Rory McIlroy finding his stride at the Masters

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If you thought that last week was easy, good. This week ain’t. No, I didn’t have Max Homa at the Wells Fargo Championship. No one did. Seriously. Zero gamers in PGA TOUR Fantasy One & Done selected him. However, Justin Rose, Paul Casey, Rickie Fowler and Sergio Garcia all finished inside the top five and two-time champ Rory McIlroy checked in at T8. Save Homa’s storybook achievement, it was chalk central in the Queen City. Perhaps one day Trinity Forest will boast a comparable Who’s Who of go-to talent in our format. Until then, we default to logical analysis, sound reasoning and, of course, the spinning dartboard. Rarely does a first-time defending champion who was a rookie when he prevailed deserve attention in fantasy circles, but Aaron Wise defies conventional, ahem, wisdom. Obviously, no one has better course history, but he’s also arriving with solid form in tow. Still, I’m advising him as a tail of a tandem in two-man games. No need to lead. If you need to swing from your heels and Brooks Koepka is burning a hole in your chinos, then I’m not going to stop ya. Just remember that he’s defending two of the remaining three majors and he plays his best in them. He’s available to me and I didn’t think twice at pulling the trigger, but I’m the pacesetter. His offense will be a dandy defense later. Marc Leishman sits atop my Power Rankings and he’s also on my board, but I’m leaving only for my lineup in PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf. While the Aussie has lifted into the category of the consistently strong, his core value is a reliability to stay hot. If I could use Charles Howell III again, I wouldn’t hesitate. Alas, I’m left with merely endorsing him emphatically if you still possess the pleasure. He connected four sub-70s here en route to a T9 last year and projects to do the same this week. He’s done nothing to suggest that his comfort level dipping deep into red numbers has been adversely affected. Scott Piercy is beside CH3 in terms of my confidence in this format. He’s been fantastic all season and you already know how much he loves to go low. I already invested confidently in his title defense at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans (T13). Sungjae Im leads the PGA TOUR in rounds under par and he’s performed well on all kinds of tests. If lightning is to strike twice for rookies at Trinity Forest, he’s most likely to be raising the 1-iron overhead. (He’s yet another who I’ve already exhausted.) Holster Hideki Matsuyama, Jordan Spieth, Henrik Stenson and Patrick Reed. There’s too much random to the madness this week. I was torn between Keith Mitchell and Rory Sabbatini, a couple of guys who should present as complementary pieces in two-man formats and not the primary or the only selection, such as in our game. However, both strut in with momentum and success at Trinity Forest last year. In fact, if both are available to you in your two-man league, there’s your ticket. Thomas Pieters, Seamus Power and Scottie Scheffler are calculated fliers for two-man teams as well. FUTURE POSSIBILITIES NOTE: Select golfers committed to the tournament are listed alphabetically. Future tournaments are sorted chronologically and reflect previous success on the courses on which the tournaments will be held in 2018-19. The numerical values in parentheses represent the order of relative confidence of where to use each golfer if multiple sites are listed (e.g. 1 for strongest, 2 for next-strongest and so on). To present weighted confidence in real time, numerical values will not change all season no matter how many tournament remain listed for each golfer. All are pending golfer commitment. Daniel Berger … Travelers (1) Rafa Cabrera Bello … Wyndham (4) Branden Grace … Byron Nelson (5); U.S. Open (4) Bill Haas … Charles Schwab (2); Wyndham (6) Brian Harman … Charles Schwab (1); Travelers (5); John Deere (4) Brooks Koepka … PGA Championship (2; defending); Charles Schwab (6); U.S. Open (1; two-time defending); Open Championship (8) Martin Laird … Barracuda (2) Marc Leishman … Byron Nelson (6); Memorial (4); Travelers (3); Open Championship (8) Hideki Matsuyama … PGA Championship (13); Memorial (8); U.S. Open (14); Wyndham (7); TOUR Championship (5) Ryan Moore … Memorial (11); Travelers (6); John Deere (8); Wyndham (2); TOUR Championship (9) Kevin Na … Charles Schwab (3); Wyndham (5) Ryan Palmer … Charles Schwab (4) Scott Piercy … Canadian (7; last winner at Hamilton in 2012) Patrick Reed … PGA Championship (4); U.S. Open (3); Travelers (7) Jordan Spieth … PGA Championship (7); Charles Schwab (5); Memorial (13); U.S. Open (4); Travelers (9); Open Championship (6); TOUR Championship (8) Henrik Stenson … PGA Championship (4); Open Championship (6); Wyndham (8); TOUR Championship (7) Jimmy Walker … Byron Nelson (6)

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FORT WORTH, Texas – The problem with playing friendly rounds of golf is the boatload of gimmes that tend to be offered. Especially when you’re a PGA TOUR pro and putting is one of your calling cards. Like Jordan Spieth. RELATED: Leaderboard | ‘Strange’ and ‘odd’ atmosphere for the TOUR’s official return Why bother putting out from 2 or 3 feet when you don’t have to? And for the last three months during the suspension of the TOUR season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Spieth didn’t really practice or putt from short range when playing on his home course or with his friends in the Dallas area. Of course, those gimme days are over now as the TOUR has returned to action with this week’s Charles Schwab Challenge. And on Friday at Colonial, it might have very well cost Spieth two strokes. Having zoomed to the top of the second-round leaderboard going into the Horrible Horseshoe – the rugged three-hole stretch regarded as one of the toughest on TOUR — Spieth had just lagged his birdie putt from inside 30 feet at the par-4 third to gimme range. But he missed the par attempt from 2 feet, 11 inches. Too much speed, with the ball rolling past the hole. Then he missed the bogey attempt from 2 feet, 10 inches, again on the other side of the hole. Finally, he converted his fourth putt from 3 feet, 2 inches for double bogey, giving up the lead and all the momentum he had been riding after starting his round with 6 birdies in his first 11 holes. It’s the first time he’s ever four-putted a hole at Colonial in his 540 holes played in this event. And it’s just the ninth time in his career he’s done it. Shocking at it was, Spieth quickly went to work putting the four-putt into perspective, telling himself that it was simply an issue caused by the unprecedented circumstances of the last three months. “I felt that I gave myself some grace to say, look, I haven’t really been practicing a ton of those kind of short-range putts,â€� Spieth said. “Those are ones where you just have a ton of them when you’re playing in competition but you’re picking them up a lot of times when you’re playing regular rounds of golf at home.â€� We knew rust might impact the field of 148 players at Colonial, and never was it more evident than on the third green for Spieth. His two missed putts inside 3 feet equals his total entering the week, as he had missed just two putts in his first 160 at that distance this season. The carryover effect lasted one hole, as Spieth followed with a bogey at the par-3 fourth when he missed the green and failed to get up-and-down. He called it his “20-minute hiccup.â€� But he did not panic. A 17-foot birdie putt at the fifth – the hardest hole on the course – followed by another birdie at the sixth got him back on track. And for good measure, he saved par at the par-3 eighth with an up-and-down that he called one of the top 5 in his career. “There wasn’t a huge swing of emotions,â€� said Spieth, who won here in 2016. “I stayed calm. I was just trying to hit each shot where it needed to go to make the best score on that hole, and 5 was huge. 5 was really big, to feel like I kind of salvaged the Horrible Horseshoe and came out of it with actually some momentum.â€� If we’re ranking them, Spieth’s bounce-back may have been only the second-best of the day. Consider the way tournament leader Harold Varner III started his round Friday off the 10th tee. His errant tee shot found the bridge going across the gulley in the fairway. Not under the bridge, or over on the bridge. But the actual bridge. Varner was forced to take a penalty shot. He dropped in the rough, then found the greenside bunker, then blasted out over the green to the rough. Triple bogey for Varner, the 18-hole co-leader with Justin Rose after his opening 63. “Obviously not the start I wanted,â€� he said. The round could have easily come unraveled, but this is not the Varner of three years ago, when he missed the cut in his only previous start at Colonial. This is his 78th PGA TOUR since then, and he’s matured – both physically and mentally. And not just inside the ropes. “I’ve grown up a lot off the course, so it makes it easy to make good decisions that prepare you a little bit better for on-the-course stuff,â€� Varner said. “Yeah, I’m a lot better golfer. “I don’t really get rattled as much.â€� He certainly wasn’t rattled Friday. Three birdies in his six-hole stretch regained the momentum, and then he regained the lead with five birdies in his last six holes, leaving him at 11 under through two rounds, one shot ahead of Spieth. “He’s hitting his mid-irons really well,â€� said playing partner Scottie Scheffler. “Just stiffing it.â€� Since 2003 in the ShotLink Era, 691 players have opened their rounds at PGA TOUR events with a triple-bogey. Varner’s 66 is the lowest score ever shot under that circumstance. “Even after a triple, you just can’t live in the past,â€� he said. “… After making the triple I was just fighting for my life. Pretty impressive stuff for the golfer who’s bidding to win for the first time in 129 career starts (and it just so happens that his 129 total through two rounds is his best career 36-hole score). If he breaks through, Varner would be just the second African-American to win a PGA TOUR event since Tiger Woods won the first of his record-tying 82 victories in 1996. Cameron Champ has two wins since 2018. In all, seven African Americans have won on TOUR. Given the developments in the U.S. since George Floyd’s death in late May, a Varner victory would be of increased significance. On Friday, Varner – along with all golfers, caddies and others at Colonial – stood for a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. in Floyd’s memory. It is a reminder each round this week of the “efforts to end systemic issues of racial and social injustices,â€� according to PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan. “It’s pretty cool that the TOUR is doing that, but when you’re out there, you’re just so in the moment,â€� Varner said. “Well, I was anyway. I don’t know, man, I was just trying to make a birdie.â€� Understandable. When you start with a triple bogey, it’s really the only approach to take.

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