How to watch ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP, Round 2: Featured Groups, live scores, tee times, TV times

HOUSTON – Later this month, Peter Malnati will become a father. His wife Alicia is due on Oct. 26, and whether their first child is a boy or a girl remains a surprise until the delivery. For the last couple of months, they’ve been making preparations to turn their new house into, as Peter says, a home. So it’s understandable that he’s been a little distracted lately inside the ropes. His results reflect it. He ended last season with a pair of missed cuts, then started the 2019-20 season with a Saturday WD due to a bad back, a T45 finish at the Sanderson Farms Championship, and consecutive missed cuts in his last two starts. Entering this week, he hadn’t broken 70 in his last eight rounds. Already planning to take the next five weeks off, Malnati wondered if he should even be playing the Houston Open. “The last couple weeks I’ve let it be a distraction in that I haven’t really prepared the way I normally would because my head’s back home. I want to be home,â€� Malnati said. “This week I was like, ‘dude, this is your last tournament before you become a dad, like do something with it.’ “The best thing you can do for your wife and your kid is to go out and play good.â€� So he did. Related: Leaderboard | Hammer roots on Astros after 67 | Beem’s ‘simply incredible’ first round Malnati shot a 3-under 69 on Thursday, followed by a bogey-free 7-under 65 on Friday morning at the Golf Club of Houston. That leaves him at 10 under. When he walked off the course, he was the clubhouse leader, with first-round co-leaders Austin Cook and Talor Gooch just starting their day. Given the windy conditions that kicked in in mid-morning after a 2-hour rain delay, the field average soared to nearly 73 for those with an early tee time. That means Malnati’s 65 was nearly 8 strokes better than the field. His caddie Chad Antus, who has been on the bag for about 2-1/2 seasons, called it the best round he had seen Malnati play. The only other round worthy of a comparison was the 10-under 62 that Malnati shot at the 2018 Korn Ferry Tour Championship, a round that included an eagle and 10 birdies. “Given the conditions of the course and everything else going on,â€� Antus said, “this round today was No. 1.“ While the next few weeks certainly will be exciting, Malnati is now in position to make the next two days exciting, too, as he chases his second career PGA TOUR win. He won the Sanderson Farms four years ago. “I practiced with a lot more focus this week and it’s nice to see that that does result in some better golf for me,â€� he said. “Yes, my head is definitely a little bit elsewhere, but again, the best thing even after the kid comes, when I do decide me and my wife decide it’s time for me to go play again — the best thing I can do when I’m at a tournament is focus on the tournament. “That’s what they need me to do, so that’s what I’m trying to do this week. It’s beyond words to say I’m 98% excited, 2% terrified, all of that is definitely at play right now. My wife’s the best and she’s going to be the best mother, so we’re going to handle things all right back home.â€� Perhaps Friday is an indication that he’s handling things inside the ropes too. Last season, Malnati’s only top-10 finish in 26 starts last season was in a team event, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, when he and Billy Hurley III were T9. But he was steady enough to make the FedExCup Playoffs and keep his TOUR card, actually improving his status from the previous year when he missed the Playoffs. In some ways, though, it was a breakthrough season for Malnati. He cites two areas of improvement – improved iron play and increased distance off the tee. On Friday, he said he “drove the ball beautifullyâ€� and was excited to see where he ranked in the field in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, a statistic in which he’s never ranked better than 150th in the previous four seasons and generally gives up strokes to the field. “I’m not a huge guy into stats,â€� he said. “At the end of the day, there’s only one that matters and that’s score and I had a good one of those today, but I do like to look at my driving stats and they’ve been really, really a weakness for me for a year.â€� What a story it would be if Malnati could pull off a win in Houston this weekend. What better way to enter fatherhood than with a shiny new trophy to show his child. “Most kids, when they kick it around at their home course growing up, they’re dreaming about that putt to win the Masters or that putt to win the U.S. Open or that putt to win THE PLAYERS Championship or something like that,â€� Malnati said. “I always took that dream one step farther. My dream, I used to as a little kid, I would watch and you would see these guys hole out to win the big tournaments and their wife and their little kids would just come running out on the green. That to me, that’s where the dream really is. That was the dream stuff. “I already won a Korn Ferry Tour event with my wife caddying for me, I won a big amateur event with my mom caddying for me, so I’ve gotten to have some of those kind of family moments at the end of a tournament. But the idea of actually being a father and then one day hopefully having my kids get to see me do what I love to do, which is this, and hopefully do it well is something that I kind of get emotional even just thinking about that. “That’s going to be so awesome for me.â€�

Click here to read the full article…

Tony Romo brought attention to the sport. That’s a good thing. Imagine if he did more, like play with Tiger Woods against Phil Mickelson and Stephen Curry. Oh, and Rory McIlroy isn’t thrilled with easy European Tour setups.

Click here to read the full article…

PALM HARBOR, Fla. – Bubba Watson received an interesting message from his longtime caddie, Ted Scott, before he got on the grounds at Innisbrook Resort for the Valspar Championship this week. As the two readied for only their second start at the Copperhead since 2011 (Watson missed the cut in 2017, his only other trip since then), Scott offered some words of wisdom to Watson:  Let’s play really, really smart.  “It might have been Sunday night, or Monday, but he texted me and he said, ‘To play good around here you’re going to have to play boring golf,’â€� Watson said. “So I joked with him and said, that’s my whole game – boring. You have to pick and choose your battles around here.â€� Watson chose them well over 72 holes, shooting 3-under 68 on Sunday to tie for fourth, his second top-5 at this event. As always, he played aggressively off the tee – hey, this is Bubba we’re talking about – but with his irons, he decided to play a little more conservatively into the greens.  “We looked at the top 10. What does it take to get in the top 10?â€� Watson said. “It’s about greens in regulation here we figured out and so you had to just kind of plot along and that’s kind of what I did. I hit a driver a lot because I love it, I dinked it here and there, but I hit a lot of irons off tees just to get the ball in play. Even if I laid back a lot further, I trusted my iron game to hit some of the greens and that’s really what I did.  “I putted really good today, the other days were just decent. For me it was good though.â€� The performance was Watson’s best since a tie for fourth at the Waste Management Phoenix Open in early February, which represented Watson’s only top 10 in seven starts this season. He started Sunday six shots behind Paul Casey and knows that at the Copperhead, lots of crazy things can happen. Watson birdied his first hole but would add only one more in his next 12 holes. “When you start out slow and don’t make any birdies … you’re like, well, second place ain’t bad, let’s try for that, and then third place and fourth place,â€� Watson said. “So it’s one of those things where, yeah, you have that vision (of catching the leader) and then after nine holes you realize that vision is gone so now just get a good finish, a good top 10 or top 5 if you have a chance.â€� Watson said his goal once he reached 10 victories was to get to 15 (he has 12). Now 40, he says he’s been inspired by watching fellow left-hander Phil Mickelson win at 48 (“I’ve got eight years,” he joked). Watson’s next stop is Austin for the Wolrd Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play, a tournament he won a year ago, dispatching fellow Georgia Bulldog Kevin Kisner in the finals, 7 and 6.  “I vote every year not to have Match Play, because I feel like I have a better chance in 72 holes (stroke play),â€� Watson said with a smile. “But nobody ever asks me.â€� 

Click here to read the full article…