 1.4 million children.

The primary mission of Shriners Children’s is to help children who need specialized medical care – wherever they may live. Although Shriners locations are primarily in North America, their compassionate health care system has treated children from many countries and conducts several medical outreach clinics outside of the U.S. every year.

Runnin’ Rebel

For many, a trip to Las Vegas is a vacation. For Taylor Montgomery, it’s home. The PGA Tour rookie is from nearby Henderson, Nevada, and spent his college years as a UNLV Runnin’ Rebel. Golf is in Montgomery’s DNA. His father, Monte, is the general manager at famed Vegas course Shadow Creek. Montgomery was actually living with his parents as he chased his dream of making it to the Tour until his recent third-place finish at the Fortinet Championship. 

Montgomery heads home as arguably the hottest player in the world receiving the smallest amount of attention. His last finish outside the top 10 in an event came in early July on the Korn Ferry Tour. Since, he has four top-10 finishes on the KFT and finished third and T-9 in his first two starts as a Tour rookie at the Fortinet Championship and Sanderson Farms Championship, respectively. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that Montgomery has only recorded two over-par rounds since April 1, and both of them came at the U.S. Open.

Perhaps a home game is the perfect place for this rookie to exchange all those top-10s for a victory.