DraftKings preview: John Deere Classic

There’s a line of demarcation in Rory McIlroy’s 2019-20 season, and it’s the PGA TOUR’s three-month layoff in which the entire sports world paused for the coronavirus pandemic. Before the TOUR shut things down after the first round of THE PLAYERS Championship in March, McIlroy – the defending FedExCup champion and Player of the Year – had six straight top-five finishes, including a win at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions. Since then? Five starts and just one top-30 finish, a T11 at the Travelers Championship. “Before the world sort of shut down, I was playing some really good golf, consistent,” McIlroy said from San Francisco’s chilly TPC Harding Park, where he is gearing up for this week’s PGA Championship. “And then yeah, having that three-month break, coming back, everything sort of changed. Everything feels different, in the competitive arena, anyway.” Not that McIlroy has faded into obscurity. Hardly. He’s fifth in the FedExCup, and had retained the No. 1 world ranking until losing it to Jon Rahm last month. (Rahm has since lost it to Justin Thomas.) No, the results for McIlroy have just been – flat. “My game doesn’t feel that far away,” he said. “I feel like I’ve played pretty well. I just haven’t got a lot out of my game. Haven’t scored as well as I was doing before the lockdown. … Haven’t been efficient as I was back then. Short game hasn’t quite been as sharp.” The question is why, and can he get it back. Coastal-adjacent TPC Harding Park, where he won the 2015 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, beating Gary Woodland in the final, is one of his happy places on the schedule, so a return to form there this week would not be entirely unexpected. Maybe there’s still some McIlroy mojo hovering up there in the marine layer. Granted, the layout and routing are different, and the course is playing longer, and with narrower fairways. The damp conditions are more or less the same. The sweater weather remains. Also, as McIlroy noted, the PGA setup man is still Kerry Haigh, whom he likes. (The PGA is the lone major McIlroy has won twice, at Kiawah in 2012 and Valhalla in 2014.) As for his relatively lackluster results, the chattering class has speculated about the why, and McIlroy hasn’t denied it. Having noted a certain week-to-week sameness in golf’s (and other pro sports’) quiet new normal, he suggested he has struggled to play without galleries. “He draws a lot of his energy from the fact that fans of all nationalities pull for him,” said Golf Channel analyst and former world No. 1 David Duval. “He’s a world-favorite player. Being out here where there are so (few) people around can take some adjustment.” McIlroy wouldn’t deny that, but knows things aren’t likely to change overnight as the virus shows no signs of going away. And he knows he’s going to have to find his A-game on his own. “I’ve said in the last few weeks that I’ve struggled to adapt to it,” he said, “but it is what it is. You need to go out there and do the best that you can. We all wish that we were playing in front of fans and have it feel like a real major championship, but I think we’re just lucky that we’re able to play golf tournaments at this point and grateful to PGA of America and all the governing bodies for adapting and pivoting and being able to put on these championships.” And again: He’s not far off. “I shot a 63 at Colonial,” he said. “I shot a 65 to make the cut at Hilton Head; a 63 at Travelers, a couple of good scores last week in Memphis. So the good stuff is in there. I was just saying earlier, it’s just the sharpness and being efficient with my scoring. “Turning the 73s that I’ve shot into 70s,” he added. “That’s the sort of stuff that I think when you’re sharp and you’re playing a bit and you’re sort of in your groove you’re able to do that a little better, and that’s the stuff that I haven’t been able to do since coming back out here.”

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In temperatures that dipped to 45 degrees and winds of up to 34 mph, J.B. Holmes grinds out a 1-under 70 in the final round for a one-shot win over fellow Kentuckian Justin Thomas at the Genesis Open. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Holmes made crucial par saves on 13 and 16, enjoyed his career-best putting week, and picked up his fifth PGA TOUR win. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Kentucky won J.B. Holmes is from Campbellsville, Justin Thomas from Louisville.  One way or the other, the Bluegrass State was going to win. It’s just that it always looked like it would be Thomas, who took a four-shot lead into the final round. “Yeah, it was great being able to go out and play with him and battle it out,â€� said Holmes, who at the end of a 34-hole slog Sunday and played a steadier back nine (36) while Thomas struggled (38). “He’s such a great player, so it was fun being out there, talking and just battling it out.â€� Holmes recalls playing golf with Thomas for the first time when Thomas was 12 or 13.  “It was in Kentucky and I knew he had a chance,â€� Holmes said. “At that age, you’ve still got a lot of stuff to go through, but he was definitely a talent and I thought he would get out here and he’s done that and some.â€� Thomas remembers being “7 or 8 or 9â€� when Holmes first pulled him inside the ropes at the PGA Championship. “I just never thought, you know, 15 years later he would beat my ass at Riviera,â€� Thomas said. “That was a bummer.â€� 2. Hard work paid off You’d never have thought so in watching him play at the Genesis, but on the season Holmes had just one top-10 finish, a 9th at the season-opening Safeway Open.  The reason: Shoddy work on the greens. “Really bad putting is an understatement the last few weeks,â€� he said.  Buckling down with his coach, Matt Killen, Holmes went to work at Riviera. “We spent a lot of time this week with the coach and getting on the green and trying to find the right ball position and how it set up and putting through some gates, making sure I was starting the ball online,â€� Holmes said. “I putted for several hours throughout the week. In the morning, we changed our routine and we had a string and a mirror and just made sure that everything was dialed in, and then I could trust it and go out there and make confident strokes.â€� None were bigger than his 12-foot par save at the 13th hole (while Thomas was four-putting) and 11-foot save at the 16th. 3. Wind frustrated Thomas It has not been a Chamber of Commerce West Coast Swing, what with the rainy final round at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, plus the delays at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Genesis. The challenging conditions got the better of Thomas on the final day at Riviera. “I really struggled putting in that wind out there,â€� he said. “It’s something that I’ve needed to get better at and it unfortunately just kind of showed a flaw in my game.â€� There was a lot that stood out between the four-putt double-bogey on 13, and the three-putts at 10 and 14, but Thomas was still irritated by one mistake in particular. He tried to jam his third putt on 13 into the back of the cup, and the ball took a hard lip-out. “I’ve got to stop going that,â€� he said. “That’s not the speed that I hit putts at when I’m putting well.â€�    4. Woods spoke for many Tournament host Tiger Woods had an outside chance to finally win at Riviera, but after he got to 10-under he bogeyed four of his last 10 holes to take himself out of it. “Yeah, I got tired,â€� he said after a week full of interruptions and early alarms and freezing-cold hands. “I don’t know if I’m the only one, but I definitely felt it today. Wind, cold. I was at 10 and I slipped four shots coming in. That’s the way it goes.â€� The good news was he saw far more good shots come off his clubs than he did at Riviera last year, and he now heads to the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship for his first TOUR start in Mexico. 5. Riviera was brutal It was cold. Wet. And windy. How hard was it? Jordan Spieth shot 81, failing to break 80 for just the third time in his PGA TOUR career after a round that included a double-, triple- and quadruple-bogey. No one went bogey-free in the third round, and only two people (Vaughn Taylor, 67; Carlos Ortiz, 69) did so in the fourth. And Justin Thomas had a four-putt and two three-putts in a span of five holes. “It’s hard to tell you how extreme it is,â€� said Adam Scott (76). At the fact that Scott, Thomas and Holmes were playing 34 holes in a single day after another pre-dawn wake-up call and Sunday became a battle of endurance and will power.    FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Holmes has never been hotter with the putter He was first in Stokes Gained: Putting at +2.043 per round, which was statistically the best performance of his career. He ranked +1.727 in finishing T4 at the 2015 BMW Championship and +1.727 in winning the 2006 Waste Management Phoenix Open. Coming into the Genesis, Holmes was languishing at 202nd in SG: Putting, but worked hard and saw it pay off. Of his total Strokes Gained at the Genesis, 54 percent came on the greens. 2. The winner also crushed the par-3s Holmes was 6-under on the par-3s, including an ace, four birdies, and 11 pars. That was his best score to par on the par-3s in any single tournament in his career, and the best by a Genesis winner at Riviera. No par was bigger than his sand save from the bunker at the par-3 16th on Sunday, with playing partner Thomas looking at a likely birdie. 3. Thomas still statistically a closer Justin Thomas became the first player since Paul Casey at the 2018 Travelers Championship to take at least a four-shot lead into the final round and not win. Still, Thomas, who has four top-5 finishes in six starts this season, is still a better-than-average 6-for-9 at converting with at least a share of the 54-hole lead. He’s 5-for-9 at converting with at least a share of the 36-hole lead.  4. McIlroy (69, T4) stumbled at the start Without his A game, Rory McIlroy notched his third straight top-5 finish. You could fault his failure to birdie the par-5 17th and his bogey on 18 in the final round, but the bigger culprit was his slow start to the week, a slugging, 1-over 72. Of the top 24 finishers at the Genesis, only Dustin Johnson (opening 73, T9) and Xander Schauffele (opening 74, T15) started worse.  5. Woods (72, T15) neared a weird personal record Tiger Woods had three eagles, which was just one shy of his career best set at the 1996 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open (a five-round tournament) and 2010 Masters Tournament. The other good news was that this marked his seventh top-15 finish in 13 starts at the Genesis. The bad news was he made four late bogeys in the challenging conditions, and the Genesis remains the only tournament where he has double-digit starts and hasn’t won. WYNDHAM REWARDS The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is in its first season and adds another layer of excitement to the FedExCup Regular Season. The top 10 players at the end of the FedExCup Regular Season will earn bonus payouts from the Wyndham Rewards Top 10. There was another flip-flop at the top after the Genesis Open, with Xander Schauffele and Matt Kuchar changing places yet again. In battling through extreme cold and gusting winds, Genesis champion J.B. Holmes was the week’s biggest mover, going from 61st to 9th. 

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Finally, Tiger Woods enters the Masters with positive vibes, which is all he can ask for at this point.

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