Monday qualifiers: AT&T Byron Nelson

A silent Ryder Cup just wouldn’t work. The players wanted no part of it, either, and have been saying so for months. Waiting a year and hoping the gates will be open again in 2021 was the only choice.

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Brendan Steele knows all about a fast start to the season. What he’d like to avoid is the slow finish. Steele won the Safeway Open a year ago, and he felt he was on his way. He made the cut in his next 16 tournaments. He had three top 10s, including a tie for sixth in THE PLAYERS Championship. He made the cut in both majors he played during that stretch. He was 13th in the FedExCup, and the TOUR Championship looked like a sure thing. And then it wasn’t. “I really felt like at the end of the season through the summer, I definitely limited myself as to what I was trying to achieve,” Steele said. “I just wanted to make the TOUR Championship so bad, I was just trying to scratch and claw for every point I could. There was never going to be a week where I had a chance to win playing like that because you play to the level you’re thinking. “If you’re trying to make the cut, you’ll be right around the cut line,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to win. I wasn’t trying to play my best. I was just trying to get whatever points I could and I played right to that level.” He made only three cuts in his last seven events, and two of those tournaments didn’t even have cuts. Steele was at No. 27 going into the BMW Championship, closed with a 72-72 weekend and missed the top 30 — and the TOUR Championship — by two shots. Since the wraparound season began in October 2013, Steele became the first player to win the season-opening event and not make it to East Lake. He hopes he at least learned from last year. “I just started playing a little more cautiously and a little bit more afraid,” he said. “I don’t know if I got a little bit more tired or what happened, but I was just worried about the outcome and not the process of actually hitting good shots and playing good tournaments. … I’m going to try not to do that this year and just really move forward and try to win as many tournaments as I can, and get myself into contention in majors and do all the things that everybody wants to do out here.” He gets his first chance quickly. After his two-shot victory to repeat at the Safeway Open, he was on a flight to Malaysia to play the CIMB Classic. ___ CAREER MONEY EXEMPTIONS: Tim Clark is coming up on the two-year anniversary since he last played on the PGA TOUR at the 2016 CareerBuilder Challenge. Instead of taking a major medical extension, he is using a one-time exemption for being among the top 50 in career money (No. 47). Whether he plays depends on his health. Clark spent time this year working with Russell Henley on his wedge game. Also using a one-time exemption for top 50 in career money is two-time U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen, who is No. 26 in career money. Goosen, who turns 49 in February, narrowly kept his card for last season. Ernie Els (No. 5) and K.J. Choi (No. 25) are using one-time exemptions for top 25 on the career money list. Els, who turns 48 next week, can still use the one-time exemption for top 50. Bo Van Pelt also is on a career money exemption, but that has been carried over from 2015-16. Van Pelt hasn’t played since Pebble Beach in 2016 after having surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left arm. ___ BACK IN ITS PLACE: With a hurricane approaching, Justin Thomas took some of his most valued possessions to a sturdy safe at the home of his neighbor Rickie Fowler. That included the Wanamaker Trophy from the PGA Championship. And that’s where it stayed. Thomas headed for Chicago, then Atlanta for the TOUR Championship, followed by New York for the Presidents Cup. He headed over to Fowler’s to retrieve his major championship hardware, and then found the perfect spot for it. “It doesn’t quite fit in my office. I have a little bookcase, and it’s a little bigger than the other trophies I have,” Thomas said. “But it’s kind of a nice little ledge above the fireplace in my living room that it just fits perfect right when you walk in the front door. And I think I’m going to leave it there.” ___ THREE-PEATS: Justin Thomas is going for a third straight victory at the CIMB Classic in Malaysia, and that’s just the start. Over the next 12 months, Thomas will be among five players trying to win the same tournament three years in a row. Hideki Matsuyama has won the last two years at the Waste Management Phoenix Open at the start of February. Daniel Berger is a back-to-back winner at the FedEx St. Jude Classic. He’ll get his chance in June. Then, a little more than a month later, Jhonattan Vegas goes for three in a row at the RBC Canadian Open. And then it circles back to Brendan Steele, who on Sunday won the Safeway Open for the second straight year. The last player to win the same PGA TOUR event three straight times was Steve Stricker at the John Deere Classic in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Before that, it was Tiger Woods at two tournaments. He won three straight at a pair of World Golf Championships from 2005 through 2007. One was the Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone. The other was held over three courses — the American Express at Harding Park (2005), The Grove (2006) and Doral (2007). ___ DIVOTS: The Olympic Golf Course in Rio de Janeiro finally gets to host another tournament. The Brazil Open starts Thursday on the PGA TOUR Latinoamerica. … Atlanta-based Delta Airlines has become the third company to become an international partner of the Masters, joining Rolex and UPS. The Masters has only three global sponsors in AT&T, Mercedes-Benz and IBM. … The LPGA Teaching and Club Professional membership has announced one winner for the Ellen Griffin Rolex Award and the Nancy Lopez Golf Achievement Award — Sandy LaBauve, the founder of LPGA-USGA Girls Golf program. ___ STAT OF THE WEEK: The top 10 in the men’s and women’s world ranking each have players from six countries. The men are represented by the United States, Japan, Spain, Northern Ireland, Sweden and Australia. The women are represented by South Korea, the United States, Sweden, China, Thailand and New Zealand. ___ FINAL WORD: “I’m going to win. It’s a matter of time. I don’t know if it’s tomorrow, I don’t know if it’s in China, but it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen soon because I’m starting to play well enough to do it.” — Phil Mickelson after the third round of the Safeway Open.

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HAIKOU, CHINA—Sweden’s Oskar Arvidsson carded a third-round, 2-over 74 to stay on course for a wire-to-wire win at the PGA TOUR Series-China International Qualifying Tournament No. 1, the first of two successive 72-hole qualifiers at Mission Hills Haikou. With difficult pin positions adding to the challenge on another cold day, Arvidsson finished 8-under, one ahead of playing partners Lucas Herbert (73) of Australia and American Jeffrey Kang (72), who will all play together again in Sunday’s final round. American Kurt Kitayama, a Web.com Tour player in 2016 and 2017, shot 69 to move to 5-under and tie for fourth with Australia’s Kevin Yuan (68) and Canada’s Richard Jung (71). Luke Toomey, formerly New Zealand’s top amateur, made a strong move as a 68 moved him into a tie for 15th, at even-par. The top-15 finishers will earn full cards and the next 25 will be conditionally exempt for this year’s PGA TOUR Series-China, which will reward the top-five money winners with places on the Web.com Tour, the path to the PGA TOUR. Arvidsson, 26, will start in pole position despite a difficult Saturday in which he dropped his first shots of the tournament after opening with two bogey-free 67s. The Bangkok-based Swede bogeyed No. 2 but bounced back with three straight birdies before dropping shots at Nos. 8, 9, 11 and 18. “It was quite tough out there today. The pins were a little difficult, it was windy, so I think we all played pretty good, but it was hard to get it going. I’m still aiming to win, and I’m looking forward to playing some great courses on this Tour,â€� said Arvidsson, who had even considered withdrawing after suffering stomach pains on Friday morning. Herbert, 22, cut a slightly frustrated figure after mixing four birdies with five bogeys, including on the par-5 18th but still heads a strong Australian contingent that also includes Yuan, DJ Loypur (4-under) and Andrew Schonewille (3-under) in the top-10. As high as third in the World Amateur Golf Ranking before turning pro in 2015, Herbert is on an impressive run of form that has steered him to eighth on the 2017 PGA TOUR of Australasia Order of Merit and a place at The 147th Open Championship at Carnoustie through a tie for eighth at last month’s SMBC Singapore Open, won by Sergio Garcia. “I try to win, anyway. I think it’s one of those events that if you keep the mentality, if you want to win, then you don’t settle for laying up. Your vision tends to broaden a bit more if you just aim for the top 15, so I’m going to try and win and just prove to myself that my game’s still got it,â€� said Herbert, who at World No. 228 is the highest-ranked of the final group. “Eventually, it would be great to play on the Web.com Tour. I have a card on (PGA Tour of) Australasia so I’m looking for Tours to play for the rest of the year, so I’ll also look to play (PGA TOUR) Canada Q-School. If I can get a card here, that would give me some security and I won’t be too stressed out going to Canada Q-School.â€� Kang, 26, also admitted that victory, not a top-15 finish, would be his focus Sunday. The Los Angeles resident, who graduated from the University of Southern California in 2014, recorded his fourth birdie of the day on the 18th to tie Herbert and offset two bogeys and the double bogey he posted on No. 13. “Any tournament you play, you want to win it. I think that’s the mentality you start the tournament with, and why change it going into the last day?â€� asked Kang, who played on the Mackenzie Tour – PGA TOUR Canada in 2016 and around Asia last year. “I’ll try to do what I did today, although the back nine was really hard today. I’ll just try to minimize the mistakes and see how it goes.â€� This week’s 120-player entry list features players from 16 countries and territories across Asia, Australasia, Europe and North America, with the largest contingents from the U.S. (34) and South Korea (29). After a one-year hiatus, PGA TOUR Series-China resumes in March with a 14-tournament schedule, with each tournament offering RMB 1.5 million, a 25-percent increase over purse levels from 2016. The Mainland China Qualifying Tournament for China passport holders will be held at Wolong Lake Golf Club in Liuzhou City in Guangxi from February 27-March 2 (Tuesday-Friday). The PGA TOUR established PGA TOUR Series-China in 2014 as its third international developmental tour, following in the footsteps of PGA TOUR Latinoamerica and the Mackenzie Tour – PGA TOUR Canada. Since its inception, PGA TOUR Series-China players have received Official World Golf Ranking points for top finishes at official tournaments. Previous International Qualifying Tournament Winners

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