Pavon leads Spanish Open; Rahm 9 strokes back

OVERVIEW Normally it might be hard to summon an encore performance in the season after winning a major, but reigning Masters champion Patrick Reed has never had a problem with motivation and will likely have no trouble pinpointing where he can improve in 2019. Reed’s tee-to-green play, so good as he copped his first major at Augusta National Golf Club, is still a work in progress. That’s a strange thing to say for a guy who has won in every season but one since he joined the PGA TOUR in 2013, but Reed, 28, is a player whose otherworldly short game, much more than his long game, has made him a star. Just check his Strokes Gained stats from last season: 107th in Off-the-Tee, 84th in Approach-the-Green, and 2nd in Around-the-Green. Far from an aberration, those numbers are emblematic of his whole career, and explain why he is occasionally prone to wild fluctuations from one round to the next. In late October, Reed finished T7 at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions, with a 64-72-70-77 scoring line. It was his only start so far in the 2018-19 season, so don’t read too much into it, but it wasn’t the first time he’s gone so cold, so fast. He struggled on a tight Ryder Cup course, and the week before that finished near the bottom at the TOUR Championship. Should Reed find a way to eliminate those stretches of bad golf in 2019, look out. — By Cameron Morfit Click here to see who else made the Top 30 list. BY THE NUMBERS FEDEXCUP UPDATE Current 2018-19 position: 82nd Playoff appearances: 6 TOUR Championship appearances: 5 Best result: 3rd in the 2015-16 season SHOTLINK FUN FACT Patrick Reed ranked second on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green last season and ranked 11th in Scrambling — career-best performances in both categories. INSIDER INSIGHTS PGATOUR.COM’s Insiders offer their expert views on what to expect from Patrick Reed in 2019. TOUR INSIDER: From the Presidents Cup (one appearance, 2017) to the Ryder Cup (three appearances), Reed is one of the most exciting, and excitable, players in the game. Other than perhaps the most recent Ryder Cup, when he returned to form only for his singles win over Tyrrell Hatton (3 and 2), he’s the catalyst U.S. teams had been missing for years. How ironic, then, that the thing that would help him most is playing more boring golf. Fairways. Greens. — By Cameron Morfit FANTASY INSIDER: It doesn’t seem like it’s been already seven seasons since he was identified only as a prodigious open qualifier. Yet, the 2018 Master champ already is 54th in all-time earnings on the PGA TOUR. If there’s a rub, it’s that he should be even higher as he’s been even odds either to record a top 25 or to finish outside that bubble since 2016-17. The thing is, he loves to travel and compete, so that resonates in our world. While we do share some of him with the European Tour (where he finished No. 2 in the 2018 Race to Dubai), it’s a formula that works for him and us. Won’t turn 29 until the 2019 FedExCup Playoffs, during which he’ll be chasing his sixth consecutive trip to the TOUR Championship. — By Rob Bolton EQUIPMENT INSIDER: Reed started the sweeping trend of 2018 major championship winners to play without equipment contracts. The former Nike staffer actually still has a remnant of his former sponsor by way of a Nike VR Pro Limited Edition 3 wood. In the beginning of 2018, Reed was testing a number of different drivers, eventually settling in with a Ping G400 LST driver that he used to win the Masters, and he’s still currently gaming it. In the equipment world, Reed is also known for his USA-flag-inspired Odyssey White Hot Pro 3 putter, but he’s since switched into a custom Scotty Cameron… with red-white-and-blue dots, obviously, because he’s “Captain America.â€� — By Andrew Tursky STYLE INSIDER: Reed’s move to Nike has resulted in better fits and more adventurous looks. Case in point, he ditched the traditional Sunday red at the Masters in favor of an energetic azalea pink as he slipped on the Green Jacket. Recently, he has been sporting trendy tonal camos in a variety of colors. Hopefully, he will continue to push his style comfort and continue to sharpen the fit of his clothing in 2019. — By Greg Monteforte

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Tommy Fleetwood narrowly qualified for THE PLAYERS Championship and then endured a long, wet start at the TPC Sawgrass with a 6-under 66 to share the early lead with AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am winner Tom Hoge. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Jon Rahm switches back to U.S. Open-winning putter Where that leaves them after the opening round could take time to determine. The PGA TOUR enjoyed ideal weather with no delays for nine weeks in four states across five time zones to start the year. And then for its biggest event, it barely got started. More than an inch of overnight rain delayed the start by an hour. Storms in the area resulted in another delay of more than four hours. Fleetwood, a Ryder Cup star in Paris in 2018 who has gone two years since his last victory, returned from the long delay to complete a string of three straight birdies around the turn and then kept his round together with two big putts, one for par and another for birdie. Hoge had an eagle on the par-5 second hole, his 11th of the round, and shot 31 on the front nine to join him in the clubhouse at 66. Keith Mitchell was poised to join the until his approach to the 18th was right of the flag and landed on the slope of gnarly rough in the mounds, and he failed to save par. He was at 67, along with Genesis Invitational winner Joaquin Niemann, Anirban Lahiri and Kramer Hickok. The stop-and-start nature might not be over. The forecast called for a slightly lower chance of rain Friday — 99% instead of 100% — and there was a chance those who finished the round might not see the course again until Saturday. Six players from the early side of the draw did not finish, meaning they return at 7:15 a.m. Friday to play one or two holes before getting the rest of the day off. Twelve players never even hit a tee shot. Ian Poulter can rest easy, even if it takes time for his heart rate to steady. The 46-year-old could sense the horn about to sound to suspend play for darkness. By rule, players can finish the hole that anyone in the group has started. Poulter was on the tee at the par-3 17th, the island green with a back pin and soft greens, when he fired is shot and barely saw it land 4 feet from the cup. He jogged all the way to the green, holed the birdie putt, ran through the tunnel beneath the bleachers and onto the 18th tee. He hit his tee shot as the group in front cleared out of the way from the fairway. He did the same thing 11 years ago. Even with only 66 players completing the round, that was enough time for the Stadium Course to provide its share of thrills and spills, mostly the latter. Harold Varner III, needing good results to stay in the top 50 and make a trip to the Masters, had a two-shot lead when he stepped to the 17th tee. His shot spun sharply down the slope, across the light cut of rough and into the water. His next shot from the drop zone nearly did the same. He made triple bogey, dropped another shot on the 18th and shot 69. “Just was in between clubs and didn’t execute the shot, and that’s what you get a lot of out here,” Varner said. Amazingly, that was the only ball in the water out of 69 tee shots. No need telling that to Adam Scott. The former PLAYERS champion pumped two tee shots into the water off the 18th tee and took a quadruple bogey on his way to a 78. Fleetwood has reason to be happy just to have a tee time. He missed the cut at the Honda Classic and narrowly stayed inside the top 50, one of the criterium for THE PLAYERS Championship. For the most part, it was safe and steady play, far from perfect though Sawgrass rarely demands that. He was 6 under through 14 holes when he hit a wild drive into the pine straw to the right of the sixth fairway, leading to bogey. He was even further to the right on the seventh, but a superb save from behind the green kept him from dropping another shot, and then he holed a 25-foot birdie on the par-3 eighth. “I’m chuffed to be in on that score,” Fleetwood said. “I felt like I drove the ball well aside from a couple, and I felt like I chipped and putted great. For sure, that was the most I could have got out of the round. So days like that are very, very pleasing.” Long. Wet. But pleasing.

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Here are the tee times for the first and second rounds of the U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts.

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