Brandt Snedeker takes lead at Vivint Houston Open

LAS VEGAS - Collin Morikawa wasn't about to let Xander Schauffele have all the fun, even if it went somewhat unnoticed. After a relatively benign opening 1-under 71 on Thursday, Morikawa slotted seven birdies in a bogey-free 7-under 65 in the second round of THE CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK to find his way into a tie for fifth. Amazingly it was a round that went a little under the radar as he was paired with Schauffele who set the course alight early and ultimately went one better with a 64. RELATED: Full leaderboard | What the pros are playing at Shadow Creek Schauffele birdied seven of his opening nine holes to shoot 29 on the back side and added one more birdie on the front to move to 14 under and three shots clear at the top of the leaderboard. But while he has set up a substantial and impressive lead, Morikawa's effort ensured Schauffele won't be able to take his foot off the gas on the weekend. The 23-year-old flashed one of his now trademark cheeky grins when he was met with a question about Schauffele's birdie blitz, reminding those in attendance that he also had gone low and so to had the third member of the threesome in Viktor Hovland (66). "It wasn’t just him. Viktor was making a bunch of birdies in that stretch, I had a couple myself. It’s enjoyable," he quipped. "When you have momentum like that, you just want to keep it going, you don’t want to kind of stall out mid round. "All of us just kept making birdies… I knew it wasn’t going to stop. I knew there was birdie chances on the front nine and we just had to keep it going. As long as I kept giving myself good looks, hitting the fairway, I knew a few would drop by 18." Morikawa credited the blemish free round to a new putter he's using this week. He's made a switch to a mallet style from the blade type he used to win the Workday Charity Open and PGA Championship last season. He needed 28 putts on Thursday and just 26 Friday and has gained 1.545 shots over the field on the greens to go with his usual ball-striking clinic. His approach game has yielded 4.077 strokes against the field so far. "I had a long neck in the blade and the way it was stroking from lag putts, it was never consistent, like the ball didn’t roll as well," he said. "If you look at the best putters, obviously their putts roll really well and their speed’s really consistent. The blade, when I found it outside 30 feet, some I’d hit past and then I’d adjust and then the next one it would be maybe six feet short. I was just looking for something to roll a lot cleaner through the putt."

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ATLANTA — For the second day in a row, no one had a better score than Jon Rahm at the TOUR Championship. That’s just what he needed to make up ground on Patrick Cantlay going into a weekend chase for the FedExCup. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Jordan Spieth reveals that couple is expecting first child Rahm birdied his last three holes Friday for a 5-under 65. Cantlay birdied his last two holes for a bogey-free 66 to keep one shot ahead. It’s not quite a two-man race for the FedExCup with 36 holes still to play at East Lake, though it was shaping up as a possibility. Bryson DeChambeau was the next closest player, and his 67 lost ground Friday. He was six shots behind. “We definitely feed off each other,” Rahm said. “And that’s probably why you see the difference in the scoreboard right now.” Cantlay looked as though he was protecting a lead, often playing to the fat of the green. That was more a product of showing respect to an East Lake course that punishes even slight misses on the wrong side of the hole. He hit 16 of 18 greens, and only twice did he have par putts from about the 5-foot range. “I’m playing really well, and I think I’m playing the golf course the right way,” Cantlay said. Cantlay started the TOUR Championship at 10-under par because he was the No. 1 seed in the FedExCup. Rahm began four shots back. Asked if the idea was to chip away at the lead, Rahm replied, “What other strategy is there?” “As soon as we teed off, that didn’t matter,” he said of the four-shot deficit. “There’s a lot of golf to be played, even now.” The reason for Cantlay’s pre-tournament advantage was because of last week at Caves Valley. Cantlay and Rahm played in the final threesome, along with DeChambeau, going into the weekend at the BMW Championship. Cantlay finished 66-66 and won in a playoff. Rahm closed with 70-70 and tied for ninth, dropping to the No. 4 seed. That now seems long ago. The TOUR Championship, to a degree, feels normal now. Cantlay was at 17 under. He and Rahm will be in the final group again. DeChambeau had more work to do, as did Justin Thomas, who made two bogeys and failed to birdie the par-5 18th in his round of 67. He was seven behind. “A place like this, there’s not really a lead that’s safe with how tough it it can play,” Thomas said. “But at the end of the day, I can’t worry about what the other guys are doing. I just have to go out and try to make some birdies and stop making mistakes.” Harris English made his share of mistakes with five bogeys in his round of 69, leaving him in the large group at 9 under. So did Jordan Spieth. He was going for his fourth straight birdie to get right in the mix, facing a 10-foot putt on the 13th hole. He three-putted, lost momentum and shot a 67. Spieth, Rory McIlroy (66) and Louis Oosthuizen (67) were at 8 under. Gone are the low scores from the opening FedExCup Playoff events, at rain-soaked Liberty Natitonal and Caves Valley, where players at each course had a putt at 59. The best anyone has managed at East Lake, still slightly soft from rain and a light breeze, had been a 65. So it’s tougher for players to make up a lot of ground unless the leaders come back, and there has been little indication Cantlay and Rahm are going to do that. Cantlay had plenty of looks at birdie, and didn’t hear many calls of “Patty Ice” because not many of those putts were going in. He got up-and-down from a bunker on the par-5 sixth. His wedge into the 13th spun back to an inch of the cup. Rahm holed a 35-foot putt from off the green at the 13th, gave it back with a bad drive to the right on the next hole, and then closed the gap to one shot with a 10-foot birdie on the 16th. The final two holes felt like a duel, even for a lazy Friday afternoon. Rahm poured in a 25-foot birdie putt on the 17th, and Cantlay matched his birdie from 15 feet, the first time he had made a putt longer than 5 feet all day. On the closing hole, Rahm blasted out of the front bunker to tap-in range. Cantlay chipped down the slope and with the grain — one of the few times he was out of position — and watched it trail off 8 feet from the hole. He made that to regain the lead. “When you have somebody like him who played a round with very few mistakes — you could argue that it could have been a lot lower — it only motivates me to keep doing a little bit better,” Rahm said. “Even though I want to focus on myself, you know he’s not going to let up and he keeps putting it in the fairway and on the green and in the fairway and on the green. “It can raise your playing level a little bit,” he said, “as well as me raising his level when I’m making birdies.”

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Because there are numerous fantasy formats for short- and long-range investments, the implications of the rescheduled 2019-20 PGA TOUR season stretch far and wide. This primer focuses on everything that could impact your gaming. It’s a one-stop shop covering what’s happened since THE PLAYERS Championship was canceled in March. Every component is labeled, but don’t skim over any section because some attention crosses over. Links are provided throughout. Bookmark what you need if you already haven’t. If you have any questions, connect with me on Twitter and/or use the discussion space at the bottom of this page. MEMBERSHIP ELIGIBILITY In our world, this is the most important matter in the wake of the hiatus. A fair amount of what’s organized in this primer is broken down in further depth here, but that wasn’t written specifically with gamers in mind. Since non-DFS formats rely on playing time for extended planning, it’s imperative to understand how membership status has been affected. This is to say that it hasn’t. All current PGA TOUR members are guaranteed to retain membership for the entirety of 2020-21. Golfers not on medical extensions cannot be demoted. Furthermore, because the 2020 Korn Ferry Tour Finals was canceled, the only two ways that current non-members can become members in 2020-21 is by winning a PGA TOUR event or by finishing with at least as many equivalent FedExCup points as the golfer who finishes 125th in the 2020 FedExCup. The membership minimum of 15 starts has been eliminated in 2019-20 for internationals who qualify for the home-circuit exemption. In short, don’t sweat consideration of an international either as a keeper for 2020-21 or on Draft Day based on how many starts he totals this season. MEDICAL EXTENSIONS Golfers who had made at least one start in 2019-20 and hadn’t fulfilled their terms when the hiatus started were given the option to reset their medical extension. Of the 17 eligible, only Charl Schwartzel and Morgan Hoffmann elected not to reset. The full explanation of the options and terms for all golfers on medicals can be found here. With decisions made, golfers on medical extensions will be treated as usual. It’s possible that any can be demoted or lose PGA TOUR status entirely. RESCHEDULED REMAINDER OF 2019-20 Fourteen tournaments remain, the last three of which comprise the FedExCup Playoffs. The first seven (through the 3M Open on July 23-26) make up Segment 3 in PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf. Although Segment 4 consists of only six events (sans the Barracuda Championship opposite the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational), strategy during that stretch still requires pause so that you can defend as a front-runner and zag as a chaser, particularly in the last two without a cut. The John Deere Classic has been canceled this year. It will return in 2021. In its place will be a new tournament sponsored by Workday with a field of 156 at Muirfield Village Golf Club on July 9-12. Muirfield Village will then host the 120-man Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide as originally scheduled the following week. FIELD SIZES In an effort to facilitate as much playing time as possible, three tournaments have increased their fields. Both the Charles Schwab Challenge (June 11-14) and the RBC Heritage (June 18-21) have reserved space for 144 golfers. That’s up from 120 and 132, respectively, and each retained its status as an invitational. Also, the Barracuda Championship (July 30-August 2) has expanded by 12 to accommodate 132 golfers. It’s a familiar size for that tournament, but all additional events were contracted to 120 golfers entering the 2019-20 season. OPEN QUALIFIERS Beginning with the Travelers Championship on June 25-28, six open qualifiers remain. The lineup includes the Workday event that has replaced the John Deere Classic, which annually also is an open. Refrain from referring to the open qualifiers as four-spotters, however. Only two openings in each of the tournaments proper will be reserved for the open qualifiers. Should any be considered not playable due to the pandemic, both spots will go to the next two TOUR members eligible for the field. PLAYOFFS Other than the one-week shift of all three events that includes the TOUR Championship starting on Friday, Sept. 4, and ending on Labor Day Monday, Sept. 7, the only change concerns FedExCup points awarded during the Playoffs. Instead of the customary quadrupling, points earned in the Playoffs will be tripled. Consider this when mapping out who you want where and when in One & Done situations. Fantasy.PGATOUR.COM no longer hosts One & Done gaming, but my solutions on how to address the new format for the TOUR Championship still apply. If however you modified your game in 2019 didn’t fulfill its intent or if you’ve yet to tackle it, you’ll find my ideas here. KORN FERRY TOUR GRADUATE RESHUFFLE At the start of the hiatus, three reorders hadn’t yet occurred. That has been trimmed to two for a total of four on the season. The third reorder is scheduled at the conclusion of the RBC Heritage on June 21. The last will take place at the conclusion of the new Workday event on July 12. For all things connected to this category, click here. How this category is prioritized at the beginning of the 2020-21 season is TBD as of this primer. ROOKIES One of the 21 rookies will win the Arnold Palmer Award as voted upon by eligible TOUR members. However, because there are no new members planned for 2020-21, it’s possible that next season will begin with zero rookies. At the conclusion of the hiatus, only Tom Lewis (five starts) hadn’t played more than seven times to exhaust his rookie eligibility and no non-members had achieved Special Temporary Membership [STM] en route to potentially qualifying as a rookie during the 2019-20 season. (With the equivalent of 188.133 FedExCup points, Erik van Rooyen has the most of all non-members.) The target for STM during the 2019-20 season remains the equivalent of 288.035 FedExCup points. The same target has been determined for the 2020-21 season. While the top 10 in Korn Ferry Tour points at the conclusion of the Korn Ferry Tour Championship presented by United Leasing & Finance on Aug. 27-30 will be granted exemptions into all additional events on the PGA TOUR in 2020-21, none will be a PGA TOUR member unless he’s already a former winner on the TOUR or if he wins three times on the KFT in the interim. QUALIFIERS The page dedicated to qualifiers into THE PLAYERS, the majors and the World Golf Championships has been updated for the resumption of the 2019-20 season. It’s also organized in a unique, temporary fashion to avoid confusion. Only the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open and the Masters remain in calendar-year 2020, but because the last two majors apply to the 2020-21 season with criteria that has carried over from 2019-20, all tournaments for which the qualifiers are eligible are listed in chronological order. Traditional formatting will return at the beginning of next season. OFFICIAL WORLD GOLF RANKING The last update on March 15 was used to trigger exemptions for the top 50 into the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational and the 2020 Masters. Revised dates for additional entries this summer were determined for the WGC-FedEx St. Jude and the PGA Championship. The OWGR issued a release on June 3 stating that it would restart the ranking with the Charles Schwab Challenge. Because other tours will not resume at the same time, the fantasy value of international non-members who play abroad regularly and will appear on the PGA TOUR is a little higher for all gamers, especially for those in formats with eyes on non-members hovering around the top 50 in the OWGR and with seven majors, five WGCs and THE PLAYERS scheduled through the summer of 2021.

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