2018 Players Championship: This is why Phil Mickelson is wearing a long-sleeve dress shirt

WILMINGTON, Del. – Rory McIlroy was dissecting Wilmington Country Club like he’d been a member for decades and then one bad swing drowned the two-time FedExCup champion’s momentum. It drowned his golf ball also. McIlroy was cruising in the afternoon wave of the BMW Championship at six under through 14 holes, looking nothing like the man who missed the cut in Memphis a week ago and everything like a man who had been spending his free weekend on a reconnaissance mission at the course. Then some indecision and poor execution bit on the par-3 15th, as the Northern Irishman double crossed his 5-iron and it went sailing into a water hazard. To compound matters his shot from the drop zone landed 25-feet from the hole and he promptly three-putted for a triple bogey. In the final wash up he signed for a 3-under 68 knowing it could have been much better but insisted he would take the positives out of the round and forge ahead. “I have to take the positives. I still played a decent round of golf. Three under out there this afternoon was pretty good. I’ve just got to reset tonight and forget about that swing on 15 and go again tomorrow,” he said afterwards. “Started really well, made some good things… just that one tee shot on 15. I felt like I had probably half a club too much, so I was trying to hit like a cut in there over the water, and I just double-crossed it and then compounded that by the three-putt.” Sitting in a tie for 13th after the first round McIlroy projects to stay in the ninth seed in the Playoff standings but believes his best is yet to come as he seeks to be the first three-time winner of the FedExCup. “Knocked some more rust off… last week I definitely turned like a 5- or 6-under into a 1-under on Friday, and that was just sort of rust and not being as sharp as I wanted to be. Just a little sharper today, and hopefully that continues not just this week but obviously into next week, as well. “I practiced really hard the week before Memphis just to get back into it after taking two full weeks off after the Open, but there’s a difference between practicing at home and camping out on the range and actually playing golf. “I knew I just needed even just a couple of competitive rounds last week in Memphis just to see where my game was, and then coming here early, working on some stuff, getting out on the golf course… I’ve been on the golf course every day since Saturday here, so playing little games with Harry, him trying to set me scores to shoot, like trying to get myself into that sort of competitive mindset again (has been helpful).”

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TRUCKEE, Calif. — Chez Reavie holed a long chip shot for eagle on the par-5 sixth hole and took a three-point lead Friday in the Barracuda Championship. Reavie had a 19-point round in the modified Stableford scoring system event at Tahoe Mountain Club, getting five points for the eagle and 14 for seven birdies. A point is deducted for bogey and three taken away for double bogey or worse. “It’s actually 2 1/2 birdies, so if you can make an eagle, you can kind of leapfrog guys on the leaderboard,” Reavie said. “I hit an OK tee shot kind of up the right side, so I had a little further in. Had to hit a 5-wood, so I kind of favored toward the right bunker side, and I just missed the bunker and had to chip across the green and was fortunate to knock it in.” Reavie played the back nine first in his morning round, making four birdies. He added birdies on Nos. 3 and 4, had the eagle on No. 6 and birdied No. 8 to take a 28-point total into the weekend in the event co-sanctioned by the DP World Tour. He’s the only bogey-free player after 36 holes. “I think really having control of the golf ball out here really helps you,” Reavie said. “You’ve got to be in the fairway. Once you get in the rough, with the greens being firm, you can’t really be aggressive with your irons, so you have to drive the ball in the fairway.” The 40-year-old from Mesa, Arizona, has two PGA TOUR victories, taking the 2008 RBC Canadian Open and the 2019 Travelers Championship. Mark Hubbard, tied for the first-round lead with Charley Hoffman with 13 points, was tied for second with Henrik Norlander at 25 points. Hubbard had a 12-point round, and Norlander a 14-pointer. The 33-year-old Hubbard is winless on the PGA TOUR. He was third last week in Kentucky in the Barbasol Championship, the first of two straight U.S. events co-sanctioned by the DP World Tour. “It was tough early, man, with the cold and the elevation,” Hubbard said. “It’s hard to know how far the ball is going, and it seemed like every pin on our front nine, the back nine, was front with water short, so you couldn’t really play with it. So it was just tough to get the ball close early. Once it heated up and started going another 10 percent, I started making some birdies.” Norlander had seven birdies in a bogey-free round. The 35-year-old Swede, also winless on the PGA TOUR, made a weekend cut for only the third time in his last 16 starts. He had missed five straight cuts. “I’m very pleased,” Norlander said. “It’s, first of all, nice to not make travel arrangements on Friday afternoon. I’ve been sort of used to that lately. Just a lot better attitude this week. ”There’s a lot of bad voices in there, I’m not going to lie. But I think the key for me is to like accept that and then move from there. When I get bad, I try to avoid those voices, but they’re there.” Kevin Tway had 21 points. He birdied the first five holes in a 15-point day. Maverick McNealy and Martin Trainer followed at 19. Hoffman had 15 after a two-point day.

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BLAINE, Minn. – When Bo Van Pelt teed it up at the Safeway Open earlier this year, it had been 1,321 days since his last PGA TOUR start. Let that number sink in for a minute. That’s more than three-and-a-half years sucked out of Van Pelt’s career, which was interrupted first by surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder, secondly by a procedure to clean out bone spurs and lastly by an operation to remove one of his ribs. Small wonder, then, that the 45-year-old veteran was so encouraged by his performance through two rounds at the 3M Open. Van Pelt fired a 68 on Friday to go with an opening 66 – the first time he’d broken 70 in consecutive rounds this year – and is just four strokes off the lead. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Dustin Johnson withdraws from 3M Open citing back injury Some players in his position would have given up, content with a life of playing client golf. Van Pelt, after all, had earned more than $20 million during a PGA TOUR career that included one victory at the now-defunct U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee so making money wasn’t top of mind. But he wanted to see if he could still compete at the highest level – and at least through 36 holes at TPC Twin Cities, Van Pelt has been equal to the task. “It’s like I told my wife and my kids, this is going to be the hardest thing I ever had to do is to try to compete out here at 45 after taking almost four years off,” Van Pelt said. “I don’t think there’s anybody probably ever done it. “But I like where my game’s going. It’s hard to just keep rah-rahing yourself when you’re shooting over par, so it’s nice to kind of put some red on the board and hopefully this will be some momentum going the right way.” The 2019-20 season has certainly been a challenge for Van Pelt. He wasn’t able to start playing 18 holes until several weeks before returning to the TOUR at the Safeway Open, where he tied for 62nd. Until this week, that was one of just three checks he’d cashed in 15 starts. Van Pelt said the four-month COVID layoff worked in his favor, though, because it gave the former Oklahoma State standout time to knuckle down and really concentrate on his game. “Even though my results haven’t been great this first month, the way I’ve been playing’s been a lot better,” Van Pelt said. “Just kind of sticking with it. It was just hard. I didn’t play 18 holes for over three years. “Basically, I was trying to relearn every kind of feel that I had less than a year ago. Yeah, it’s just been kind of a process. Finally feeling like I’m getting back to where I can compete again.” Van Pelt’s physical problems began in 2016, likely after he reached behind the driver’s seat of his car to pick up a backpack that was heavier than he expected. A few weeks later, the pain in his right shoulder ratcheted up on the weekend of the Waste Management Phoenix Open as a pair of 74s turned a solid 6 under start into a tie for 51st. So, after he missed the cut at Pebble Beach the following week, Van Pelt headed home to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to find out what the problem was. “I tore like 85 percent of my labrum and I just couldn’t play,” Van Pelt said, remembering the diagnosis. “So, they went back in and found a bunch of bone spurs, cleaned it out, thought that was going to do it.” When his hand started going numb, Van Pelt was really worried. In truth, he feared he might never play again. So, his doctor referred him to Dr. Greg Pearl in Dallas. This time, the diagnosis was thoracic outlet syndrome which occurs when blood vessels or nerves in the space between your collarbone and first rib are compressed. “So, they said on top of the torn labrum, (that’s) what I had going on,” Van Pelt said. “That’s why I kept getting a pinch and pain. He removed my first rib I guess a year and a half ago in February and it just gave me the opportunity to play.” Van Pelt made this week’s highlight reel when his 6-iron at the eighth hole on Thursday found the bottom of the cup for an ace. It was a nice way to bounce back from a bogey that had ended a run of four birdies in his previous five holes. “It was great,” Van Pelt said. “I was playing well and bummed about bogeying 7, so it was a great bounce-back. It was funny, I mean, half the holes-in-one I ever had have been with a 6-iron, so that has been my lucky club.” And time will tell if this is his lucky week.

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