Els takes Tour Champions lead at Pebble Beach

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NAPA, Calif. – Notes and observations from Saturday’s gusty third round of the Safeway Open at sun-splashed Silverado Resort & Spa. LEADING LIGHTS SNEDEKER CLOSING IN. Brandt Snedeker was coming back from a rib injury and missed the PGA TOUR’s fall swing last year. As a result, he felt like he was playing catch-up all season and missed the TOUR Championship, a hard pill to swallow given that he won it along with the FedExCup in 2012. This time, Snedeker said after shooting a 69 to take a three-shot lead into Sunday, he’s determined to rack up as many FedExCup points as he can, as quickly as he can. “That’s the reason why I came here,� said Snedeker, a nine-time TOUR winner. “… I want to make sure I get as high on the list as possible so you can kind of set your schedule up and set your season up and not be worried about where you are on the list.� Saturday brought the most challenging conditions yet, with gusting winds that scattered leaves across the greens and made club selection tricky. There’s more wind in the forecast for Sunday, but Snedeker isn’t worried. He likes unsettled weather, and authored one of best bad-weather rounds ever in winning the 2016 Farmers Insurance Open. TWAY A LATE BLOOMER. Kevin Tway bowed out of the Playoffs after THE NORTHERN TRUST (T56) and Dell Technologies Championship (T43) last season. He started well at both, but finished poorly. At the RBC Canadian Open, he contended before a final-round 76 dropped him to a T17. Now, he says, he’s ready to take the next step in his career progression: finishing off a win. “It always takes me a while to kind of get comfortable in new places,� said Tway, who shot 68 to get to 13 under, three back and in solo second. “I got in contention a few times last year and didn’t do very good, so I’ll use tomorrow to learn from the bad and try to do better.� NOTABLES MICKELSON FALTERS. All week, Phil Mickelson insisted he was playing poorly despite posting good enough scores to work himself into the final threesome going into the weekend. The popular lefthander finally faltered in the third round, hitting his tee shot out of bounds on the way to a double bogey at the 8th hole and finding just 5/14 fairways as he shot 74. He missed a birdie putt of just over 6 ½ feet at the downwind, par-5 18th hole and went from three behind starting the day to eight strokes behind and in a tie for 15th. COUPLES CRUISING. A day after he made his 500th cut on the PGA TOUR, Fred Couples, who turned 59 earlier this week, kept on going with a third-round 70 to get to 8-under and in a large tie for 15th place. His round was highlighted by a hole-out eagle from the bunker at the par-5 9th, after which he mostly spun his wheels with a 1-over back nine. “I think this is a good course for everybody, whether you’re 29, 39, 109,� said Couples, who missed a 4 ½-foot birdie putt at the par-5 16th hole. “And I really like it, so that helps.� OBSERVATIONS HAAS TAKES LONG VIEW. Bill Haas is taking nothing for granted after a season in which he was in a car accident and wound up 152nd in the FedExCup, missing the Playoffs. At 36, the 2011 FedExCup champion has been in an especially reflective mood amongst so much youthful talent at Silverado. “Doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past,� Haas said after shooting 67 to get to 11-under, five back. “You’ve got to keep playing. There’s young guys, year in and year out, coming out that are really good. You just can’t sit by and expect to play out here forever. So just motivated me a little bit to realize I’ve got to get after it if I want to hang around.� IM IN THE MIX. Sungjae Im didn’t waste any time last season as he started his Web.com Tour campaign with a win in his first start and a runner-up in his second. He wound up leading the money list wire-to-wire, and don’t look now, but he’s threatening to win his first start on the PGA TOUR, too, at the Safeway. Im shot his second straight 69 to reach 12-under and will go into Sunday four behind solo leader Snedeker. “I’m not looking at the leaderboard at all tomorrow,� Im said. “So I’m going to play my own game tomorrow.� GET TO KNOW … CHASE WRIGHT. University of Indiana product was mentored by fellow Hoosier and TOUR pro Jeff Overton; the two were even roomies for a time in Bloomington. Wright got engaged last week to Gretchen Zoeller, daughter of 10-time TOUR winner Fuzzy, and shot a third-round 70 to reach 10-under at Silverado. He’s tied for 5th place, six back. QUOTABLES I was kind of stunned.I’m not looking at the leaderboard at all tomorrow.It’s 1,000 percent attitude. SUPERLATIVES Low round: 67 by Bill Haas, Sam Ryder. Longest drive: 398 yards (Martin Trainer/No. 9) Longest putt: 57’ 9� (Sepp Straka/No. 5) Toughest hole: The 464-yard, par-4 13th played to a 4.267 average. Easiest hole: The 580-yard, par-5 16th played to a 4.535 average. CALL OF THE DAY For play-by-play coverage of the final round of the Safeway Open, listen at PGATOUR.COM. SHOT OF THE DAY

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DUBLIN, Ohio – If this were a normal year, which is certainly isn’t, Dylan Frittelli would have been defending his title at the John Deere Classic this week. Instead, the 30-year-old South African found himself making headlines at another PGA TOUR golf tournament in a totally different city when he teed off with Nick Watney and Denny McCarthy on Thursday in the first round of the Workday Charity Open. Frittelli, Watney and McCarthy had tested positive for the coronavirus, the highly infectious respiratory disease that forced the TOUR to shut down in March and the John Deere Classic to be canceled last month. All three had quarantined for 10 days and had no symptoms but continued to test positive. On Wednesday the TOUR updated its protocols to so that a player or caddie who tested positive with symptoms and continues to test positive can return to competition as long as 72 hours have passed since recovery – which is defined as resolution of fever without the use of medication and improved respiratory symptoms. In addition, 10 days must have passed since those symptoms appeared. (Click here for full details) The clarification of the TOUR policy is in concert with the “Return to Work” guidelines of the CDC and was done in consultation with the TOUR’s medical adviser, Dr. Tom Hospel and other infectious disease experts. So Frittelli, Watney and McCarthy played together in the final group of the morning wave on Thursday at Muirfield Village. Frittelli and McCarthy each shot 73 while Watney, who was 2 under when he made the turn, finished with a 77. Frittelli described himself as “super happy” to be playing golf again. He originally tested positive in Hartford, Connecticut, during the Travelers Championship. He quarantined there for six days and spent next four in isolation at his agent’s house in New York. “It’s been pretty boring the last five or six days just sitting around doing nothing,” Frittelli said. “It was fun to get out there. Obviously, a few hoops to jump through yesterday. It was a little tricky situation that went on. “But that’s fine; life is full of surprises, so we’ll move on from there and hopefully get everything cemented in the coming weeks.” Frittelli, who said he felt “totally better” after the fourth day of quarantine, tested positive twice this week – taking a saliva test on Monday and another with a nasal swab on Tuesday. He wasn’t surprised. He said his doctor had told him that he might continue to return positive tests for up to a month. “I’ve got a friend in Japan who chatted to me, he said, dude, I’ve been testing for 28 days, I still haven’t got a negative,” Frittelli said. “I knew that was a possibility.” He didn’t know about the 10-day cycle of the virus, and the “Return to Work” guidelines that covered repeated positive tests without symptoms, though. “I still thought it had to come along with a negative test according to the TOUR, but obviously the TOUR is trying to monitor things as they move, and scientists and biologists are still figuring stuff out today, so this stuff is going to change all the time, and I’m glad the TOUR have kept their finger on the pulse,” Frittelli said. Frittelli said his symptoms were minor. On the Sunday night after he was originally tested in Hartford, he had some nasal congestion and some minor muscle aches for an hour or so. He also had two headaches in three days that lasted for 20 or 30 minutes each. “I did feel a little lethargic and slow, but that’s normally the case when I don’t work out or I don’t get outside or I’m not busy,” he said. Like Watney, Frittelli did lose his sense of smell about five days into his bout with COVID-19. “I was just eating regular plain meals and then all of a sudden I took some Vicks VapoRub and smelled it and I got a little burn in the nasal cavity, but I didn’t smell the menthol and I was like, that’s weird,” he said. “I was like, OK, this is the final piece of the puzzle that confirms that I had it. “But that subsequently has come back. Yesterday I finally started tasting food and smell seems to be back right now.” Frittelli, Watney and McCarthy are not allowed inside the Muirfield Village clubhouse and gym and the physical therapy trailers. But they do have a room underneath the old pro shop where the three of them can eat and “chill out together,” Frittelli said. The only negative is that he can’t work with his physiotherapist, who works with other TOUR pros. “I just drove straight in this morning actually,” Frittelli said. “I stretched at home. I ate breakfast in my hotel room and then straight to the parking lot and felt like Walter Hagen, just walked straight on to the driving range.” While Frittelli admitted the isolation made him feel a bit like an outcast, he understands the reasons. He said he hasn’t had much contact with other players but that many of the ones he’s talked to were “intrigued” by what he had experienced. “They were all asking me questions, hey, what’s going on, how did it happen, and I just explained,” Frittelli said. “I told them the truth, I told them what happened, and I tried to give them my best biology lesson that I could.” While he’ll have to wait another year for his John Deere Classic title defense, Frittelli has decided he is the “defending tournament week champion” at Muirfield Village. “I’m defending this time frame, I guess,” he said. “But no, I’m not getting any similar vibes to Silvis, Illinois, to be honest, but hopefully I can play well tomorrow and see some more golf hopefully.”

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