Clutch Suzann Pettersen leads Europe to redeeming Solheim Cup win

ATLANTA – Brooks Koepka has the confidence to pose for nude photos. He has the composure to withstand the final-round pressure in golf’s biggest events. There may not be a more intimidating figure in the game today. But Koepka admitted that he was “freaking outâ€� about his game on Tuesday. He was in “full-panic modeâ€� on Thursday after sailing a tee shot 75 yards right of the 10th fairway. And yet, Koepka is the leader at the halfway point of the TOUR Championship. He was trailing Justin Thomas by three shots when play got underway at East Lake. Now Koepka is one stroke ahead of Thomas and Rory McIlroy with 36 holes remaining in the season finale. Xander Schauffele is two back. Related: Leaderboard | Casey pulls wrong club on 18 | Koepka discusses Body Issue After winning three times this season, including a major and World Golf Championship, Koepka has all but clinched a second consecutive Player of the Year Award. He’s two days from authoring the perfect ending to another dominant season. Koepka said late Friday his game is headed in the right direction heading into the weekend. He made that statement with his words and two 5-irons he hit on East Lake’s closing holes. The first came on the 229-yard 15th, where he laced his tee shot to the middle of the island green to set up a two-putt par on the day’s most difficult hole. Three holes later, he scared the hole with his 239-yard second shot, leaving himself just 9 feet for eagle. He missed the putt, but the birdie was enough to take the solo lead. Koepka shot 67 in each of the first two rounds at East Lake. “I feel better. I don’t feel like I’m clicking 100%, but it’s definitely close,â€� Koepka said. “There are shots where it’s like, ‘How did I just do that?’ And there are some shots where I’m like, ‘Man, why can’t I do that every time,’ like on 18.â€� He’ll play alongside Thomas in Saturday’s final group. The pairing will feature the past two PGA TOUR Players of the Year. Two years ago, Thomas’ capped a five-win campaign with a FedExCup triumph. He didn’t win the TOUR Championship, finishing second to Schauffele, but still claimed the season-long prize. That scenario doesn’t exist anymore. Under this year’s new format, the man atop the leaderboard Sunday afternoon will win both the FedExCup and TOUR Championship. Thomas shot 70-68 on Thursday and Friday, but is just one back thanks to the starting strokes he was awarded as the leader of the FedExCup. He won last week’s BMW Championship to take the top spot in the FedExCup standings. That earned him a two-stroke lead over the field at the start of the week. “I thought it was going to be easy for me to just play a tournament. It wasn’t. At least for me it wasn’t,â€� Thomas said about playing Thursday with a pre-tournament lead. “I thought it was difficult to stay aggressive, but then again, I wasn’t driving it very well, so I couldn’t be aggressive. “I don’t know, it was odd, but today definitely felt more normal.â€� He drove the ball better Friday, but his momentum was interrupted by a weather delay that hit just as the final groups were making the turn. Thomas and Koepka were both 13 under, and three shots clear of the field, when play was halted. Thomas missed just one fairway on the front nine while focusing on shortening his backswing. He only hit one on the back nine, though, and failed to make a birdie. He had to scramble just to shoot 1-over 36 on the last nine. There was a flop shot to save par on the 15th, and then a good bogey save at the 17th, where he bladed a fairway-bunker shot over the green. He missed a 6-foot birdie putt on the last hole after a good wedge shot. “It would be hard for me to say that (the delay) didn’t kind of stop my momentum because I was playing really flawlessly, I felt like, that front nine,â€� Thomas said. He has hit less than half his fairways this week (13 of 28) to rank 25th in the 30-man field in driving accuracy. He insists he’s driving it better than the statistics indicate, but the rough is so penal at East Lake that one foot can make a big difference. He had to lay up on 18 after his tee shot just trickled into the rough. “That’s the difference between me being able to hit a 4-iron and trying to make a 3 and then I’m just trying to get it over the water,â€� Thomas said. “That’s a big difference at East Lake.â€� Thomas and McIlroy are trying to join Tiger Woods as the only two-time champions in the FedExCup’s 12-year history. McIlroy won the TOUR Championship and FedExCup in 2016. He started the week five off the lead but shot 66-67 in the first two rounds. McIlroy finished Friday’s round by saving par from a greenside bunker on 16, sinking a 15-foot birdie putt on 17 and hitting a 25-yard chip to 3 feet for a closing birdie. “When they cleared the course. I was even par, sort of neutral, a nice thing for me to reset, and I thought, ‘OK, let’s give myself a goal here. Let’s play the last nine holes at 3 under par,’ and I was able to do that. It worked nicely for me.â€� McIlroy has 13 top-10s this season, including wins at THE PLAYERS and RBC Canadian Open. He leads the TOUR in Strokes Gained: Total, as well. He said before the tournament started that he believes a FedExCup victory could give him a case for the Player of the Year Award. He’ll have to earn it, though. Three of the game’s top players sit atop the leaderboard as the TOUR Championship heads to the weekend.

Click here to read the full article…

Matt Corrado's colorful graphic art hangs in galleries. He's also painted everything from a wooden chair he found by the side of the road that now sits in his office to automobiles and motorcycles and basketballs. Right now, he's even painting big metal Greek statue. The lifelong Washington Capitals fan also worked with his hometown team on a mural prior to the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs. And he live-painted a moveable wall for the Baltimore Ravens that lives at M & T Bank Stadium and has become a popular selfie spot. "It's something that I particularly enjoy, that crossover of sports and art," Corrado says. His artwork has never appeared on a golf bag, though. That is, until this week at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. About three months ago, the Washington, D.C.-based artist was asked to design the bag that Jordan Spieth's caddie, Michael Greller, will carry in the tournament. It's the kickoff to a promotion with AT&T, the three-time major champion's long-time sponsor. AT&T owns the branding rights to Spieth's bag. In the past, it's been used to spotlight HBO Max and the "Wonder Woman" movie. This week, though, the bag Corrado created launches a contest where fans compete to design the one Spieth will carry at the AT&T Byron Nelson in May. Fans can create and submit their designs on a web-based app starting Thursday. The five finalists will be selected and flown to Fort Worth, Texas where the winning bag will be unveiled. "If you're entering the contest, I'd say take Matt's lead and really have some fun with it," Spieth says. "There are so many chances to get creative with a blank golf bag and create something that is going to stand out." Corrado's certainly does. The colors are bright - predominantly blues, reds and greens - and the pop art style on each panel of the bag is distinctive. As expected golf clubs, balls and a green figure into the design but there is much more. "One of the things that was challenging, but cool was they wanted it to be specific to Pebble Beach, which was fun," Corrado says. The artist has played golf most of his life, but he has never been to the Monterrey Peninsula. His parents had taken a trip to Pebble Beach about five years ago, though, so he picked his mom's brain and made sure landmarks like the Lone Cypress were included in his creation. "And just the natural beauty — looking at the pictures and everything - I kind of was inspired to use some of the colors and the waves and the water and kind of that California feel," he says. "I think that was probably the most challenging part was just making sure we got the elements in and to make sure that it tells the story and is specific to Pebble Beach." Corrado also researched Spieth, who turned pro midway through his sophomore year at Texas and won the John Deere Classic two weeks before his 20th birthday. He won his first two majors two years later and added a third in 2017. And in an interesting coincidence, Corrado found that one of the signature features in his art could be used to tell Spieth's story, as well. "There's an element that I use a lot in my artwork — I use these hands," he says. "They’re kind of like these classic cartoon hands. And I use the hands doing like kind of a rock-on kind of hands, and it looks like horns or something. "And Jordan, he went to the University of Texas, the Hook-’em-Horns hands, which is the same thing. So, I put that element in there, because I thought, well, this is cool because I already do this in my artwork. And it also is kind of a nod to his time at Texas." The detail was not lost on the 11-time PGA TOUR champion who tied for fourth last week at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. "Matt's design is awesome," Spieth said. "I really love the bold style and am excited it's going to stand out on the course. It feels personal, too, with the Hook ‘em Horns and the iconic Pebble Beach lone Cyprus tree." Corrado always knew he wanted to be an artist, and he studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 2005 with a BFA in illustration. He's developed a distinctive pop art style that is driven by the things that influenced him as a kid - skateboarding and comic books and graffiti, among them. "Those are kind of like some of the core elements that I feel like inspired my art as I was growing up and as I was kind of developing a style," Corrado says. "But I also really enjoy graphic design and clean, bold design stuff. "So, I try to kind of pull some of those things in consciously and subconsciously, I think to kind of create a style and a visual language that can be traced back to me, too. Part of it is just a branding thing where you want your work to be recognizable and consistent in some capacity. So, it’s kind of a combination of those things." Corrado said the opportunity to design Spieth's bag came out of the blue, a cold-call of an email, essentially. And he was immediately excited to participate in the project. "I’ve done a lot of murals and I’ve done a lot of canvases and paintings and stuff like that," he says. "But there’s something really cool that I always enjoy about actually putting artwork on like tangible products, things that people use and functional. … "And it’s also a challenge to try to like figure out how to apply artwork to something like a golf bag. It’s just not it’s not something you see a lot, you know? So yeah, I thought it was really cool and kind of would be an exciting challenge and a good opportunity." The payoff comes this week when Corrado will see the bag on national television at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, a tournament Spieth won in 2017. "I hope I get to see the bag out there and I hope Jordan does well," he says. "He usually competes pretty well in that tournament. I have some friends and stuff who will be watching too — they’ll be watching anyways, but it will be fun to have them maybe see my bag pop up, too, if it gets shown on the coverage. I’ll definitely be watching to check it out." And one of Spieth's fans will have a similar experience May 13-16 at the AT&T Byron Nelson.

Click here to read the full article…

HOUSTON – Local amateur Cole Hammer, having just completed a 5-under 67 at the Houston Open that included eight birdies, immediately turned his attention to another big sports event in the city later in the evening. The decisive Game 5 between the Astros and the Tampa Bay Rays in the AL Division Series. “I’m going to do everything I can to try to get to the stadium,â€� Hammer said, “I think it’s going to be a great atmosphere. I’m a huge Astros fan, have been for as long as I can remember. I’m praying for tonight.â€� MORE ON HAMMER: When will it be time to turn pro? At least some of his prayers were answered a while later, as he was able to procure tickets to the game that would send the winner to the AL Championship Series against the New York Yankees. (Whether his prayers for an Astros win are answered would have to wait at least nine innings.) The 20-year-old Hammer, a University of Texas sophomore playing on a sponsor exemption this week, was impressive in his opening round Thursday after a shaky start. Starting his round off the 10th tee, he double-bogeyed the par-4 11th when he found the water with his tee shot. He immediately bounced back at the short par-4 12th, his pitch shot from 45 yards leaving him inside 5 feet for birdie. That was the first of eight in his round, as he became the eighth amateur since 1996 at a PGA TOUR event to record eight birdies in one round. Ty Tryon has the record of nine in the opening round of the 2001 B.C. Open. “Not a bad start in my book, that’s for sure,â€� Hammer said. Hammer hit just 6 of 14 fairways, but he leaned heavily on his putter to bail him out. He gained more than 4 strokes on the putting surface, the second-best performance in the field. Hammer is making just the second PGA TOUR start of his career. His first was at the 2015 U.S. Open when he qualified as a 15-year-old. He didn’t make the cut that week, but he’s in good shape to reach the weekend this time. “Feels like my first U.S. Open was so long ago,â€� Hammer said. “Yeah, I was a little bit nervous at the beginning of the round and then kind of settled down and was able to roll in some putts and it was a great start. Just what I wanted.â€� As it turned out, he also got the Astros tickets that he wanted. All in all, it was a pretty good day.

Click here to read the full article…