DJ playing his way into Player of the Year debate

ORLANDO, Fla. — Henrik Stenson had a hot putter, a much quieter crowd and a one-shot lead in the Arnold Palmer Invitational. One week after Stenson returned from his winter break and spent two days with Tiger Woods and his raucous crowds, he made birdie on half of the holes at Bay Hill for an 8-under 64, his lowest round ever on the course Arnold built. PGA TOUR rookies Aaron Wise and Talor Gooch each had 65. Wise missed a 6-foot birdie putt on the final hole. Woods again brought out big crowds in the unseasonable chill Thursday morning and gave them quite a show. He hit a tee shot that was out of bounds by inches. He atoned for that with a 71-foot birdie putt. And he wound up with a 68, his best opening round since he returned this year from a fourth back surgery. “I feel like I’m not really thinking as much around the golf course,” Woods said. “I can just see and feel it and go.” Each week is a little better for Woods, and Stenson saw the progress last week. The 41-year-old Swede typically takes a month off between the Middle East swing and the Florida swing, and he returned last week to a grouping of Woods and Jordan Spieth. That didn’t bother him as much as his poor putting. Bay Hill provided a change in both areas. “It’s great to see him back competing, but it was a little loud out there last week,” Stenson said. “But that comes with the excitement of having him back and seeing him play well, so I thought it was great. … I guess it’s nice to get a little bit of a breather at times, though.” It really helps to be putting well, especially on pure greens at Bay Hill that already had a yellow hue to them. He spent the weekend at home in Orlando working with Phil Kenyon, his putting coach, and it seemed to help. Stenson took only 20 putts, tying his personal best for fewest putts in a round on the PGA TOUR. He ran off five straight birdies around the turn, and he followed his lone bogey at the par-3 14th with two birdies and a 10-foot par save. Woods had no complaints, and about the only thing that went wrong — except for the tee shot on No. 3 that went OB — was his prediction before he left Bay Hill. He was happy with anything in the 60s and said, “There won’t be a lot of rounds out there that will be in the 60s. The golf course is playing difficult.” There were 13 more rounds in the 60s in the afternoon, including Ernie Els and Rory McIlroy at 69. Only one of them was pleased with it. Els, who has gone more than a year since his last finish in the top 30, dropped only one shot, on the opening hole. McIlroy had five birdies through 10 holes and then hit out of bounds on the 18th hole for a double bogey. Coming off a runner-up finish at the Valspar Championship that raised expectations of a victory being closer than ever, Woods started and finished strong, with one mishap in the middle. His drive on No. 3, his 12th hole of the round, sailed to the right and went off a cart path and toward the houses. Only when he reached the ball did Woods find it had rolled into the bottom of a mesh fence. It looked like it was in play, except the poles on the waist-high fence were the boundaries, and his ball was inches outside of them. He went back to the tee, sprayed the next tee shot under a tree and made double bogey. And then came the big finish — two birdies on the par 5s, including a bold flop shot from a tight lie over a bunker at No. 6, and the 71-foot putt he was hoping would be close. Woods immediately pressed his hand down, asking for the ball to slow down, and then watched it drop for a most unlikely birdie. “I was trying to lag it down there and just make my par and get out of here,” he said. “It had to crash at the hole — which I’m not complaining — and it went in.” He closed with a 12-foot putt to save par from the bunker. Former PGA champion Jimmy Walker, Rickie Fowler and Bryson DeChambeau were at 67. Walker was on the other side of the golf course finishing up at the same time as Woods. He holed a wedge from 132 yards on the 18th for an eagle, matching his best score at Bay Hill. It was especially gratifying because he wasn’t even planning to play this week. He had a trip to Augusta National planned with some friends and club members and thought it was this weekend. Instead, it was meant to be Monday and Tuesday. Walker’s wife, Erin, has a horse-jumping show in West Palm Beach. The kids are with their grandparents skiing in Utah. “I figured I might as well play,” Walker said. He had two days at Augusta National, didn’t have a practice round at Bay Hill and felt right at home. “It’s just golf,” he shrugged. “Just hit the shots. I’ve done so many Monday qualifiers earlier in my career where you never see the golf course. Sometimes it helps because you’re not overdoing it.”

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For most of us, golf is a hobby, a way to put work in our rearview mirrors, at least for four or five hours at a time. Chesson Hadley plays the game for a living, though, and he had to look elsewhere “so it’s not just golf, golf, golf all the time.â€� He tried hunting and liked it. Hadley, who is a gregarious sort, was particularly partial to turkey and bird hunting, which he found to be a little more social than hunting for four-legged wild game. “You don’t have to stand completely still and not speak and you don’t have to get up at zero o’clock in the morning to do some of these things,â€� he explains. But at the same time, Hadley doesn’t have land to hunt on. The father of two young children also felt guilty coming home from weeks on the road and then disappearing again to go out and hunt. So Hadley eventually decided to take up woodworking. It’s something he can do at home when the kids are asleep. Plus, he used to watch his dad build things so he has his own teacher — and what his dad can’t show him how to do, YouTube can. “You can just watch — I mean, it’s unbelievable,â€� Hadley says. “You pick up techniques and it’s very simple. And so I started doing a little bit that it’s fun.â€� Hadley’s biggest challenge has been staying focused on the project at hand. “I’m a little bit scatterbrained so once I start like multiple different projects and seemed to like get halfway through them all and just kind of set them down for several months,â€� Hadley says. “So I need to pick one, stick to it and finish it and move on. But I enjoy it.â€� One of the projects that Hadley has actually finished is a side table for his man cave. It’s made of walnut and maple with a butcher block top that has routed edges. “If I had to do it again, I could make it look better, I think, but it was a good first kind of project,â€� Hadley says. “… You can actually open the lid and there’s a cooler inside so I don’t have to go keep going back to the fridge for soda or maybe a beer.â€� He started a project for the kids, too. They have a small table made out of a laminated particle board and Hadley wanted to build some sturdy chairs for them. “I never quite finished it because I was trying to do it with dowels,â€� he says. “And your measuring has to be so, so precise in order for the dowels to the line up here and then you’ve got to attach the end and if one’s off the whole thing is going to be off.â€� “I did OK. But I wasn’t doing it the easiest way possible. You really need a drill press to draw perfectly straight down into your wood and I didn’t have that.â€� But Hadley is starting to accumulate tools for his workshop which is now in the garage of his Raleigh, North Carolina, home. He’s got various sanders and drills as well as a planer, a router and a joiner. “But as a man, you always need more,â€� Hadley says with a grin. “I don’t have enough. So I’m always eying a bargain here and there.â€� He doesn’t have enough room for a table saw yet, but Hadley does have miter, circular and jig saws. The way he sees it, that might not be a bad thing, either. “The table saw is just super easy, you’ve got the fence, you just run up against that,â€� Hadley says. “But those are also incredibly dangerous. And believe it or not, my golf is more important to me than woodworking. “I need my fingers.â€� Hadley is working on another side table for his man cave. This time he’s replacing the pocket screws he used on the first one with biscuit joints for a more seamless look. “I attach the legs together by biscuits,â€� Hadley says. “So there’s no screws, there’s nothing visible. It’s pure — that’s really the more fine woodworking.â€� Hadley would also like to make something with a concrete tabletop. “It’s not hard at all and you can do anything,â€� he says. “You can make a side table or a coffee table or whatever. You’ve just got to build a frame, pour the concrete and sand it flat. It’s really neat.â€� That is, if he can just find the time.

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The 14th Presidents Cup commenced Thursday at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, with Day 1 of competition featuring five Foursomes matches (alternate shot). The Presidents Cup is contested across four days and 30 matches – five Foursomes matches on Thursday, five Four-ball (best ball) matches on Friday, four Foursomes and four Four-ball matches on Saturday, and 12 Singles matches on Sunday. The U.S. Team, captained by Davis Love III, entered the week undefeated in seven past Presidents Cups on American soil (7-0), with an 11-1-1 overall record. The International Team, captained by Trevor Immelman, aimed to rally around its underdog status with eight first-time President Cup participants. Here’s a match-by-match breakdown of how Day 1 unfolded at the Presidents Cup. PRESIDENTS CUP: Scoring | The five key clubs for the International Team at the Presidents Cup | The five key clubs for the U.S. Team at the Presidents Cup THURSDAY: FOURSOMES MATCH 1 Patrick Cantlay/Xander Schauffele (U.S.) def. Adam Scott/Hideki Matsuyama (Intl.), 6 and 5 The International side put its most experienced guns out first, but they were no match for Cantlay/Schauffele, the day’s lone bogey-free team. By the time this match reached the eighth tee, the U.S. owned a 4-up advantage. Scott struggled with the pace of the greens early, and the Internationals handed away the par-4 third with a three-putt. Cantlay would get hot with the putter, rolling in birdie putts on Nos. 5 (9-feet) and 6 (13-foot curler). Schauffele had but 167 yards left into the par-5 seventh after a 360-yard bomb off the tee by Cantlay, setting up another easy birdie. The U.S. was 4-up. The Internationals birdied No. 8, but Scott missed from 8 feet for birdie at 10, a putt that would have cut the deficit to 2-down. From there, the U.S. rolled, with Scott and Matsuyama finishing with three bogeys and the match ending on 13. They fell to 1-4-1 when teamed in the Presidents Cup. Cantlay/Schauffele are 5-0 in Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup Foursomes. QUOTES: “With the wind picking up and that storm getting close to us, we felt like the wind was all over the place. We told ourselves to ballstrike the heck of out this place, and that’s what we did. – Xander Schauffele “We’ve played a lot of alternate-shot with each other, and I think we just feel very comfortable and confident. On a day like today, to make no bogeys, that was really good golf.” – Patrick Cantlay Score at match’s conclusion: U.S. Team 1, International Team 0

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