Jones wins Honda Classic by 5, bound for Masters

The PGA Championship heads to Kiawah Island for a second time, with Collin Morikawa looking to defend his first major and Rory McIlroy seeking to recapture the magic that led to an eight-shot win here in 2012. Storylines abound, as Jordan Spieth will be attempting to complete the career Grand Slam and Bryson DeChambeau will bring his big drives to the longest venue in major championship history. FIELD NOTES: Two-time FedExCup champion Rory McIlroy arrives on a winning note, claiming the Wells Fargo Championship in his last start. McIlroy’s eight-shot win here in 2012 is the largest winning margin in PGA Championship history and came a year after he won the U.S. Open by the same margin… The reigning FedExCup champion Dustin Johnson along with current FedExCup leader, Bryson DeChambeau, lead one of the strongest fields in golf teeing it up at the second major of the year. Johnson had to WD from the event preceding the PGA, the AT&T Byron Nelson, beause of knee pain… After returning home to a hero’s welcome after his Masters win, Hideki Matsuyama returned to the TOUR at the AT&T Byron Nelson, where he made the cut… There will be 20 PGA of America club pros in the event, who all qualified in various ways… Brooks Koepka missed the cut in Texas at his first start since the Masters after returning from injury, however, Koepka – a two-time PGA winner – has never missed the cut in eight attempts at the PGA… Collin Morikawa already beat a world-class field once this year, having won the WGC-Workday Championship in February, and now he’s looking to do it again as he defends his title from 2020. He and Tiger Woods are the only players to win a major and World Golf Championship before turning 25… Justin Thomas is hoping to add to his major championship trophy case with another Wanamaker, after winning the PGA in 2017. Thomas, who won THE PLAYERS earlier this year – his 14th TOUR title – has never missed the cut at the PGA. FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 600 FedExCup points. COURSE: The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Golf Resort, par 72, 7,876 yards. The Pete and Alice Dye design has been stretched to more than 7,800 yards, making it the longest major championship venue in history (the previous mark was Erin Hills which, for the 2017 U.S. Open measured 7,741 yards). It’s also 200 more yards than when Kiawah hosted the PGA in 2012. Six holes will play over 500 yards. The course, which also hosted the 1991 Ryder Cup, is set alongside the Atlantic Ocean (it boasts the “most seaside holes in the Northern Hemisphere”) and wind certainly will play a factor. STORYLINES: Jordan Spieth’s game is trending in the right direction heading to the PGA. Spieth, a winner already on TOUR this season, is looking for the career Grand Slam once again at the PGA, the lone major that has eluded him in his career thus far. This is Spieth’s fifth crack at trying to win the Grand Slam… Americans have won five straight PGA Championships and seven of the last 10 (with Rory McIlroy being the exception twice)… McIlroy along with Keegan Bradley, Ian Poulter, Justin Rose, and Steve Stricker are golfers who finished inside the top 10 in 2012 who are back in the field at the Ocean Course in 2021… Rickie Fowler and John Catlin were extended special exemptions for this year’s PGA. Fowler didn’t play in the Masters (for the first time since 2010) and he’s not teed it up at a major since last year… Dustin Johnson was teary-eyed after winning the Masters near his childhood hometown of Columbia, South Carolina. Can he win a major in his home state this time? 72-HOLE RECORD: 264, Brooks Koepka (2018 at Bellerive CC) 18-HOLE RECORD: 63, Bruce Crampton (2nd round, 1975 at Firestone CC), Raymond Floyd (1st round, 1982 at Southern Hills), Gary Player (2nd round, 1984 at Shoal Creek), Michael Bradley (1st round, 1993 at Inverness), Vijay Singh (2nd round, 1993 at Inverness), Brad Faxon (4th round, 1995 at Riviera CC), José María Olazábal (3rd round, 2000 at Valhalla), Mark O’Meara (2nd round, 2001 at Atlanta AC), Thomas Bjorn (3rd round, 2005 at Baltusrol), Tiger Woods (2nd round, 2007 at Southern Hills), Steve Stricker (1st round, 2011 at Atlanta AC), Jason Dufner (2nd round, 2013 at Oak Hill), Hiroshi Iwata (2nd round, 2015 at Whistling Straits), Robert Streb (2nd round, 2016 at Baltusrol), Brooks Koepka (2nd round, 2018 at Bellerive; 1st round, 2019 at Bethpage Black), Charl Schwartzel (2nd round, 2018 at Bellerive). LAST TIME: Having been originally scheduled May 14-17, the 2020 PGA Championship was moved to August 6-9 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was the first major played in over a year. By week’s end, it was Collin Morikawa who had won his first major title. Morikawa had won on the PGA TOUR earlier in the year (his second TOUR title) and his final-round 64 – highlighted by one of the shots of the year, a driver on the par-4 16th that ended up just 7 feet from the hole – saw him jump to the top of the leaderboard. He starting Sunday two shots back of Dustin Johnson’s lead. Morikawa’s Sunday 64 was tied for the low round of the week, and his 129 on the weekend set a new PGA Championship record. Johnson ended up T2 alongside Paul Casey, while Matthew Wolff, Bryson DeChambeau, Scottie Scheffler, Tony Finau, and Jason Day finished T4. HOW TO FOLLOW (All times ET) Television: Thursday-Friday, 7 a.m.-1 p.m. (ESPN+), 1 p.m.-7 p.m. (ESPN). Saturday-Sunday, 8 a.m.-10 a.m. (ESPN+), 10 a.m.-1 p.m. (ESPN), 1 p.m.-7 p.m. (CBS) Bonus: Thursday-Friday, Featured Group #1, 7 a.m.-7 p.m. (ESPN+), Thursday-Friday, Featured Group #2, #3, #4, 8 a.m.- 7 p.m. (ESPN+). Saturday-Sunday, Featured Group #1, #2, 8 a.m.-7 p.m. (ESPN+), Featured Group #3, #4, 8 a.m.-1 p.m. (ESPN+). Radio: Thursday – Sunday, 1 p.m.-7 p.m. ET (on SiriusXM 208, XM 92. Not available on PGA TOUR Digital platforms).

Click here to read the full article…

It was March of 2018 and Tiger Woods, having lost the better part of two years due to back issues, was just a few tournaments into his return to competitive golf. Asked about his improving play after a solid round, Woods offered an explanation, then finished with this thought: “I’ve got my feels back.” It’s a term, of course, that Tiger has used throughout his legendary career. Feels. It’s his way of describing his reliance on one of his senses to analyze his form. He’s not waiting for TrackMan to deliver launch numbers; he’s not leaning heavily on his yardage book. If his “feels” are working, then he’s comfortable with his game … and his equipment. But there’s another sense that Tiger uses, especially when he’s testing golf balls for Bridgestone. Hears. He listens to the sound the ball makes as it comes off his club, particularly with his wedges. In a game in which player and equipment are connected by the hands, it’s the ears that perform a vital role for Tiger in determining his golf ball of choice. “It’s something that’s definitely important to him, listening to the ball,” said Adam Rehberg, Bridgestone’s ball fitting manager. “When he’s juggling the ball on the club, he’s feeling it out obviously, but he’s also listening to the sound of it when he’s chipping it. “The sound of the ball is so important to him. He’ll turn a ball away just for the fact that it didn’t sound like he wanted it to.” So what exactly does Tiger want to hear? “He’s looking for something that’s not as loud, a little bit quieter,” Rehberg said. “I would venture to say that he’s looking for a softer sound. Obviously, he plays a really soft ball and has always traditionally wanted to put a very soft cover on the ball. But we have to be careful with the mantle layer because it influences the sound a lot.” For the TOUR B XS, Tiger’s current ball of choice that he’ll have in play at this week’s Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, Bridgestone is using its new REACTIV Urethane cover. Urethane, even in firmed conditions, is traditionally softer compared to Surlyn. Bridgestone developed the REACTIV cover to essentially adapt to the type of shot being struck, reacting differently depending on the force of the impact. It’s a shock absorber for wedge shots, making it a quiet ball for more spin and control. That’s key for Woods. “The mantle layer for him is very important,” Rehberg said. “That’s why we go to him with a soft cover because he needs to spin the ball around the greens, which the cover influences a lot. But when he’s hitting a little flighty wedge from 70 or 60 yards and he doesn’t want it to get high, the mantle layer is very important too, because that’s the backboard that pinches the cover against it.” Tiger doesn’t even have to say anything for Rehberg to know when a ball is too loud, too clicky. Woods will simply turn and squinch his left eye. Then he’ll try a few more just to confirm what his “hears” are telling him. It’s that sound feedback, along with his expectations with trajectory and flight, that determine if he eliminates a ball during testing. The first time Tiger worked with the Bridgestone folks during testing was about 2-1/2 years ago. Included was Tiger’s current ball, along with five prototypes. The first set of shots were around the greens, just short chips, no longer than 10 feet off the fringe. By the time Woods got to 40 yards away, he had already eliminated a couple of the prototypes – an indication of the importance of the short game. Three balls were left in that first phase of testing. Woods was particularly fond of one of those. “Man, this one’s really good,” he told Rehberg. But that was before he pulled a 7-iron from his bag. With that club, the ball was a little high in Tiger’s “window” where he expected the ball to go. Outside of that, it checked every box. Instead of dismissing the ball, Bridgestone kept it in the mix, made some adjustments, created a handful of prototypes in hopes of getting the ball flight down so that it would fall into the window, and then went into phase two of testing with Tiger. The survivors were then kept around for phase three. At that point, the balls were very similar – but not exactly the same. Tiger could tell the difference. “We’re talking about minute changes from ball to ball,” Rehberg said. “It’s quite amazing that he can see it. Most people can tell the difference between a range ball and a high-end TOUR ball if they hit them back-to-back. With Tiger, we’re talking about the same specification of ball with deviations of less than 1% or 2% from the one to the other and trying to figure out which one fits his game. “So we’re really dialed in to a little bit of different compression points on this ball.” The Bridgestone team knows the differences from the spec sheet. Tiger, however, does not. In fact, he is adamant about not knowing the numbers that appear on paper. This is where his “feels” and “hears” come in. “I don’t want to know anything about them. I want to hit them,” Woods has repeatedly told Rehberg and the others. “I don’t want to know which one’s softer and what it should do. I want to figure that out.” In finishing the story, Rehberg added, “I can tell you, man, he’s spot-on.” The importance of how a ball sounds is so important to Bridgestone that the company has a way to check decibel levels and pitches. It happens in the Research & Development department in the company’s office in Japan, where a tool analyzes the sound of a ball coming off a club. A microphone picks up the sound based on where a player stands in relationship to the ball. That distinction is important. “You know how it is when you hear somebody else’s driver, right,” Rehberg explained. “You hear it from far away, like 20 feet, and you’re like, ‘Man, that sounded awesome.’ But then the guy who hit the shot says, ‘Oh, I think it sounds weird,’ because they’re on top of it. The sound is totally different at different lengths. “So with Tiger’s ear distance from the ball, it has to sound a certain way to him. He doesn’t care what it sounds like to the crowd out in the distance.” Once the sound is gathered, an engineer will work with the Pioneer Corporation, the consumer electronics company that has been in business more than 80 years, to study the decibel sounds from the different balls being tested. Peak metallic sound will be compared to peak low pitch, with the goal of finding a pleasant sound instead of a harsh one. It’s painstaking work. “You’re talking about a multitude of prototypes they can make for this,” Rehberg said. “They can make balls with low compression cores with firm mantels and soft covers and listen to the sound. Then they could switch those around – soft mantle, firm core and soft cover. “We are definitely studying the sound the ball makes because we understand that it influences a lot of what people think or feel it should sound like. “Tiger wants a soft-sounding golf ball that also spins. For our R&D team in Japan, they really set out to find that perfect combination that delivers the feel he wants but then also delivers the sound he wants, in order to give him exactly what he needs.” Tiger’s found it in the TOUR B XS, a ball designed primarily to spin around the greens and into the green. It’s a ball for golfers who want to control spin; it’s not a bump-and-run ball. “This is a ball that Tiger looks to control flight,” Rehberg said. “If he wants to dead-hand it and pop-and-stop one, he can. But if he wants to rip one back 30 feet to the flag from 100 yards, this is that ball. This is a ball that a player would like to work and flight.”’ The problem, at least in the past, with spinny balls that perform around the greens is that they’re often not as effective off the tee because of that spin capability. In essence, they overspin. According to TrackMan, the average spin rate for drivers on the PGA TOUR is 2,686 RPM. Tiger wants to stay under 2,700 when he hits a fade off the tee. But when he hits a little draw, “like a whooping draw,” Rehberg said, then the spin rate can’t fall below 2,100 or so. “There’s a window of spin that he needs to keep the ball in,” Rehberg said. Thanks to the REACTIV cover, Bridgestone believes they’ve solved the issue of spin balance between drivers and wedges. The TOUR B XS, according to company data, is the most spinny ball on the market between 15-40 yards, and yet is still manageable off the tee. “It’s not nearly the highest spin ball off the tee,” Rehberg said. “It’s still very controllable.” And on top of everything else, it has Tiger’s seal of approval. Hear, hear.

Click here to read the full article…

The Hero World Challenge, hosted by Tiger Woods and his TGR Foundation, takes place at Albany in the Bahamas this week. The 20-man field was set to feature Woods in his first start since The 150th Open Championship in July but the 82-time PGA TOUR winner was forced to withdraw with plantar fasciitis. Sepp Straka gets the late call up against some elite talent. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $300K Pitch + Putt [$100K to 1st] STRATEGY The field might be very limited with only 20 players, but it’s elite and features golfers from across the globe. All 20 reside inside the top 33 of the OWGR, giving us plenty of top options down the board to choose from for fantasy. Last year’s winner and runner-up (Viktor Hovland and Scottie Scheffler) are both in the field, as is 2018 winner Jon Rahm, who won twice on the DP World Tour this fall. With such a limited field — and every player guaranteed to get in four rounds of golf — every pick we make will have serious consequences for our daily fantasy golf lineups, so prepare for some big swings up and down the leaderboard this week as the event progresses. Albany is set near the sea and has little in the way of cover, with wide-open fairways tending to deemphasize power. Even with heavy winds from the sea often affecting play, the course itself is conducive to lower scoring. Albany has yielded a winning score of 18-under par or better in each of the past five seasons. The venue is unique in its setup in that designer Ernie Els set up Albany to play as more of a links-style venue, and Els even compared it stylistically to St. Andrews at one point. Rickie Fowler, who has proven himself to be an excellent links player (but who doesn’t qualify as a long hitter), is a past champion. The venue is also unique in that it features five par 5s and five par 3s (instead of the normal four we find on most par 72s). That makes this more of a shot-makers course and also siphons away some of the advantages that longer drivers have. Without a ton of the longer par 4s that we see on more traditional PGA TOUR setups, players who are weaker off the tee can challenge this week if they are firing with their approaches and putter. It’s near the end of the year and players will be coming in with varying form, but strong around the green and approach play has generally been the key to success at this event. Look for players who have been sharp in those areas this fall and who have experienced some success on the links in their careers already. GOLFERS TO CONSIDER Justin Thomas ($10,200) Taking Thomas this week could be a nice contrarian play in larger field tournaments on DraftKings. The American only played a couple of events over the fall with a T40 at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina being his best result. That’s not likely to get him a ton of eyeballs on a week where you only have to pay $500 more to get up to the red-hot Jon Rahm or have the choice of going more balanced by using players like Tony Finau ($9,300) and Viktor Hovland ($8,700) as your anchors. Thomas finally cracked the top 10 at this event in 2021, grabbing a T5 finish at Albany last season. With limited starts on his resume since the TOUR Championship, he should be eager to improve on that career-best finish in 2022. He’s also ranked first in around the green stats over the last 50 rounds in this field and has had plenty of success winning at non-mainland PGA TOUR courses over his career, grabbing wins in Malaysia, Hawaii (twice) and South Korea to date. While his price may seem high, his upside is every bit as elite as the other top players in the field, making him a solid contrarian play to build around in big field GPPs. Tommy Fleetwood ($7,300) Fleetwood is an experienced links player who has already had a terrific 2022 season and is coming off a win on the DP World Tour just a few weeks ago in South Africa. Like Thomas, Fleetwood has an elite short game that should allow him to handle this venue if and when the wind gets up. Fleetwood has also shown a ton of confidence with the putter over the back half of 2022, gaining strokes on the greens in six of his last seven PGA TOUR starts. A top-five finisher at The Open Championship in two of the past four years, Fleetwood also showed strong at Albany the last time he played this event in 2017 (his only invite), grabbing a share of third. Given his recent form and the success he’s had on links venues in the past, using him as a value play in this range makes plenty of sense for DFS purposes. Collin Morikawa ($6,900) Even in this elite field, Morikawa’s sub-$7,000 salary sticks out like a sore thumb. The two-time major winner may have had a down season by his standards, but he still finished top five at two of the four major championships in 2022, and encouragingly, looked better in his last fall start in Mexico where he grabbed a share of 15th place. Morikawa’s last two starts have also seen him gain strokes around the green which is perhaps a sign that the rest of his game is catching up to his elite iron play — which has him ranked third in this field in strokes gained approach stats over the last 50 rounds. Morikawa is an Open Championship winner who also prevailed for a big win against an elite WGC field down in Florida (at the very open and windy Concession Golf Course). He finished T5 at this event/venue last season and comes in with more motivation than his peers given he’s gone the entire year without a win. At under $7,000 on DraftKings, he’s criminally underpriced (even in this limited field) and makes for a terrific value target this week for fantasy. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $300K Pitch + Putt [$100K to 1st] Place your golf bets at DraftKings Sportsbook and bet online by downloading the DraftKings Sportsbook app. I am a promoter at DraftKings and am also an avid fan and user (my username is wavegoodbye) and may sometimes play on my personal account in the games that I offer advice on. Although I have expressed my personal view on the games and strategies above, they do not necessarily reflect the view(s) of DraftKings and do not constitute a representation that any particular strategy will guarantee success. All customers should use their own skill and judgment in building lineups. I may also deploy different players and strategies than what I recommend above. I am not an employee of DraftKings and do not have access to any non-public information.

Click here to read the full article…