Jack Nicklaus talks positive COVID-19 result from March

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jordan Spieth gets his first shot at completing the career grand slam at this week’s PGA Championship. Check out PGATOUR.COM’s day-by-day coverage from Quail Hollow below. SPIETH’S PGA CHAMPIONSHIP SCORECARD Saturday: Hot streak, tough finish For the first seven holes Saturday, Jordan Spieth continued the frustrating play that has denied him a shot at history. Three bogeys had him free-falling down the leaderboard. But then he finally found the form — specifically, his putting stroke — that he had been seeking all week at Quail Hollow. A birdie from 10 feet at the eighth hole, followed by his longest made putt of the week, from 33-1/2 feet from the fringe at the ninth. Then four consecutive pars followed by three consecutive birdies, including a 23-foot putt at the 16th. His 5-under stretch in those nine holes had him on the verge of climbing inside the top 20 on the leaderboard. But on the final hole, his tee shot found the bunker and his second shot landed in the water. He ultimately suffered a double bogey, leaving him with an even-par 71 and 3 over going into the final round. It’s his best score of the week but even after his hot stretch, he had few illusions of becoming a contender. “If I had birdied one of the last two and I’m at even, it’s unrealistic,” Spieth said. “My goal was to try to work our way into a backdoor Top-10. Kind of stinks because it sets me back there. 18 is just a ridiculously hard hole today.” He’ll go into Sunday hoping to build some momentum going into the FedExCup Playoffs. Two months ago, he was out of contention at the U.S. Open but shot a final-round confidence-boosting 69. He said it was a catalyst to his wins at the Travelers Championship and The Open Championship. “Obviously any week you don’t have a chance to win, you’ve fallen short of where you would like to be,” Spieth said. “Disappointing would have been going home after two days. I think I saw some highlights today. “Like Michael [Greller, his caddie] was saying, we could break the season into quarters. This is the start of the fourth quarter. [Entering the] U.S. Open Sunday, I was out of it, but I gathered a little something off that Sunday round that led to two wins and two tournaments after that including a major. “Just one round like that can do that. That’s what I’m looking to do here.” — Mike McAllister Friday: Essentially out of it Jordan Spieth will start the weekend 11 shots behind co-leaders Kevin Kisner and Hideki Matsuyama. That means he has lots of ground to make up. Does he have a target score in mind for Saturday’s third round at Oak Hill? “54 would be nice,â€� he joked. Consider that Spieth’s way of saying he’ll likely have to wait another year to complete the career Grand Slam. His 2-over 73 on Friday leaves him at 3 over through two rounds and a tie for 46th, with some players yet to complete their second rounds. The good news for Spieth was that he did finish his round. The horn suspended play for darkness just before his chip shot onto the 18th green. Opting to finish the hole, Spieth chipped onto the green, then two-putted from 11 feet for bogey. It was that kind of day. Spieth posted just one birdie – he has just four through the first 36 holes – and never built any momentum. Instead, it was mostly just trying to scramble out of trouble. After a rain delay Friday afternoon softened the course and created prime scoring conditions, Spieth played even par once play resumed. He failed to birdie the drivable par-4 14th or the par-5 15th, missing a birdie putt from just inside 10 feet. He said he bailed out on both tee shots. He also thought 16 and 18 were playing easier, but he failed to take advantage of those opportunities others did, and consequently, he gave up ground quickly on the leaderboard. “It was more gettable after the rain delay than it was before, no doubt about it,â€� Spieth said. “I played even par after the delay and that’s not very good in my opinion on those holes that we had left.â€� So now his best chance is a Hail Mary on the weekend. “I kind of accept the fact that I’m essentially out of this tournament pending some form of crazy stuff the next couple of days,â€� he said. “I’m sure going to give it a try.”  — Mike McAllister Thursday: Putting struggles Jordan Spieth has displayed a new skill set in 2017, and it’s one that we still have to get accustomed to. His ballstriking has been the key to his success, while his trusty putter has failed to live up to his standards. That was the case again Thursday as Spieth began his pursuit of the career Grand Slam at Quail Hollow. This is a course that requires players to drive the ball well, and Spieth leaned heavily on the longest club in his bag. It was the shortest one that frustrated him, though. “It was just the putter,â€� Spieth said after a first-round 72 that left him five shots behind leader Thorbjorn Olesen. Spieth had 32 putts Thursday, and didn’t make a putt longer than 5 feet. – Sean Martin Click here for the full story on Spieth’s opening round Preview: No added pressure Jordan Spieth enters the season’s final major with a rare opportunity to wipe out one of Tiger’s records. Having just turned 24 in late July, Spieth is about six months younger than Woods was at St. Andrews. Should Spieth win at Quail Hollow, he would eclipse Tiger as the youngest player to complete the career slam. Theoretically, Spieth will have many opportunities – two decades? three decades? – to finish the career slam. But he’ll have only one shot to do it faster than Woods did. “He can accomplish something that has to rank up there with the greatest records in the history of this 500-year-old sport,â€� CBS golf anchor Jim Nantz said. “It’s a huge story. … Golf could be on the precipice of one of the greatest achievements.â€� Thanks to his win at The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale – along with his Masters and U.S. Open wins in his magical 2015 season — Spieth has put himself in this position. He knows the spotlight will be heavily focused on him at Quail Hollow. He calls it “noise.â€� Whether he’s feeling any additional pressure, however, remains to be seen. His preparation will not deviate just because it’s his first slam opportunity. His goal of winning majors – “The four events that we try to peak and think most about at the beginning of every year,â€� he said – has not changed. — Mike McAllister Click here for the full story on Spieth’s grand slam bid

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It’s the annual flex officially known as the Sentry Tournament of Champions. RELATED: The First Look | Five Things to Know The new year always opens with a special field at Kapalua Resort’s Plantation Course on Maui. Win a PGA TOUR event and you’re in, but there are extra-special considerations contributing to the construct of 39 commits in this first full week of January 2023. The full breakdown, what each qualifier can expect on the only par 73 of the season and more is detailed below. POWER RANKINGS: SENTRY TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS The other 24 in the field will be ranked 16-39 in Tuesday’s Draws and Fades. (There are no Sleepers for the tournament.) For the record, 40 golfers qualified for the Sentry Tournament of Champions. (Rory McIlroy is the only eligible entrant taking a pass, and that’s not unusual for the world’s top-ranked talent. He’s qualified now a dozen times and has appeared just once (T4, 2019).) However, this year’s competition is a tournament of champions and those who qualified for the TOUR Championship in 2022. Ten golfers gained entry through the secondary conduit, including Sahith Theegala and Cameron Young, neither of whom has prevailed in a PGA TOUR event. As unconventional as it seems to invite non-winners to compete at Kapalua, it’s not unprecedented. It’s straight from the playbook of the 2021 field that was modified to accommodate 16 qualifiers from the TOUR Championship at the conclusion of the 2019-20 season that was interrupted for three months due to the pandemic. All of that now is just a history lesson because the new opportunity to earn a spot no longer is unique or temporary. It is now a constant. And that’s because the Sentry TOC is the first of the designated events on the PGA TOUR schedule. With it is an 83-percent increase in the total prize fund to $15 million. In addition to $2.7 million, the winner will bank 550 FedExCup points. There is no cut in the traditional, four-round contest. As a designated event, those who finished 2022 among the top performers in the Player Impact Program are required to compete if eligible. Of the 23 who qualified for bonus prize money, 17 are at Kapalua this week. (Each is allowed to sit out one of the designated events, so McIlroy, who finished second in the PIP, must appear in all remaining tournaments in the series for which he is eligible.) Naturally, the winner of the Sentry TOC automatically will become the first qualifier for the 2024 edition of the event, which will return to its leadoff position on the schedule for the first time since 2013. While all of these enhancements and modifications are occurring, Kapalua promises a familiar test to those who have given it a go before; well, at least to everyone who has shown since the course was renovated prior to the 2020 staging. Five returnees didn’t qualify in the interim. There also are 13 debutants in the field, including Adam Svensson, who was the last qualifier and first breakthrough champion of the 2022-23 season at The RSM Classic. For the fourth consecutive edition, Kapalua can stretch to 7,596 yards, but in this land of extremes, there’s more bark to that than the bite. Last year’s scoring average (among 38 golfers) was 68.217. Not only was that a record low since the course assumed its role as host in 1999, but it beat the previous mark (in 2003) by almost a full stroke. A standard set of four par 5s are sprinkled on the hilly track along the northwestern shore of Maui, but Kapalua boasts only three par 3s. No matter the par, the course’s only significant defense is wind, and that, of course, is variable. Moderate trade winds (from the northeast) are forecast throughout the tournament, and the strongest pushes will be felt in the middle two rounds, but by no means will they gust infamously like they did last in 2020. With fair conditions otherwise welcoming the field, scoring overall should be only slightly higher than last year. Because this is a shootout, the champion and bulk of the close calls will have lifted the averages of greens in regulation and converting those chances into par breakers. A target of 24-under 268 (or an average of 6-under 67 in every round) is reasonable. In respecting wind and due to Plantation’s full-time job as a resort course, bermuda greens are governed to max at just 11 feet on the Stimpmeter. The worst rough is trimmed to 2¼ inches, but the fairways are among the most forgiving and easiest to find all year, so the scorer’s mentality has the green light. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.com’s Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous perspectives. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Draws & Fades SUNDAY: Payouts and Points, Medical Extensions, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Rookie Ranking * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.

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