California Chrome won his second Horse of the Year title at the Eclipse Award on January 21 along with Champion Older Male. Beholder and Javier Castellano both won their 4th Eclipse titles. Get all the winners with photos and vote totals here.
LA QUINTA, Calif. — Notes and observations from Saturday’s third round of the CareerBuilder Challenge, where Adam Hadwin leads by one after firing 59 on Saturday at La Quinta Country Club. For more on what transpired during the first round, check out the Daily Wrap-up. BREAKING THE 60 BARRIER Another week. Another 59. Adam Hadwin became the latest PGA TOUR player to break 60, shooting 59 just nine days after Justin Thomas did it at the Sony Open. Now Hadwin will try to repeat Thomas’ feat of following that low round with a victory. Hadwin’s 13-under 59 on Saturday at La Quinta Country Club gave him the 54-hole lead at the CareerBuilder Challenge. The 29-year-old from Moose Jaw, Canada, is seeking his first PGA TOUR victory. He sits 48th in the FedExCup. “I think (the 59) makes tomorrow harder,” Hadwin said. “They say one of the hardest things in golf is to follow up a low round. I can’t go much lower. I think that I have to find a way to get rid of it. “I’m not going to make 13 birdies again tomorrow. I mean, I could, but the chances are pretty slim.” Hadwin is one shot ahead of TOUR rookie Dominic Bozzelli. Chad Campbell, the 2006 CareerBuilder champion, is two shots back, as are Bud Cauley and former Georgia teammates Hudson Swafford and Brian Harman. Hadwin made six consecutive birdies on Nos. 2-7, including an unlikely hole-out from off the fourth green. With one foot in a bunker, he choked up to the shaft of his hybrid club and bumped that shot into the hole from about 20 feet. He made the turn in 7-under 29 after birdieing the ninth hole, then made five consecutive birdies at Nos. 11-15. A birdie at No. 17 necessitated just a par at the final hole for a 59. After flying the green with his approach shot to No. 18, he chipped to 3 feet and made the par putt. “It’s the exact same things that I’ll be feeling on the first tee tomorrow,” he said. There have now been nine sub-60 rounds in PGA TOUR history, including Jim Furyk’s 58 at last year’s Travelers Championship Hadwin’s 13 birdies Saturday tied Chip Beck’s record for most birdies in a round. Beck set the record when he shot the second 59 in TOUR history, at the 1991 Las Vegas Classic. Beck’s 59 came 14 years after Al Geiberger became the first player to break 60. Now we’ve seen players break 60 in consecutive weeks. Hadwin shot just the third sub-60 round without an eagle. The 59s shot by Beck and Paul Goydos (2010) are the others. The CareerBuilder Challenge also is the first PGA TOUR event to see multiple 59s. David Duval shot a final-round 59 at PGA West’s Palmer Private Course to win in 1999. This will be the second consecutive year that Hadwin will play in the CareerBuilder Challenge’s final group. A final-round 72, including a 2-over 38 on the back nine, left him five shots behind winner Jason Dufner. The Canadian finds a favorable crowd in the California desert because so many of his countrymen live here to escape cold winters. “Somebody told me at the end of (Sunday in 2016) that I had the second-loudest cheer going off the first hole besides Mickelson,” Hadwin said. “They come out in full support for all of us Canadians. There’s a lot of them down here.” He gave them something to cheer about Saturday. Now he’ll see if he can make them celebrate for two consecutive days. FOLLOWING GOOD ADVICE Bozzelli had a good practice-round partner for the CareerBuilder Challenge: Jason Dufner, his fellow Auburn alum and the tournament’s defending champion. During their three practice rounds this week, Dufner showed Bozzelli the tournament’s likely hole locations and gave him advice on what clubs to hit off the tees. “He’s been a big help these past few years. Even when I was at Auburn, he would hang around the team when he was off the road,” Bozzelli said. Dufner was a volunteer assistant for Auburn when it played in the 2012 NCAA Championship at Riviera Country Club, site of the Genesis Open. Bozzelli was on that team. Bozzelli has shot 64-67-69 this week, including just a single bogey. He earned his first TOUR card after posting a win and runner-up on the Web.com Tour in 2016. A shoulder impingement in the middle of the season forced him to miss six weeks. By the end of the year, the pain had caused his enthusiasm for the game to diminish. He missed his last three cuts of 2016. This is his first start of the year, and he said the rest has refreshed him. “I was trying to get healthy with the shoulder last year and just really wasn’t in a good spot mentally,” Bozzelli said. “I’m excited to practice again and excited to get back out here.” CAN I HAVE YOUR AUTOGRAPH, PLEASE It’s not often that you a PGA TOUR player asks for an autograph at a golf tournament, but that’s what Swafford did after his third round. He asked for the signature, even though it came from a player who helped defeat one of his favorite teams. Swafford was paired Saturday with Joe Carter, who won the 1992 and 1993 World Series with the Toronto Blue Jays; Carter’s Jays beat Swafford’s Atlanta Braves in that 1992 World Series. “Joe Carter was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. We kept it light, had a good time. He was motivating me to play well for him,” Swafford said. Swafford, who held the 36-hole lead after shooting consecutive 65s, fired 71 on Saturday at the Stadium Course. He was 4 under par before making a double-bogey at the par-5 16th, where he found the 18-foot-deep bunker left of the green, and a bogey at the par-3 17th. “This is already a difficult golf course, and if you put 20-mph winds on it, it’s all you want,” Swafford said. Swafford, 29, has made 19 consecutive cuts, dating back to last year’s PLAYERS Championship. He has three top-10s in 92 career starts. ODDS AND ENDS Chris Evans, a local pro who works in the bag room at nearby Plantation Golf Club, made the most of his sponsor exemption into the CareerBuilder Challenge. A third-round 68 allowed him to make the cut, guaranteeing him a paycheck of at least $10,000. That will come in handy after Evans earned status on PGA TOUR Latinoamerica at the recent Q-School. Local favorite Brendan Steele, who used to attend this tournament as a child and starred at nearby UC Riverside, is in seventh place at 14 under par, three shots behind Hadwin. Steele started last year’s final round in 10th place before a final-round 74 dropped him to 34th place. Steele won the season-opening Safeway Open and sits fourth in the FedExCup. CALL OF THE DAY BEST OF SOCIAL MEDIA
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The Blue Jackets would just as soon forget the second period of Saturday’s game, when the Carolina Hurricanes rallied from a 2-0 deficit to tie it. Columbus didn’t play much better in the third but withstood 15 shots and killed three penalties. Midway through, Scott Hartnell scored his second goal of the game , and the Blue Jackets beat Carolina 3-2.
Ryan Grigson spent everything he could to bring another Super Bowl title to Indianapolis. On Saturday, Colts owner Jim Irsay fired his general manager after five up-and-down years that ended with Indy missing the playoffs in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1997-98. After almost three weeks of silence from the Colts, the assumption was that Irsay would again surprise Colts’ fans by keeping Grigson and coach Chuck Pagano for another season.
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. (AP) — Marcus Morris scored 25 points and tipped in the winning basket at the buzzer, leading the Detroit Pistons to a 113-112 victory over Washington on Saturday night for their third straight win.
Off the miss, Marcus Morris makes a buzzer-beating tip-in over his brother Markieff to win it for the Pistons.
KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii (AP) — Bernhard Langer was declared the winner of the Mitsubishi Electric Championship after strong winds blowing across the Hualalai golf course halted the tournament on Saturday. It was Langer’s 30th victory on the PGA Tour Champions, moving him into second place on the career list behind Hale Irwin, who has 45 wins on the senior circuit. Langer became the first person to win this event three times while celebrating his 33rd wedding anniversary with wife Vikki on Saturday.
Gregg Popovich would bench President Trump. San Antonio’s long-time coach, who has been highly critical of Donald Trump in the past, went on a lengthy rant about the newly sworn-in president on Saturday night, calling him a bully and saying he hopes he can change while in office. While meeting with reporters before the Spurs played the NBA champion Cavaliers, Popovich didn’t hold back in offering his disdain for Trump and members of his administration.
Langer, wind both win out at Champions event
