Beau Hossler rides experience at Colonial to a share of the lead

MELBOURNE, Australia — Teams from Belgium and South Korea emerged from the rain, gusty winds and generally miserable conditions after a demanding round of foursomes to share the 36-hole lead at the World Cup of Golf on Friday. Belgium’s Thomas Pieters and Thomas Detry shot 1-under 71 and South Korea’s Byeong Hun An and Si Woo Kim had a 72 for two-round totals of 10-under 134. Teams from Italy, India, Malaysia and England were tied for third, two strokes behind. Rain showers fell all day on Metropolitan, heavy at times, and tested the players’ patience levels in the alternate-shot format. On the 10th hole, when England’s Tyrrell Hatton’s tee shot went into the woods, he angrily smashed a tee marker with his driver. His partner, Ian Poulter, had to take a penalty drop out of the woods and the English bogeyed the hole. On the 13th, Hatton maintained his patience when he had to take a drop out of casual water in a bunker. The drop took about 10 minutes while officials determined whether the drop was legal. Hatton then hit the lip of the bunker and the ball ended up in casual water — again. Poulter played it out of the water and England bogeyed that hole but finished with a 74. Anirban Lahiri combined with Gaganjeet Bhullar to keep India near the top of the leaderboard after a 72. “I think it’s one of the toughest rounds of golf I’ve played in my career,” Lahiri said. “I think we both did really well out there and it wasn’t easy.” Australia’s Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith shot 76 and went from a tie for first to a tie for eighth. Americans Matt Kuchar and Kyle Stanley shot 79, including bogeys on their last five holes, playing like they were in a hurry to get out of the rain. That was a 13-shot turnaround from their opening 66, moving them to a tie for 21st in the 28-country field, a drop of eight places. There were only four rounds under par, but five in the 80s. The format reverts to fourballs (best ball) on Saturday before a return to foursomes for the final round on Sunday. The Mexico team of Abraham Ancer, who won last week’s Australian Open, and Roberto Diaz, had the low round of the day — 70, including a bogey on the last, their only dropped shot of the day. They finished about an hour before the later groups, when the rain became heavier. Ancer was impressed with Metropolitan’s ability to stay in decent shape despite all the rain. “I thought it was just absolutely (going to be) probably unplayable, but it was good,” Ancer said. “There were a little bit of puddles here and there, but the fairways are phenomenal. The golf course can take a lot of rain.” Temperatures were just 13 Celsius (56 Fahrenheit) when play began and only went a degree higher the rest of the day. And with winds gusting to 35 kilometers an hour (20 mph) it appeared much cooler.

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LA QUINTA, Calif. – Jon Rahm, the Desert Classic’s defending champion, overcame the flu and some uncharacteristic weather conditions to shoot 66 at La Quinta Countrty Club on Thursday. Those were two reasons he struggled with distance control on Thursday. The weather in the California desert is often so pristine that people refer to it as “dome golf.â€� Thursday started with a one-hour fog delay. Then players had to deal with rain during their round. “(I’m) still pretty weak, which is possibly why I wasn’t hitting it quite as far,â€� Rahm said. “(I’m) not fully recuperated, my body is not a hundred percent, so I could definitely feel when I hit a driver and I thought I hit it far enough it was definitely a 10 yard gap. Even today a couple of the shorter irons I could feel my body not being able to swing as hard. But I don’t have bad feelings in me, I just need to rest up a little and hopefully I get better every day.â€� Rahm made his only bogey of the day after his approach shot to the second hole came up short and he missed a 5-foot par putt. He made seven birdies over his next 16 holes. He is six shots behind Phil Mickelson, who shot 60 at La Quinta. Rahm missed just three greens despite saying that he struggled with his distance control. “The air density, it’s pretty heavy right now. So sometimes it’s hard to believe, especially when you get closer to the hole, how hard you had to hit the ball,â€� Rahm said. “And when you are hitting one or two clubs more than what we’re used to, it’s hard to be absolutely certain of doing it. But again, that only happened a few holes. For the most part I had a pretty good day, a pretty good ball striking day.â€� He is 69th in the FedExCup standings after starting his season with a T22 at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions and eighth-place finish at the Sentry Tournament of Champions. He also won the Hero World Challenge in December.

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SOUTHAMPTON, Bermuda – Here was the lead in a wire services story 53 years ago: “Postman Eardley Jones in Warwick, Parish, Bermuda, is a father, a golfer – and more recently, a hero.” The story detailed how Jones jumped out of his mailman’s outfit and dove into rough water on Bermuda’s south shore to save a drowning man. After medics took the man to the hospital, the story goes that Jones nonchalantly slipped back into his work clothes and continued on with his route. “I have a picture somewhere, of my father that day standing in his skivvies,” says Nick Jones, the youngest of Eardley’s six children. It is that segment of the slideshow memory that makes him laugh. The next slide, however, brings a somber, yet respectful reflection. “I’ve met the man (my father) saved,” Nick says. “He’s still alive. It’s that connection that helps me remember my dad fondly. I miss him every day. He believed in me and was the driving force behind me. “There was no shaking his faith in me.” When Eardley Jones died at 73 in 2012, he was praised as “the Arthur Ashe of Bermuda golf,” a Black man who helped end segregation policies on this island. Until 1967, Black golfers could only play Ocean View, but Eardley Jones helped break down that barrier and open the door for Frankie Rabaid, Llewelyn Tucker, Keith Pearman, and so many others. Including, of course, Nick Jones, now 33 and beaming with pride as he prepares to play in this week’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship at Port Royal Golf Course. He earned one of three spots in a local qualifier (fellow Bermudians Michael Sims and Jarryd Dillas also got in) and embraces the opportunity before him. “I love that I’m here,” he says. “I love the chance to show what I’ve got.” What Nick Jones has is a story that is equal parts adventure, passion, and pride, with golf being the common denominator. The game took him from Bermuda to high school in Florida. He turned pro at a young age and showed immediate promise with victory in the 2011 Daytona Beach Open, then flew to England to chase minitours while living with extended family. “I can’t be in the United States for three months at a time because of visa (restrictions),” Jones, who has a British passport, says by way of explaining his allegiance to competitive golf in the U.K. By now it’s likely you have heard of those who were stranded somewhere during the beginnings of the COVID pandemic. But Jones can likely top them all. “I was stuck in Palau for almost two years,” he says. Palau is in the Western Pacific, part of an archipelago of hundreds of islands in the Micronesia region. Indonesia is to the south, the Philippines to the north, but Jones, whose wife’s job had moved them to Palau in late 2019, couldn’t leave once the lock-down began in the spring of 2020. “There was a range with a big net where I could hit balls, but during lock-down they down took the net,” Jones says, laughing at the memory. “I could chip and putt, but that’s it. I didn’t touch my clubs for more than a year. I just did a lot of diving and a lot of fishing.” When the lock-down was lifted in the fall of 2021, Jones followed his heart. “Bermuda is home,” he says, “and it’s the golf community here that I love.” Beyond rusty, Jones didn’t get through the local qualifier for the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in ’21. But he was so determined to be a part of the tournament that he caddied for a competitor in a Monday qualifier, then stuck around Port Royal to wash dishes at night and even tend bar. The sense of adventure still burns for Jones, who placed fourth in the Trinidad and Tobago Open in the spring and is signed on for the upcoming Jamaica Open. But his time back in Bermuda has returned him to his roots. It’s where he learned the game, and where his father’s legacy still is rich. “My ideal goal is to spend six-to-eight months here,” he says, “teaching kids and rebuilding and developing the junior program, which my father started years ago. Then spend a few months traveling to play in golf tournaments.” He has a soft spot for Spain, has family in the U.K., and says, not surprisingly, “I love all the islands.” His father and other Black golfers from Bermuda were trailblazers who overcame long odds. Rabaid played in the 1971 Open Championship. Eardley played in the Canadian Amateur and once brought Nick, then a young teenager, to caddie for him in the British Senior Open. “My father didn’t have much money, but he had a big heart,” says Nick, whose father played at an elite level while juggling two jobs, as a mailman and a maître d’ at that onetime bustling hot spot in Hamilton called Forty Thieves. On top of that, Eardley Jones led the fight against segregation. “He had to fight for his sport,” Nick adds. That battle won, Eardley Jones then brought kids, Nick Jones prominent among them, into his junior program right here at Port Royal. “He didn’t force me to play, but he made sure I wanted to play,” Jones says. “He gave me the freedom to fall in love with the game.” Mission accomplished, Eardley. Mission accomplished.

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