Jordan Spieth is off to a good start on moving day at Colonial Country Club. See if he can catch the leaders on Saturday.
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How it works: Each week, our experts from PGATOUR.COM will make their selections in PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf. Each lineup consists of four starters and two bench players that can be rotated after each round. Adding to the challenge is that every golfer can be used only three times per each of four Segments. The first fantasy golf game to utilize live ShotLink data, PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf allows you to see scores update live during competition. Aside from the experts below, Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton breaks down the field at this year’s A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier in his edition of the Power Rankings. For more fantasy, check out Sleepers, Rookie Ranking, Qualifiers and Reshuffle. THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN OUR EXPERTS? The PGA TOUR Experts league is once again open to the public. You can play our free fantasy game and see how you measure up against our experts below. Joining the league is simple. Just click here to sign up or log in. Once you create your team, click the “Leagues” tab and search for “PGA TOUR Experts.” After that? Pick your players and start talking smack. Want to represent the fans against our experts? Editor’s note: Season and segment standings for the experts will be displayed in this space following this week’s season-opening event at The Greenbrier.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – When you talk about golf’s famous Class of 2011, you have to start with Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, but there’s also FedEx St. Jude Classic defending champion Daniel Berger, and then of course there’s Sebastian Munoz. Wait. Who? The was the question at TPC Southwind as Munoz, a Colombian who played for the University of North Texas, shot 67 to tie for the lead at 9 under par halfway through the FedEx St. Jude. At 197th in the FedExCup standings and 373rd in the Official World Golf Ranking, Munoz was suddenly T1 with Chez Reavie (65) and Charl Schwartzel (66). “I’m super happy,� Munoz said. “I’m really proud of the way I played today. I had one mistake, but I think a pretty good bogey on 18, so I was just happy to be able to step it up.� These guys are good—that’s how the PGA TOUR slogan goes. But it could just as easily be: There are a lot of good guys. So many, in fact, that a few sometimes slip through the cracks. Who is Sebastian Munoz? HUMBLE BEGINNINGS Munoz, 24, is often asked to provide ID when entering PGA TOUR locker rooms. “It happens all the time,� he said with a smile. “I don’t mind.� The good thing is, he surprises people all the time, too. Consider Munoz’s zero-to-hero college career at North Texas, where the coach, Brad Stracke, discovered him through a Latin American recruiting service. “I’ll tell you the truth: The coach was the only one who sent me an airplane ticket to check it out,� Munoz said. “I did, and I was like, of course I’m going to go. I had fun that weekend, and they had a couple Latin players, Carlos Ortiz and Rodolfo Cazaubon. It felt right.� Alas, Munoz didn’t play his first two years, as Ortiz, who plays the Web.com Tour, and Cazaubon—PGA TOUR Latinoamerica, and Munoz’s Dallas housemate—took starring roles. “He wasn’t really into it,� Stracke says. “He was just there to study, and was just going through the motions with the golf. He was going to take over his parents’ business in Colombia. Then he saw Carlos Ortiz make it to the Web.com Tour and win, and it got him thinking. “We have these end-of-the-year meetings, and between his sophomore and junior years we sat down in my office. He said, ‘Coach, those other guys have graduated. This is my time. I’m going to play well. I’m going to carry the weight.’ I’m like, where is this coming from? He had hardly played. It’s cool when a kid says that and then comes out and does it.�     Munoz shot 71-63-69 to win the Jim River Intercollegiate and set a school record for 54 holes. He ditched his first name (Juan) for his middle name (Sebastian), necessitating new letters on his golf bag. He won the Conference USA individual championship as a senior, and shot 65 to beat his man and help North Texas win the team title over Alabama-Birmingham. A far cry from the guy who’d wandered aimlessly around Denton for two years, Munoz got a degree in business management, and turned pro. Last year he got a sponsor’s exemption to play in the Club Colombia Championship Presented by Claro, a Web.com Tour event, and he won to kick-start a pro career that had once looked like a pipe dream. JUST NEEDS MORE REPS For Munoz, who finished 22nd on last year’s Web.com Tour money list, the biggest challenge has not been learning courses but simply getting into tournaments. He got into the AT&T Byron Nelson (T50), but not the DEAN & DELUCA Invitational at Colonial. That one hurt a lot, what with being so close and yet so far in his adopted home state of Texas. “I just hid in my room,� he said. “I didn’t want to know anything about it.� Until Thursday, when Munoz shot a 6-under 64 in the first round of the FedEx St. Jude, he didn’t know much of anything about TPC Southwind, either. He’d never even played the front nine, but got tips over dinner from countryman Camilo Villegas, a four-time TOUR winner. It must have been some dinner. “I’ve been putting the ball in the fairway,� Munoz said, “and capitalizing on some putts.� As for his more famous fellow alumni of the Class of 2011, he’s not only never beaten them, he’s never even met them. That’s because Munoz sat the bench his first two years at North Texas, after which Spieth (Texas) and Thomas (Alabama) turned pro. Today, those guys already have fat bank accounts and work their way through endless autograph lines. Munoz? Yes, well. Maybe someday. Is it extra pressure, he was asked, to not get into many tournaments and therefor know he has to make the most of the ones he does get into? “Yeah, I mean, you can see it that way,� he said. “I just see it as opportunities.� At the FedEx St. Jude, Munoz is eying the biggest opportunity of his career.
DUBLIN, Ohio – By the time he made a 12-foot birdie putt to close out Byeong Hun An in a playoff at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, Bryson DeChambeau had already checked the nitrogen levels in the Muirfield Village rough, verified the camber of the 18th green, and analyzed the glycemic load of Jack Nicklaus’ favorite milkshake. Or so you would believe, given DeChambeau’s mad-scientist reputation. “People always kind of scrutinize me saying I’m too technical and whatnot,â€� DeChambeau, 24, said after moving from 22nd to 4th in the FedExCup with his second PGA TOUR win. “It’s all just to aid my feel. I am a guy that goes off of feel still, to everybody’s surprise, probably.â€� By now it’s well known that the polymath DeChambeau has reimagined golf. He plays with a single-length set of irons, advocates a single-plane swing, and has done for the humble yardage book what Leonardo da Vinci did for anatomy. Good copy, as they say in the typing business. But it doesn’t really explain how this guy won the Memorial while hitting just 5 of 14 fairways in regulation play Sunday. How after missing 14 straight cuts last season, he now must be considered one of the 10 best American players. (He and other potential U.S. Ryder Cup Team members were fitted for uniforms at Muirfield Village earlier this week.) Yes, DeChambeau has reimagined the game, but he’s been even better at reinventing himself. “Other players go to the range,â€� said his caddie, Tim Tucker. “He goes to the range religiously.â€� Case in point: DeChambeau was the only one on the Muirfield driving range as the sun bled over the horizon Saturday night. What was he working on? No telling. He was improving his transdimensional aspect, closing the thorium loop, attenuating the dip slip. It doesn’t matter, and DeChambeau says he doesn’t like to give away his secrets, anyway. The important thing is he was working. “He’s happiest when he’s hitting balls,â€� Tucker said. With his active mind, DeChambeau is a perfect fit for golf, with its three-dimensionality and limitless variables. But that insatiable curiosity would mean nothing without the insatiable work ethic to go with it, the willingness and stamina to tear everything apart and start all over again. And again. And again. In a sport where even the big winners fail most of the time, self-reinvention is everything. Those 14 straight missed cuts, the last of which came at the U.S. Open last summer? Not unusual. Plenty of players could describe similarly bleak stretches before they turned into caddies (Paul Tesori, Lance Ten Broeck), and broadcasters (David Duval, Trevor Immelman). Not DeChambeau. Although he said it was “a tough pill to swallowâ€� and wondered if he was a TOUR quality player, he also settled in and sucked it up. It was time to have the Big Talk with the guy looking back at him in the mirror, because if he was going to survive, he had to adapt. “I went back to the drawing board,â€� he said, “kind of figured something out, and ultimately wound up winning the John Deere four weeks later because of that hard talk to myself.â€� But his reinvention wasn’t over, because he went straight from the Deere, where he thought he’d figured something out, to the Open Championship, where he shot 76-77 to miss the cut by eight shots. And he failed to make the TOUR Championship two months later. “So I went back to the drawing board again,â€� DeChambeau said, “… to be able to come out with something that has allowed me to be more consistent on TOUR, have less error in where I’m hitting it and be more confident in unique situations.â€� The second drawing board worked even better than the first one. He notched a top-20 finish at the Safeway Open, a top-10 at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, a top-5 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Reinvention gave way to refinement, and he was second to Rory McIlroy at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, T3 at the RBC Heritage, and 4th at the Wells Fargo Championship. The mad scientist was closing in. DeChambeau led the field in scrambling (17/21) at the Memorial, and was ninth in Strokes Gained: Putting (+4.916). With only five fairways hit, the entire final round was a high-wire act. He three-putted the 72nd hole to fall into a playoff with Kyle Stanley (70) and An (69), and ripped off his white, Hogan-style cap and swatted his leg with it. “Let’s go win it,â€� caddie Tucker said. As sudden-death playoffs go, this one wasn’t very sudden. For the second time in 20 minutes, DeChambeau split the 18th fairway with a 3-wood, and he and An each missed the green before making deft par saves. Stanley, who had birdied four straight holes on the back nine to make the playoff, could barely get a club on the ball for his second shot and bogeyed to fall away. Again, DeChambeau went back to the 18th tee; again, he split the fairway with that 3-wood. This time his 9-iron approach shot rode the wind to within 12 feet of the pin. When the final putt fell, with An looking at another short putt to save par, the winner looked up and pumped his arms. He had found validation, again, and with something less than his A-game, grinding out the win the way tournament host Nicklaus had so often back in the day. “Sometimes that’s what you gotta do,â€� Nicklaus said. “If your driver’s not working, your putter better be working. And if your putter’s not working, everything else must be working. But he had the right club working today and that was his flat club. Nice going.â€� A Memorial victory, by the way, comes with a three-year exemption on TOUR, which is one more than most tournaments. DeChambeau may not need the extra year, but it’s nice to know it’s there. You know, just in case he ever has to go back to the drawing board.
