Cockerill aiming for strong finish to European tour season

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/08/2023 (1110 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A stellar start. A mediocre middle. And now, Manitoba’s top golfer hopes, a fantastic finish.

Aaron Cockerill is back in Europe after an extended summer stint on home soil, looking to wrap up his first full-time season on the DP World Tour with a flourish.

“It’s kind of ramping back up here,” Cockerill said Wednesday, in a telephone conversation from his hotel in Switzerland.

The 31-year-old from Stony Mountain enters play at this week’s Omega European Masters sitting 57th overall in tour rankings, built largely on the strength of six finishes of no worse than 21st — including a second and a fourth — in the first few months of the campaign.

Cockerill hasn’t played a DP event in nearly two months, when he missed the cut in Denmark for a third consecutive outing. He followed that up by playing in back-to-back PGA Tour events, in Kentucky and California, where he made the weekend but finished 58th and 64th, respectively.

Then, it was back to Winnipeg to spend the past month with his wife, Chelsea, and their newborn daughter, Addison.

“Obviously I would have liked to have done better but it just came at a time of the year where my game just honestly wasn’t good to begin with,” said Cockerill.

“It was a lot of golf and the break couldn’t have come at a better time. You know, golf is not exactly the most physically demanding sport, but when you’re travelling around and walking however much you’re walking, and all the practice and other stuff we’re doing, it was a lot. So, I put the clubs away for a week or two when I first got home.”

Cockerill, who only had conditional DP status last year but earned his 2023 card by finishing 107th-overall (the top 117 qualified), now enjoys the luxury of not having to sweat out his 2024 plans based on his overall performance this year.

“Now I can feel not so bad about playing. When you play well at the start of the season, it’s a little easier to do,” he said. “It came at a great time of year, and August in Winnipeg is pretty awesome. I just loved being home and the break was great.”

With just eight full-field tournaments left on the 2023 calendar, Cockerill is planning to play in seven of them. As long as he’s in the Top 70 after that, he’ll get into the Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa in early November. And, if he can climb inside the Top 50 after that, he’ll compete in the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai the following week.

Cockerill got a jolt of confidence earlier this week when he made a brief pit-stop in Toronto to participate in the 2023 Ben Kern Pro-Am at the National Golf Club of Canada, which acts as a major fundraiser for prostate cancer research. Cockerill’s one-under-par 70 was the low round of the professional division, beating out PGA Tour regulars Steve Elkington and Will Bateman by two strokes, and Rocco Mediate by three. He pocketed CDN$10,000 as a result.

“It was a very eclectic leaderboard and an amazing event,” he said. “And it turned out to be great for me because I haven’t played in a legitimately competitive tournament in almost five weeks. So it was a nice little prep for everything. I went straight to the airport after winning and then got here (in Switzerland) early Tuesday morning.”

Cockerill also got to test out a new set of irons, giving them a passing grade.

“During the break I was able to mess around and tinker a bit,” he said. “My iron play has been off a little bit, so I changed from TaylorMade to Srixon. It’s like eight new clubs in the bag. It’s been good so far. Starting to feel better about my game.”

Cockerill joked that, when things aren’t going well, it’s always the fault of the equipment, not the player. Being in Winnipeg also allowed him to have a few in-person sessions with his coach, Derek Ingram, rather than just online sessions, as is typically the case with their busy travel schedules.

Ingram was back home last week as many of his clients were playing in the Manitoba Open on the PGA Tour Canada. Cockerill also got out to Southwood Golf & Country Club to watch some of the competition up close this past weekend and came away impressed with the next wave of Canadian talent.

“I’m sure a handful of those guys are going to move on to the Korn Ferry Tour and the PGA Tour…,” said Cockerill. Or, perhaps follow his road less travelled and head over to Europe.

Cockerill would ultimately love to find a way to get into the PGA Tour full time without the grind of trying to qualify on the Korn Ferry, which is the North American equivalent of the DP World Tour. He’s buoyed by the fact he’s now got six PGA Tour events on his resume — with five cuts made. The only one he missed was at the RBC Canadian Open this past June, where he came one stroke short.

“It just kind of reminded me that the top guys are very, very good. They are probably better than everyone else,” said Cockerill. “But from Player 20 down to Player 200, there’s really not a whole lot of a difference. I think if I was able to somehow get back over there, I think I could compete against those guys.”

Considering the top-10 finishers on the DP World Tour who don’t otherwise hold PGA Tour status will get their 2024 cards as part of a new partnership, a strong end to the season for Cockerill could make that dream a reality.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg