Major questions: What’s next for Tiger, Phil and the rest of golf

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Fifty-three weeks ago, Amanda Hadley felt helpless as she watched her husband compete at the Wells Fargo Championship. His slump had become so severe that he’d considered taking an indefinite leave from the game. Now Chesson Hadley was struggling to two scores in the mid-70s at Eagle Point Golf Club in Wilmington, North Carolina. He had no idea how to fix a game that was good enough to win on the PGA TOUR just three years earlier. “It was the saddest for me watching him, that tournament. He just looked lost,� she said. “That’s heartbreaking to watch. I think that’s when he actually hit rock bottom.� Now Chesson Hadley is near the top of THE PLAYERS Championship leaderboard. The first-round co-leader shot a 69 early Friday to finish 36 holes at 9 under par. Despite playing his final two holes in 3 over, he was a stroke behind co-leaders Charl Schwartzel and Patrick Cantlay after the morning wave was finished.  “I did a lot of great things, and I’m really not worried about the last two holes for a second,� Chesson Hadley said. He hit his tee shot into the water at No. 17 and failed to get up-and-down from right of the 18th green. Every player in the field will likely endure a similar stretch this week. Such is the nature of the penal Stadium Course. That’s why resiliency is a requirement for any PLAYERS champion. Chesson Hadley’s trials over the past year should come in handy as he chases the largest title of his career. He was 588th in the Official World Golf Ranking a year ago and wasn’t at TPC Sawgrass for the first time in four years. He was back on the Web.com Tour and in a “dark spot, not only in golf but in life,� he said. “He knew what was wrong, but he didn’t know how to fix it,� Amanda Hadley said. Chesson Hadley started to see his game turn around after reuniting with longtime swing coach, Jeff Paton, last spring. He finished second at the Rex Hospital Open in his hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, in June, then won the LECOM Health Challenge the following month. He sobbed into his baseball cap after his win was complete. “You start to spiral, lose your confidence and get negative,� he said that day. “I’ve gone from the top to the bottom, and it doesn’t take long.� Another win came in the Web.com Tour Finals, earning Chesson Hadley the Web.com Tour’s Player of the Year award. Then he began the PGA TOUR season with three consecutive top-four finishes. He has risen more than 500 spots in the world ranking since and is now 19th in the FedExCup. His six top-10s this season are second-most on TOUR. “It certainly is something to be proud of, to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and move forward when you’re kind of down, scraping the bottom of the barrel,� Chesson Hadley said. “You can only dwell on that for so long. You have to keep moving forward and getting better.� The statistics say that iron play has been his biggest improvement. He is fourth on the PGA TOUR in strokes gained: approach-the-green (+0.97) after ranking 91st and 143rd in that statistic in his previous two PGA TOUR seasons. His confidence with those clubs has allowed him to play safely on the Stadium Course’s tee shots that make him uncomfortable. He has hit 20 of 28 greens this week and leads the field in strokes gained: putting, gaining nearly eight strokes on the greens through two rounds.  He made a 44-footer to birdie the fifth hole in the first round and a 24-footer for birdie on No. 15 on Friday. He had an 11-foot eagle putt at the next hole to reach 13 under, but missed that opportunity. “Off the top of my head, I think it was the first time I saw him miss when he had a chance,� said playing partner Matthew Fitzpatrick. “He holed everything he looked at.� Hadley has made all 30 putts from inside 10 feet this week, including all seven from 5 to 10 feet. He needed just 24 putts Thursday, during what he described as a “blackout� performance on the greens, and 27 on Friday. He already has won once at TPC Sawgrass, at the 2013 Web.com Tour Championship. That tournament was played on the property’s other course, Dye’s Valley. Hadley won two Web.com Tour titles that year, then won the Puerto Rico Open and was named the PGA TOUR’s 2014 Rookie of the Year. He was flirting with the top 50 in the world ranking after his win in Puerto Rico. He finished 49th in the FedExCup as a rookie but fell to 98th the following season. He missed 13 of 27 cuts in 2016 and finished 159th in the FedExCup to lose his card. “It’s a testimony to his character to get as far down as he did and come back up,� Amanda Hadley said. “I would attribute that to his faith and to his work ethic. … I knew he was going to bounce back. It just depended on how long it was going to take.� From considering quitting to contending at THE PLAYERS, Chesson Hadley has come a long way in a year.

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2021 Travelers Championship, Round 2 Top 10 win probabilities: 1. Jason Day (1, -9, 10.7%) 2. Bubba Watson (T2, -8, 9.7%) 3. Russell Henley (T4, -7, 7.0%) 4. Patrick Cantlay (T11, -6, 7.0%) 5. Scottie Scheffler (T11, -6, 5.0%) 6. Kramer Hickok (T2, -8, 3.8%) 7. Patrick Reed (T20, -5, 3.6%) 8. Kevin Kisner (T4, -7, 3.4%) 9. Bryson DeChambeau (T20, -5, 3.4%) 10. Justin Rose (T4, -7, 3.1%) Top Strokes-Gained Performers from Round 2: Putting: Kevin Kisner +4.2 Around the Green: Brandon Hagy +2.7 Approach the Green: Stephen Stallings Jr. +3.5 Off-the-tee: Carlos Ortiz +2.3 Total: Jason Day +6.9 NOTE: These reports are based off of the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cut”, “Top 20”, “Top 5”, and “Win” probabilities every 5 minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 20K simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of the Travelers Championship, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page.

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Cameron Smith made the longest week at THE PLAYERS Championship worth the wait. In a dynamic conclusion to five days of bad weather and high drama, Smith one-putted eight of his last nine holes with his pure stroke and delivered one of the gutsiest shots of his career for the cushion he needed to win. RELATED: Final leaderboard | What’s in Smith’s bag? Leading by two on the par-3 17th hole, 135 yards to the hole on an island green, Smith split the difference in the 12 feet that separated the flag from the water. The ball ended up 4 feet away and the Australian made his record-tying 10th birdie of the round. Turns out he needed it. Smith punched out from the pine straw right of the 18th fairway all the way into the water. After a penalty drop, his 60-yard wedge spun next to the hole to 3 feet for a bogey and a 6-under 66, giving him a one-shot victory over Anirban Lahiri of India. Lahiri, who started the final round with a one-shot lead, birdied the 17th and needed one more to force a playoff. He came up short of the green, and his pitch was below the cup all the way. He closed with a 69. Paul Casey shot 69 and was the victim of a horrible break on the 16th hole when he was in position to edge closer to the lead. Smith, who finished at 13-under 275, won for the second time this year, and the fifth time in his PGA TOUR career, and picked up $3.6 million from the $20 million purse, the richest in golf. He earned a staggering 600 FedExCup points. This was about more than money, more than the three-year exemption he earned to the four majors and a five-year exemption on the PGA TOUR. This was as much about family. Smith, so unflappable in the tense pressure that featured 26 holes on Monday, choked up when he talked about his mother and sister, whom he had not seen more than two years because of travel restrictions Down Under during the pandemic. Smith makes his home down the road in Jacksonville Beach, and he happily went to the airport this week for a special reunion. They watched him capture the crown jewel of the PGA TOUR. “It’s really cool to have them here,” Smith said. “My main priority was to hang out with them. Golf was second. It’s nice to see them and nice to get a win for them.” Lahiri’s only big mistake was a tee shot into a palmetto bush on the par-3 eighth, forcing him to take a drop near the concession area that led to double bogey. It was the only shot he dropped all day, and his best finish on the PGA TOUR came with a $2.18 million consolation prize. Casey, meanwhile, was the victim of bad luck. He was two shots behind and in the same group as Smith when he looked to have a big advantage on the par-5 16th. Smith duck-hooked his tee shot into the pines. Casey drilled his drive down the middle. But the ball took one last roll in the rain-soaked fairway, right into another player’s pitch mark. Instead of a mid-iron into the par 5, he had to punch it out short. Then, he was inches away from getting relief from a sprinkler head near the green and had to scramble for par. Smith punched out to the fairway and matched the par. They headed to the 17th, where Smith’s 9-iron was bolder than he wanted. “I’d be lying if I didn’t push it a little bit,” he said. No matter. He got the birdie, got the win and moved to No. 6 in the world. So concluded a week like no other on the TPC Sawgrass, where so much rain early in the week meant the first round lasted 54 hours and 16 minutes, finishing on Saturday morning. The wind that followed wreaked havoc on half the field. The bone-chilling temperatures Sunday made it tough on everyone. It was the first Monday finish since 2005 at THE PLAYERS. Smith made it memorable for so many other reasons. Kevin Kisner birdied three of his last four holes for a 68 to finish alone in fourth. Kisner is famous for once saying 20th place pays pretty good. So does fourth place at the TOUR’s premier event. He earned $980,000. Keegan Bradley was among four players who had a chance over the last hour. He was one shot behind after a birdie on the 16th, only to three-putt the 17th from the front of the green to a back pin, and then took double bogey on the 18th when his punch shot from the trees came out hot and ended up in the water. He shot 68 and finished fifth.

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