Patrick Cantlay wins second Memorial Tournament title and takes FedExCup lead

NORTON, Mass. – A year ago, Tiger Woods was cleared by doctors to hit a golf ball. It was a big moment in his comeback from a fourth back surgery. Since then, he’s had a few more big moments, as well as several smaller ones – including, perhaps, Saturday’s second round, as Tiger’s bogey-free 66 moved him into a tie for 21st at the halfway point of the Dell Technologies Championship. It’s his second bogey-free round in his last four competitive rounds. Until last week’s third round of THE NORTHERN TRUST, he had not produced a bogey-free round all season. What does it mean in the scheme of things? Woods thinks it’s a sign that his swing is getting more consistent – especially with some recent tinkering to his TaylorMade M3 driver, including an additional degree of loft and a switch to an old shaft, Mitsubishi’s Diamana D+ White Board. On Saturday, Woods hit 12 of 14 fairways after hitting 10 of 14 in his first-round 72 at TPC Boston. “I’m keeping the ball in play a little better,â€� Woods said. “I can cheer for my bad ones – they’re hanging in there. A couple of tee shots were kind of borderline but still in the fairway. I think that’s probably the biggest difference.â€� Of course, the biggest difference from a year ago – when Woods tweeted out a video with the caption “Dr. gave me the ok to start pitchingâ€� – is that he no longer fears the full swing. He recalled when he first began swinging, he was “very nervous because I didn’t want to screw it up. This is it. So if it doesn’t fuse, there really is no other option.â€� So he took a cautious approach. After being cleared to hit long irons, his first 4-iron carried “about 90 yards,â€� he said. “I was just so apprehensive to start letting it go.â€� That feeling, he acknowledged, isn’t completely gone, even though his comeback has progressed much faster than he has imagined. “I didn’t want to get hurt again,â€� he said. “I didn’t want to feel that pain again. Every now and again throughout this entire year, I’ve probably golfed and played a different shot here and there because there is a bit of me that doesn’t want to feel that way again.â€� What he does want to feel, of course, is a trophy in his hands again for the first time in five years. He’ll start Sunday’s third round seven shots off the pace set by Webb Simpson, and with 20 players ahead of him on the leaderboard. “I’ve got some work to do still,â€� he said. “I’m six back. This is a golf course you can’t sit still on. You have to keep making birdies. You have to keep getting after it.â€� It’s a tall order but not an impossible one. Given that a year ago, he was limited to chip shots in his backyard, he’ll gladly take on the challenge.

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Phil Mickelson, who 30 years ago won on the PGA Tour as an amateur, begins his 2021 season this week. So what is fair to expect? Plus, making sense of Bryson DeChambeau and more.

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RIDGELAND, S.C. – Chesson Hadley had missed 10 of his last 12 cuts coming into this week. He was 192nd in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, 151st in the FedExCup, 320th in the world. Only his putting, in which he ranked 14th on TOUR, seemed to be going right. The best thing he’d done was take some time away from the game to preserve his sanity. And yet it will be Hadley, and not his third-round playing partner, world No. 1 Dustin Johnson, who will go into Sunday with the best chance to win the Palmetto Championship at Congaree. Hadley, the snapping, lanky 33-year-old from Georgia Tech, was 3 under on the day and 14 under total when the horn sounded for a weather delay after his tee shot at the 18th hole. “No, I did not see this coming,” he said earlier this week. Harris English, 4 under on the day, was his closest pursuer, four shots back. Johnson was 1 over on the day and 8 under total, tied with South African Garrick Higgo (68). The third round was called for the day at 8 p.m. ET with four players on the course. It will resume at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, with fourth round tee times from 8:05 a.m. – 1:50 p.m. ET off the first tee. English, who bogeyed the 17th hole, had yet to putt out on 18 when the horn blew. The winner of the Sentry Tournament of Champions in January, he had cooled off some partly due to a back injury he suffered at THE PLAYERS Championship in March. “I never really had any back injuries before I had to pull out of THE PLAYERS, and I haven’t been 100 percent since then,” he said earlier this week. “It’s a long year. I know, 31 years old, I’m bound to have a couple injuries. But it’s been close. … I feel like it’s been trending.” Higgo, a 22-year-old lefty from Johannesburg who could make the 2022 International Presidents Cup Team, won two of his last three starts on the European Tour, but has been mostly overlooked this week. Instead, most of the attention has been on native son Johnson. Earlier this week, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster presented him with the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor. Alas, the golf hasn’t come easy lately for the 24-time PGA TOUR winner. After missing the cut in two of his last four starts, including the PGA Championship at nearby Kiawah Island, and failing to register a top-10 finish since February, he got away from the game to do some fishing and clear his head. He was struggling on the greens, he said, and while things were looking up for a while at Congaree, he was back in negative numbers in Strokes Gained: Putting on Saturday. Still, a six-shot deficit is hardly insurmountable, and Johnson surely would love to win in his home state of South Carolina for the first time in his career. Tyrrell Hatton (67) and veteran Bo Van Pelt (66) are at 7 under, seven back. Hadley, though, controls his destiny. If he doesn’t do anything crazy on 18 (he’s in the fairway) and shoots under par Sunday, the 2014 Puerto Rico Open champion, 2013-14 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year, and four-time Korn Ferry Tour winner will be awfully hard to catch.

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