‘Somebody’s going to say something’ about Patrick Reed this week

NOTE: If you play PGA TOUR Champions One & Done presented by SERVPRO, the Pacific Links Bear Mountain Championship begins on Friday. For my recommendations among notables in the field, scroll to the bottom of the page. With only the BMW Championship and TOUR Championship remaining in 2016-17, it would probably be easier to conduct a Q&A session to review your possibilities. Of course, you know I’m happy to do just that in the thread below, on Twitter (public or private) and via email (to [email protected]), but that’s the irony of the season. You need less advice and direction as your league championship hangs in the balance for you’ve likely whittled your choices accordingly. Still, simple reminders never hurt. For starters, make sure you have at least one guy available to burn at the TOUR Championship. The current points structure took hold in 2015 when points distributed in the Playoffs were reduced by 20 percent, but all of the top 21 in the FedExCup standings entering the BMW Championship advanced in all of the first 10 editions of the Playoffs. It’s not a guarantee for the top 21, mind you, but you need to draw the line somewhere to establish a plan. Reviewing the golfers in Future Possibilities below beside whom the TOUR Championship appears, only Jordan Spieth (1), Dustin Johnson (3), Paul Casey (8) and Justin Rose (17) are currently inside the top 21 in points. Conveniently, each has a terrific record at East Lake. Of course, if any are still available to you because you’ve mapped it out that way, then you already knew this, but anxiety still must be replaced by execution to pay it off. Others worthy of a look next week include Daniel Berger (11) and Kevin Kisner (14) for the sole reason that both will be putting on Bermudagrass. Once you’ve worked backward and selected your charge for the finale, the BMW presents like any other tournament. Both previous champions at Conway Farms don’t line up as favorably as we would have hoped. Zach Johnson (2013) and Jason Day (2015) are worthy finds in mid-September, but it’s likely that your opposition in pursuit will be on board more than front-runners. Both are in that rare positions as contrarians given all of the current variables. I shifted Day from this event to THE NORTHERN TRUST because I didn’t want him on the bubble at the BMW. It may prove to be the turning point of my season as he yielded a T6 at Glen Oaks but now sits 28th in points, while it also opened the door to slide Justin Thomas into place at Conway Farms. Thomas is fresh off victory at the Dell Technologies Championship. He won the PGA Championship and placed T6 at THE NORTHERN TRUST before that. While One & Doners often prefer not to choose the winner of the previous tournament, if you’re going to buck tradition, you want to do it during the Playoffs when there’s precedent for momentum. There have been five occurrences of a golfer winning consecutive tournaments in Playoffs history. Billy Horschel was the last in 2014. If you’re also chasing, it could be worth ignoring my advice of holstering Spieth, DJ and Casey in favor of a burning any of the three right now. (Rose would be your guy at East Lake.) Not unlike the ninth frame in bowling, your game can be determined in your penultimate performance. Positioning won’t mean anything unless you convert and put a mark on the board now. Two-man gamers who can still build a threatening lineup deserve the annual golf clap. Depending on your flexibility, you’re likely forced into reserving at least one of your spots for a long shot to advance. Snagging one from the likes of Patrick Cantlay (41), Charl Schwartzel (43), Chez Reavie (46), Keegan Bradley (48), Jamie Lovemark (58), Rafa Cabrera Bello (60) and Bud Cauley (68) would be timely. FUTURE POSSIBILITIES NOTE: Select golfers committed to the tournament are listed alphabetically. Future tournaments are sorted chronologically and reflect previous success on the courses on which the tournaments will be held in 2016-17. All are pending golfer commitment. Daniel Berger … BMW Paul Casey … TOUR Championship Jason Day … BMW; TOUR Championship Jason Dufner … TOUR Championship Rickie Fowler … BMW Sergio Garcia … TOUR Championship Billy Horschel … TOUR Championship Dustin Johnson … BMW (defending on a different course); TOUR Championship Zach Johnson … BMW; TOUR Championship Hideki Matsuyama … BMW Rory McIlroy … BMW; TOUR Championship (defending) Ryan Moore … TOUR Championship Justin Rose … TOUR Championship Charl Schwartzel … BMW Jordan Spieth … TOUR Championship Henrik Stenson … TOUR Championship Gary Woodland … TOUR Championship CHAMPIONS ONE & DONE NOTABLES Pacific Links Bear Mountain Championship After its debut in 2016, Bear Mountain Resort’s Mountain Course in Victoria, British Columbia, is hosting again. It’s a par 71 with four par 5s (three on the inward side) and five par 3s, and it tips at 6,881 yards. The total prize money is $2.5 million, highest of the three remaining events in PGA TOUR Champions One & Done presented by SERVPRO. Golfers listed alphabetically. Rob’s serious considerations in bold. Stephen Ames … Lives in Vancouver, but he finished T54 last year. T19 at the Shaw in Calgary two weeks ago was one of four straight top 20s. Tenth in earnings with seven top 10s. Marco Dawson … Sneaky but inconsistent. Two top 10s in his last four starts but they’re also his only top 20s in his last eight. Tied for seventh here last year. Scott Dunlap … Disappointed us last week with a T44 at Narita, but worth the plunge again. He connected six top 20s prior to the trip to Japan and landed a T3 at Bear Mountain last year. Joe Durant … Stumbled to a T34 in Japan, but figures to rebound despite a T28 here last year when he settled for an even-par 71 in the final round. Bob Estes … Took last week off after a T10 at the Shaw. Timely wild card no matter your position. Steve Flesch … A T15 at the JAPAN AIRLINES Championship extended his top-20 streak to eight in a row. Has nine in 11 starts since turning 50 in May. Doug Garwood … A rare inclusion here but worth your attention after a T3 at Bear Mountain last year. Nine top 25s this season, including a T22 in Japan. Sits 37th in earnings. Todd Hamilton … Was poised to deliver on the Japan connection but drifted to T9 in the finale. However, he’s connected top 10s for the first time in his PGA TOUR Champions career. Lee Janzen … Loves himself par 3s but he’s just off the radar to warrant even a flier at Bear Mountain where he finished a steady T28 last year. Jerry Kelly … Answered his breakthrough at the Boeing with a T6 at the Shaw. Top 25s in 12 of his 14 starts. A brilliant option this late if you have the means. Bernhard Langer … Given the purse, if you’ve yet to burn him, it’s time. Shared seventh place last year, albeit needing a closing 63. Four-time winner this season. No. 1 in earnings. Tom Lehman … Bear Mountain debut, but he’s been in a funk in recent starts. After nine straight top 20s, he’s gone four straight without one. Scott McCarron … Opened last year’s P2 with a 62. Thrice a winner in his last seven starts entering this week. T2 at the JAPAN AIRLINES Championship. Colin Montgomerie … No-brainer. Prevailed in a playoff over Scott McCarron at Bear Mountain last year and beat McCarron and Billy Mayfair by one for victory in Japan last week. Scott Parel … Coming on a bit in the last month with four straight top 20s. T9 in Japan last week. Closed out a T12 here last year with a 7-under, 35-29=64. Corey Pavin … Sets up well for his debut at Bear Mountain and placed T9 last week in Japan. So hit and miss, though. Best suited for front-runners. Jeff Sluman … Continues to produce. T15 in Japan marked his 12th top 25 of 2017. T3 at Bear Mountain last year. Turned 60 years of age on Monday. David Toms … His T6 at the Boeing Classic is his only top 20 since May. Scott Verplank … Poor showings in his last two starts and a T57 last year. We need more promise at this point. Duffy Waldorf … T12 here last year, but rapidly falling out of favor for a spot with only one finish better than a T20 in his last 10 starts.

Click here to read the full article…

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico — Viktor Hovland was hitting it so well he had no trouble taking on a big risk, and it paid off Saturday with a big finish for a 9-under 62 and a two-shot lead in the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba. RELATED: Leaderboard | Viktor Hovland contending with borrowed driver in Mayakoba Hovland, the defending champion at this Mexican resort, hit driver just over the green on the par-4 17th and hit a dart into the closing hole at El Cameleon for the lowest score of his PGA TOUR career. That gave him a two-shot lead over fellow Oklahoma State alum Talor Gooch (63), and he was three clear of Justin Thomas (64). “That was fun today,” Hovland said. “Obviously, got off to a nice start and it was nice to have one of those rounds where you can kind of keep it going throughout the day instead of maybe slowing down towards the end there where, frankly, there’s some tough holes.” Matthew Wolff, who started the weekend with a two-shot lead, made a pair of bogeys early in his round to fall out of the lead and managed only one birdie in his round of 73 that dropped him out of contention. Scottie Scheffler had a good start and little else, and a double bogey on the 14th hole when he drove into a hazard led to a 70 that put him seven shots behind. Hovland was at 19 under as he goes for his third PGA TOUR title. The Norwegian star already had made up a three-shot deficit with seven birdies, along with tough pars on some of the holes into the steady breeze. The TOUR moved up the tees about 100 yards on the 17th hole, with mangroves right of the green and a small lagoon to the left. Gooch was in the group ahead of him and hit iron off the tee and wedge to tap-in range for birdie that gave him a share of the lead. Hovland went with driver and it landed about 15 feet beyond the pin and rolled just off the edge. He pitched beautifully to 6 inches for birdie. “I’ve hit it great and I thought it was the play,” Hovland said. “So if it’s the play, you pull outt the big dog and you try to hit it.” Then, Hovland peeled a low driver into the fairway and stuffed that one about 4 feet away for another birdie to widen his lead. Gooch had a birdie putt that spun out of the cup on the 18th. Even so, he will be in the final group on Sunday as he goes after his first PGA TOUR victory. He did his best work earlier on the back nine, rolling in a 30-foot birdie putt on No. 12, an eagle putt from about 35 feet on the par-5 13th and then chipping in for birdie from just off the green at No. 14. “You never know when your time is going to come,” Gooch said, speaking specifically to his burst of scoring, and possibly to finally hoisting a trophy. This is his 102nd start. “The game came easy today,” he said. “I hit a bunch of fairways, hit a bunch of greens. Nice when you get a chip-in, you make a 30-footer and those are the type of things you need to have happen to turn it from a 67 to 63.” Thomas had a 62 in the third round last year at Mayakoba to at least give himself a chance. This time, he started much closer to the leaders and his 63 left him only three back. He began the tournament at 3 over for his opening nine. Thomas couldn’t help but think of his pairing with Patrick Cantlay at the BMW Championship, when Cantlay started slowly and wound up winning in a playoff. “And I know this is a course you can get on crazy kinds of runs out here,” Thomas. “It feels good to know I haven’t really done anything special, but I’ve just kind of checked the boxes and done a lot of things I need to do and put ourselves in a good spot.” Carlos Ortiz of Mexico had a 67 and was five shots behind.

Click here to read the full article…

NOTE: For the first three events of the FedExCup Playoffs, Rob focuses only on golfers outside the bubble to advance. In this last installment, all five below enter the BMW Championship outside the top 30 in FedExCup points. Charl Schwartzel … The South African is the only qualifier on this page with experience at Conway Farms. He shared eighth place in 2013. For the second consecutive season, he begins the third leg of the Playoffs slotted 43rd in the FedExCup standings. Last year, after opening T53-70th, a five-way share of fourth place at Crooked Stick yielded a rise to 30th in points and into the TOUR Championship. This time around, he strolls in with better form after a T29 and a T25 in the first two legs, respectively. Mackenzie Hughes … At 31st in FedExCup points, he’s the easiest to pluck from the 40 outside the top 70, but to lean on that as the reason would be ignoring why he’s 31st. As I laid out in a recent edition of the Rookie Ranking, the Canadian cannot be ruled out to scoop up the once-in-a-lifetime honor, but he’s probably going to need to advance to the TOUR Championship given the depth of his class. A T13 at the Dell Technologies Championship served a reminder to his competition as it matched his third-best result of the season and best since mid-February. Through two legs of the Playoffs, he’s ninth in strokes gained: putting. Xander Schauffele … Not that Hughes needed any additional motivation to secure a tee time at East Lake, but his fellow rookie, Schauffele, is one notch back at 32nd in the FedExCup standings. The 23-year-old from California could be part of a photo finish for the Rookie of the Year award. It would cap a flourish that was sparked in earnest by a T5 at the U.S. Open and has included four top 20s since, including a breakthrough win at The Greenbrier Classic. He leads the FedExCup Playoffs in par-5 scoring average. Hudson Swafford … It’s reasonable to assume that he experienced an emotional letdown after breaking through for his first PGA TOUR title at the CareerBuilder Challenge in January. After all, expectations were high following his phenomenal career at the University of Georgia. He connected top 10s two months post-victory, and then went virtually silent until hanging up a T10 in his debut at Firestone in August. A T13 at TPC Boston two weeks ago lifted him to 33rd in the FedExCup standings and to without shouting distance of his debut at East Lake. It’d make for a proper way to celebrate his 30th birthday (on Sept. 9). Ranks seventh in the Playoffs in strokes gained: tee-to-green, sixth in proximity and T11 in bogey avoidance. Rafa Cabrera Bello … Populated this space two weeks ago, and then finished T18 at the Dell Technologies Championship to climb 20 spots to 60th for the BMW Championship. The Spaniard is seeking to become just the fourth in Playoffs history to play his way into the TOUR Championship after starting both the second and third legs outside the bubble. Only Marc Leishman (2009), Geoff Ogilvy (2011) and Morgan Hoffmann (2014) have previously scaled the same ladder. (Hoffmann is the only golfer of the three to begin the Playoffs outside the top 100.) RCB ranks 13th in the Playoffs in strokes gained: putting and 12th in scrambling, so he’s connecting with his bread and butter.

Click here to read the full article…