Mickelson revises earlier prediction on 50 PGA TOUR wins

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Brooks Koepka is turning a public golf course into his private playground in the PGA Championship. Staked to a seven-shot lead, Koepka never let anyone get closer than five shots Saturday as he powered his way to an ideal start and overcame a few sloppy mistakes for an even-par 70. For the first time this week, he didn’t touch any scoring records. That wasn’t the objective. Koepka kept his seven-shot lead going into a final round that feels more like a victory lap as he tries to join Tiger Woods as the only players to win back-to-back in stroke play at the PGA Championship. “I think we’re all playing for second,” Luke List said after bogeys on his last two holes knocked him out of the final group. History would agree with him. No one has ever lost a seven-shot lead in 159 years of the majors. No one has lost more than a six-shot lead in any PGA TOUR event. Dustin Johnson tried to make a run with six birdies, only to stall with five bogeys in his round of 69. No bogey was more damaging than the 18th. A drive into the fairway would have given him a reasonable shot at birdie. Instead, he sent it right into the bunker, came up well short into the native grass, left the next one in the bunker and had to scramble to limit the damage. That kept Johnson from joining his close friend in the final group. Koepka, who was at 12-under 198, will play the final round with Harold Varner III, whose week began with plans to play a practice round with Tiger Woods on the eve of the PGA Championship until Woods called in sick. Varner birdied the 18th to cap off a bogey-free 67 and lead the group at 5-under 205 that includes Jazz Janewattananond (67) and List, who holed two shots from off the green for a 69. Jordan Spieth did not put any pressure on Koepka at all. Playing in the final group on the weekend for the first time since the Open Championship last summer, Spieth didn’t have a realistic birdie chance until the sixth hole, and he missed that one from 8 feet. He shot 72 and was nine shots behind. There was simply no stopping Koepka, who is one round away from a fourth major in his last eight tries. Koepka also would become the first player to hold back-to-back major titles at the same time. He won his second straight U.S. Open last year 60 miles down the road on Long Island at Shinnecock Hills.

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KAPALUA, Hawaii — KAPALUA, Hawaii — All it took was one round for the new year to feel like the end of last season on the PGA TOUR. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Viktor Hovland reunited with clubs just in time in Maui Cameron Smith of Australia opened the Sentry Tournament of Champions with a pair of long eagle putts and to offset an early bogey for an 8-under 65 and a one-shot lead at Kapalua. For the rest of the warm, gorgeous afternoon, the focus quickly shifted to the two players golf hasn’t seen in quite some time. Patrick Cantlay, who last competed on Sunday at the Ryder Cup on Sept. 26, seized on the scoring holes and the soft conditions and started running off birdies and one eagle. He had to settle for par on the par-5 18th hole and posted a 7-under 66. Not bad for his first competition in 102 days. Jon Rahm, who was in dire need of a break from a chaotic 16 months of majors and parenthood and COVID-19, was bogey-free and still mildly irritated by the pair of birdie putts he left short on the par 5s. He also had 66. They were the leading contenders for the FedExCup last year, when Cantlay closed with a superb 6-iron for birdie on the final hole and a one-shot win at the TOUR Championship, giving him the $15 million and ultimately PGA TOUR player of the year. They will be paired Friday. “Again,” Cantlay said with a smile. There was plenty of good golf, and attribute that to day in paradise that felt and looked like one. The sun was blazing. A few humpback whales were breaching. The wind was not raging. The Plantation Course was soft from rain. Scoring was simply ideal. Twenty-two players from the 38-man field of PGA TOUR winners broke 70. Justin Thomas, Patrick Reed and Lucas Glover, all at 74, were the only players over par. But while everyone had a holiday break — that meant more fishing than golf for Smith while at his U.S. base in north Florida — Cantlay and Rahm seemed to have been gone forever. It just didn’t look that way. “I still think I’m a little rusty and I saw that in my start,” said Cantlay, who missed the first green and saw his chip run with the grain some 12 feet by the hole. “I got away with a couple of loose swings and one flier on the sixth hole where I was able to make a par, but maybe shouldn’t have.” His shot sailed well over the green, some 40 yards away. He chopped that out to 8 feet for an unlikely par, had a two-putt par from 70 feet, saved par from the rough on the par-3 eighth. He was holding it together. And then really got on a roll on the back nine,” Cantlay said. It started with the 13th hole and a birdie, and while Cantlay missed a good chance at birdie on the 18th that would have tied Smith for the lead, he still played the final six holes in 6-under par. The big shot was a 35-foot eagle putt on No. 15. The most pleasing was a full pitching wedge over the ravine to a front pin on the picturesque 17th. Rahm was a lot cleaner, playing bogey-free. He ran off three straight birdies on the front nine and then got hot, as Cantlay did, on the closing six holes. Rahm finished with a long two-putt birdie in his first round in 83 days. “You can always expect a little bit of rust,” Rahm said. “I took time off, but I wasn’t on the couch doing nothing. I was still working out. I was still practicing as if I was still in the season. I took maybe three weeks off of golf, which were very needed. But even though I was home, I was practicing. “Again, not that I’m surprised that I played good, but it’s really good to come out and start the year off the right way.” Throw Daniel Berger into that category. He joined Cantlay and Rahm just one shot off the lead. Berger, who had to reconfigure a caddie’s clubs to practice earlier in the week when his golf bag was delayed two days, also opened with a 66. Berger also went missing after the Ryder Cup, turning up in the Bahamas with plenty of rust and no lack of belief. He practiced a little bit more in the week before Kapalua, only to show up on Maui with his golf clubs nowhere to be found. He had them two days later — Berger borrowed the clubs of caddie Brett Waldman, and even took the liberty of changing the lies and lofts on the irons — and didn’t miss a beat. His only lapse was a long three-putt that was down the slope but into the grain on the 17th, though he atoned for that with a birdie on the last. Players could reach the 663-yard closing hole with a long iron in fast conditions last year. Berger couldn’t get home with a 3-wood. He was no less pleased and it was hard for anyone to be terribly upset given the location. Never mind that he still isn’t sure which island is Lanai and which is Molokai as he gazes out toward the ocean. “I’m not good with islands. There’s too many of them,” Berger said. “I know we’re in Maui.”

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