RBC Canadian Open to return to Glen Abbey in 2018

The PGA TOUR’s lone official team event returns to the schedule in 2021 after being cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic last season. Jon Rahm and Ryan Palmer are back to defend their title from 2019 against a big-time field of FedExCup contenders, TOUR winners, and major champions. FIELD NOTES: Henrik Stenson, 2013 FedExCup champion, teams up with fellow Olympic medalist Justin Rose. The pair are reunited after breaking up in 2019… Reigning PGA Champ Collin Morikawa is making his Zurich debut alongside Matthew Wolff… Danny Willett is joining forces with fellow Englishman Tyrrell Hatton; they played together in the third round of the RBC Heritage on Saturday… Fresh off his T3 finish at the Masters, Xander Schauffele is pairing up with another top-10 golfer in the world, Patrick Cantlay… Kevin Kisner and Scott Brown, both of Aiken, South Carolina, are looking to finally take it across the finish line in New Orleans. They lost in a playoff in 2017, had the 54-hole lead in 2018, and finished T5 in 2019… Other notable pairings include South Africans Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel, the long-hitting tandem of Cameron Champ and Tony Finau, European squads of Viktor Hovland and Kris Ventura plus Graeme McDowell and Matt Wallace, and Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith (who with Jonas Blixt won this event in 2017). FEDEXCUP: Winners receive 400 FedExCup points each. STORYLINES: FedExCup points are distributed as if the partners tied for first. The winning duos will split the 500 points usually reserved for an individual champion plus the 300 points to the golfer who finishes second for 400 points each… The unique team format sees golfers play best-ball on Thursday and Saturday and alternate-shot on Friday and Sunday… There are plenty of potential Presidents Cup (Leishman/Smith) and Ryder Cup (Willett/Hatton; Hovland/Ventura) teams in New Orleans… This is the fourth year the event will be played as a team format. It’s one of the longest-standing events on TOUR, having started in 1938. COURSE: TPC Louisiana, par 72, 7,425 yards. The Pete Dye design is just 15 minutes from downtown New Orleans and while water is featured prominently, it is also one of the TOUR’s most scoreable layouts. The course, which boasts Steve Elkington and Kelly Gibson as consultants, moves through 250 acres of wetlands with more than 100 bunkers. 72-HOLE RECORD: 261, Cameron Smith/Jonas Blixt (2017), Kevin Kisner/Scott Brown (2017). Individual record: 262, Chip Beck (1988 at Lakewood CC). ALTERNATE SHOT RECORD: 65, Jon Rahm/Ryan Palmer (2nd Round, 2019) BEST BALL RECORD: 60, Retief Goosen/Tyrone van Aswegen (2nd round, 2017), Kevin Kisner/Scott Brown (4th round, 2017), Chez Reavie/Lucas Glover (1st round, 2018), Marty Dou/Xinjun Zhang (1st round, 2018), Brian Gay/Rory Sabbatini (1st round, 2019) LAST TIME: Jon Rahm and Ryan Palmer won by three over Tommy Fleetwood and Sergio Garcia in ’19. Fleetwood and Garcia pressured Rahm and Palmer by making birdies on Nos. 17 and 18 but it was too little, too late. It was Palmer’s first TOUR title in almost a decade, since the 2010 Sony Open. KH Lee/Matt Every and Brian Gay/Rory Sabbatini finished T3, while Seamus Power/David Hearn, Roberto Castro/Cameron Tringale, Hank Lebioda/Curtis Luck, and Kevin Kisner/Scott Brown – who lost a playoff to Cameron Smith and Jonas Blixt in ’17 – finished T5 HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Friday, 3:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m. (Golf Channel), Saturday-Sunday, 1 p.m.-3 p.m. (Golf Channel), 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (CBS) PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday, 8 a.m.-6:30 p.m. (Featured Groups); Friday, 9:15 a.m.-6:30 p.m. (Featured Groups); Saturday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. (Featured Groups), 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (Featured Holes); Sunday, 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. (Featured Groups), 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (Featured Holes) Radio: Thursday-Friday, 1 p.m.-6:30 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 1 p.m.-6 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio). TOURCast: Get shot-by-shot info in real time with shot tracks and video with TOURCast. TOUR Pulse: Get the PGA TOUR app to utilize TOUR Pulse, which provides users the ability to experience a mix of content, such as video highlights, written hole summaries and stat graphics on every player after every hole they complete.

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SAN ANTONIO — Camilo Villegas chipped in twice to highlight a nine-birdie round that earned him an 8-under 64 and the first-round lead at the Valero Texas Open on Thursday. RELATED: Leaderboard | Cut prediction: Valero Texas Open Sung Kang, a 33-year-old South Korean, is two shots back with Cameron Tringale after each had a 66 at TPC San Antonio’s Oaks Course. Jordan Spieth, whose struggles the past three years appear to be subsiding after four top-10 finishes the past two months, is three back (67) with Seung-Yul Noh and Hideki Matsuyama. Phil Mickelson dropped to 15 shots back when he had a 10 on the 18th hole — he took two penalty shots and another three strokes trying to get away from a greenside stream — and ended with a 79. Villegas won the TOUR Championship in 2008 and the Wyndham Championship in 2014, but has endured injury and then the death of his 22-month-old daughter last year. His two top-10 finishes this year include a tie for eighth at the Honda Classic. “Sometimes it goes your way, and sometimes it doesn’t,” Villegas said. “The last few years I’ve been up and down with many things. We keep showing up and the results start showing up.” He bogeyed his opening hole Thursday and birdied six of seven holes in the middle of his round. That streak included putts of 23 and 20 feet and a chip-in from the fringe at his 13th hole. He finished up when he holed out from about 45 yards away to the side of the green. “Some days the hole is a little bit big,” Villegas said. “On (the last hole), I got really lucky. I hit a chip that was probably going off the green, and it hits the pin and goes in.” Kang, the 2019 Byron Nelson champ, got his round rolling with an eagle on his 11th hole. He hit the green in two on the par 5 from 292 yards and made a 30-foot eagle. “I played great today, but I didn’t start off very good,” Kang said. “I struggled a little bit with a new driver from the start, but I found a way to hit it on the back nine so started driving a lot better.” Kang birdied three of his last four, including his finishing hole with a 22-foot birdie. Spieth birdied three of his opening five holes. Looking for his first win since the 2017 Open Championship, he had steadily dropped in the world rankings until he hit No. 92 in January after missing the cut in five of eight starts. “Overall with the score, I certainly would have signed up for 5 under starting out,” Spieth said. “I felt like I played some really nice golf on our front nine. I didn’t quite hit it as good as I have been, but certainly the short game came through. I mean, 5 under around this track is a good score. I’d take four more of them.” Five of Spieth’s seven birdies came before he made the turn. For the day, three of his birdie putts came from longer than 15 feet, including a 21-footer at his second hole. “Overall, just chipped and putted really well, which was the difference-maker today,” he said. He used a putter from the fringe while 16 feet away for birdie at his second-to-last hole. He made up for hitting into the bunker on the right off the tee, but he couldn’t recover on his 18th. He pushed another tee shot right and hit a provisional. But he found his tee shot near trees, punched it out near the green, yet failed to get up and down and settled for his second bogey. “It just got a little bit off there today off the tee on contact,” Spieth said. “The rest of the swing, I mean, I feel like I’m swinging the same and out in front of it and putting a good move on it.” Spieth has used the Texas Open to bolster his game in the past. In 2015, he finished second after four straight birdies late. Two weeks later, he won his first major at the Masters and in June won the U.S. Open. In February, Spieth had a share of the lead after a third-round 61 at Phoenix and he led by two shots going into the final day at Pebble Beach. Last month at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard in Florida, he was two shots out of the lead heading into the final day and finished tied for fourth. Scottie Scheffler, a Dallas native and former Texas Longhorns standout like Spieth, shared opening-round 68s with Tom Hoge and Sebastian Munoz. Scheffler was runner-up last week in Austin at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. He made up for a bogey on his 17th with an 11-foot birdie putt at his last. “I made a few silly mistakes here and there, kind of two sloppy bogeys, but other than that, I felt like I played really solid,” Scheffler said. “I was pretty frustrated bogeying a par 5 there towards the end of the round, so having a nice bounce back will give me some momentum and make me rest a little easier.” In addition to Mickelson’s final-hole struggles, he had a three-putt inside nine feet and on the next hole missed from less than four feet. Abraham Ancer was tied with Spieth at 4 under early in his second nine, but a triple-bogey and bogey finish put an even-par 72 on his card.

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