2017 CIMB Classic preview

Here are nine tidbits from the first round of A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier gamers can use tomorrow, this weekend or down the road. The Old White TPC at The Greenbrier Resort in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia hosts for the eighth time and measures 7,287 yards and plays to Par-70.   KNOW THY ENEMY These were the top-10 selected golfers in the PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf game presented by SERVPRO. The morning wave had the best greens and best weather. The afternoon wave had to deal with a 1 hour 55 minute weather delay. Play was halted at 3:51 p.m. and resumed at 5:46 p.m. after the conditions were deemed safe. Don’t be surprised if there is more weather that causes play to stop and start again Friday! The splits were barely noticeable so when in doubt with the weather tomorrow, split/blend accordingly. Round 1 scoring average was 69.340 (-0.660) and there are 87 golfers currently at one-under par or better. There were seven bogey-free rounds Thursday as play was completed even with the weather delay. No tee times have been adjusted for Friday. PEOPLE’S CHOICE There’s good news and bad news for Bubba Watson and his investors. He was cruising along at four-under-par before a sloppy double late in his round knocked him back to 68 (-2). Watson jammed his hand/wrist early in the round as he had to navigate a bunker shot near the lip. Luckily he shook it off in a couple of holes and it wasn’t bothering him according to his post-round interview. Whew. Don’t forget the winner of this tournament has NEVER LED after any round except Round 4 in the seven previous editions. No lead is safe and there have been no 54-hole conversions. Strange, but true. STREAK BUSTER If Webb Simpson is going to rack up his first win and fourth top-10 payday at The Greenbrier, he’s going to have to do it in historic fashion. Knowing that he will have another mouth to feed shortly, I doubt he’s worried about streaks by previous champions. He needed to birdie the last two to tie the course record 59. He made pars on the final two holes to sign for a bogey-free, career-best 61 and the outright lead.  WHERE’S WHEE? It’s never hard to find the guy who circled 10 birdies on the day! Whee Kim sits T2 after making six on his opening nine to go out in 30. His score could have been even better but he squared two bogeys during that opening run. He played the back in bogey-free 32 and sits one behind Simpson’s lead. His 62 is his career-best round on TOUR. NOTHING NEW FOR NIEMANN I get that Joaquin Niemann is 19, but this isn’t his first event at The Old White TPC. Last year as an amateur he showed up and opened 68-68 to easily play the weekend. Saturday got the best of him as he stumbled to 75, but it was Sunday’s 64 that should have caught your attention! His bogey-free 63 is his third bogey-free round in his last four on TOUR. Don’t be late to this party. HE’S KRAFTY Grabbing gamers attention in late February with a T8 and a solo third in late March, Kelly Kraft looked like he was heading to “regular” status in his column. His next 11 events saw him pack early seven times and T35 was his biggest payday. He must like it here as he was T5 with all four rounds in the 60’s last year in his first try. This year he extends to five in a row with seven birdies against one bogey for 64 in Round 1. HOWELL-ING AT THE MOON The human ATM doesn’t have a very stellar track record here compared to some of his other stomping grounds. Charles Howell’s T9 in his first visit in 2010 is his only top-10 finish, and he’s not cashed for anything better than T32 in his next six tries. Gamers still backed him heavily as his recent form is impossible to ignore. He didn’t win the tournament on Thursday but his 68 surely didn’t lose it.  DEFENSE It’s never easy to win tournament No. 1, and it’s probably just as difficult to arrive for the first time as the defending champion. Xander Schauffele will get it out of the way this week so he won’t have to worry about it at East Lake (if he qualifies) to wrap up the season. His opening round 66 didn’t beat his 64 from last year but he played his last 12 holes in five-under to keep it around the top 10. He’s now 18-under in five rounds. COURSE HORSE Robert Streb has finished second and lost in a playoff in his last two starts in West Virginia and was 26-under combined. He’s picked up right where he’s left off as his opening round 66 runs his streak of rounds in the 60’s to nine. His best finish on TOUR this season is T40 so something has to give this week! STUDY HALL Norman Xiong is making his pro debut this week. As of this evening he was leading the event in SG: off the tee, striped 12-of-14 fairways and checked in on 17-of-18 GIR. His round of 69 (-1) could have been much better but he needed 33 putts. You’ve been alerted.  Billy Hurley III was of the 36 and 54-hole leaders (2014) who couldn’t close the door. His 66 in Round 1 gets him out of the blocks nicely. The fellas with babies on the way all were red figures after Round 1. Austin Cook (-4), Wesley Bryan (-1) and Simpson have all announced recently that their families are expanding.  Smylie Kaufman signed for 79 and then WD with an elbow issue.  The highest round on a winner’s scorecard for the week is 70. Scott Stallings is the only victor of seven to accomplish this. Stallings fired 70 this year in Round 1 as well.

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GUYANCOURT, France – Rickie Fowler was the last player to leave after another losing Ryder Cup press conference in Europe. Unfortunately, the cart he was driving would not start. With a coffee cup in his left hand – champagne glasses are reserved for winners – Fowler stretched his hand under the dash, fiddled with the switch, then stepped lightly on the gas. Finally, the ignition came on, and Fowler was on his way, back to the team room to join his fellow Americans in licking their wounds after being thrashed by the Europeans. It was a fitting goodbye for a 17.5 to 10.5 defeat that becomes the third worst for the U.S. in Ryder Cup history. Only the defeats in 2004 and 2006 were more decisive – and if you consider that the U.S. won the first three matches on Friday, that means they were outscored 17.5 to 7.5 the rest of the way. In fact, Sunday’s result was worse than the 5-point loss the U.S. suffered four years ago at Gleneagles. It was during that losing press conference that Phil Mickelson criticized the way Captain Tom Watson handled the team, and a task force soon emerged to help the Americans solve their Ryder Cup problems. It worked two years ago. But the Americans clearly still have issues – mainly, that they cannot win on European soil. It’s been 25 years now, and the problem is getting worse. Beating Europe in the U.S.? That’s not the issue. Hazeltine showed us that. Beating Europe on the road? Maybe it’s time for another task force. That’s where the focus should be. Four years from now, the Ryder Cup is scheduled for the Marco Simone Golf and Country Club in Rome. Europe’s best player that week may very well be its best player this week – Italian Francesco Molinari, who became the first Euro to go undefeated in a single Ryder Cup. He will be 39 years old then and surrounded by 11 other players who will share a singular goal and purpose. Let’s go ahead and make the Europeans the favorite right now. Yes, the knee-jerk reaction to Sunday’s loss is to focus on how to win back the Ryder Cup in two years at Whistling Straits. But the real question becomes: What will they do between now and 2022 to win in Italy? Jim Furyk – who stands to garner most of the criticism, as Captains generally do when their teams lose – said he will work with the PGA of America and the Ryder Cup committee to improve on areas that were lacking for this week. “I’ll definitely go through things that are in my head,� said Furyk, who did not reveal the specifics of those things. One of the obvious things is making sure the Americans are acquainted with the course – and perhaps making sure the American players are best suited to play that course. The fear entering Friday’s first day was that the tight, driver-unfriendly Le Golf National would pose issues for big American bombers. That seemed to play itself out, as the U.S. found more trouble off the tee than its counterparts. The best American player this week was Justin Thomas, who just happened to be the only American who played the French Open at Le Golf National this summer. Others came for practice rounds before The Open Championship, but it was clear that the Europeans – each of whom had played in at least one French Open, and had a combined 236 tournament rounds to 8 for the Americans – were a better fit. “We thought this course suit us and our style of play,� said Rory McIlroy, the PGA TOUR’s driving distance leader who may have been the only European to feel at a disadvantage. He still won two points. Furyk, however, denied that lopsided course experience played a big part in the outcome. “I offered the invite and I had more players show up for that practice round than I could have hoped for,� Furyk said. “We were prepared. I feel like we played our practice rounds and we understood the golf course. We got outplayed.� Furyk, to his credit, took the blame for the loss, saying he would gladly take the same 12 players into battle once again. He knows he will be second-guessed for decisions such as breaking up the Jordan Spieth/Patrick Reed pairing, or picking Phil Mickelson to play a tight course in which he ranked second-to-last on the PGA TOUR in driving accuracy. Everything was done with reason, input, thought through. Then it’s up to us to execute, and we just didn’t quite execute. “Some of you might question some of the decisions,� Mickelson said, “but everything was done with reason, input, thought through. Then it’s up to us to execute, and we just didn’t quite execute.� Certainly the two most decorated American players didn’t execute. Mickelson and Tiger Woods were a combined 0-6-0 this week, with both players losing their Singles matches Sunday. Woods had a key 2 and 1 loss to Jon Rahm in the fourth match when the Americans needed every single early part to shake the European confidence. “Obviously very disappointing,� said Woods, whose 0-4-0 record is his worst Ryder Cup performance, surpassing his 1/2-point effort in 2012. “Those are four points that aren’t going towards our site. It’s going towards their side. … It doesn’t feel very good because I didn’t help my teammates earn any points.� Woods may get another chance. Mickelson may not. He will be 50 when the next Ryder Cup is played. “This could very well, realistically, be my last one,� he said. If it is, his final shot won’t exactly be one worth remembering. Trailing the entire match to Molinari, Mickelson was 3 down going to the par-3 16th. Another halved hole would end the match, so after Molinari found the green with his tee shot, Mickelson went for broke … and found the water. He quickly took off his cap and extended his hand to Molinari, conceded both the hole and the match. It was a bitter ending for the most experienced player in Ryder Cup history. Can he get one more shot? “I’m motivated now to work hard, to not go out on this note, and I’m motivated to play well these next two years to get back to Whistling Straits and show what I can do in these events, because this week was not my best,� Mickelson said. This week was not America’s best. No one will be surprised if they bounce back two years from now. The reasons that the Americans were favored this week – incredible talent and depth – are not going away. The young core remains. They will only get better. And if the course is set up in their favor – as it was for the Europeans this week – all the more reason for optimism. But it’s 2022 that the U.S. should be worried about. By then, it will be 29 years since the last time the U.S. Ryder Cup team has won on enemy territory. “We want to be successful in this event,� Furyk said. “We want to grow and we want to get better, but we want to do it here in Europe. That will be the goal four years from now.� Four years seems far away, but it’s never too early to start finding solutions. Perhaps the first order of business is finding golf carts that are easier to start.

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The event in Puerto Rico was made a team fundraiser in 2018 to help the island recover from Hurricane Maria, but the Puerto Rico Open returned in full for 2019 with Martin Trainer emerging victorious by three shots. Trainer will return to defend his title in 2020 alongside many of the game’s up-and-coming stars and world No. 51 Ian Poulter. RELATED: Inside The Field FIELD NOTES: The PGA TOUR’s alternate-field events will feature 120 players in the 2019-20 season. Brendon Todd won the first alternate-field event of the season, the Bermuda Championship, and that helped him earn a spot in this week’s World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship. … Trainer’s victory was his lone top-10 of last season. He went on to finish 132nd on the FedExCup standings. He’s looking to become the first person to defend their Puerto Rico Open title… Ian Poulter, at 51st in the world, is the highest-ranked golfer in the field after missing out on the WGC-Mexico cut-off… Viktor Hovland is the highest-ranked golfer in the world in the field… Past winners in Puerto Rico including D.A. Points, Alex Cejka, Chesson Hadley, Scott Brown, and George McNeil will be teeing it up… There is a robust list of sponsor exemptions playing in Puerto Rico including Sam Saunders and Bryson Nimmer, who played last year while still at Clemson University and finished T47 in his TOUR debut… Kristoffer Ventura also received a sponsor exemption a year ago. He’d go on to win twice on the Korn Ferry Tour and is back in Puerto Rico as a full-fledged TOUR member. Davis Thompson, who plays for the University of Georgia, also is in the field. He finished T23 at The RSM Classic in the fall and recently had a record-setting victory at the prestigious Jones Cup, one of the top amateur events in the country. Thompson set a tournament record by shooting 13 under par in his nine-shot win. Past Jones Cup champions include Justin Thomas and Patrick Reed. … Puerto Rico has been a catalyst for such stars as Jason Day, Jordan Spieth and Bryson DeChambeau, all of whom finished runner-up in this event before earning their first PGA TOUR victory. FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 300 FedExCup points COURSE: Coco Beach Golf & CC (Championship), 7,506 yards, par 72. STORYLINES: George McNeill, who won the event in 2012 and is back in the field for 2020, was part of a group of PGA TOUR and LPGA Tour golfers who teed it up at a charity pro-am that raised more than $500,000 for relief efforts on the island. McNeil and Cheyenne Woods were part of the winning team… Harry Higgs is the highest-ranked golfer on the FedExCup points standing in the field this week. Higgs was tops on the PGA TOUR Latinoamerica Order of Merit in 2018 and should have some good vibes in the Caribbean… There are a handful of local connections to the tournament via sponsor exemptions and the like for this week – spots are designated for golfers from the Caribbean, South America, and Central America – but one notable absence will be Rafa Campos, who requested a medical exemption from the PGA TOUR in late January. Campos earned PGA TOUR status via the Korn Ferry Tour a year ago… Seven of the 11 Puerto Rico Open winners made the tournament their maiden TOUR victory. 72-HOLE RECORD: 267, Chesson Hadley (2014). 18-HOLE RECORD: 63, Derek Lamely (3rd round, 2010), James Driscoll (1st round, 2011), Chris Tidland (2nd round, 2011), Scott Brown (2nd round, 2013), James Driscoll (2nd round, 2014), Trey Mullinax (1st round, 2017), J.J. Henry (4th round, 2017). LAST TIME: Trainer notched his first-ever PGA TOUR victory by three shots – the largest margin of victory ever at the Puerto Rico Open. Trainer, who was using a fill-in caddie for the week with his usual bagman out sick, shot a 5-under 67 Sunday to end the week at 15 under. Trainer started the day going 3 under for his first five holes but then recorded back-to-back bogeys on Nos. 6 and 7 to open the door ever-so-slightly to his chasers. But he went 4 under for his final 10 holes – including a birdie on the par-5 18th, to seal the deal. Daniel Berger, Roger Sloan, Johnson Wagner, and Aaron Baddeley finished T2 at 12-under-par. HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Friday, 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Saturday, 2:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m. (Golf Channel). Sunday, 2:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m. (Golf Channel).

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