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AUSTIN, Texas – Paul Casey has conceded his Thursday morning Group 10 match against Swede Alex Noren at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play after being unable to recover from a back injury. Casey played just two holes against Corey Conners on Wednesday before spasms forced him from Austin Country Club, but after treatment the Englishman had hoped to take on Noren to keep his tournament hopes alive. But after attempting a warmup early Thursday it became apparent he could not continue. “The pain I’m feeling is in the lower back, left side, it’s like spasms and I saw Jason in the truck yesterday and he said your glutes are not firing which made me giggle. Clearly it is a thing when you get to your 40s … and that’s what is causing the pain and spasms up the back,” Casey said. “Jason was really good in the truck. We did everything to try to play. We taped up my back, we did ice, we did physio, we did heat, we did drugs … and I wanted to play but even after another round of treatment this morning it was tender on the putting green, started to feel it on the chipping green and then couldn’t get past a 9-iron (on the range).” Casey hasn’t yet conceded his Friday match against Louis Oosthuizen despite the fact he will now be unable to advance to the round of 16, but it is likely he won’t hit another ball in competition as he looks ahead to his next event at the Masters. The 44-year-old couldn’t pinpoint how the injury occurred but suggested it could be from fatigue after THE PLAYERS Championship which was played in tough, wet and cold conditions. Casey was third at TPC Sawgrass behind winner Cameron Smith and India’s Anirban Lahiri. He remained confident he could play at Augusta National next month. Noren now leads Group 10 in Austin with two points, giving him a great chance to advance to the final 16 this weekend. Oosthuizen and Conners play Thursday, with the South African needing to win to stay alive. Casey was hoping to replicate previous match play success in Austin. A seasoned Ryder Cup star for Europe, he finished runner-up in this tournament in 2009 and 2010. He also made the quarterfinals in the first year of the new pool-play format in 2015, losing to eventual champion Rory McIlroy in 22 holes.

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The grim news we are hearing daily about the COVID-19 pandemic has brought back painful memories for Audrey Leishman. Five years ago, she was in a Virginia Beach, Virginia, hospital fighting for her life. In addition to sepsis and toxic shock syndrome, she had acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the same thing that has proven so deadly to countless coronavirus patients across the world. “ARDS is the worst thing I have ever gone through,â€� she said recently. “It felt like I was drowning.â€� “It was the worst time of her life,â€� Audrey’s husband Marc echoed. “It was the worst time in my life, too. I didn’t even have it.â€� Related: For more on how players are giving back, visit PGATOUR.COM/IMPACT Like so many of the COVID-19 patients with ARDS, Audrey was put on a ventilator for five days. The doctors told Marc that his wife had just a 5 percent chance of survival, and the couple said they loved each other for what might have been one last time. But Audrey fought. So did her doctors and nurses. And they saved her life. So, when the COVID-19 pandemic began invading the United States, Audrey and Marc, the five-time PGA TOUR champion, knew what they wanted to do. They wanted to find a way to help the emergency room and ICU staffs in hospitals near their Virginia Beach home who were on the front lines every day. “With our personal experience of me getting sick, we realized how hard these doctors, nurses, the support staff, respiratory therapists, how hard they all work to keep patients alive,â€� Audrey explained. “I wouldn’t be here without them, and so we wanted to support them.â€� But how? Audrey texted the pulmonologist who she says saved her life, as well as one of the physician’s assistants on her case. She also contacted some of her friends who are nurses. What did they need? How could the Leishman’s aptly named Begin Again Foundation make a difference? While the lack of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers is, she said, “literally keeping me awake at night,â€� she knew that was too vast a problem to tackle. Other friends simply told her to pray for them. Her response? “Absolutely, but I want to do more than that.â€� Someone mentioned that restaurants were afraid to deliver food to the hospitals, and suddenly the Leishmans had an idea. They have lots of friends in the hospitality industry, people who have donated food and other services for the Begin Again Foundation’s celebrity golf classic over the last four years. With restaurants closed to in-house dining and able only to offer takeout in these days of stay-at-home orders and social distancing, those businesses were suffering, too. Why not help them by buying meals that might allow the owners to pay employees for a little bit longer, then having them delivered to different hospitals? “It just seemed like a really natural fit,â€� Marc said. “With what happened to Audrey … we know how, on a normal day, we know how hard the medical staff work. And I mean when something like this is going on and it’s got to be, I don’t want to say tenfold, but more than that, like 100 times harder. They’ve got so much more going on, and a lot of them aren’t getting home to see their family because they might be infected. So, it’s just a huge burden on them. “And then the restaurants having to be closed for eating, we want to keep them employed. And I know four meals for just us … it’ll make a little difference, but not a huge difference. … I don’t know how many meals they’re buying, but 60 or 80, or whatever it is. If we buy that many, that could make a difference to that restaurant, possibly staying open or not. “We’re just trying to help in any way we can.â€� The first hospital the Begin Again Foundation served – quite literally, and quite fittingly – was the Sentara Princess Anne, which is where Audrey got her second chance at life. And the couple is in it for the long term, too, sending meals to a different hospital each week, because they know all too well that defeating COVID-19 is not going to happen quickly; it’s a marathon, not a sprint. “One thing I have seen is that a lot of people offer to help right in the beginning,â€� Audrey said. “That just comes to happen in any kind of crisis. I still want to be there when it’s getting harder for people to help. … Especially in a situation like this as time goes on and people are out of work for longer, it may be harder and harder to do so. “We’d like to keep doing this for as long as we can.â€� That’s not all Audrey and Marc are doing, either. In partnership with the Patient Advocate Foundation, the Begin Again Foundation, is also giving out 10 $1,000 grants per month to survivors of ARDS, sepsis or toxic shock syndrome. These LEISHLines can be used to help with uninsured expenses like rent, utilities, food, lodging and transportation. And recently, the Foundation placed an order for 1,000 cloth masks to be delivered to grocery stores in Virginia Beach to protect the cashiers and stock clerks who work there. A Masters flag signed by Tiger Woods will be auctioned off to support those efforts. Marc and Audrey have been keeping busy at home, too. They have two sons and a daughter, aged 2 to 8, who miss their friends. FaceTime calls help, though, and there is plenty of schoolwork now that Mom and Dad are doubling as teachers for the foreseeable future. Marc is quick to point out that his specialty is the physical education part. He’ll leave the math and English lessons to his wife. “I’m helping Harvey, he’s only in second grade and there’s a few things I’m like, dude, I don’t know how to do this,â€� Marc said with a chuckle. “… They’re doing addition and subtraction a different way now. So, I don’t know how to do that. There’s a lot of things I can help with, but there’s a lot that I can’t as well.â€� He can help Harvey with chipping and putting, though, at the short game area in the backyard. And Ollie, who’s 6, has taken up Taekwondo and kick-boxing – and his father has a shiner to show for that after an accidental headbutt. The family lives on a golf course that is closed right now so there have been field trips, of sorts, to fish and look for frogs and tadpoles. Now that the weather is getting warmer the pool in the backyard is getting some use, and Marc has also taught the kids how to build fires and cook smores. Golf has been put on the back burner. Leishman, who won the Farmers Insurance Open earlier this year, said it just doesn’t feel right. “Once the weather gets good and everyone is allowed out there again and things are sort of starting to turn for the better,â€� he said “I think that’s when I’ll start to get back into it. … “A lot of tournaments this time of year that I really enjoy, and to be missing them is tough. But again, the family times, they’re positive.â€� And so is the work of the Leishman’s Begin Again Foundation.

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In just five years, Jon Rahm’s performances at Torrey Pines have reverberated in the record books, indelibly tying the world’s No. 1 player to this southern California layout. In 2017, Rahm concluded his inaugural Torrey Pines appearance with a powerful exclamation mark, making eagle on the 72nd hole to seal victory. Rahm was the first player to win the event with a closing eagle since Tiger Woods in 1999, and the first to win in his Farmers Insurance Open debut since Arnold Palmer in 1957. Four years later, Rahm closed his first major championship victory in a similar fashion: with a red-hot Torrey Pines finish. Rahm closed birdie-birdie, becoming the first U.S. Open champion to birdie the final two holes of regulation since Tom Watson in 1982. His victory made him not only the first U.S. Open winner from Spain, but the first Spaniard to win any United States Golf Association championship. Rahm is a cumulative 51-under at the Farmers Insurance Open since 2017, the best cumulative score by any player in that span by five strokes. But what specifically has set Rahm apart from his peers in his 20 career rounds at this event? Twenty First Group dove into the numbers to explain. North Course Dominance Over the last five years, the North Course at Torrey Pines has played about two strokes easier than the South has. No player has taken more advantage of that disparity than Rahm, who in five career rounds on the North Course has a grand total of five bogeys. Rahm’s career scoring average of 66.4 on the North Course is the best of any player since 1990 with at least four competitive rounds there. His remarkable 6.20 birdies-or-better per round on the North Course ranks third-best in that span, trailing only Ryan Palmer (6.63) and Tom Kite (6.25). Rahm has hit less than 50 percent of his career fairways on the North Course (48.6 percent, to be exact), but it hasn’t impacted his ability to score on that layout. Thirty-three percent of the time Rahm has missed the fairway on a par-4 or par-5 on the North Course, he’s still gone on to make birdie or better. That is a significant advantage over the field average historically (20 percent). Rahm has been stellar on the par-4s at the North Course in his career, regardless of tee shot outcome: his 3.72 scoring average ranks third-best among players with four or more rounds played since 1990. Elite drives on the South Course While missing the fairway hasn’t penalized Rahm much on the North Course, that can’t usually be said for the South. Traditionally, only about 14 percent of players who miss a fairway on Torrey South go on to make birdie or eagle. That’s been no issue for Rahm – his driving accuracy leaps to 63 percent when playing the more difficult Torrey Pines South layout in this event. Since Rahm’s debut in 2017, there are 122 players with six or more Farmers Insurance Open rounds at Torrey Pines South. Of that group, Rahm is the only player to average a full stroke gained per round off the tee. Since Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee became available in 2004, Rahm’s average of +1.07 per round is the second highest of any player with a dozen or more rounds. Fellow tournament winner Bubba Watson (2011) is the only player in Rahm’s league in that regard, gaining 1.33 strokes off-the-tee per round in that span. More than 55 percent of Rahm’s Strokes Gained: Total on the South Course have come from tee shots, the third-highest rate of any player with 10 or more SG: Total on this course in the last five years. His ability off the tee has been especially beneficial on par-4s, where Rahm has gained, on average, half-a-stroke on the field with his drives per round. That is the third-highest rate on the South Course in that stretch, trailing only Cameron Champ (+0.77) and Luke List (+0.55). Different recipes to get it done Over the last 30 years, the players to average the most birdies-or-better per round at the Farmers Insurance Open are Woods (4.88) and Rahm (4.60). Not coincidentally, those are also the two players to win U.S. Open titles at the venue, with Woods’ unforgettable performance on a broken leg coming in 2008. But the two champions have used different formulas to separate themselves from the field on the South Course. While we mentioned Rahm using his driver to a distinct advantage, Woods has averaged just +0.34 Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee per round at Torrey South since ShotLink data became available in 2004. That’s less than one-third of the strokes Rahm gains from the tee box. Woods, however, has been peerless with his iron play on the South Course, averaging a stellar +1.24 Strokes Gained: Approach per round in that span. Of players with 12 or more rounds since 2004, Woods is one of just five players to average a full stroke gained per round in that statistic, and he ranks one-tenth of a stroke per round better than any other player. Much like how he has performed on the PGA TOUR in the last seven months, Rahm has found success through his bag in his career at this event. Since 2017, Rahm ranks well above average in every Strokes Gained statistic at this event – leading off-the-tee, and ranking 43rd in approach, 29th around the green and 48th in putting (out of 122 players with a minimum of six rounds). That’s a microcosm of the balanced excellence Rahm has been displaying week-in and week-out on TOUR: since July 1 of last year, Rahm leads all players in Strokes Gained ball-striking (off-the-tee + approach) and ranks No. 6 in Strokes Gained: Putting. The reigning world No. 1 is the justifiable betting favorite this week at the Farmers Insurance Open.

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