Patrick Cantlay won four times this season, capped off by the FedEx Cup.
Patrick Cantlay was voted PGA Tour player of the year on the strength of his four victories, including a one-shot advantage at East Lake that made him the FedEx Cup champion. Tuesday’s announcement was another big step for Cantlay, a 29-year-old Californian who went from being the No.1 amateur in the world to being unable to play for some three years because of a career-threatening back injury. Now he has the Jack Nicklaus Award after a big finish to his best season. Cantlay won four times this season, capped off by the FedEx Cup. No one else won more than twice. The PGA Tour does not release vote totals or how many players even voted. It presumably was a tight race between Cantlay and Jon Rahm, the No.1 player in the world. Rahm finished one shot behind Cantlay at the Tour Championship, where Rahm started the tournament four shots behind. He picked up his first major this year at the U.S. Open with a birdie-birdie finish. Rahm also had a six-shot lead going into the final round of the Memorial until having to withdraw with a positive COVID-19 test. Cantlay wound up winning the Memorial for his second win of the season, and then he set himself apart at the end. He won the BMW Championship at Caves Valley with as clutch a putting performance to beat Bryson DeChambeau in a playoff, and then he won the Tour Championship to collect the FedEx Cup and its $15 million prize. Rahm, meanwhile, won the PGA of America award as player of the year. That’s based on points, with triple value for winning a major. McHugh and Jones come over from NBC, which will not be carrying NHL games for the first time since 2004 after Turner and ESPN won the rights earlier this year. McHugh will host the studio coverage and will be joined by Carter, Rick Tocchet and Paul Bissonnette. The network announced earlier this year that Wayne Gretzky would be a studio analyst for big regular-season games, including the Winter Classic, and the playoffs. Jones, who was in the studio for NBC, will be an ice-level analyst for select games. Brendan Burke and Darren Pang will form the second commentary team after it was announced earlier that Kenny Albert and Eddie Olczyk would be the top team. Pang was ESPN and ABC’s top analyst for 13 years (1991-2004) and did do some games for NBC. Jennifer Botterill, Jackie Redmond and Tarik El-Bashir have been hired as contributors. The first games on TNT will be on Oct.13 when the New York Rangers face the Washington Capitals and Chicago Blackhawks take on the Colorado Avalanche. • Former New York Rangers forward Jim Vesey is among three players the New Jersey Devils have signed to tryout contracts. The Devils also announced the signings of center Mark Jankowski and defenseman Tyler Wotherspoon. They will join the team when all players report to the NHL camp on Sept.22 at Prudential Center. The 80-year-old Edson Arantes do Nascimento was in good clinical condition and will remain “from now on recovering in his room” at Albert Einstein Hospital, the Sao Paulo facility said in a statement. Pele, the only male player to win three World Cups, has had mobility problems since a failed hip replacement surgery in 2012, forcing him to use a walker and wheelchair.
