Bettors with potential winnings as high as $800,000 if the Saint Peter’s run goes all the way to the national title have sportsbooks starting to sweat, while a New Jersey law means North Carolina will be a futures winner no matter what Sunday.
Saint Peter’s guard Doug Edert has become an instant sensation for the Peacocks thanks to his game on the court and his mustache. Our Confidential Crew takes us inside the story behind the stache.
Chad Ramey got the job done in the Dominican Republic, winning the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship by one shot over Ben Martin and Alex Smalley. Take a look at the clubs Dahmen used to win his first title on the PGA TOUR. RELATED: Final leaderboard Driver: Stealth Plus; 10.5 3-wood:SIM2; 15.0 Hybrid: SIM2 Max Hybrid; 19.0 Irons: P7MC; 3-PW Wedges: MG3; 52, 58 Putter: Spider GT Notchback Ball: TP5x
While San Francisco center Volodymyr Markovetskyy was preparing for the NCAA tournament, his family was enduring the Russian invasion of their home country of Ukraine. CBS followed Markovetskyy throughout his tumultuous week.
Only five teams with double-digit seeds have made the March Madness Final Four since the men’s field expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
PUNTA CANA, Dominican Republic (AP) — Chad Ramey won the windswept Corales Puntacana Championship on Sunday for his first PGA TOUR title, beating Ben Martin and Alex Smalley by a stroke. RELATED: Final leaderboard Ramey closed with a 5-under 67, completing a two-putt par on the par-4 18th after Martin missed a 6-foot birdie try that would have forced a playoff. “It was honestly like I always thought it would be,” Ramey said. “It was very stressful, very nerve-wracking coming down the stretch, but I just grinded it out, kind of stuck to my process, stayed within myself and pulled it out.” Two strokes behind Martin entering the round, Ramey made four straight birdies on Nos. 13-16 to take the lead and parred the par-3 17th at Corales Golf Course. “I’ve been rolling the putter good all day, they just hadn’t been going in,” Ramey said. “I was kind of all around the hole on the front side. I didn’t change a thing, I didn’t do anything different. They just started going in.” With the tournament played opposite the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play event in Austin, Texas, Ramey earned 300 FedExCup points. The 29-year-old from Mississippi finished at 17-under 271. “I think it will take maybe a day or two to sink in,” Ramey said. “Everything’s pretty surreal, happening pretty fast, but I’m definitely excited.” Martin, the leader after each of the first three rounds, closed with a 70. The 2014 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open winner for his lone PGA TOUR title, Martin was making only his second PGA TOUR start of the year. “That was obviously difficult,” Martin said. “I’ve won out here before, won on the Korn Ferry, runner-up in the U.S. Am, but I guess maybe I wanted this one a lot more. I don’t think I’ve ever been this emotional about golf, so this is a first. I guess, to me, that’s a good thing. Means I competed hard and it obviously stung. Hit two such good shots into 18 to have such a good opportunity and then not capitalize I guess is the most difficult part.” Smalley finished with a 67. The TOUR rookie from Duke had his best PGA TOUR finish. “Successful week,” Smalley said. “Kind of stings a little bit to come up a shot short. Left my 20-footer on the last 6 inches short right in the middle. Whatever’s meant to be is meant to be, so I take a lot of positives from this week.” Jhonattan Vegas of Venezuela shot a 68 to tie for fourth with Cameron Percy (67) at 15 under. Denmark’s Rasmus Hojgaard (67) was 14 under. Twin brother Nicolai, the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 77, missed the cut.
In the spirit of the Valero Texas Open celebrating its 100th anniversary, here’s a ranking of the top 10 Valero Texas Opens in tournament history. 1940 Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan drove from Phoenix to San Antonio in a two-car caravan — Nelson in a gleaming new Studebaker, Hogan in his old maroon Buick with many miles on the odometer — for the first Valero Texas Open of the 1940s. The two friends from the caddie yards of Fort Worth played thrilling golf that week at Brackenridge Park, which teemed with spectators trailing the marquee pairing before marquee pairings were a thing. Nelson birdied the 72nd hole to tie Hogan, who finished 66-66 on the weekend. Thousands followed the playoff between the two. Nelson beat Hogan by a shot to secure his 11th PGA Tour title. Hogan, who had won only once at the time, would finish second in the next two Texas Opens, in 1941 and ’42. 1981 Reigning Open Championship winner Bill Rogers, born and raised in Texas, crafted a final-round 63 that autumn at Oak Hills Country Club, forcing a sudden-death playoff with fellow Texan and longtime friend Ben Crenshaw, who had shot 64. Rogers birdied the first hole to win for the fourth time that season, his best on the PGA TOUR. “I’m excited about winning,” Rogers said collegially, “but there’s a little something taken away when I have to beat one of my best friends to do it.” 2021 The Valero Texas Open returned with tremendous fanfare after the global pandemic cancelled the 2020 tournament — and so did Jordan Spieth. The 27-year-old Texan, the winner of three major championships and eight other PGA TOUR titles, had gone a mystifying 83 starts since his last victory at the 2017 Open Championship. He ended that streak on a bright Sunday at TPC San Antonio. Spieth, who had been working that week to return to the swing of his youth, shot a 6-under 66 on Sunday at TPC San Antonio to win by two. “It’s been a road with a lot of tough days,” he said. That road had ended, and this was not one of those days. Spieth, who hasn’t won since, returns this week to defend. 1923 The great Walter Hagen, who became in 1922 the first American to win the Open Championship, shot a course-record 65 that January in the third round at Brackenridge Park. He and Bill Mehlhorn finished the tournament at 9 under par before a record gathering of 6,000 who came to watch the stylish club pro from Michigan. Hagen won the ensuing playoff by a shot. His victory vaulted the Texas Open into the consciousness of the American sporting public. 1962 Arnold Palmer struck one of the most famous — and most-watched — shots in the history of the Valero Texas Open at the 72nd hole at Oak Hills Country Club. His soaring 7-iron stopped a foot from the hole, giving him a birdie and his then-record third consecutive VTO title. More than 15,000 spectators witnessed the charge from Palmer, who beat four other players by a stroke, one of Palmer’s eight TOUR titles that year. 1955 A burly former Duke University football player name Mike Souchak amassed 27 birdies over four days at Brackenridge Park, which included a first-round, 11-under 60. He shot 257 for the week, a scoring record that stood for 46 years, and wore deerskin gloves between shots through a frigid final round when temperatures never rose above freezing in San Antonio. His 60 shared the TOUR single-round record until 1977, when Al Geiberger shot his celebrated 59 in Memphis. 1950 In a reflection of the growing popularity of the Valero Texas Open, more than 300 contestants entered the tournament, played that year at both Fort Sam Houston Golf Course and Brackenridge Park. Sam Snead won his second VTO over Jimmy Demaret with a final-round 63 in rain and, for a moment, pounding hail. The Slammer “came roaring down the muddy stretch with birdies flying off his warclubs like leaves off a tree in fall,” read a breathless account of his round in the San Antonio Express. His weekend of 63-63 set a 36-hole scoring record on TOUR. 1946 Byron Nelson played his last Valero Texas Open in 1946, when his longtime friend and rival Ben Hogan won the tournament for the first and only time. The victory — one of Hogan’s remarkable 13 titles that season — launched a streak of five consecutive starts in which Hogan won or finished runner-up. Nelson came in third and retired from competitive golf that year with 52 wins and five major championships in his career. Hogan went on to win at least once each year through 1953, including 10 titles in 1948. But he never again contended at the VTO. 2003 Tommy Armour III shot rounds of 64-63-62-65—254 at the La Cantera Resort Course to shatter by three the PGA TOUR 72-hole scoring record set by Souchak in 1955. Armour’s four-round total of 26-under 254 included no bogeys until the 10th hole on Sunday. He won by a stunning seven shots. Even Armour seemed bemused. “You only get one trip around life,” he told reporters after his epic performance at La Cantera. “Golf is something that I love to do. I don’t play for the money. I never have.” He won $630,000, which was easy to love. 1980 Lee Trevino of Dallas finally won the Valero Texas Open at the age of 40. He holed a bending 25-foot putt — a putt he simply was trying to lag — on the 72nd hole to beat Terry Diehl by a stroke. Trevino signed for a 65 that gave him $45,000 and 27 titles on TOUR. He had suffered many close calls in his 14 starts at the VTO, one of his favorite stops because so many in the Mexican-American community in San Antonio could identify with him (and he with them). Trevino sipped a beer with reporters after his round. “I love it,” Trevino told them. “This is what I live for.”
Day 5 of competition at the WGC-Dell Match Play commenced bright and early Sunday morning at Austin CC, with Scottie Scheffler facing Dustin Johnson in one Semifinal match, and Corey Conners matching up against Kevin Kisner in the other. The Semifinal match winners will compete in the Final match on Sunday afternoon, to determine the 2022 WGC-Dell Match Play champion. Keep it here to see how the drama unfolds throughout the day at Austin CC. MATCH RECAPS (LIVE SCORES, BRACKET) SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER (5) def. DUSTIN JOHNSON (8), 3 and 1 Local fans were out in full force to support former University of Texas Longhorn Scottie Scheffler in his Semifinal match against Dustin Johnson. A strong start with a wedge to 7 feet opened the scoring before a tight approach on the par-4 third pushed the young Texan’s lead to 2 up. A bogey at the fourth by Johnson pushed the hole to 3 down, a deficit he had yet to face this week despite trailing on the front nine in all but one of this edition’s matches. Needing a spark, DJ ripped a 350-yard drive over the green at No. 5, leaving him with a tricky shot from the greenside bunker which he could only get up-and-down for a matching par. The former FedExCup champ and 2017 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play winner got a fortuitous break on the next hole, able to take a free drop from an electrical box after his tee shot settled amongst some trees on the left-hand side of the fairway. Scheffler would maintain his 3-up lead, flashing a short game that saved him all day with a chip to inside 3 feet to match DJ with birdie. A ho-hum stretch saw a pair of bogeys from each around Nos. 7, 8 and 9 before an incredible approach from Scheffler on the par-4 10th to less than a foot extended the lead to 4 up. A bounce-back birdie on the 12th for Johnson followed by a bogey from Scheffler on 13 after his tee shot found the water lit the fuse for a comeback on the back nine. It was nearly automatic for DJ on the par-4 14th and 15th, splitting both fairways and sticking it to 6 feet at each for back-to-back birdies to cut the deficit all the way to 1 down. A striped Scheffler approach ran just past the hole on No. 16 and a two-putt birdie doubled his edge after DJ’s birdie to tie lipped out. Facing a must-make on No. 17 from 16 feet, DJ powered his attempt towards the hole but with too much pace for another lip-out. With Scheffler’s birdie try conceded, the match was won, 3 and 1, and DJ is set to face either Corey Conners or Kevin Kisner in the Final match. Already leading the FedExCup, Scheffler has a chance to become No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking if he were to cap off an incredible run of three wins in five starts, a year after falling just short in the 2021 championship match at Austin CC.
Confronting the end in this weekend’s West Regional, Coach K remained rooted in the familiar.
This is the complete March Madness schedule for 2022, including direct links to the NCAA tournament livestreams, TV schedule and round-by-round results.
