A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier, Round 3: Leaderboard, tee times, TV times

• FIELD: See the entrants for the event • COURSE: The Club at Nine Bridges, 7,196 yards, par 72. Located on Jeju Island, a resort destination just south of the Korean mainland, Nine Bridges opened in 2001 and is the only Korean course ranked among the world’s top 100. Designers Ronald Fream and David Dale deftly incorporated the layout into rolling pineland beneath Mount Halla, a dormant volcano that formed Jeju Island. The club was one of the first Asian venues on the LPGA schedule, with Se Ri Pak capturing the first tournament in 2002. Nine Bridges also is the longtime host of the biannual World Club Championship, where champions from top-level clubs around the world gather to contest a global title. The course actually features eight bridges – the ninth is metaphorical as a link from the club to members and guests. • FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 500 points. • CHARITY: The CJ Welfare Foundation and CJ Culture Foundation, supporting a wide range of projects from aiding retirees to fostering up-and-coming young artists and athletes. Among the initiatives is the “Silver Deliveryâ€� project, which gives part-time delivery jobs to retired seniors and resulted in CJ’s recognition by Fortune magazine among 56 companies “changing the world.â€� A new joint effort with UNESCO aims to expand education among girls in underdeveloped nations. • FIELD WATCH: Justin Thomas, making the second start of his FedExCup defense, and THE PLAYERS titleholder Si Woo Kim headline a limited field of 78 players set to tee it up in the CJ Cup’s debut. … TOUR Championship winner Xander Schauffele is one of 17 entrants who were at East Lake last month by virtue of making the top 30 in last season’s FedExCup points race. … The event has attracted 10 of the top 30 players in the world rankings, with No. 4 Thomas and No. 9 Jason Day heading up that list. … Kim, Day and Adam Scott are among 10 members of the International squad that competed in the Presidents Cup at Liberty National. Thomas is one of three U.S. Team members, joined by Daniel Berger and Patrick Reed. … Thomas and World Golf Hall of Famer Ernie Els are among 10 major championship winners coming to Nine Bridges. • 72-HOLE RECORD: Debut event. • 18-HOLE RECORD: Debut event. • STORYLINES: The PGA TOUR expands its Asian outreach with its first standard event in South Korea, creating a three-week swing on that continent. The CJ Cup arrives just two years after a successful Presidents Cup near Seoul, where the International team nearly upended the favored Americans. … K.J. Choi, winner of eight TOUR titles, and Kim are among 16 Korean pros seeking to give the event a homegrown winner in its very first edition. The list also includes former U.S. Amateur champion Byeong Hun An and three-time European Tour winner Jeunghun Wang. … Also among the Korean faction is Sangmoon Bae, who tees it up for the third time since returning from mandatory military service in his homeland. He has missed the cut in both starts of his fledgling comeback, including the Safeway Open two weeks ago. • SHORT CHIPS: Two CJ Cup entrants have won debut events in the TOUR’s not-too-distant past – Scott (Dell Technologies Championship, 2003) and Choi (The National, 2007). … A total of 21 players will make their third start in as many events of the new 2017-18 season. Emiliano Grillo is playing a fourth consecutive week when you factor in the Presidents Cup. … Nine Bridges wound up serving as LPGA host for four years, with Korean pros winning all four editions. After Pak won the inaugural crown, Grace Park made it one of her six LPGA titles. • TELEVISION: Wednesday-Saturday, 10 p.m. – 2 a.m. ET (Golf Channel). • PGA TOUR LIVE: None. • RADIO: None.

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ATLANTA – Justin Thomas had won nine times on the PGA TOUR before last week’s BMW Championship. He started the final round at Medinah Country Club with a comfy six-shot cushion. Despite his experience withstanding Sunday pressure, and the distance between himself and the rest of the field, Thomas admitted that he was “really nervous� at the start of the day. Thomas’ lead was whittled down to just two strokes with eight holes left, but he birdied half of the remaining holes to win for the first time in more than a year. How did he right the ship? He told himself, “Hey, you have a two-shot lead standing on the 11th tee on Sunday.� “If I have a two-shot lead with eight holes left, I feel confident I can pull it off.� Related: How it works: TOUR Championship | Power Rankings | TOUR Championship experts roundtable Last week’s win vaulted Thomas to the top of the FedExCup standings. He has another two-shot lead, but now there are 72 holes remaining. Thomas has technically led the TOUR Championship since Sunday, giving him four extra nights to sleep on the lead. “It’s going to be tough,� said Thomas, the 2017 FedExCup champion. “I think (Thursday) I’ll kind of feel it for the first time.� That’s when this new TOUR Championship finally gets underway. There has been much discussion over the past year, and especially in the last three days, about how players will handle the season finale’s new staggered start. Players agree that the best way to handle this new format is to not think about it. “I’m just going to have to try to play another golf tournament and act like everyone’s staring at zero and try to shoot the lowest 72 holes,� said Thomas, who will start the final round with a two-stroke lead over Patrick Cantlay. Thomas is five shots ahead of Rory McIlroy, who’s fifth in the FedExCup, and 10 shots ahead of the last five players to qualify for the TOUR Championship. When McIlroy won both the FedExCup and TOUR Championship three years ago, he made up three shots in the final three holes before winning in a playoff. The lowest score in relation to par, including the starting strokes, wins both titles this week. McIlroy has a target score, not Thomas, at the front of his mind. The winning score at East Lake has been between 11 and 13-under-par in four of the last five years (it was 9 under in the other year). “If I was in JT’s position, it would be, OK, I’m just going to set myself a target for the week. … You say, ‘OK, I’m going to go out and shoot 67 every day. No one should beat me if I do that,’� McIlroy said. “I think you have to just control what you can.� Thomas is the pacesetter, so he controls how this week transpires. A strong start could eliminate most of the field, while some early struggles may bring most of the 30-man field into the mix. The rough is thick this week at East Lake, making it harder for someone to run away from the field. Cantlay said he’d want some odds if Thomas asked for two shots in a match at home in Jupiter, Florida, even if it was 72 holes. Like Thomas, Cantlay also has a win this season. Cantlay overcame a large deficit in the final round of his victory at the Memorial, while Thomas watched his lead get whittled away. Cantlay was four shots behind 54-hole leader Martin Kaymer entering the final round at Muirfield Village Golf Club. Cantlay’s 64 was the low final round by a winner in tournament history. He beat Kaymer by eight on that day. “I felt like I was always chasing that day,� Cantlay said. This week, his pursuit begins Thursday. He will play in the shadow of Thomas in Thursday’s final group. Thomas will control the tournament when he steps to the tee. “There isn’t a person on the planet that’s experienced this before, for the stakes it’s for,� Thomas said. “I’m just going to try to deal with it the best I can.�

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2022 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Round 1 Scoring Conditions: SH: +0.23 strokes per round MP: -1.48 PB: -1.23 Current cutline (top 60 and ties): 73 players at -2 or better (T51) Top 3 projected cutline probabilities: 1. 5 under par: 24.7% 2. 4 under par: 23.0% 3. 6 under par: 17.8% Top 10 win probabilities: 1. Seamus Power (2, -8, 22.4%) 2. Patrick Cantlay (T5, -6, 22.1%) 3. Tom Hoge (1, -9, 13.1%) 4. Andrew Putnam (T5, -6, 2.6%) 5. Austin Smotherman (T3, -7, 2.5%) 6. Denny McCarthy (T15, -4, 2.0%) 7. Jason Day (T15, -4, 2.0%) 8. Troy Merritt (T15, -4, 1.9%) 9. Scott Stallings (T7, -5, 1.8%) 10. Jordan Spieth (T33, -3, 1.5%) NOTE: These reports are based off of the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cut”, “Top 20”, “Top 5”, and “Win” probabilities every 5 minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 20K simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page.

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