New caddie rule strikes again in odd fashion

As we hit the last event of the regular season and get ready to ride the rollercoaster of the FedExCup Playoffs, it seems an apropos time to check in on our bold predictions that came way back from last October. It has been another brilliant season full of highlight moments. We’ve seen the resurgence of some stars like THE PLAYERS champion Webb Simpson. We’ve seen Brooks Koepka become a major force. We’ve seen some newcomers emerge with the likes of Austin Cook, Aaron Wise and Satoshi Kodaira leading the rookie race. We’ve seen T.J. Vogel become a Monday king – getting through qualifying an incredible eight times. And we’ve seen some bigger names slide. But they’ve still got time to round back into form. Were we able to predict it all? Let’s see. 18. THE PLAYERS champion Si Woo Kim finds his consistency and becomes a regular threat on the PGA TOUR. Last season Kim shocked the world with his dominant PLAYERS win because for the remainder of the season he was virtually irrelevant. He made 14 cuts in 30 starts with six WDs. While he has certainly been much better this season with 20 made cuts and five top-10s from 27 starts it would be a stretch to claim he’s been a regular threat. We’ll be generous and give ourselves half a point here. 0.5/1 17. Phil Mickelson breaks his win drought. Mickelson arrived at the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship having not tasted victory since 2013. But he was able to hold off a red-hot Justin Thomas to finally return to the winner’s circle. Thomas holed out for a dramatic eagle in regulation play to be part of a playoff but Mickelson held his nerve. 1.5/2 16. Three players will have a taste at World No. 1. Oh we were so close. And it could still come true during the last five weeks of the season. Dustin Johnson has continued to be a pretty good mainstay at the top, holding court for all but four weeks of 2018 so far. Justin Thomas was given his first view from the top in May. Justin Rose had a handful of chances to get to the top and still might, and Brooks Koepka is now breathing down Johnson’s neck. 1.5/3 15. Rose will bloom, and win, among the azaleas. As mentioned above Justin Rose has had a couple of chances to climb to No.1 in the world in what has been a pretty decent season. Wins at the World Golf Championships–HSBC Champions and the Fort Worth Invitational. He also won the Turkish Airlines Open and Indonesian Masters and was inside the top 25 of all four majors and THE PLAYERS. But he did not go one better than his 2017 runner-up at the Masters, finishing T12. Half a point. 2/4 14. Hideki Matsuyama wins a major. Can’t hide behind it. This one was wrong. After winning plenty of tournaments in 2016-17 it seemed a decent gamble on Japan finally getting a major champion. But instead, Matsuyama has seen a significant drop in form. He has just two top-10 results on the PGA TOUR this season. His best major result was T16 at the U.S. Open. Perhaps we should have seen it coming. Most players have a small dip in results after the birth of a first child. But they also bounce back the season after so let’s watch this space. 2/5 13. Rookie of the Year Xander Schauffele will keep on going. This kid is the real deal, so we were right about that. But we also said he’d win again this season, and so far, the trophies have eluded him. Two runner-up finishers. A third. A total of five top-10s and just four missed cuts from 23 starts. Who knows, he may just defend his TOUR Championship title and prove us fully right yet. 2.5/6 12. Tiger Woods plays again on TOUR. What a difference a year makes. This was considered a BOLD prediction last October. We had no idea if Woods would ever return to competitive golf as he recovered from a fourth back surgery, this time a fusion. Of course he has and he’s been amazing. His recent runner-up finish at the PGA Championship was his second of the season. Five top-10s in just 12 starts. Not only has Woods played, he could win this season. If he doesn’t get a trophy, you can be sure the prediction next season will be about claiming an 80th title. And some. 3.5/7 11. Someone will play late Sunday with the career Grand Slam on the line. This was true at the first major of the season as Rory McIlroy moved into the final group behind Patrick Reed at Augusta National. The problem for Rory was he never really threatened from there with a final-round 74 dropping him into a tie for fifth. Phil Mickelson was never a threat at the U.S. Open, and Jordan Spieth needed a late Sunday charge at the PGA Championship to finish T12. 4.5/8 10. Sangmoon Bae makes the FedExCup Playoffs – and so does a Chinese player. Well, we were off the mark with Bae as he returned to the TOUR from his Korean military duty. In 16 starts he has just one top-25 finish and ranks 201st in the FedExCup. And our history-making Chinese players haven’t fared much better. Zinjun Zhang sits 165th in the standings and Marty Dou is way back in 227th. 4.5/9 9. Justin Thomas will keep narrowing the gap between himself and Jordan Spieth. This has certainly happened, but just as much for Thomas’ great play as Spieth’s lack of it. The FedExCup champion has a huge chance to the be the first player to go back-to-back and win the FedExCup again after three wins already. His career win total sits at nine, while Spieth has stalled on 11 after a winless season to this point. Spieth has five top 10s – it certainly has not been a terrible season – but by his own standards he has dipped. The good news? There is still time to turn it around in the Playoffs. 5.5/10 8. Expect two or three wins from among this quartet: Maverick McNealy, Beau Hossler, Aaron Wise and Cameron Champ. Well, Wise held up his end of the bargain with an impressive win at the AT&T Byron Nelson, showing great poise down the stretch on Sunday. He’d been runner-up his previous start. Hossler has threatened often, twice a runner-up including a playoff loss at the Houston Open are part of five top 10s. Champ and McNealy have spent the majority of their time on the Web.com Tour where Champ has a win and a locked-up TOUR card for next season. McNealy has been fair without being great but will have a chance to advance from the Web.com Tour Finals. 5.5/11 7. Anirban Lahiri will use the Presidents Cup as a springboard to win on TOUR. Not yet he hasn’t. The Indian national has four top-10 finishes this season without being a serious threat. Still has the potential to be a superstar. 5.5/12 6. Jason Day and Adam Scott return to winning form. This one is already half true and might become full reality. Both players had been winless last season but Day certainly has returned as a TOUR threat. Wins at the Farmers Insurance Open and Wells Fargo Championship proved it. Scott, however, appeared to be heading for a long-term funk until lately. Scott led the PGA Championship with four holes to play before Brooks Koepka stepped up. His third-place finish was just his second top-10 of the season. Maybe he can push through the FedExCup Playoffs with a win. 6/13 5. U.S. Team will win the Ryder Cup in France. This seemed an obvious statement after their demolition of the International Team in the 2017 Presidents Cup, but as we head toward the contest, the European Team looks very strong. Players like Francesco Molinari and Tommy Fleetwood bring fresh form and Ian Poulter has his fire back. It should be an epic contest. 4. We will have a three-peat winner. Nope. Justin Thomas missed his chance at the CIMB Classic (T17). Hideki Matsuyama was a WD in his dual title defense in Phoenix, and Daniel Berger couldn’t keep pace with a dominant Dustin Johnson at the FedEx St. Jude Classic. 6/14 3. Justin Thomas will win THE PLAYERS Championship. Not this time. Instead he settled for T11. No one really competed with the resurgent Webb Simpson, who lapped the field with an incredible putting performance over four rounds. 6/15 2. There will be another first-time major winner along with Matsuyama. We did get two first-timers at the majors with Patrick Reed winning the Masters and Francesco Molinari taking Italy’s first major title at The Open Championship. But as Matsuyama was not one of them, we can only claim a half point. 6.5/16 1. The 25-and-under brigade will equal if not better their numbers from 2017. While Justin Thomas has kept winning and others like Aaron Wise and Jon Rahm have helped him out, reaching the incredible 18-win total from last season has remained out of reach. 6.5/17. Final Verdict: Currently 6.5/17. Bold predictions are meant to be just that. But we were still hoping for a better than 50 percent record! With that in mind…we’re hoping to earn more points with win from the U.S. Team at the Ryder Cup, and wish Scott, Hossler, Schauffele, Lahiri and Koepka the best in coming weeks.

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AUSTIN, Texas - With 32 matches going on across Austin Country Club it is easy to miss something while trying to keep up with the drama at the World Golf Championships - Dell Technologies Match Play. Never fear! We are here to help catch you up on the big events as they happen. For full Day 2 match recaps, visit here. WILDEST RIDE - Jordan Spieth and Matthew Wolff provide rollercoaster tie You could have been watching the Jordan Spieth / Matthew Wolff match (like we were) and still missed a bunch of stuff! This was one wild ride that ebbed and flowed as much on positive play as it did on the negative. Honestly it was like two heavyweight boxers coming out of retirement to take each other on - they were throwing the odd haymaker that had you longing for the old days but at the same time each spent time on the canvass from their own mistakes rather than the others prowess. Both came into the match having won on Wednesday meaning a victory would have seen them in prime position to advance but their tie now means they'll need to fight tooth and nail in their Friday matches to get to the weekend. This contest appeared to be Spieth's for the majority of the day until implosions on the final two holes opened the door for Wolff to howl and steal a tie. Prior to that the only howling Wolff was doing was of the moaning variety. A wild tee shot on the third hole led to a bogey and a dodgy putt from the fringe on the fourth left him with a testing par putt he duly missed to be 2-down early. When he reached into his bag to hit a provisional tee shot on the fifth hole things really looked ominous for the Californian going up against the local Texan favorite. But his first shot was found and just as Spieth thought he was cruising Wolff dropped a 30-foot birdie putt to cut the deficit in half. The joy was short-lived as Wolff's short game went on vacation on the sixth. He watched a chip roll across the green into a bunker and then blasted his sand shot back across the putting surface. On the seventh it was Spieth's turn to lose a hole with a bogey as he failed to get up and down from a greenside bunker - a feat Wolff also had to attempt but did pull off. Wolff pulled level at the turn thanks to a stunning approach shot to 2-feet, 8-inches on the ninth but not before Spieth's 46-foot birdie try hit the hole but jumped over it. But just as each player appeared to get momentum, they'd throw it away. This time Wolff found water off the tee on both the 10th and 11th holes allowing Spieth to quickly set up a 2-up lead once more. On the 12th Spieth used the honor to slice his tee shot some 60 yards right of the edge of the fairway, leaving him out amongst the fans near a large merchandise tent. But he managed to find his way back to the correct hole and even had a chance from 10-feet to extend his lead but his putt ran out of steam. On 13 the pair both put their second shots to three feet from the hole and looked at each other with quizzical eyes. Nothing was said so Wolff put his birdie in the hole and then picked up Spieth's coin. The two came together and had a little chuckle over the moment. "When I walked up there I saw he was a little closer and I knew I was farther out, so in my mind I’m thinking, well, I’m the one who is putting first, I’m the one who has the farther putt so if I say good-good I might look desperate," Wolff recounted. "And then he told me after he was about to say good-good but I didn’t, so that’s why he didn’t, and it was a funny match play moment." The pair would halve the next three holes leaving Spieth 2-up with just two to play but he would pull his tee shot on the par-3 17th left and it only stayed out of the canyon thanks to wedging between some rocks. His near impossible shot came out into a bunker and his third went from one bunker to another. When he was unable to hole out his fourth shot they moved on. On 18 Spieth received a nice bounce back into the fairway from his tee shot but couldn't capitalize and watched in horror as his approach spun back off the putting surface and into the rough. He was unable to get up and down and the hole was lost, leaving both to settle for a tie. "Nothing against Jordan, but I’m sure he’s thinking he gave me that match and he might have, but at the end of the day I got it up-and-down on 15 for par to keep the match 2-down and then birdied 16... ended up making par on 17 and then 18 technically I made a birdie," Wolff said. "So going 2-under in the last four... I felt like I did what I could to put that pressure on him and try to get that tie." On Friday Wolff plays Matt Fitzpatrick and Spieth takes on Corey Conners. A win for either guarantees at least a playoff to advance.

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Travelers reaps benefits from new PGA Tour rule

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