Celebration of Champions kick-starts special week at The Open

FRIDAY MORNING FOUR-BALLS Match 1: Brooks Koepka / Tony Finau, USA, def. Justin Rose / Jon Rahm, Europe, 1-up Holes won: Europe 4, USA 5 Holes led: Europe 14 USA 1 Recap: After trailing for almost the entire match, the Americans stole a pivotal point with a great finish, helped by an incredible bounce. Koepka and Finau were two down with six holes to play and still under pressure when they reached the par-3 16th tee a hole behind. But Finau’s shot, that appeared well short and too far right, caught the wooden bulkhead and bounced up to just 3 feet from the hole. The birdie squared the match and then a pair of pars on the last was enough to steal the match when Rose found water and Rahm trouble in the deep rough. Quotes: “We will take the breaks when we can get them. I knew it needed to get up a little bit. It rose on me a little bit, started to spin. I said get lucky somehow, that’s what I was thinking in my head. Fortunately it did. That was a huge break for us.â€� – Tony Finau “Feels like two (points). They got us down early, which you never really plan on, but you just got to fight and keep fighting.â€� – Brooks Koepka Match 2: Dustin Johnson / Rickie Fowler, USA def. Rory McIlroy / Thorbjorn Olesen, Europe, 4 and 2 Holes won: Europe 1, USA 5 Holes led: Europe 1 USA 7 Recap: After halving the opening seven holes the European side took the lead on the par-3 eighth when neither American could make par. But it was the last bit of joy the home side faced. With Rory McIlroy playing poorly and unable to find a single birdie it was up to rookie Olesen to keep pace. He couldn’t despite some decent play. Fowler made back-to-back birdies around the turn to wrestle the lead and Johnson then stepped up with two of his own to create a big cushion. Johnson sealed the match with a clutch iron to a few feet on the 16th hole. Quotes: “I think the big thing was we tried to both be in as many holes as we could. We just played some solid golf. When one of us was out of the hole, the other picked the guy up. We knew that was going to be needed against Rory and Thorbjørn. They’re great ball-strikers, and knew it was going to be a tough match.â€� – Rickie Fowler “We believe in each other. Our demeanors are pretty similar, especially on the golf course. We practice a lot together. We spend a lot of time together, whether out here this week or even at home. We felt we’d be really good partners, and so far so good.â€� – Dustin Johnson Match 3: Jordan Spieth / Justin Thomas, USA def. Paul Casey / Tyrrell Hatton, Europe, 1-up Holes won: Europe 3, USA 4 Holes led: Europe 0 USA 16 Recap: It appeared the birth of a new super team for the USA after the good friends stormed to a 3-up lead through just seven holes. Spieth’s putter found form and the pair of former FedExCup champions were on fire. But Casey and Hatton refused to roll over and wins on 11, 12 and 13 squared the match. Thomas made his move to reclaim the lead on the 15th hole and they held firm over the difficult closing stretch. Quotes: “It was great. Playing Ryder Cups over here are extremely fun. We were able to feed off each other. We ham-and-egged it extremely well around this golf course. I don’t think we birdied the same hole once. We made a lot of birdies today. What a blast that was.â€� – Jordan Spieth “We’ve talked about this really for so long, so long being all of nine or so years, but it’s cool to finally be here and doing it. We’ve spent time at Ryder Cups together. We’ve played in the Junior Ryder Cup and he’s played in a couple of these now and it’s been my first. There’s not a partner in the world I’d rather have a chance to go out here with.â€� – Justin Thomas Match 4: Francesco Molinari / Tommy Fleetwood, Europe, def. Tiger Woods / Patrick Reed, USA, 3 and 1 Holes won: Europe 7, USA 4 Holes led: Europe 7 USA 3 Recap: The most up and down battle of the morning finished with a European flurry to post their only point of the Four-ball session. Woods and Reed were touted to be a formidable mix but Molinari set a tone with an opening birdie. Through eight holes things were tight and square before Woods took the ninth with birdie and Reed chipped in for birdie on the 10th to go 2-up. And then the European revival took flight. Molinari posted back-to-back birdies to square the match at 11 and 12 before Fleetwood stepped up late. Huge birdie putts on the 15th and 16th holes from the Englishman took control of the match and then just for good measure Molinari made a long one on the 17th to close it out. Quotes: “Just unreal. We had that little tough stretch in the middle of the round, I lost three holes out of four, I think, it’s easy for it to go flat, but the crowds, the home crowds, as soon as Fran holed that putt on 11, things changed straightaway. And the crowd carried us through it all the way. There is nothing like it. And that’s just my first morning experience. Guys have done this 10 times. There is nothing like it, and I can’t wait to get out and do it again.â€� – Tommy Fleetwood “I love him. What can I say? I love him. We both played really well. We had a couple of moments where we had to dig in, but we both stayed positive.â€� – Francesco Molinari

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Cameron Smith started the year by setting a PGA TOUR scoring record (and beating the top player in the world in the process). Two months later, he won the largest prize in the TOUR’s history, taking $3.6 million from THE PLAYERS’ record $20 million purse. How’s your 2022 going? The latter achievement, which he accomplished Monday at TPC Sawgrass, moved him to No. 2 in the FedExCup and sixth in the Official World Golf Ranking, the fruits of a newfound dedication to his fitness and improvements to his iron play. Add those to a short game that’s long been considered among the best in the world and Smith is now firmly ensconced among the top echelon in the game. RELATED: Final leaderboard | What’s in Smith’s bag? He’s done so with an old-school skillset that stands out in a space-age era of golf. Smith is surrounded by players whose swings have been optimized for maximum distance and who use analytics to determine the most efficient path to the hole. He isn’t all that long, is occasionally crooked and still putts for dough, even after the data disproved the old adage that discounted the importance of driving distance. Smith plays an entertaining style of golf, and one that also is proving to be incredibly successful. TPC Sawgrass isn’t known as a place where players can scrape it around, but Smith won THE PLAYERS despite hitting less than half his fairways (24 of 56) and finishing last in driving accuracy among the 70 players who completed all four weather-delayed rounds. He’s the first PLAYERS champion to hit the fairway less than 50% of the time. Golf Channel commentator Brandel Chamblee called it “one of the greatest examples of great nerve from start to finish that I’ve seen.” His 24 birdies were the most in the field, but he also made 11 bogeys. “I felt really confident with my iron shots,” Smith said. “I just needed to hit the fairway. That was the big thing.” His iron play is vastly improved this season, allowing him to capitalize on the best club in his bag, the putter. He ranks sixth in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green this season after never finishing in the top 50 of that metric in his six previous seasons. “I feel as though I’ve put the work and I feel as though I’ve done a lot of work on my body and I’ve put in the time,” he said. “It’s nice to see all that stuff paying off.” The first sign of Smith’s ascendence came in the opening week of the year, when he held off world No. 1 Jon Rahm at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, shooting the lowest 72-hole score in relation to par to beat Rahm by one. On Monday, Smith conquered a strong field on a penal Pete Dye layout. His first 13 holes of the final round featured just a single par. He birdied five of his first six holes before three straight bogeys knocked him back. But then he birdied the first four holes of the back nine to separate himself from the field. Nifty par saves on both 14 and 15, where he holed par putts of 14 and 8 feet, set the stage for the full Cameron Smith experience over TPC Sawgrass’ famous final three holes. It started with a severe hook off the 16th tee that necessitated a punch out from the pine straw. Holding onto a one-shot lead, he had to hit a 3-iron for his third shot into a green protected by a pond. “I think that’s where it could have got away from me a little bit,” Smith said afterward. Instead, he laced his long-iron from 240 yards to the left side of the green to escape with a par. Then, on the island 17th, he squeezed his ball into the narrow strip of land between the flag and the water. He shared a smile with his caddie, Sam Pinfold, as he put his 9-iron back in the bag. Smith’s short game allows him to take aggressive lines with his irons, but not even Jacques Costeau can recover from a missed green on 17. No one intentionally hits his tee shot right of the flag, but by knocking it close and making the birdie putt, he walked to the 18th tee with a two-shot lead. Smith’s drive on 18 unsurprisingly sailed into the right trees. That was the safe play, far away from yet another penalty area. But the crowd was in shock when his punch shot rolled across the fairway and into the water. But that miscue offered just one more opportunity for Smith to display his strongest trait. “He’s a genius inside 60 yards,” Pinfold said. After his penalty drop, Smith’s wedge bounced right of hole before spinning to tap-in range. That up-and-down meant Anirban Lahiri, who’d just birdied 17, needed another birdie at 18 to force a playoff. He missed right of the green and it was all over. The scouting report on Smith says that his short game and his mental strength are his biggest assets. He needed just 24 putts in the final round and 101 for the week. He led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting. “It’s definitely the strength of mine,” he said, “and sometimes I maybe lean on it too much.” But it’s one thing to pour them in on a Wednesday. Doing it on a Sunday (or Monday) is another matter. In THE PLAYERS’ final round, Smith missed just one of the 8 attempts he faced from 7-15 feet. He gained more than 4 strokes on the greens. “They breed them tough in Queensland,” said Smith’s friend, Jack Wilkosz. Smith needed that fortitude to make it to the PGA TOUR and win three times with a long game that didn’t match many of his peers. Before this year, he’d never finished better than 119th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, losing strokes in that area of his game each season. He’s a grinder whose resolve was steeled by all those years recovering from wayward shots. “If you haven’t always been a good ballstriker, … you learn when you hit an awkward or squirrely shot to not get too wound up about it,” said former Masters champion Trevor Immelman, an interested observer Monday as the captain of this year’s International Team for the Presidents Cup. “I always used to think I was a good ballstriker, so it would really get under my skin when I hit a bad shot and maybe even affect future shots. Cam takes everything in stride.” This year, Smith is on pace for the best showing of his career in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green and is hitting nearly three-quarters of his greens to rank 10th in that statistic, as well. Immelman, a student of the swing, sees a “cleaner” transition that is rid of the excessive motion. He also appreciates the balance Smith exhibits in his swing. “He always nails his finish,” Immelman said. He did that Monday to bring home the biggest title of his career.

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