Leaderboard: Playoffs head to TPC Boston

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NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. – Tiger Woods’ magic with his Scotty Cameron didn’t continue Friday at the BMW Championship. Woods struggled with his putting throughout his second-round 70. After starting the day with a share of the lead, he is now five shots behind leader Xander Schauffele. After holing four putts of 10 feet or longer on Thursday, Woods’ longest made putt Friday was a 6-footer for par on his first hole. He ended the day with a three-putt bogey that was punctuated by a miss from 6 feet. It was his second consecutive missed par putt from inside 10 feet. Woods was 1 for 4 from 4-8 feet on Friday. This was his second-worst performance in Strokes Gained: Putting of the season. He lost 3.57 strokes on the greens. Only the second round of the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, where he lost 3.68 strokes with his putting, was worse. Woods made three birdies and three bogeys Friday. All three of his birdies came on putts from inside 3 feet, and two of them were on par-5s. He made just 31 feet, 4 inches of putts in the second round. Woods wasn’t ready to blame his putter, though. “I hit it just as good and putt it just as good. Nothing went in. That’s the way it goes,â€� Woods said. It wasn’t just his iron play that wasn’t sharp. He hit 14 greens Friday but failed to hit many shots close to the hole. On the par-3s and par-4s, he hit just two approach shots within 15 feet. His proximity of 37 feet, 4 inches was almost 12 feet higher than the previous day. A change in conditions is partly to blame. Woods’ average approach shots on the par-4s Friday was 144 yards, 19 yards longer than the previous day. Thursday’s high temperatures allowed the ball to fly far and for Woods to hit driver over many of the fairway bunkers that cut into the fairway. The softer conditions made the course play longer and made it difficult for him to get close to the back hole locations. Half of Friday’s pins were cut within 10 strokes of the back edge of the green. “(I) couldn’t get back there, couldn’t skip the ball back there,â€� Woods said. “It was a difficult task to try and flight one to get it back there without hitting it over the back.â€� Aroninimink was hit by rain overnight, and tee times were moved up because of thunderstorms that were forecast to hit Friday afternoon. The air was damp and heavy when Woods teed off at 8:06 a.m. He missed four birdie putts from 20 feet or less on his first seven holes. He didn’t make his first birdie of the day until the par-5 ninth hole, where he pitched to 2 feet from in front of the green.   That offset his first bogey of the tournament. One day after hitting his tee shot over the green on the downhill par-3 fifth hole, he hit it into one of the deep bunkers fronting the green. He couldn’t convert the 4-foot par putt after playing a delicate shot from the sand. It was his first miss from inside 10 feet of the week. Of his six missed greens this week, four have come on par-3s. Woods was under par for the first time Friday after a birdie on No. 11, where he wedged to 2 feet from 93 yards. He made a nice par save at the 15th hole, getting up-and-down from 75 yards after driving into the rough on the 515-yard, par-4. That preceded his third birdie of the day. Despite driving into a divot in the 16th fairway, he reached the green in two with a fairway wood. He two-putted for birdie. Woods then pushed his tee shot on the par-3 17th into a bunker before three-putting the last hole. “That round today was easily 6, 7-under par,â€� he said. “It turned into even par which is not what I needed to do today.â€�

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This week’s Wyndham Championship is the final event for players to jockey for points in advance of the FedExCup Playoffs. It’s also the final opportunity to accrue Wyndham Rewards Top 10 points — the regular-season cash bonus — although no one is catching Brooks Koepka after his win at the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. Just another $2 million into Brooks’ bank account — rough life. After two consecutive weeks of stacked fields at The Open Championship and the WGC-FedEx St, Jude Invitational, you’d expect a severe drop-off in the quality of the field in Greensboro, North Carolina. While there is a clear dip in talent, it’s not as pronounced as years’ past. Jordan Spieth, Webb Simpson, Hideki Matsuyama, Billy Horschel, Paul Casey, Cam Smith, Matthew Wolff, Lucas Bjerregaard, Collin Morikawa, Alex Noren, Viktor Hovland, Doc Redman, Branden Grace, Joaquin Niemann, Chez Reavie, Dylan Fritelli, Charles Howell III, Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Sungjae Im and defending champ Brandt Snedeker will be teeing off in North Carolina. There is a slew of players impacted by the FedExCup standings, but while you can project “needâ€� onto golfers in this situation when making your picks all you want, there’s no empirical evidence to support it makes a difference either way. It is a fun narrative, and maybe it works out; however, it’s all noise from a prognostication standpoint. For the course, Sedgefield CC is one of the few on the PGA TOUR that allows players of all skill sets to play their preferred game and have a chance to complete. A Donald Ross design (like Detroit Golf Club and East Lake), Sedgefield features eight par 4s measuring between 400 and 450 yards and a pair of par 5s reachable by the entire field (a cumulative 70 eagles on those two holes last year). Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green has been more than two times as impactful on the top-5 finishers (+1.1/per round) than Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee (+0.46/per round) and Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green (+0.37/per round), although, driving accuracy has popped as an essential skill in winning over the years. While the GIR rate is above TOUR average, the fairways narrow around the 275-yard mark off the tee, and this has resulted in six of the past eight Wyndham Championship winners finishing in the top 15 of accuracy for the week they claimed victory. Patrick Reed in 2013 and Brandt Snedeker last year are the two outliers. If you’re searching for a course that correlates with Sedgefield, Harbour Town and the RBC Heritage leaderboard have had a substantial amount of crossover the past decade. Targets From The Range Patrick Reed ($9,700) The lack of fairways gained off the tee is somewhat problematic, but as noted above, Reed was one of two winners (along with Snedeker) to finish outside the top 15 in Driving Accuracy in the last eight years. Reed’s an excellent player out of the rough, and has been red-hot over the past few months. He rolls into Greensboro with top-12 results in three of his past four starts, no worse than T32 in his past six starts and gaining an average of more than four strokes on approach in that span. He hasn’t won since the 2018 Masters, so we officially are in a drought. But at a familiar venue, which has seen multiple repeat champions, Reed is a perfect spot to collect another novelty check. Viktor Hovland ($9,500) First, Matthew Wolff got his breakthrough. Then Collin Morikawa followed it with a victory at the Barracuda Championship. Seems like Hovland won’t be too far behind. He fits the accuracy mold, ranking 10th in the field in fairways gained over the past 50 rounds per www.fantasynational.com, and it’s not like the rest of his game is lagging behind. He’s gained off the tee box and through approach in every start as a pro, and he hasn’t finished worse than T16 in any of his past three starts. If his putter finally will cooperate, he’ll at least notch the first top 10 of his career. Maybe more. Kyle Stanley ($7,700) After finding himself in majors and WGCs over the past two seasons, Stanley is back just attempting to churn out quality results and cash paychecks on TOUR. And most of the season, it’s been a poor effort. However, since the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, his ball-striking game has re-emerged. He’s strung together five straight cuts — with a pair of top-25 finishes — and is gaining off-the-tee and through approaches in every start. Per Fantasy National, Stanley is fourth in the field in fairways gained over the past 24 rounds, sixth in par 5s gained and eighth in approach. If he doesn’t putt himself out of contention, he’ll have a shot in a birdie-fest. Peter Malnati ($7,100) Making 13 of his past 14 cuts, Malnati has gained with his irons in six of past seven starts and has lost on the greens only once early February. While putting is a high-variance skill year-over-year, Malnati has been one of the few to sustain consistent roll over the years. Digging back into his course form, he has never missed the weekend at Sedgefield and was top 10 in the field in Strokes Gained: Approach a year ago, but a poor week off the tee capped his upside at a T24. However, this is the best he’s played entering the Wyndham in his career, sitting seventh in the field in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green over the past 24 rounds and ranks out 24th in Par 4s 400-450 yards, 27th T2G, and 25th in proximity gained from 150-175 yards, where the plurality of iron shots come from this week. Read more daily fantasy analysis from Pat Mayo and others on the DraftKings Playbook. Writer’s profile: I am a promoter at DraftKings and am also an avid fan and user (my username is ThePME) and may sometimes play on my personal account in the games that I offer advice on. Although I have expressed my personal view on the games and strategies above, they do not necessarily reflect the view(s) of DraftKings and I may also deploy different players and strategies than what I recommend above. I am not an employee of DraftKings and do not have access to any non-public information.

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