Ames defends Champions event title on birthday

The Asian Swing kicks off a three-event “mini-season” on Jeju Island South Korea for the third edition of the CJ CUP. The Club at Nine Bridges hosts for the third consecutive year of this relatively new event with a select field of 78 players. RELATED: Expert picks | Daily fantasy advice | Sleeper picks For the first time in three events the CJ CUP AT NINE BRIDGES will be the first stop in the Far East. The old warm-up act, the CIMB Classic, is no longer on the schedule so it will be a week of body-clock adjustment for most. Jeju Island has taken on over 50 inches in the last five weeks as three different typhoons have battered the area. The bentgrass layout, which drains well, should be lush and somewhat soft after the pounding it has taken. The major defense for this layout is the wind. Generous landing areas and massive green complexes (7,800 square feet on average) give plenty of targets to aim at but this par-72 doesn’t even stretch to 7,300 yards. While the recent rains should keep the roll off the tee to a minimum, the altitude of 3,500 feet should shrink this track even more. The two winners have been the reigning PGA TOUR player of the year and winners of the PGA Championship but that streak ends this week as Rory McIlroy isn’t entered! Need more Course Info? Check Rob Bolton’s Power Rankings, The First Look and Course Preview. Recent Winners  2018: Brooks Koepka (-21, 267) Fresh off two majors and a Player of the Year, Koepka rolled into town, set the 54-hole and 72-hole scoring record and kicked off the new season with a four-shot win over Gary Woodland. Won in his first appearance. … Played the last 54 holes 20 under. … Closed with 29 on the inward 18 on Sunday. … T2 birdies (23). … Led Par-4 scoring. Notables: Woodland led the field with 27 birdies and was 18 under his final 54 holes. … Ryan Palmer circled 10 birdies, including the final seven holes, in the final round to set the course record of 62. … The top four on the leaderboard posted 64, 63, 65 and 62 in the final round. … Rafa Cabrera Bello (T3) posted 65-65 on the weekend. … Scott Piercy (T5) led after 36 holes. … Si Woo Kim (T23) was the best Korean finisher. … Defending champion Justin Thomas was T36. 2017: Justin Thomas (-9, 279) Sizzling hot after winning the PGA in August and a FedExCup event in September, Thomas continued his heat-check by winning the inaugural event in a windy playoff over Marc Leishman. … Neither Thomas nor Koepka finished in the top 20 of fairways or greens hit for the week. … Both finished in the top five of Birdie-or-Better Conversion Percentage, Putting Average, Par-4 and Par-5 scoring. … Scoring average was 73.187 versus 70.944 last year. #Windy. Notables: The only bogey-free round on Sunday was 68 by CIMB champion Pat Perez (T5). … Cameron Smith (3rd) missed a birdie putt at the last to join the playoff. … 36-hole leader Luke List (T5) opened 68-67 before closing 76-72. … Byeong-Hun An (T11) posted the lowest round of the weekend, 67, in Round 3. … There were a TOTAL of eight rounds in the 60s on the weekend. … Whee Kim (4th) was the best Korean finisher. Key stat leaders Top golfers in each statistic on the 2018-19 PGA TOUR are listed only if they are scheduled to compete this week.  * – previous top 10 finish here Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green  2  *Justin Thomas  3  Hideki Matsuyama (T18, 2018)  7  Byeong-Hun An  9  Corey Conners 12 *Brooks Koepka 13 Tommy Fleetwood (first appearance) 15 Emiliano Grillo 16 *Gary Woodland 19 Kevin Streelman (first appearance) 23 Joaquin Niemann 24 Sergio Garcia (first appearance) 25 Lucas Glover Birdie-or-Better Percentage  2  Jordan Spieth (first appearance)  3  *Justin Thomas  5  *Gary Woodland  8  Wyndham Clark (first appearance) 11 Si Woo Kim 13 Andrew Putnam 16 *Rafa Cabrera Bello 17 *Brooks Koepka 18 Hideki Matsuyama 20 Troy Merritt (first appearance) 22 *Ryan Palmer 23 Vaughn Taylor 30 Phil Mickelson (first appearance) Par-5 Scoring  1  *Justin Thomas  2  Wyndham Clark  4  *Gary Woodland  6  Sungjae Im 10 *Brooks Koepka 12 Matt Jones 12 *Ian Poulter 12 Troy Merritt 17 Jhonattan Vegas 17 Sergio Garcia 23 Hideki Matsuyama 23 *Luke List 23 Kevin Tway 31 Si Woo Kim 31 Rory Sabbatini 31*Marc Leishman Frequent Fliers Cameron Smith: One of only two players to cash in the top 10 in the first two appearances. He’s 19 under over eight rounds with six of those in the red for T7 and 3rd. Pat Perez: While both winners are in their 20s, Perez, 41 at the time, backed up his 2017 CIMB win with T5 and last year added T7. Decided to WD the morning before the Houston Open to fill out this year’s field. That tells me all I need to know about what he thinks of the course/event. Two-for-Two-Top 18 Edition Rafa Cabrera Bello: Didn’t break 71 in his first visit (T11) or in his first two rounds last year (73-70) before unlocking the mystery (65-65) to cash T3. Jason Day: The Aussie has found solace in a wide-open, target-rich environment to show off his short game and putter. Backed up T11 with T5 (65-67) last season as six of eight rounds are under par. Chez Reavie: Rattled off four rounds of 70 or better last year (T7) after T15 in the first go-around. Hardly a big hitter, Reavie is hyper-accurate off the tee and an above-average putter. Ian Poulter: Seven of his eight rounds are in the red as the Englishman cashed T10 last year after T15 the year prior. Marc Leishman: I had to go back and change the title to this section when I realized he was T18 last year. It shouldn’t be lost in the shuffle that he closed 68-66 last year after struggling in the first two rounds.

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Start with a Rubik's Cube. Twist it and crank it, make it as hopeless looking as you can, and it won't matter. Put that thing in front of a certain subset of nimble-fingered geniuses and they'll figure it out in a matter of seconds. They're just too good. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Five things about The Concession What's happening at the sun-splashed World Golf Championships-Workday Championship at The Concession, where Collin Morikawa (67) will take a two-shot lead over Billy Horschel (69) and Brooks Koepka (70) into Sunday, is essentially the golfing version of that. Whoever wins, it will be a victory for that ineffable quality known as golf IQ, that unseen but still very real attribute that separates the elite of the elite on the PGA TOUR. "I’m kind of good at resetting," Morikawa said after a round in which he reeled off eight birdies in a 10-hole stretch. "And figuring out what I did well, and just kind of pushing that forward into tomorrow and really figuring out what I didn’t do great, obviously, those last few holes and just learn from them." (After building a five-shot lead, Morikawa bogeyed two back-nine par 5s.) This marks the second time Morikawa will take at least a share of the lead into the final round. The first was the 2019 3M Open, where he tied for second. He leads the field with 23 birdies. Webb Simpson (69) will go into Sunday at 12 under, three back, while Rory McIlroy (66) and Patrick Reed (69) are by no means out of it at 11 under. Even Viktor Hovland (66, 10 under), is still in the mix. He has made 12 birdies and an eagle the last two days but showed how fast the course can bite back when he made a quadruple-bogey 8 on his last hole Friday. They've been the fastest to solve the Rubik's Cube that is The Concession. Before this week only a handful of players had ever seen the course that members call The Concussion. There's water everywhere, and sand, plus the odd alligator. Then there's the roller-coaster greens. And yet the best players in the world are figuring it out. Morikawa, who at 24 already has three TOUR wins, including a major, is an especially fast learner, and this week he's been buoyed by a chipping lesson from Concession member Paul Azinger. What's more, the young Cal graduate has built his putting stroke, which he calls "kind of the saw," with input from PGA TOUR Champions member Mark O'Meara. Here's how fast the best in the world adapt to a new course: Koepka, who has come from behind in four of his eight TOUR wins, had never seen the back nine until the first round Thursday. "I mean, Rick walked it," he said with a shrug after the first round, a reference to his longtime caddie, Ricky Elliott. "I get a yardage book, it's not too difficult." Well, it is, actually. But these guys just make it look like it isn't. "You can make this golf course as easy or as hard on yourself as you want to be," McIlroy said after vaulting up the leaderboard with a back-nine 31, including an eagle at the par-5 13th hole. "If you want to take something on and put it into sort of smaller spots to give yourself better looks, you can, or you can lay back if you’re more comfortable doing that. "A couple of tee shots on the back nine, that’s what I did, I just laid back," he continued. "I knew I was going to have over 200 into 18, but I was happy hitting 3-wood off the tee instead of hitting driver. Just keeping it in play, keeping it in front of you and going from there." High golf IQ means knowing when to back off and when to attack, your place on the scoreboard, and where others are, too. Jack and Tiger had it. Koepka, who is seeking to become the first multiple winner this season (Waste Management Phoenix Open), seems to have it. Oh, and the last time Horschel was inside the top two on the leaderboard through 54 holes on TOUR, he went on to win (2017 AT&T Byron Nelson). Morikawa, who grew up in Southern California and played collegiately in Northern California, admits he is not by nature a Florida guy. He's only played a handful of times here, but you'd never know it from his body of work at The Concession, where he was 7 under through 12 - including a career-best five straight birdies - but 2 over for the last six holes Saturday. He doesn't have the Rubik's Cube entirely figured out. But he's working on it. "There’s so many positives to take from those first 12," he said, "but I have a lot to learn from those last six. I’m not looking at it as a negative. Yeah, I didn’t play great the last six, but a lot to learn from heading into tomorrow. Just to kind of clear my head to get ready for the 18-hole grind tomorrow. It’s all a learning experience for me and if I can just kind of tighten everything up from throughout the entire round tomorrow, I think we’re going to be fine."

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