Bubba Watson charges ahead at Riviera

The next installment of Capital One’s The Match will feature a foursome of legendary NFL quarterbacks. Four of the past five NFL MVPs will take the course as Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers will team up to face Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. TNT will televise the 12-hole event at 6:30 p.m. Eastern on June 1 from Wynn Las Vegas, the only course on the Vegas Strip. Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl winner and three-time MVP, and Rodgers, a four-time MVP, will team together after opposing each other in the fourth edition of The Match last July in Montana. The team of Rodgers and Bryson DeChambeau emerged victorious over Brady and Phil Mickelson at The Reserve at Moonlight Basin. Brady fell to 0-2 in The Match, having paired with Mickelson both times. Mahomes and Allen will each make their debut in The Match franchise. Mahomes quarterbacked the Kansas City Chiefs to back-to-back Super Bowl appearances after the 2019 and 2020 seasons, going 1-1, and was also awarded 2018 NFL MVP. Allen has quarterbacked the Buffalo Bills to three consecutive playoff appearances, after the team had advanced to the postseason just once in a 19-season span. In total, the four participants of The Match have combined for 30 Pro Bowls, 86 NFL playoff appearances and nine Super Bowl titles. Live coverage of the match-play event will feature players mic’d up for the duration of competition, including the capability to communicate directly with their competitors and the broadcast team. The Match will be contested at Wynn Golf Club for the second consecutive iteration, following Brooks Koepka’s 5-and-3 win over DeChambeau last November. The 6,722-yard, par-70 Tom Fazio design features elevation changes and water hazards on 12 holes. To date, The Match has raised nearly $33 million for various organizations and has donated nearly 17 million meals to Feeding America.

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FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Daniel Berger was playing some of the best golf that no one noticed. Three months away because of the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t slow his momentum, and he made it pay off Sunday with a victory at Colonial. The PGA TOUR made a healthy return to golf at the Charles Schwab Challenge. Berger saved par from behind the 17th green on the first playoff hole and won when Collin Morikawa missed a 3-foot par putt. Berger closed with a 4-under 66, his 28th consecutive round at par or better dating to Oct. 11 at the Houston Open. Even over the final hour, a half-dozen players were still in the mix. All that was missing was the sound and energy of a gallery, with the PGA TOUR not allowing spectators for the opening five events in its return. Berger won for the third time — all victories during this week on the calendar, just not in circumstances like this. It was the first PGA TOUR event since March 12 when the spread of the new coronavirus shut down golf and other sports. From no positive tests to a dynamic finish at history-rich Colonial, PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan sized up the week by saying, “This has been a phenomenal start to our return.” Morikawa has been equally steady. Since graduating from Cal a year ago, he has won and made every cut, a streak now at 21 events, the longest streak by a newcomer since Tiger Woods. He took a share of the lead with a 50-foot putt on the 14th hole. It was the short ones that hurt. Morikawa also missed a birdie putt from 6 feet on the 18th hole in a 67. Berger was the only one who delivered, making a 10-foot birdie on the final hole that put him at 15-under 265. The last time Berger was in a playoff, Jordan Spieth holed a bunker shot to beat him at the Travelers Championship. So he could feel for what Morikawa felt int he loss. “It’s going to hurt for a little while, but he’ll get over it and he’ll be winning again,” Berger said. Even the optimism of being back to golf didn’t eliminate the sting, and more than Morikawa felt it. Xander Schauffele gave new meaning to the phrase “Horrible Horseshoe” at Colonial. He hit into the water on the 15th from a fairway bunker, hit a poor chip after the penalty shot and then made a 30-footer to escape with a bogey. He followed with a 25-foot birdie to regain a share of the lead. And then his 3-foot par putt on the 17th hole dipped in one side of the hole and spun out of the other. His 25-foot birdie putt to join the playoff came up just short and he shot 69. Bryson DeChambeau cringed when his 12-foot birdie putt on the 18th narrowly missed, giving him a 66 and leaving him one shot out of the playoff. Ditto for Justin Rose, whose 18-foot birdie on the last hole was a turn short. He also had 66. Jason Kokrak finished well ahead of everyone else. he also missed a birdie on the last hole in his round of 64. Spieth, trying to end three years without a victory, left with a consolation prize of progress. He missed a 2-foot par putt on the sixth hole — part of three bogeys in a four-hole stretch — but was still in the mix until a tee shot out of bounds on the 14th. Even then, he made a 35-foot putt to save bogey. He wound up with a 71 and tied for 10th. Rory McIlroy had seven straight tournaments no worse than fifth, a streak that came to a stunning halt. Starting the final round three shots behind, he was 5 over through seven holes and closed with a 74 to tie for 32nd. The final round was as wild as expected with eight players taking turns or sharing time in the lead, all without having any idea without fans to give a hint of what was going on. “If there are fans and everything with the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs,’ I’d probably be a little more (ticked) off,” Schauffele said. “Maybe that’s a good thing for me right now. But it was definitely weird. It was sort of an internal battle, which it always is for me, but more so internal this week just with no fans.” Monahan conceded his biggest concern going into the week, even with its testing and safety procedure, was positive tests popping up. “That’s something, candidly, that I lost a lot of sleep over in the weeks that preceded coming in,” he said. All 487 tests at Colonial were negative, and the golf lived up to its part with a star-filled leaderboard and a half-dozen players still in the mix the final hour. Next up is the RBC Heritage at Hilton Head on the South Carolina coast, and Monahan said the first week won’t be complete until then to see how players handled the interstate travel. Those on the charter were tested for the new coronavirus after the third round. Everyone else would be tested when they arrived at Hilton Head. “This is about a sustained return,” Monahan said. “But I think as we sit here late in the day Sunday, there’s no question that this has been an exceptional week.”

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SILVIS, Ill. – Viktor Hovland figured he needed to birdie the last hole to get a top-10 finish at the John Deere Classic, thus punching his ticket to next week’s Barbasol Championship. Instead, the 2018 U.S. Amateur winner from Oklahoma State bogeyed the hole and signed for a final-round 64, dropping him out of the top 10 and giving him a hard-earned break. “I’ll take two weeks off and just chill in Stillwater,� he said as he packed up his things in the locker room after competing on a sponsor exemption for the fourth straight week. He shrugged off the 12-foot par putt he missed on 18. “I figured I needed a birdie, but it still hurt.� At the U.S. Open in June, Hovland, 21, set a new tournament standard for low score by an amateur (280, 4 under), beating the record previously set by Jack Nicklaus in 1960 (282). In doing so, Hovland also became the first player since Matt Kuchar in 1998 to be low amateur in both the Masters Tournament (T32) and U.S. Open (T12). Hovland turned pro before the Travelers Championship (T54), and was steadily improving, finishing T13 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic and 3M Open the last two weeks. He was hot again Sunday, leaving himself just a three-foot eagle putt at 17 before his miscue at the difficult, par-4 finishing hole. The bogey was a setback in his quest to earn enough FedExCup points to secure his playing privileges on the PGA TOUR next season. Hovland could have earned Special Temporary Membership, good for unlimited sponsor exemptions, with a three-way tie for third or better, or a six-way tie for second or better at the Deere. But a top-10 finish would have helped a lot, giving him at least one more start at the Barbasol. Instead, he’ll take a much-needed break after five straight weeks. “It’s going to take something really special at the Wyndham,� Hovland said, “but more likely I’ll be going to the Korn Ferry Tour Finals.�

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