Corey Conners is chasing his first major title. An ace in the third round of the Masters can only help.
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JACKSON, Miss. - Life is full of contradictions. Take MJ Daffue, the 31-year-old who shot a second-round 69 (10 under par total) for the lead halfway through Friday's second round at the Sanderson Farms Championship. His last name, pronounced Duffy, looks nothing like it sounds, making him the Brett Favre of golf. RELATED: Full leaderboard Also, while most pros hope to play four good rounds to have a good week, Daffue, who has Monday-qualified nine times in his last 14 tries (including here) on the PGA TOUR and Korn Ferry Tour combined, keeps having to play five. "You've got to make birdies and get through," Daffue said. "I guess every round to me, I just take it as a Monday qualifier." He made five birdies and two bogeys at the sun-splashed Country Club of Jackson and was leading after the morning wave. He is bidding to become the first Monday-qualifier to win on the PGA TOUR since Corey Conners at the 2019 Valero Texas Open. He's trying to "stick to the process." That's a cliché, of course, but it's really Daffue's only choice. He's 861st in the Official World Golf Ranking. This is his fifth TOUR start. His career best: a T22 at the Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village, where he faded with a final-round 73. His wife, Kamie, a speech pathologist who works with the deaf, is back in Houston with their 6-week-old boy Oliver. Yep, Daffue and Rory McIlroy became new dads at just about the same time. And nope, you couldn't find two guys further apart on golf's pecking order. So, yeah, a win? It would be completely crazy. Life-changing. And he can't think about it. If you haven't heard of Daffue, join the club, but it's most likely because of something that happened off the golf course, not on it. Before what can only be described now as a freak accident, Daffue was a promising junior golfer in South Africa who at 11 played with Retief Goosen and mixed it up with TOUR winners like Dylan Frittelli. He came to America and was a two-time Southland Conference Golfer of the Year at Lamar. He also met Kamie, a native Texan, got married, and turned pro in 2012. All was well. With Daffue's family so far away, her family became his family, so when her mother, Jill Badeaux, was hit by a car and killed while walking away from the dentist's office in 2013, he was devastated. He drove home from a Hooters Tour event in South Carolina to comfort his wife, but wasn't sure how to process the grief himself. Having grown up in a military family, he says, he only knew to keep a stiff upper lip. "I didn't really know how to deal with it," he said, "so I just kind of put it to the side." Alas, bottling it up didn't work; soon he was living and dying with every shot, too wound up to let his talent shine on the course. The results showed; while peers like Frittelli were establishing footholds on TOUR, Daffue's path may as well have been lined with banana peels. Today, having had time to think about it, especially as he and Kamie were forced to put down their corgi during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, Daffue realizes he hadn't allowed himself to properly grieve. "I just had to talk to people," he said. "I'm a very outgoing guy. I don't really wear my emotions on my sleeve, but I just had to sit down and look at everything on the whole. The point where it started to change was golf was everything to me, and the pastor at our church told me, ‘If you're nothing without golf, you're not going to be anything with golf.' "That's just how it works," Daffue added. "So I had to really see where I need to find my happiness. It's in friends, and serving people, and helping people where I can, being friendly, trying to make someone's day, something like that." He says he considers himself a better person, and a better golfer, than before. This weekend would be a really good time to show that to the world. He's playing with a local caddie, Austin Rose, who played for Mississippi State and is a member at Country Club of Jackson. They were introduced by Dusty Smith, who was an assistant coach at Lamar and is now the head men's golf coach at Mississippi State. All the pieces are coming together for MJ Daffue. He just can't think about it. Not yet.
This week, all eyes are on Patrick Cantlay as he returns to Muirfield Village Golf Club as the defending champion of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. A lot has happened for Cantlay since last year’s event. After winning his second Memorial, he went on to win the final two events of the 2021 season, the BMW Championship and TOUR Championship, en route to claiming the FedExCup and earning PGA TOUR Player of the Year honors. He’s also coming off a recent win at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans with his good friend and potential Presidents Cup partner, Xander Schauffele. Cantlay is a year older (now 30), his career victory total has swelled to seven and his bank account is surely heftier (thanks in large part to the FedExCup’s $15 million first prize). His golf club setup, however, looks quite similar at this year’s Memorial. Cantlay is an old soul who is slow to make change, preferring to stick with what works instead of chasing the latest and greatest. “I feel like I have stuck to things being pretty much the same and I think that’s part of me being so consistent,” he once said. This philosophy applies to his equipment, as well. For example, Cantlay still uses a Titleist 915F 3-wood, which is a club that became available to the public at retail back in 2014. His irons, the Titleist 718 AP2’s, were released in late 2017 and his Titleist TS3 driver was released the following year. Although his deliberate gear approach still holds true, Cantlay has made a few key changes in a year’s time. For one, he’s changed out his previous Titleist 816 H2 21-degree hybrid for a Titleist TS2 21-degree 7-wood, which is now equipped with a Mitsubishi Diamana ZF shaft that matches up with his driver and 3-wood. He’s also upgraded his 56-degree wedge from a Vokey SM7 model into a new Vokey SM9. Being that the Vokey SM9 wedges were released to retail in March 2022, his new sand wedge is clearly the most modern golf club in Cantlay’s bag. Despite being a notoriously slow switcher of gear, Cantlay has indeed shaken things up a touch in the last year. Check out the full comparisons below. Patrick Cantlay’s WITB this week Driver: Titleist TS3 (9.5 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana ZF 60TX 3-wood: Titleist 915F (15 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana ZF 70TX 7-wood: Titleist TS2 (21 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana ZF 80TX Irons: Titleist 718 AP2 (4-9) Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold 120 Tour Issue X100 Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM7 (46, bent to 47 degrees, and 52 degrees), Titleist Vokey SM9 (56, bent to 57 degrees), and Titleist Vokey SM8 (60 degrees, bent to 61 degrees) Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S300 Putter: Scotty Cameron Phantom T5 proto Ball: Titleist Pro V1x Patrick Cantlay’s winning bag from the 2021 Memorial Tournament Driver: Titleist TS3 (9.5 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana ZF 60TX 3-wood: Titleist 915F (15 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana ZF 70TX Hybrid: Titleist 816 H2 (21 degrees) Shaft: Fujikura Ventus Black 10TX Irons: Titleist 718 AP2 (4-9) Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold 120 Tour Issue X100 Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM7 (46-10F, 52-08F, 56-08M) Titleist Vokey SM8 (61 Proto) Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S300 Putter: Scotty Cameron Phantom T5 proto Ball: Titleist Pro V1x
GREENSBORO, N.C. - There's no rest for the weary. Not when you're at the Wyndham Championship and it's the final week of the PGA TOUR's regular season with the FedExCup Playoffs looming large next week. RELATED: Leaderboard | Four-way tie for lead after Round 2 | Projected FedExCup standings Si Woo Kim is a prime example. The co-leader - Kim's tied for the top spot after matching 65s in the first two rounds - has played every single tournament since the TOUR's Return to Golf in June after a three-month hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That means the Wyndham Championship, a tournament he won in 2016, is Kim's 10th straight event. Let that sink in a little bit. And even after that marathon stretch, Kim still arrived at Sedgefield Country Club this week in dire need of FedExCup points. He was ranked No. 121 and was hardly safe to make the Playoffs which start next week at THE NORTHERN TRUST at TPC Boston. The other three players tied for the lead with Kim are on similar runs but are safely in the Playoff bubble. Tom Hoge and Talor Gooch, who shot 65 and 68, respectively, will be seeking their first PGA TOUR titles this week while Billy Horschel, the 2014 FedEx champ who had a 64 Friday, is vying for his sixth. Horschel has only missed the Wyndham Championship once since 2011, and he's finished 11th or better three times in his last four starts here. With the compacted TOUR schedule, though, and the hopes of a long Playoff run, Horschel wasn't sure a trip to Sedgefield was in the cards this year. "I knew if I played here there would be a lot of tournaments in a two-and-a-half month window, but with my position in the FedExCup, I felt like it was vital for me to come here and try to accumulate more points," said Horschel, who ranks 50th. "So, after Sunday I flew home and spent two days there and I flew up here Wednesday morning. It was just nice. It was nice to not be here Monday, Tuesday and sort of grind it out. So, I know I’ve got several more weeks left to play golf and I’ll just do a good job of being smart with my practice. "Thankfully, the game’s in a good spot. I don’t have to really grind too hard, which helps a lot in that aspect." There are a total of 35 players within four strokes of the lead heading into a third round fraught with uncertainty with a weather forecast that calls for heavy rain and thunderstorms. And even without the potential downpour to soften things up, Sedgefield figured to be generous - already giving up four 62s this week and even relinquishing a 59 to Brandt Snedeker in 2018. One of those 62s was shot in the first round by the popular Harold Varner, who grew up in Gastonia, North Carolina, and graduated from East Carolina. He's not putting much stock in the meteorologists as he looks for his first PGA TOUR victory, though. "I've got to hit more fairways," said Varner, who only hit nine in shooting a 69 on Friday but still starts the weekend one stroke off the lead. "They said it was supposed to rain all day today, but it didn’t. I’m always glass is half full, so we’ll see what happens. "I don’t control that, so we’ll just do what I do best, play golf." Hoge, who opened the season with a career-best runner-up finish at The Greenbrier, and Gooch have played in nine of the 10 tournaments since the break, each taking the week before the PGA Championship off to recharge. Like Horschel, their FedExCup position is solid — Hoge ranked 38th at the start of the week and Gooch clocking in at No. 66. The goal is to be among the 30 who get to the finale at East Lake where anyone can win the $15 million FedExCup bonus, though, so every bump helps. For Gooch, Friday marked the first time he'd ever shot 65 or lower twice in a TOUR event - as well as the first time he'd made the cut in two Wyndham Championship starts. "It was solid," he said. "I got off to kind of a slow start yesterday on the front nine and kind of got it going on the back and just carried that momentum all the way through the round. Anytime you shoot 65, it doesn’t matter who, what, when, where, why, you’ve done some good." Paul Casey, who's three strokes behind after a 66 and riding momentum after a tie second at the PGA on Sunday, is making his fifth straight start. He can't remember ever doing that in his professional career and admits he's trying to conserve energy while looking to win his fourth TOUR event. That said, he'd also like nothing better than to add three more starts to the five he's already made and advance to Atlanta for the fifth straight year. He moved from No. 121 to 54th with his runner-up finish at TPC Harding Park. Tempering expectations will be key. "It would be real easy to stand on the first tee yesterday and expect, you know, brilliant golf like I played on Sunday or all week last week," Casey said. "Then if you don’t play it, then you’re putting yourself between a rock and a hard place. "Yeah, no question. Just expectations is always the best way to be, but it’s hard. I made a really good jump up the FedExCup last week and I want to keep that going. … I want to make it to East Lake because I feel like — well, if you want to win it, you’ve got to be there." First, though, there's a tournament to try and win in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina.
