Woo Kim holds off Cantlay to win American Express

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Webb Simpson didn’t back off Saturday at THE PLAYERS Championship with a 4-under 68 that stretched his lead to seven shots. He started out with an 8-foot birdie putt on the opening hole. His shot from the back bunker on the par-5 11th raced across the green and into the hole for an eagle. And that island green on the 17th was no problem. He tapped in for birdie. Simpson’s seven-shot lead set a record at THE PLAYERS, and he has plenty of history on his side. No one has ever lost a seven-shot lead in the final round on the PGA TOUR. He was at 19-under 197. Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth each had their best round at the TPC Sawgrass with 65s. They still were 11 shots behind.  

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Could John Oda be this season’s version of Austin Cook? Oda, who turned pro last fall, does not have any PGA TOUR status, but will be making his fourth start of the season at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. He earned his tee time at TPC Scottsdale by shooting 7-under 65 on Monday at McCormick Ranch Golf Club’s Pine Course in Scottsdale, Arizona. Oda was the medalist in the Phoenix Open’s Monday qualifier, which awards three spots in this week’s PGA TOUR event. Oda finished T8 in his pro debut after receiving a sponsor exemption into the OHL Classic at Mayakoba. That earned him a start at The RSM Classic, where he missed the cut. Oda is now 2-for-2 in Monday qualifiers this season. The Honolulu native qualified for his hometown TOUR event, the Sony Open in Hawaii, for a second consecutive year and now has a spot in the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Cook is a PGA TOUR rookie who won The RSM Classic in November. He first gained attention in 2015, when he finished in the top 25 in five of seven TOUR starts. He Monday qualified three times, received two sponsor exemptions and got into two events after finishing in the top 10 the previous week. Oda finished T67 at this year’s Sony. He’s earned 89 non-member FedExCup points, which most years would be sufficient for him to qualify for the Web.com Tour Finals. Players who earn non-member points equivalent to the amount earned by No. 200 in the FedExCup standings are eligible for the Finals. Three players – PGA TOUR member Cameron Tringale, Richard Lee and Eddie Olson — will participate in a playoff for the final two spots in the field. All three shot 66 on Monday. The playoff will resume at 8 a.m.

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ATLANTA — Dustin Johnson went the last three hours over 13 holes without hitting from the fairway and still manged to hang on to the lead Saturday after two rounds at the TOUR Championship. Johnson could at least see his entire golf ball from the first cut on the par-5 18th at East Lake, setting up a two-putt birdie for an even-par 70 and a one-shot lead lead over Sungjae Im. RELATED: Full leaderboard | McIlroy begins fatherhood with 64 in Round 1 | JT thrives in pursuer role The big picture going into the final two rounds is all about opportunity. As well as Johnson has been playing — two runner-up finishes and an 11-shot victory in his last three starts — there was a chance he could have started with that two-shot lead and created some big separation. Instead, nine players are separated by five shots heading for the Labor Day finish. Im, the budding star from South Korea whose game had gone lukewarm coming out of the three-month shutdown, birdied three of his last four holes for a 64 and will be in the final group with Johnson. Xander Schauffele, who won the TOUR Championship as a rookie in 2017, ran off three straight birdies late in his round for a 65 and was two shots behind. Another big move came from PGA champion Collin Morikawa, whose 66 put him in range. And it took some help from the leading players who stumbled on an East Lake course that punished mistakes. Johnson has rounds of 67-70, and along with starting at 10 under because of his No. 1 seed, was at 13-under par. He hit only two fairways — the first hole and the fifth, where both times he made par. He still managed a birdie on No. 8 when he chipped in from 40 feet and the final hole, one of the two par 5s at East Lake. Rory McIlroy, who managed only two birdies, lost ground at the end with a shot that laser cameras estimated at 85 feet, which didn’t account for how far it sunk to the bottom of the lake. He tried to reach the 18th green from the thick rough just through the fairway, and it topped out into the water. That led to bogey and a 71. Justin Thomas pulled within one shot until he couldn’t convert birdie chances and then drove so far left on the 18th that he had to pitch out sideways, leading to bogey and a 71. Jon Rahm again was keeping stride with Johnson until he found the water off the tee at the par-3 15th and made double bogey, followed by a wild drive that led to bogey on the 16th. He shot a 74, nine shots worse than his opening round. That left him four shots behind at 9 under, along with Morikawa and Tyrrell Hatton, who had a 66 and spoke for the field when he said hitting from the rough “is a complete lottery.” That’s what was so maddening for Thomas, who felt like he was hitting it well enough from tee to green. He ranks last in the 30-man field in putting, which would not surprise him. “I should have never shot over par today with how well I played,” he said. “I just made absolutely nothing.” That much was evident when his 6-foot par putt swirled in and out of the cup, and Thomas gave it a sarcastic thumbs-up. McIlroy said he tried to take on too much with his shot that he duffed into the water, but he didn’t appear too shaken. This was more about the leaderboard than perspective on life from being a new father. “It doesn’t look like I’m going to lose any ground today anyway, which is some sort of consolation,” he said. Rahm was frustrated as ever, mainly because he couldn’t capitalize when he was in the fairway and felt it was another round at East Lake that would cost him. Now, however, he’s still only four shots behind with 36 holes remaining and the FedExCup still very much up for grabs. “The closest I came from the fifth hole on to make a birdie was that bunker shot on 18,” he said of his third shot from behind the green. “That’s the best look I had all day. It’s just one of those days. But like you said, the mentality is right now we’ve played two days of the tournament. I’m four back going into the weekend. Anything can happen.”

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