Lee6 leads ShopRite Classic by 1 after late eagle

ATLANTA — Xander Schauffele ended his rookie season by winning the TOUR Championship. Justin Thomas ended the best season with the FedExCup. Schauffele, a 23-year-old worried about keeping his PGA TOUR card just over three months ago, swirled in a 3-foot birdie putt on the final hole Sunday for a 2-under 68 to beat Thomas by one shot and become the first rookie to win the TOUR Championship. Thomas had plenty of reasons to celebrate his runner-up finish. He capped off a season of five victories and his first major championship by claiming the $10 million bonus. He closed with a 66 after he narrowly missed a 25-foot birdie putt on the 18th. It was the first time since 2009 that the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup were won by different players.

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Five-time PGA TOUR winner Luke Donald withdrew Thursday from The RSM Classic in Sea Island, Georgia, after experiencing chest pains that required seven hours of testing at a nearby hospital. Donald, the former world No. 1 who claimed he PGA TOUR’s Player of the Year in 2011, posted on his Instagram that the chest pains began Wednesday night and continued to worsen into Thursday morning. He was taken to the Brunswick campus of the Southeast Georgia Health System, and was released after the long day of testing. “After 7 hours of tests all looks good with my heart thankfully,� Donald wrote on his Instagram account before offering thanks to the hospital staff “for taking good care of me.� The 39-year-old Donald was planning to make his second start of the 2017-18 season this week at Sea Island. Instead, he will now rest through the holiday break and hopes to return to the TOUR after the new year. “That wasn’t quite the finish to my year I had in mind!!� the Englishman wrote. Instead, it’s now “time to put my feet up for a few weeks, recharge, regroup and get ready for a big 2018.� Donald’s last TOUR win came in 2012 at the Valspar Championship. Last season, he made 18 TOUR starts, with his best finish a solo second at the RBC Heritage. He followed that with a string of eight consecutive missed cuts but remained inside the top 125 in points to make the FedExCup Playoffs. He was knocked out after the first Playoffs event. Donald’s first start this season was at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, where he finished tied for 32nd.

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Cameron Smith tied the PGA TOUR record for fewest putts in a round (18) during his second-round 62 at the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. He missed a birdie attempt from just over 22 feet on 18 that would have broken the record. “Yeah, it’s a pretty cool little title I guess to have next to your name,” Smith said after making six birdies and an eagle at the par-5 third hole, where he holed his sand shot from over 33 feet. He also had no putts at the par-3 fourth hole, where he got out of position but chipped in for par. All told, Smith made 110 feet, 3 inches worth of putts. He saved par eight times in eight tries. “The greens are so good around here,” he said, “if you get the ball started online and you’ve hit a good putt, most of the time they’re going in. Yeah, really just a good day on the greens, I guess. “…I probably didn’t drive it as good as I did yesterday,” he continued, “but the approaches were really nice. Like I said, I felt I was hitting lots of nice shots that were just going off the green and made a couple of them and a couple of them missed. That’s just how it went, but still a pretty cool record.” He admitted to trying to add up how many putts he’d taken on the day as he played the 17th hole. For some reason, he said, he thought the record for a single round must be 17, not 18 putts. Smith is one of 19 players in Memphis who played the Olympics in Japan, 14 times zones away. Still, fatigue doesn’t seem to have slowed him down much as he is in position for his first victory since capturing the Zurich Classic of New Orleans with partner Marc Leishman in April. “Probably haven’t had the results that I wished for,” he said. “After the win at Zurich, I felt like I’ve continued to play really nice golf and really haven’t got the most out of my game, so a day like today I think was probably a little bit overdue, but it’s nice to know it’s still in me.”

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