Best and worst from Tiger Woods’ return

The fall portion of this PGA TOUR season was not without its share of milestones, drama or interesting finishes. Strong fields dotted the schedule. Seven of the nine winners had already laid claim to a PGA TOUR victory in their careers. The roster of champions included established names like Rory McIlroy, Hideki Matsuyama and Max Homa, along with rising stars such as Sam Burns, Sungjae Im and Viktor Hovland. Players went remarkably low to get to those trophies: the final-round scoring average for the winners this fall was 65.6. Over the previous five PGA TOUR seasons, winners have averaged 67.2 on Sundays. Here are the top numbers to know from the fall portion of the season: RELATED CONTENT: Five things from the fall season | Talor Gooch wins RSM to take FedExCup lead | Twenty First Group 62 At the Shriners Children’s Open, Sungjae Im put on a stellar display of approach play, hitting 62 of 72 greens in regulation on his way to a four-shot victory. Since 1990, only 4% of PGA TOUR winners have hit at least 86% of their greens in regulation for the week. Incredibly, it was the second week in a row that it happened! The previous week, Sam Burns lit up the Country Club of Jackson with 63 of 72 greens hit as he picked up his second PGA TOUR title. +1.78 Speaking of Burns, he careens into the new year sitting in second place in the FedExCup standings. Burns is averaging a whopping 1.78 Strokes Gained: Ball Striking (combining performance off-the-tee and on approach), a full quarter-of-a-stroke better than anyone else with at least eight measured rounds this fall. Now in the top 15 of the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time in his young career, Burns has not finished worse than T-21 in any event around the world since July 19. 68.85 With four consecutive top-20 finishes, another young star positioning himself for a successful 2022 is Matthew Wolff. The 22-year-old Oklahoma State product leads the PGA TOUR in scoring average and ranks fourth in Strokes Gained: Total. One intriguing figure within Wolff’s stat sheet is his increased club head speed. At 125.11 MPH, Wolff led all measured players this fall, and sits nearly 11 MPH above the TOUR average. 20 At THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT, Rory McIlroy made two eagles and 13 birdies on the weekend to win by one stroke over a surging Collin Morikawa. At age 32, the victory was McIlroy’s 20th on the PGA TOUR, making him the second-youngest player born outside the United States to achieve this milestone. Harry Cooper, born in England in 1904, is credited with his 20th PGA TOUR title at age 31. Since 1960, McIlroy is one of just seven players to reach 20 official PGA TOUR titles before age 33. The others are a list of historical luminaries: Arnold Palmer, Billy Casper, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. 1 McIlroy found the winner’s circle in an unconventional manner for him: with an incredible week on the greens. He led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting for the week, just the second time in his career he has done that over the entirety of a PGA TOUR event. The other instance came at the 2018 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, which he also won. It was just the seventh time McIlroy finished a PGA TOUR event ranked in the top five in the statistic; he’s won four of those seven instances, and never finished outside the top five when ranking in the top five in Strokes Gained: Putting for the week. -3.58 McIlroy’s terrific putting and usual stellar performance off the tee masked a below-average statistical performance with his approach play at Summit Club. For the week, McIlroy wound up with -3.58 Strokes Gained: Approach, ranking 67th of 77 players in the field. Of the nearly 700 PGA TOUR events officially tracked by ShotLink all-time, it is the worst Strokes Gained: Approach performance by a player in a victory. 3 At the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba, Viktor Hovland became the first player to successfully defend a title on the PGA TOUR since Brooks Koepka won back-to-back PGA Championships in 2018 and 2019. Hovland picked up his third TOUR win at 24 years, 1 month, 20 days old, making him just the fourth international player in the last 40 years to win three times that young. The others: McIlroy, Sergio Garcia and Adam Scott. Hovland capped off his 2021 with an unofficial win at the Hero World Challenge last week to rise to a career-best seventh in the Official World Golf Ranking. He’s now the second-ranked European in the world, behind only No. 1 Jon Rahm. 31.8 Was this the most impressive collection of PGA TOUR winners we have ever seen in the fall? The numbers suggest so. The average World Ranking of the nine official tournament winners this fall was 31.8, by far the best since wrap-around scheduling began in 2013-14. For comparison’s sake, the average World Ranking of winners in fall 2020 was 169.8! Every winner this fall was ranked in the top 60 of the OWGR at the time of his victory. Only one other fall stretch can even boast an average under 60 (2013, 53.2). 19 The United States trounced Europe at the Ryder Cup, posting the largest margin of victory (19-9, 10 points) by either side in the modern era. The Americans dominated the par-5s for the week, winning 34 holes to Europe’s 14. Every American player won at least one match before Singles even began. Dustin Johnson was a flawless 5-0-0, becoming the first American since Larry Nelson in 1979 to win five matches in a single Ryder Cup. U.S. rookies posted a combined record of 14-4-3, the highest points per match average (0.74) for any group of rookies in the modern era.

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ALBANY, Bahamas – The majority of the star-studded field is set for the 2018 Hero World Challenge, the invitation-only PGA TOUR event to be held Nov. 29-Dec. 2 at Albany, Bahamas for the fourth consecutive year. The 2018 Hero World Challenge field features players representing six different countries including four of the top five, and 16 of the top 23 players in the world. 2018 Hero World Challenge field: Name, Country Justin Rose, England Dustin Johnson, USA Justin Thomas, USA Bryson DeChambeau, USA Jon Rahm, Spain Rickie Fowler, USA Tommy Fleetwood, England Jason Day, Australia Xander Schauffele, USA Tiger Woods, USA – Tournament Host Tony Finau, USA Bubba Watson, USA Patrick Reed, USA Webb Simpson, USA Alex Noren, Sweden Hideki Matsuyama, Japan Two exemptions will be issued at a later date to round out the 18-player field. Live television coverage of the Hero World Challenge will be provided by Golf Channel during all four rounds and by NBC during the third and fourth rounds. Good-any-day grounds tickets and a limited number of premium hospitality packages for the Hero World Challenge are available for purchase here.  The TGR Foundation is the event’s primary charitable beneficiary, along with the Tavistock Foundation and Bahamas Youth Foundation.

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DETROIT – Absorbed in its entirety, Cameron Champ’s round of 7-under 65 Friday morning would provide ample explanation for his 36-hole lead at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. But upon further review, you could look at the torrid 8-under 28 going out on Detroit Golf Club’s front nine, then measure it against the inward 1-over 37 and wonder, why such a stark contrast in performance? Champ could, in turn, smile, and suggest you widen the lens if you want to really study the roller-coaster of this, his rookie season. To wit: In his first seven tournaments there was a win, four other top-15 finishes, and 592 FedExCup points, but since the Farmers Insurance Open in late January, Champ has missed eight cuts, withdrawn once, had a best finish of T-28, and earned a mere 39 FEC points. All of which – the 28-37 in Round 2, the fact that he went four months on the PGA TOUR without breaking 70 with Thursday’s opening 66, and a return to contention after months of early exits – he is most happy to explain. “You know, I’m still young,� said Champ, who signed his card and headed home at 13-under 131, at the time two better than Ryan Armour (69) with the entire afternoon wave on the golf course. “I just turned 24, so I had a lot coming at me and distractions. I had to just really adjust and prioritize.� As explosive as Champ’s power is, it is another commodity he possesses that likely will maintain the much-needed balance in his game. “He’s a good kid, a gentle soul,� said Jeff Camp, Cameron’s father, who walked Friday’s round as his son put up back-to-back scores in the 60s for the first time since the Sony Open in Hawaii, way back in January. “He knows he has to just grind.� On his first nine Friday, though, it was not a grind. It was Champ at his very best, flashing the sort of incomparable power that would make you wonder how anyone can beat him. He hit six of seven fairways, reached both par-5s in two, was on in regulation at all nine greens, and required but 12 putts. For a sampling of the unmatched power Champ can unleash, consider the par-5 seventh, set up at 545 yards. J.B. Holmes, hardly a singles hitter, was dead center, out there a robust 327 yards. Yet, Champ was 38 yards beyond him, and provided with the opportunity to hit just a 177-yard second shot to 8 feet. He made that eagle, which coming on the heels of five birdies in a row went a long reason in explaining the sprint to the turn in 28. “One of those nines, kind of everything went my way,� said Champ, who also drove it 368 yards at the 635-yard, par-5 fourth and reached in two to set up a two-putt birdie. True enough, that, because a ticklish 15-footer straight downhill at the par-4 wasn’t one he expected to make but did. And at the par-3 ninth, his 20-footer found the hole, too. But Cameron Champ lets those words of his greatest mentor in life – his grandfather, Mack Champ – constantly echo in his head. “It’s not where you start that matters, it is where you finish.� So, the six birdies and one eagle on his first nine didn’t matter; it was the bogey on the par-4 13th and the bogey at the par-4 18th that offset the only inward birdie, at the par-5 17th, that Cameron Champ digested after his round and will use as motivation for Saturday’s third round. It’s not dissimilar to how he maintained composure these past few months. “Just embracing failure,� he said. In other words, he has put the early-season success behind him and learned much from that stretch where he failed to play on the weekend of six straight tournaments. “I think it has, personally,� said Champ, when asked if the rough stretch was in some ways better for his career than the win at Sanderson Farms last October and the string of high finishes that stopped at the Sony. “At times, I can definitely be tough on myself. But I’m learning, especially the last month-and-a-half (has been good for me). It’s sent me back to the drawing board and to think back to how I play good golf, how I think around the course.�

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