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

Hard to believe another season is upon us, but the 2017-18 PGA TOUR lid-lifter, the Safeway Open, tees off this week at Silverado Resort in Napa, California, The new season will usher in new stars, new comeback stories, and fresh-faced rookies who play with the poise of polished veterans. Herewith, the big storylines going into the new season. WHAT’S NEW The PGA TOUR’s 49 FedExCup tournaments represent an increase of two events over last season. New this season: THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES at Jeju Island, Oct. 16-22, 2017, represents Korea’s first official TOUR event. Some five months later, the Dominican Republic will host its first TOUR event, the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship, which after a two-year run on the Web.com Tour, will be elevated to a PGA TOUR event and debut March 19-25, the same week as the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play. Meanwhile, the Puerto Rico Open moves from Match Play week to Feb. 26-March 4, coinciding with the WGC-Mexico Championship. With the addition of two new international tournaments, the schedule includes nine tournaments in eight countries outside the U.S. The total prize money reaches a record of more than $363 million, and the Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, Maui, gets a new title sponsor in Sentry. Other changes: The AT&T Byron Nelson, May 14-20, moves to the new Trinity Forest Golf Club in Irving, Texas, while two FedExCup Playoffs events change venues. THE NORTHERN TRUST, Aug. 20-26, returns to The Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey, and the BMW Championship, Sept. 3-9, goes to Aronimink Golf Club outside Philadelphia for the first time. Also: The one-week break in the FedExCup Playoffs will take place after the first three tournaments and before the season-ending TOUR Championship.  THREE ROOKIES TO WATCH BOUNCE-BACK CANDIDATES PLAYERS ON THE RISE VETS WHO’LL WIN FOR THE FIRST TIME FIVE BURNING QUESTIONS 1. Will the 20-somethings continue to dominate? Yes. They won three of the four majors in 2017, and the FedExCup. Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth, each 24, combined to win eight times, and Xander Schauffele, 23, picked up his second W of the season at the TOUR Championship. Whew! Throw in Daniel Berger, yet a fourth member of the high school Class of 2011; and Hideki Matsuyama, 25; and others, and 19 players in their 20s won 28 times. Youth is wasted on the young? Not in this case.     2. Who has the best chance to complete the career grand slam? Spieth at the PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis. When Bellerive hosted the 1992 PGA, Nick Price won, three ahead of Nick Faldo and Gene Sauers. None of those guys was an overly long hitter. Yes, Phil Mickelson will return to one of his favorite U.S. Open venues — he contended until the bitter end at Shinnecock Hills in 2004 — but at 47 he looks like a sentimental longshot. And after a down 2017, Rory McIlroy may have too much work to do to get back up to speed in time for the 2018 Masters.  3. Can Spieth and Thomas keep up this pace? Yes, and that’s a mind-boggling thought. At 24, Spieth already has three majors to his name after his electrifying victory at The Open in July, when he stepped on the gas to leave Matt Kuchar in the dust. “If I have the year I had this year the next 15 years, then I’ll be the greatest player that ever played the game if you judge it by major championships,â€� Spieth said at the BMW Championship. For good measure, he went 3-1-1 at the Presidents Cup. Scary. As for Thomas, he said at the BMW, “I feel like I’ve matured a lot as a player and as a person.â€� Well, yeah. He’d already won five times, including the PGA Championship. Then he finished second at the TOUR Championship at East Lake to salt away the FedExCup title, and leading money-winner honors with $10 million. He, too, went 3-1-1 at the Presidents Cup. Double scary. 4. Is this the season for a Tiger comeback? Stay tuned. Although he won five times in 2013, Woods has made just 19 starts since then, including one in 2017, at the Farmers Insurance Open in January. It didn’t go well. Woods shot 76-72 to miss the cut at Torrey Pines, where he had won eight times as a professional, including the 2008 U.S. Open. He announced in April that he had undergone back fusion surgery — his fourth back operation in three years. Woods will turn 42 in December. I would like to play competitive golf,â€� Woods said during the victorious U.S. Presidents Cup press conference. “I just don’t know what my body is going to allow me to do. That’s something I’m going to have to, as I said, listen to my surgeon, see what he says, and then I’ve got to get a feel for what my body is able to do and not do.” The guess here is that Woods is eyeing the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, Nov. 30-Dec. 3. 5. What will become of all these caddie changes? Wait and see. Mickelson dissolved his 25-year partnership with Jim (Bones) Mackay; McIlroy ended things with J.P. Fitzgerald; and Jason Day relieved coach and father figure Col Swatton of his caddie duties. Just like that, three of the most prominent players in the game — all in the throes of a below-average season — announced they were starting over with new side men. Mickelson, at least, went 3-0-1 at the Presidents Cup with his brother, Tim, on the bag. FINAL PREDICTIONS Three early picks to win THE PLAYERS Championship 1. Sergio Garcia – He’s won it before, and he’s coming off a life-changing season. 2. Francesco Molinari – Finished T6 in 2017, T7 in 2016. A hot putting week and he wins. 3. Justin Thomas – T3 in 2016, and that was before he became a cold-blooded closer. One early pick to win the FedExCup Jordan Spieth – How could anyone ever bet against him?

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The PGA TOUR has released the four featured groupings for Thursday-Friday at this week’s Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut. Groupings and starting times for the first two rounds at the Travelers Championship will be released officially at approximately 12 p.m. ET on Tuesday, June 18. HOW TO FOLLOW TELEVISION: Thursday-Friday, 3-6 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Saturday-Sunday, 1-2:45 p.m. (GC), 3-6 p.m. (CBS). PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday-Friday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m. (featured groups). Saturday-Sunday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. (featured groups), 3-6 p.m. (featured holes). International subscribers (via GOLF.tv): Thursday-Friday, 11:030 to 22:00 GMT. Saturday-Sunday, 13:00 to 22:00.  RADIO: Thursday-Friday, noon-6 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 1-6 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.COM). FEATURED GROUPS Bubba Watson/Brooks Koepka/Tony Finau • Watson closed the 2018 Travelers Championship with a 63 to win his third title at the event, one shy of Billy Casper’s record of four. • With two wins (THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, PGA Championship) and coming off his third runner-up of the season at last week’s U.S. Open, World No. 1 Koepka is No. 3 in the FedExCup standings. • In search of his second career PGA TOUR victory, Finau has five runner-up finishes since the start of the 2017-18 season, tied with Koepka for most of any player in that span. Phil Mickelson/Jordan Spieth/Marc Leishman • A two-time winner of the event, Mickelson has not played in the Travelers Championship since 2003. • Spieth is in search of his first victory since The 2017 Open Championship, which came in his first start following his playoff win at the Travelers Championship. • Leishman, winner of the 2012 Travelers Championship, leads the Presidents Cup International Team standings. Paul Casey/Jason Day/Bryson DeChambeau • Casey, a winner this season at the Valspar Championship, has three top-fives in four starts in the Travelers Championship, including a playoff loss to Watson in 2015, and a T2 in 2018. • Day has four top-fives in 15 starts during the 2018-19 season as he seeks first win of the season. • DeChambeau, a five-time winner on the PGA TOUR, opened with a pair of 66s en route to a top-10 at the 2018 Travelers Championship (T9). Patrick Cantlay/Francesco Molinari/Justin Thomas • Three weeks removed from his win at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, Cantlay returns to the site where he posted a 60 as a 19-year-old at the 2011 Travelers Championship, the lowest 18-hole score by an amateur in PGA TOUR history. • Molinari has three top-fives in the 2018-19 season, including his third PGA TOUR victory, coming at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. • Thomas has made five career starts at the Travelers, highlighted by a T3 in 2016.

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DUBLIN, Ohio – Billy Horschel won’t begrudge you the memory if all you take away from his victory at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday on Sunday is his eagle at the 15th hole. His nearly 55-foot putt, curling from right to left, was a splendid stroke and extended his two-shot lead to four, the final margin as Horschel (72) bested Aaron Wise (71). But while the eagle stood out, shiny things do not excite Horschel, who obsesses more over peak performance and what goes into it. He wants to understand success like a cheetah understands speed. What works? What doesn’t? He thinks about this as it relates to real estate, business – he doesn’t want to play professionally forever – and, for now, golf. On a list of the hardest workers on the PGA TOUR, he puts himself in the top five. RELATED: What’s in Horschel’s bag? That work is paying off, and in capturing his seventh TOUR title over a cast of younger players – Wise, 25; Joaquin Niemann, 23; Will Zalatoris, 25; Sungjae Im, 24; Sahith Theegala, 24 – Horschel, 35, also authored a victory for professionalism itself. “I think today, knowing the golf course, knowing how it was going to be fast and firm again, it was knowing the pin locations,” Horschel said. “I didn’t have to do anything to do anything special out there. I’ve got a five-shot lead.” In other words, Horschel is 13 years into his TOUR career; he knows what it takes. When Tiger Woods converted all those 54-hole leads/co-leads, Horschel was paying attention. He knew to appraise the difficulty of the course, the rock-hard greens, the pin positions. “I love watching golf,” he said. “As I’ve said for many years, I probably watched more golf than any PGA TOUR player. Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it’s a bad thing.” Given that he is now 3-for-5 at converting 54-hole leads/co-leads to victory, it’s probably a good thing. Horschel has not only studied the game, he has assembled an all-star cast around him that includes his (longtime) swing coach, Todd Anderson; fitness guy, Alex Bennett at the TPC Performance Center; stats guy, Mark Horton; and caddie, Mark “Fooch” Fulcher, who was on the bag for Justin Rose’s 2010 Memorial victory and joined Team Horschel last summer. Horschel’s wife, Brittany, has his back, too, although she had never been there to witness one of his wins until Sunday. She’s been too busy with their three young children, Skylar, Colbie and Axel. She’s also, ahem, superstitious. “My wife has never wanted to fly in on a Saturday night when I’ve had a chance to win,” Horschel said, laughing at the running joke in their family. “She feels like she may be bringing bad luck or something. “I had a chance to win Bay Hill this year,” he continued. “My family was there. They were right there on the 18th green. As I was walking up, had a chance to make a putt to go into a playoff with Scottie Scheffler.” The most important, relatively new addition to the team is probably Fulcher, who thought that this might have been his 40th victory between caddying on the PGA TOUR, LPGA, and DP World Tour. (When your caddie has lost track of how many times he’s won, you’ve got yourself an experienced caddie.) After Horschel missed the cut at the Charles Schwab Challenge last week – his first missed cut on TOUR since the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, nearly a year ago – he called a team meeting with Fulcher and statistician Horton. “We just said, ‘We need to get back to it,’” Horschel said. It, meaning their process, even if it sometimes feels too slow and deliberate for pedal-to-the-metal Horschel. “To be honest, it was probably long overdue,” Fulcher said. Not missing a cut since the U.S. Open was becoming too much of a story. Also, they were not thinking well, and consequently making poor decisions. Perversely, the missed cut at Colonial, and the ensuing meeting, prepared Horschel for winning. Deep into his successful but somewhat underrated career – he has never played on a U.S. Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup team – he is enjoying his best run since winning the 2014 FedExCup. He captured the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play last season, plus the BMW PGA Championship, the crown jewel of the DP World Tour. And now he’s earned the coveted Jack Nicklaus handshake at Muirfield Village, moving from 30th to 10th in the FedExCup. “He’s an incredible professional, and I think he’s getting better,” Fulcher said. Teeing it up against significantly younger competition, Horschel is a throwback to an earlier era when guys like Ben Hogan and Tom Watson and others routinely peaked in their mid-30s. He would know all about that. He also knows where success has eluded him: in the majors. It just so happens the next U.S. Open, at The Country Club in Boston, is in two weeks. Horschel will continue put in the work; he loves the grind. If it doesn’t pay off at the U.S. Open, then it will at The Open Championship, and if not at St. Andrews, then next year. He admits the majors get him extra riled up, maybe too riled up. “He’s emotional,” Fulcher said. “What I have seen, though, is he’s a lot quieter on the golf course now, especially in moments like today. He’s a lot more set in his process than even when I started with him. He was a bit loose.” Work hard, stick to the process, and success will get in the way. Horschel firmly believes that. “Sometimes they get a little tired,” he said of his team, which he calls the best in the business, “because I want to just keep pushing and keep going forward. But they all understand it’s all for the betterment of the team and hopefully gives us the best chance to be victorious. And it’s great to have three wins in roughly the last 15 months.”

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