Spieth, new sponsor part of changing times at Colonial and on PGA Tour

One of the PGA Tour’s longest-tenured events will operate under a fresh name this week when the Dean & DeLuca Invitational unfolds at Colonial Country Club.

Dean & DeLuca marks the fifth title sponsor to join forces with representatives from Fort Worth’s annual PGA Tour stop, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary. For local golf fans, the name change at Colonial coincides with a changing of the guard in regard to the primary movers and shakers on today’s PGA Tour.

For different reasons, longtime gate magnets Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson have taken a step back and yielded the spotlight to younger players at the top of the world golf rankings who have done most of the winning at the sport’s major championships in recent seasons.

The 2016 season began with three players under 30 holding down the top three spots in the world for the first time since the rankings were introduced in 1986.

All three remain in those spots in May, with Dallas resident Jordan Spieth (No. 2) headed to Fort Worth to participate in Thursday’s opening round at Colonial. Spieth, 22, is the reigning U.S. Open champion. He is joined at the top of the rankings by PGA champion Jason Day (No. 1) and Rory McIlroy (No. 3), a four-time major champion. Day is 28. McIlroy is 27.

Behind that threesome is another wave of under-30 talent topped by Rickie Fowler, 27, a top-10 golfer and winner of the 2008 Ben Hogan Award during his college days at Oklahoma State. Other notable names include Colonial competitors Patrick Reed, 25, and Hideki Matsuyama, 24.

Reed, a Spring resident, began May at No. 12 in the world golf rankings. Matsuyama checked in at No. 14. Irving resident and Colonial competitor Danny Lee, 25, stood at No. 42.

In addition, Colonial competitors Bryson DeChambeau, 22, and Smylie Kaufman, 24, played their way into weekend contention last month in their debuts at the Masters Tournament.

Roll them together, along with fellow 20-something standouts Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka and Tony Finau, and it is clear why PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem has declared himself “bullish” on the future of the game.

“I can categorically say we have never been more excited about the future because of the youth movement and the quality of youth right now,” Finchem said earlier this season.

Michael Tothe, Colonial tournament director, said the latest wave of 20-something stars is “great for the game because they’re attracting new fans to our events. We’re seeing that at Colonial.”

The biggest piece to the puzzle for Fort Worth, as well as most U.S.-based events, is Spieth. The emerging face of professional golf has finished fourth or higher in each of golf’s last five major championships, with two victories. His flirtation with last year’s Grand Slam led to Spieth’s selection as 2015 PGA Tour Player of the Year. It capped a stellar season marked by five victories and a tour-record $12,030,465 million in official earnings, plus a $10 million bonus for winning the FedEx Cup.

Lest anyone question there are new sheriffs in charge of the game on today’s PGA Tour, consider this: Day and McIlroy have combined with Spieth to win five of golf’s past seven major titles. This has overlapped a stretch when Woods, 40, has fallen out of the top 500 in the world golf rankings because of recurring back surgeries and Mickelson, 45, seems to be feeling the impact of Father Time on his golf game since winning the 2013 British Open.

While any tournament director at a PGA Tour event would love to have Woods or Mickelson in the field, Spieth did something almost unprecedented last year. Spieth, who played college golf at Texas, became the first player in 13 years to displace Woods at No. 1 on the 2015 list of the world’s top-earning golfers, as reported by Golf Digest. The magazine cited a combined $53 million in on-course and off-course earnings last year for Spieth, while Woods checked in at $48.5 million.

“You can’t have a conversation about golf without his name coming up. It’s the same way it was for so many years with Tiger,” Tothe said of Spieth. “Phil Mickelson played some great golf at the same time, but the conversation always came down to Tiger. I feel the same way right now with Jordan. And that’s a lot of fun.”

It’s also an image-lifter for the Colonial tournament, which has attracted Woods to Fort Worth only once in his PGA Tour career (1997). Spieth, a runner-up last season in Fort Worth, is preparing for his fourth consecutive Colonial appearance and has stressed on multiple occasions that the event is one of his favorites.

“Colonial is a place that’s special to me,” Spieth said. “I’m very comfortable on the golf course. I’ve had success there.”

Best of all, from a tournament perspective: Spieth committed in February, making it possible for Colonial officials to tout his participation for three months while selling tickets to its first event staged under the Dean & DeLuca flag. At the time he made his announcement, Spieth was ranked No. 1 in the world, a first for a golfer from Dallas-Fort Worth.

“That’s everybody’s dream, to get those guys who move the needle to commit early,” Tothe said. “Plus, he’s local. And he’s very approachable. For us, that’s special. If Jordan could be the face of golf for the next 10 years, like Tiger was for so long, we’d all shake our heads up and down and say, ‘Yep, golf is in a good place.’ ”

Tom Watson, a World Golf Hall of Famer who won the 1998 Colonial title, will make that pronouncement today. Watson, an eight-time major champion, said the young players at the top of today’s rankings — Spieth, Day and McIlroy — have the necessary blend of skills and intangibles to carry the sport for an extended stretch.

“But I’m equally impressed by how they handle themselves outside of playing the game. They are generally nice people. They treat the fans well.

“They kid around with fans and they do things that I never did. All in all, I think the game is in great stead right now. It’s really cool. It’s good for our game, that’s for sure.”

Television ratings, by and large, back that premise. Ratings for the Golf Channel, which handles the majority of nonweekend telecasts of PGA Tour events, drew stronger-than-expected numbers in 2015, said network president Mike McCarley.

The 2015 ratings, he said, equaled what the network experienced during a record-setting 2013 season, when Woods won five events. Woods was limited to 11 events last year because of back surgery, but Spieth and Day combined for 10 wins, including three majors.

Regardless of the world rankings, Spieth said McIlroy deserves the most respect among the game’s young stars because he has won four majors. Spieth and Day have combined for three, with shutouts for Fowler, Reed, Matsuyama, Lee and the rest.

“Rory is more accomplished than me and Jason and Rickie and whoever else,” Spieth said. “I have the highest respect for him and his game and the way he handles things.”

But McIlroy, a native of Northern Ireland who competes primarily on the European Tour at this time of year, will not be at Colonial. Spieth will be in Fort Worth, along with Reed, Matsuyama, Lee, DeChambeau, Kaufman, Finau and other 20-somethings who seek to claim a plaid jacket at a new-look Colonial event that will feature fresh touches implemented by the new title sponsor.

Among them: white mesh coverings for fencing and grandstand areas rather than the green mesh used in past years. The corporate color scheme for signage will feature black and gray instead of plum, the preferred shade of CrownePlaza, the event’s former sponsor.

The Prince Street display area (formerly Colonial Main Street) will feature a Dean & DeLuca retail outlet where fans can sample and purchase goods from the specialty-food provider. D&D agreed in February to be the title sponsor of Fort Worth’s tour stop through the 2021 tournament.

“We want to enter the tournament in a way that’s respectful,” said Jay Coldren, Dean & DeLuca’s chief development officer. “But as we grow with the partnership, we’ll try to translate the magic that is part of the experience at our stores and bring that here.”

On the course, much of this week’s magic figures to come from Spieth and his fellow 20-somethings near the top of the world rankings. Reed, who began May with a tour-best eight top-10 finishes this season, made it clear that he is eager to return to the winner’s circle after runner-up efforts at the Texas Open, Hero World Challenge and the Tournament of Champions.

“It’s nice to lead the top-10 category. But I’m out here to play for the ‘W,’ not to finish second or eighth or 10th,” said Reed, who has four career victories at tour events. “I feel like I’m playing solid and any time I tee it up, it’s about the ‘W.’ ”

Reed said he’s grown in his consistency this season to the point that “even with a somewhat off week, I can still finish inside the top 10” of most events. He’ll put that theory to the test at Colonial, where Reed joins Spieth, Matsuyama, Lee and others among the under-30 contenders seeking their share of a PGA Tour spotlight once dominated by Tiger and Phil.

This story was originally published May 24, 2016 at 6:51 PM with the headline "Spieth, new sponsor part of changing times at Colonial and on PGA Tour."