It’s the first time in Hall history that a class has included four men who played the defensive backfield exclusively.
The story behind it, from the NFL’s new chief marketing officer, Tim Ellis, who came to the league from the video game industry last September:
Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz disputed some aspects of a recent critical article but admitted he could be a better teammate.
Playing with a four-shot lead but with the weight of history and haunting missed chances, Rickie Fowler overcomes a bad break and a tough ruling with a pair of clutch birdies to finally win the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Fowler broke a nearly two-year win drought, qualified for the Sentry Tournament of Champions, and vanquished his demons at TPC Scottsdale. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Mental toughness told the story. Golf is always about resilience, but Fowler’s triple-bogey at the 11th hole was one-of-a-kind. How did he survive it? It wasn’t easy. After a bogey at the 12th, and with Branden Grace climbing fast up the leaderboard, Fowler had gone from a five-shot lead to one behind. “It would have been really easy at that point to say, ‘This just isn’t my day,’â€� said Fowler’s friend Aaron Baddeley, who for the third time in the last four years hung around the scoring area (he lives five minutes away) hoping to congratulate Fowler on the victory. This time, it worked out. For the winner, it was all about keeping the past in the past. As they stood on the 14th tee, Fowler’s caddie, Joe Skovron, said, “Hey, you would have taken this at the beginning of the week, tied five holes to play. Let’s go win a golf tournament.â€� Fowler did. “You kind of just have to put the first 67 holes behind you and go play five holes,â€� he said. 2. TPC Scottsdale was brutal. Players woke up to rain and cooler temperatures Sunday, restoring the bite to a TPC Scottsdale track that Fowler had tamed to the tune of 64-65-64 (20-under) in the first three rounds. The grass was wet, and the ball was flying every which way, Fowler finding the native area at the third hole, where he made a 30 1/2-foot par putt to steady himself. That was hardly his only brush with danger. He got out of position two holes later, smacking his ball around more native area before finally rolling in a 4 1/2-foot putt for double-bogey. Then came the chaos at the 11th, where drained a long putt for a triple-bogey 7. Justin Thomas shot 72 to finish third. Matt Kuchar, who was trying to extend a perfect streak of 19 straight rounds of par or better this season, and win for the third time in three starts, shot 75 to finish T4. They made up the last threesome and shot a combined 8-over. “I’ve never been in a group that had worse momentum,â€� Thomas said. 3. Grace got a lot out of the week. Coming off a missed cut, South Africa’s Branden Grace was making his first start at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and wasn’t sure what to expect. He shot a final-round 69 for a runner-up finish, his only regret being the tee shot he hooked in the water at the driveable par-4 17th hole, leading to a bogey. “It was great,â€� Grace said of his overall experience. “I really enjoyed it. Obviously being in the final group (Saturday) with Rickie and them was awesome. This place was nuts. It’s everything and more than what I expected and what a fun week it was. I can’t take anything for granted and I had to dig deep today and I did that, it’s just unfortunately one bad shot.â€� In search of his second TOUR win (2016 RBC Heritage), Grace recorded his first runner-up finish in 104 TOUR starts and moved to 31st in the FedExCup. 4. Thomas fought hard without his A-game. Despite slogging through a flat weekend, and an especially difficult course in wet, cool conditions Sunday, Thomas hung around for a 1-over 72 and a third-place finish. It was his best result in five WMPO starts. The only downside was that the 1-over 72 marked his first over-par final-round score since the 2018 Travelers Championship. “I didn’t think I had on a great chance to start the day, or knew I needed to do something special,â€� Thomas said. “And the weather got pretty tough out there and I can’t believe if I would have shot 2-under, I would have been in a playoff. And, yeah, I mean for myself I just didn’t–I couldn’t make the putts.â€� He was 28th for the week in Strokes Gained: Putting. 5. Kuchar battled despite a rare, left miss. Attempting to win for the third time in three starts, Kuchar could have given Fowler something to think about but for a couple of surprising hooks that hurt him at the 15th and 17th holes. “I knew I didn’t have my A game,â€� said Kuchar, 40, who still finished T4 with Chez Reavie (68) and Bubba Watson (71). “Conditions were hard. I was kind of trying to steer it around and then hit a couple good shots. Made the birdie on 13. And then 15 you’ve got four exciting holes to play and I was right there. Any time I struggle with missing left, I struggle. “I missed one left there, missed one left on 17,â€� he added. “Those are typically just not misses I have. And when I’m doing that it, I know it’s going to be a tough day for me and unfortunately it came out at a bad time.â€� His final-round 75 was his first over-par score this season, in his 20th round. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Fowler led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting (+2.385) and is the first since 1983 to win despite a double bogey and a triple bogey or worse in the final round. He has posted an over-par score in each of his seven 54-hole leads/co-leads, winning twice. It was his fifth victory in 220 TOUR starts, and his first win at the WMPO in 11 starts. 2. It wasn’t just the players in the final group who struggled. The wet, long course really was harder in the rain and cooler weather. TPC Scottsdale, which already had the tees back, felt longer in the elements and played to a 71.575 stroke average in the fourth round, highest of the week by almost a full shot. The second round (70.634) was the second hardest day. 3. Branden Grace, who was seven shots back at the start of the day, was attempting to author the second-biggest WMPO comeback. Kyle Stanley came from eight behind to win in 2012. Grace was also trying to become the 10th player to win the event in his first appearance, and the first since Brooks Koepka in 2015. Grace tied for third in distance of putts made (367’ 7’’). 4. Chez Reavie, who lost in a playoff to Gary Woodland last year, didn’t make a bogey and shot 64-68 on the weekend to finish T4. Something has clicked. Before last year, Reavie had six missed cuts at TPC Scottsdale, with a career best finish of T41 in 2011. 5. Former Arizona State star Jon Rahm (T10) has finished no worse than T16 in four WMPO starts and has four straight top-10s on TOUR this season. In his TOUR debut, Oklahoma State sophomore Matthew Wolff shot 72 to finish T50. Bubba Watson’s T4, in his 300th TOUR start, was his first top-10 since the 2018 Dell Technologies Championship. WYNDHAM REWARDS The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is in its first season and adds another layer of excitement to the FedExCup Regular Season. The top 10 players at the end of the FedExCup Regular Season will earn bonus payouts from the Wyndham Rewards Top 10. There were no changes in the top six players after the Waste Management Phoenix Open, with Xander Schauffele hanging onto the top spot with a T10 finish. In battling through adversity, WMPO champion Rickie Fowler was the week’s biggest mover, going from 65th to 7th.
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA – The PGA TOUR announced that PGA TOUR AR, an augmented reality (AR) app that rolled out in 2018, will add a “360° Tee Box presented by AT&T� experience on holes No. 1 and 18 on Pebble Beach Golf Links at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. The experience will bring live AR and 360° tournament coverage to life for fans in the United States on their Apple device. The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am will also showcase live featured hole AR coverage on the PGA TOUR AR app from holes 1, 7 and 18 at Pebble Beach Golf Links. The AR experience will begin in conjunction with the opening round of the tournament on Thursday, February 7. The PGA TOUR AR app is available for free, exclusively in the App Store. After selecting the 360° Tee Box within the app, fans will be directed to scan the floor and tap to start the experience. Once they tap to start, an AR green with the Pebble Beach flag will appear and direct fans to walk toward the green. Once fans walk onto the virtual green, the 360° video from either the 1st or 18th tee box will appear, and they can move their phones around to view the video. The experience will go live one hour before the first tee time Thursday-Sunday at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. “The AT&T 360° Tee Box in the PGA TOUR AR app offers fans a unique and exclusive view of Pebble Beach Golf Links,� said Devon Fox, PGA TOUR Director, Digital Platform Innovation. “Fans will be able to see holes No. 1 and 18 in an entirely new way, getting them closer to the action than ever before. Collaborating with AT&T to bring fans this exclusive experience represents a new way for the TOUR to add value for sponsors and partners in the future.� PGA TOUR AR allows fans to interact with 3D featured holes and live 3D shot trails on any flat surface right in front of them. On featured holes throughout the season, fans will be able to select their favorite player on the golf course, compare shot trails from each round and compare the shots of different players. The 360° Tee Box presented by AT&T experience will only be available for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am from February 7-10. The PGA TOUR AR app is available on iPhone 7 and above and iOS 11.3 and above and on iPad Pro. The “360° Tee Box presented by AT&T� experience will only be visible to users on the iPhone/iOS versions listed above. The 360° Tee Box experience was developed jointly by the PGA TOUR, AT&T, The Marketing Arm and Trigger Global. The development of the PGA TOUR AR app in collaboration with POSSIBLE Mobile, part of the creative agency POSSIBLE, was aided by existing data gathered by ShotLink powered by CDW, the TOUR’s longstanding state-of-the-art scoring system. ShotLink through CDW technology captures and reports real-time vital information on every shot, by every player, during tournament competition. Every shot is translated into thousands of statistics, changing the way fans watch – and now interact with – the PGA TOUR, bringing them closer to the action. ShotLink and CDW’s vision is to turn data into information, information into knowledge, and knowledge into entertainment. The upgraded PGA TOUR AR app was built using the latest versions of ARKit and Unity to provide fans with faster, more accurate surface detection and the ability to choose where they want to place the models.
Most fans thought the Super Bowl was boring. But if you’re a New England fan or someone who appreciates great defense, then the Pats’ sixth title was a thing of beauty.
The Rams star was missing in action again in the Super Bowl, yet he and wunderkind coach Sean McVay both said his knee was fine. Something doesn’t add up.
The Rams star was missing in action again in the Super Bowl, yet he and wunderkind coach Sean McVay both said his knee was fine. Something doesn’t add up.
The Rams star was missing in action again in the Super Bowl, yet he and wunderkind coach Sean McVay both said his knee was fine. Something doesn’t add up.
In the biggest game of his career, Jared Goff was awful. If he ever gets back to the Super Bowl, he’ll have to learn from this experience.
