Warwick Hills maestro Jim Furyk returns for The Ally Challenge presented by McLaren

Jim Furyk's 2022 PGA TOUR Champions season had been an unexpected slog until last week’s DICK’S Sporting Goods Open.

But with a new driver in his bag and the aftereffects of a bout with COVID in his rear view, Furyk, 52, got back to playing like himself. He posted a tie for fourth in Endicott, New York, his best finish of the year and only his second top 10 (the first came in the first event, the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai).

Yes, you read that correctly. The same Jim Furyk who finished in the top 10 in nearly 70% of his starts as a rookie on PGA TOUR Champions with three victories and three seconds, has just two top-10s in 11 events in ’22.

But that’s often the nature of golf, and no one would be surprised if the 17-time winner on the PGA TOUR now goes on an epic run. He’s definitely well-positioned for it, as this week he returns to a course in which he won in his very first PGA TOUR Champions start and played it so well while it served as host for a PGA TOUR event that Furyk is the all-time leading money winner there.

The Ally Challenge and Warwick Hills couldn’t have come at a better time for Furyk, who would dearly love to shrug off the first half of this year.

“It's nice to go to places where you've had success, obviously Warwick Hills, and I won at Pebble (the PURE Insurance Championship followed The Ally Challenge last year),” Furyk said. “I like the golf course in St. Louis (Furyk tied for sixth at the inaugural Ascension Charity Classic). Then we have our event at Timuquana (the host was T4 at the first CONSTELLATION FURYK & FRIENDS). We had a good opportunity at SAS last year (T3). So these are a lot of courses that I’m comfortable with, which is … which is always nice, but you still have to go out and hit good shots and play well.

“So I'll continue to try to work on my game and trying to get back to where I was last year and you know, hopefully take a little bit of momentum from last week. Hopefully I can build on that and carry that into the last couple of months of the year.”

Furyk said he felt like his game was coming around when he arrived in Akron, Ohio, for the Kaulig Companies Championship. The Pennsylvania native has put his stamp on Firestone Country Club much like he has at Warwick Hills, but he tested positive for COVID the day before the event started and returned home to Jacksonville, Florida.

He said the virus lingered, causing him to miss The Senior Open Championship presented by Rolex, Shaw Charity Classic and Boeing Classic.

“I struggled to get my energy back,” Furyk said. “I was finally able to play with a cart at home in Florida, and I was able to get ready for the trip to New York.

“I drove the ball great last week, definitely better than what I had in the past. And I just did a good job of scoring and getting the ball in the hole. My short game was good. I putted well so it was nice to see some good results.”

Furyk drove it longer and straighter at the DICK’S Sporting Goods Open than he had all season. His average driving distance of 288.3 yards was a whopping 23 yards better than his season average, and his accuracy was 2 percentage points higher, which might not seem like much but was T8 for the week (whereas he ranks 43rd in accuracy for 2022). The game gets a lot easier when a player suddenly is longer and straighter than he has been.

It turns out Furyk took the unexpected COVID break to tinker with some new drivers. He tried a Callaway and a Titleist, and he decided to put a Titleist TSR3 in play for the first time in New York.

He knew he had lost some distance. And he was looking for a solution. But only time will tell if he really has found it.

“Look, I'm not claiming I'm back, everything's great,” Furyk said. “But it's nice to get a good tournament under my belt. I hit some solid shots down the stretch on some difficult driving holes and had some good irons, made a couple of birdies on the way in, so nice to see some good things happen.

“Like I said, you can lose your confidence pretty quickly, but it takes a lot longer to kind of get that back. It’s a process, and I'm working on it.”