How to Watch the Travelers Championship, Round 4: Featured Groups, live scores, tee times, TV times

LOS ANGELES — Sam Burns wanted to pay respect to tough Riviera by playing it safe. It led to a 5-under 66 on Friday to tie the 36-hole record at The Genesis Invitational and build a five-shot lead going into the weekend. RELATED: Leaderboard | Dustin Johnson lurks at Riviera Among those chasing is Dustin Johnson, the reigning Masters and FedExCup champion and a past winner at Riviera. Another shot back was Jordan Spieth, who is starting to make himself at home near the top of the leaderboard. Burns kept his bogey-free day intact toward the end of the round when he came up short of the eighth green, his 17th of the morning. He chipped it about 10 feet short — anything too strong could lead to big trouble — and made the par putt. He also handled two of the par 5s, and picked up so much roll on the firm turf at the 476-yard 12th hole that he had only a pitching wedge into the green and made a 5-foot putt. “Whenever we were kind of in a tricky spot, just kind of took what the golf course gave us,” Burns said. “There’s definitely times where I’ve tried to force it a little bit, but this just is not a golf course you want to do that.” Burns was at 12-under 130, matching the record last set in 2004 by Mike Weir and Shigeki Maruyama. Johnson led a group at 7-under 135 despite playing the three par 5s in only 1 under for the week. Part of the problem is that Johnson has hit only one fairway on the par 5s. That was the final one he played Friday, the 17th, and it set up a simple up-and-down that moved him a little closer. He also has a simple solution to improve his par-5 performance. “Drive it in the fairway,” he said. “I feel like I’m playing really well. Just need to get a little bit more out of the rounds.” Joaquin Niemann finished with eight pars for his round of 68 and was five shots behind. He and Johnson were joined by Tyler McCumber and Jason Kokrak, who each shot 68 in the morning. McCumber is the miracle worker this week. His finger got caught trying to open a window is his hotel room Tuesday, and his best option was for a doctor to remove the nail on his left index finger. He did that Wednesday, hit about five balls and figured he could give it a shot. “It’s pretty wild how quickly the body does adapt to things,” McCumber said. “I thought it was a little better today just to focus on the golf and not really worry about the finger.” Riviera injured some of the games best players. Rory McIlroy made only one birdie in his round of 76 and missed the cut. Justin Thomas followed his opening 77 with a 73 and missed the cut. So did U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau after a 69. McIlroy had the PGA TOUR’s longest active cut streak at 25 events dating to the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush. The streak now belongs to Xander Schauffele at 22. Burns is a 24-year-old from LSU who has what it takes to win when it falls into place. He tied for sixth at the Barbasol Championship when he was still an amateur, and it took him only one year on the Korn Ferry Tour before he was in the big leagues. Now it’s a matter of breaking through, and he’s off to a strong start at Riviera. “I’d like to think that I have all the tools to win out here,” Burns said. “There’s a lot of good players — really, really good players. I try not to get caught up in that and just trying to get better each week.” Riviera is playing fast and difficult this year with such beautiful weather and occasional gusts of wind. Aside from Burns and his great play over 36 holes, no one else was better than 7-under par. Ten players in the 120-man field had two rounds in the 60s while playing in ideal weather. “It’s one of those rare weeks where you can’t get away with firing at flagsticks,” Spieth said. “There’s not much rough, but when you get in the rough it takes the spin off enough to where you can’t get into pins. A lot of times when you miss the greens, it’s harder to get it closer than where you could have hit your approach. “It’s such a different experience from what we normally have on TOUR.” Spieth was three shots behind going into the weekend in the Phoenix Open, shot 61 and shared the 54-hole lead. He tied for fourth. Last week at Pebble Beach, he had a one-shot lead after 36 holes and led by two going into the final round before tying for third. Now he’s six shots behind Burns, but in reasonable position on the leaderboard. It’s an upward trend. “It’s not like you can go chase people on this golf course,” Spieth said. “So I’m happy with where I’m at, but just eliminate a couple of the minor mistakes here and there and try to keep clean cards on the weekend and let the rest of it take care of itself.”

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Matt Corrado's colorful graphic art hangs in galleries. He's also painted everything from a wooden chair he found by the side of the road that now sits in his office to automobiles and motorcycles and basketballs. Right now, he's even painting big metal Greek statue. The lifelong Washington Capitals fan also worked with his hometown team on a mural prior to the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs. And he live-painted a moveable wall for the Baltimore Ravens that lives at M & T Bank Stadium and has become a popular selfie spot. "It's something that I particularly enjoy, that crossover of sports and art," Corrado says. His artwork has never appeared on a golf bag, though. That is, until this week at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. About three months ago, the Washington, D.C.-based artist was asked to design the bag that Jordan Spieth's caddie, Michael Greller, will carry in the tournament. It's the kickoff to a promotion with AT&T, the three-time major champion's long-time sponsor. AT&T owns the branding rights to Spieth's bag. In the past, it's been used to spotlight HBO Max and the "Wonder Woman" movie. This week, though, the bag Corrado created launches a contest where fans compete to design the one Spieth will carry at the AT&T Byron Nelson in May. Fans can create and submit their designs on a web-based app starting Thursday. The five finalists will be selected and flown to Fort Worth, Texas where the winning bag will be unveiled. "If you're entering the contest, I'd say take Matt's lead and really have some fun with it," Spieth says. "There are so many chances to get creative with a blank golf bag and create something that is going to stand out." Corrado's certainly does. The colors are bright - predominantly blues, reds and greens - and the pop art style on each panel of the bag is distinctive. As expected golf clubs, balls and a green figure into the design but there is much more. "One of the things that was challenging, but cool was they wanted it to be specific to Pebble Beach, which was fun," Corrado says. The artist has played golf most of his life, but he has never been to the Monterrey Peninsula. His parents had taken a trip to Pebble Beach about five years ago, though, so he picked his mom's brain and made sure landmarks like the Lone Cypress were included in his creation. "And just the natural beauty — looking at the pictures and everything - I kind of was inspired to use some of the colors and the waves and the water and kind of that California feel," he says. "I think that was probably the most challenging part was just making sure we got the elements in and to make sure that it tells the story and is specific to Pebble Beach." Corrado also researched Spieth, who turned pro midway through his sophomore year at Texas and won the John Deere Classic two weeks before his 20th birthday. He won his first two majors two years later and added a third in 2017. And in an interesting coincidence, Corrado found that one of the signature features in his art could be used to tell Spieth's story, as well. "There's an element that I use a lot in my artwork — I use these hands," he says. "They’re kind of like these classic cartoon hands. And I use the hands doing like kind of a rock-on kind of hands, and it looks like horns or something. "And Jordan, he went to the University of Texas, the Hook-’em-Horns hands, which is the same thing. So, I put that element in there, because I thought, well, this is cool because I already do this in my artwork. And it also is kind of a nod to his time at Texas." The detail was not lost on the 11-time PGA TOUR champion who tied for fourth last week at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. "Matt's design is awesome," Spieth said. "I really love the bold style and am excited it's going to stand out on the course. It feels personal, too, with the Hook ‘em Horns and the iconic Pebble Beach lone Cyprus tree." Corrado always knew he wanted to be an artist, and he studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 2005 with a BFA in illustration. He's developed a distinctive pop art style that is driven by the things that influenced him as a kid - skateboarding and comic books and graffiti, among them. "Those are kind of like some of the core elements that I feel like inspired my art as I was growing up and as I was kind of developing a style," Corrado says. "But I also really enjoy graphic design and clean, bold design stuff. "So, I try to kind of pull some of those things in consciously and subconsciously, I think to kind of create a style and a visual language that can be traced back to me, too. Part of it is just a branding thing where you want your work to be recognizable and consistent in some capacity. So, it’s kind of a combination of those things." Corrado said the opportunity to design Spieth's bag came out of the blue, a cold-call of an email, essentially. And he was immediately excited to participate in the project. "I’ve done a lot of murals and I’ve done a lot of canvases and paintings and stuff like that," he says. "But there’s something really cool that I always enjoy about actually putting artwork on like tangible products, things that people use and functional. … "And it’s also a challenge to try to like figure out how to apply artwork to something like a golf bag. It’s just not it’s not something you see a lot, you know? So yeah, I thought it was really cool and kind of would be an exciting challenge and a good opportunity." The payoff comes this week when Corrado will see the bag on national television at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, a tournament Spieth won in 2017. "I hope I get to see the bag out there and I hope Jordan does well," he says. "He usually competes pretty well in that tournament. I have some friends and stuff who will be watching too — they’ll be watching anyways, but it will be fun to have them maybe see my bag pop up, too, if it gets shown on the coverage. I’ll definitely be watching to check it out." And one of Spieth's fans will have a similar experience May 13-16 at the AT&T Byron Nelson.

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Australia’s Cameron Smith rode a hot final nine holes at St. Andrews to win the 150th Open Championship and his first major title.

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