Cut prediction: The Honda Classic

Tiger Woods is headed back to TPC Sawgrass and THE PLAYERS Championship, where he has authored some of the most unforgettable chapters of his storied career. A 79-time PGA TOUR winner who has missed significant time with injuries, Woods announced late Thursday afternoon that he will tee it up at THE PLAYERS for the first time since a T69 finish in 2015. He won the tournament in 2001 and 2013, and also won the 1994 U.S. Amateur at TPC Sawgrass. Injuries have limited the 14-time major winner, but Woods’ comeback at age 42 has been a big storyline this season. Although he finished a forgettable T32 at the Masters, he captivated fans at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard (T5) and Valspar Championship (T2), where a birdie at the last would have forced a playoff in his first-ever start at the Valspar. The only player to win the FedExCup multiple times (2007, ’09), Woods is 50th in the current FedExCup standings and 91st in the Official World Golf Ranking. He has a 69.9 scoring average this season. His performance this season has been a pleasant surprise. Few knew what to expect after his most recent back surgery, a fusion operation that shelved him for most of 2017, but the procedure seems to have worked “I’m a walking miracle,â€� Woods has said more than once. His overriding goal was to be able to live without pain, but he’s been able to do so much more than that both on and off the course. Last month he was named captain of the 2019 U.S. Presidents Cup team, which will take on the Internationals at Royal Melbourne on Dec. 12-15. And in just the last week, Woods has given a kidsclinic at Big Cedar Lodge in Ridgedale, Missouri, and a private golf lession to a Nepalese teenager in South Florida. Meanwhile, he’s been practicing amid his traditional post-Masters hiatus.   This has been a big season for comebacks on TOUR, with Jason Day, Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy and others picking up victories after long droughts. A Woods victory at TPC Sawgrass would end one of the game’s most talked-about dry spells and move him ever closer to the TOUR’s all-time victories leader Sam Snead (82). One of Woods’ few flaws has been the long game, where he is 202nd in driving accuracy (51.97 percent) and 151st in strokes gained: off-the-tee (-.174) this season. TPC Sawgrass is demanding off the tee, though it will allow him to hit less than driver off many tees. The watery Pete Dye course may be even tougher on mediocre approach shots, though. “It’s disappointing that I didn’t hit the ball well enough,â€� Woods said at the Masters, where he faulted his imprecise iron play. “But to be able to just be out here competing again, if you had said that last year at this particular time, I would have said you’re crazy.â€�

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RIDGELAND, S.C. – Rory McIlroy was not in a waiting mood as he stood fidgeting on the tee at the par-4 15th hole at Congaree Golf Club, site of THE CJ CUP in South Carolina. The hole measures 360 yards but features a deep and rugged bunker that juts into the fairway from the left, and most players prudently lay up short with long irons, as McIlroy’s two fellow competitors already had. Not McIlroy. He stood there looking like Popeye fresh from an all-you-can-eat spinach buffet, until he could stand idly no longer. McIlroy unleashed a mighty swing and launched a moonshot that scoffed at the 320 yards it needed to cover the gaping bunker, his ball then pounding firm turf and scooting between a greenside bunker and a golf bag before finally stopping on the front of the green. The players and caddies on the green weren’t ready for that. Keegan Bradley, playing alongside Thomas and Jon Rahm up ahead, threw both arms over his head, hopefully only in jest at his South Florida neighbor. After the group teed off at 16, McIlroy would walk up and apologize. He was sorry/not sorry. “Yeah, the longer I stood over that tee shot,” McIlroy said, “the more likely it was that I was going to lay up, so I just needed to step up and hit it. Whether they were on the green or not, I had to go.” Had to go. In a larger picture frame, that line seems to capture where it is in the golf universe that McIlroy finds himself at the moment. There are few things in golf as feared as McIlroy when he is armed with a hot driver and a belly filled with confidence. At Congaree on Thursday, where his opening 5-under 66 left him just one shot off the lead, McIlroy had both. He is playing well, he is No. 2 in the world (closing fast on top-ranked Scottie Scheffler), he has momentum on his side, and it is time to go. Time to make his move. Last autumn, McIlroy, 33, was coming off a dismal performance at the Ryder Cup, where the European team’s clear-cut leader had laid an egg, and his team got trounced. He was in tears. Having climbed to No. 1 eight different times in his career – doing so the first time in 2012 – McIlroy had slid to 14th. No-man’s land for him. Frankly, he was lost. So he hit reset and decided to do something about it. His priority? Reclaiming ownership in his own game. Making sure whatever he was doing had his own thumbprint. Never one to stand in one place, McIlroy had chased more speed, a rabbit hole, and listened to advice outside of Michael Bannon, his instructor since his youth in Northern Ireland. McIlroy eventually would move forward by pausing and taking a step back. “I sort of went down a path that I realized wasn’t for me,” McIlroy said. “That was really it, just trying to get back ownership of my game, my golf swing, and being OK with doing it my way. I think that was the big thing.” Thursday, outside of a wild opening tee shot, there was little to fault in his game. He ran off three consecutive birdies starting at Congaree’s par-5 fourth, and he tacked on two more birdies on the back, including an easy two-putt birdie after reaching the green at 15. After he’d driven the green, a tanned marshal on the tee was asked if other players in the field also had been doing that. “Uh-uh,” the marshal said, somewhat shock-like, shaking his head side-to-side. You’d have thought he’d just spotted Sasquatch. Tom Kim, the 20-year-old South Korean who already has two PGA TOUR victories, knows that McIlroy packs plenty of power into a small frame, but it was different to be playing alongside him, and to witness it for 18 holes. “He makes this game look so easy,” said Kim, who was impressive in his own right. (Kim briefly tied the lead when he stuffed a 9-iron inside 2 feet at the par-4 17th, reaching 6 under on his round, but gave the shot back with an errant drive on the final hole.) Kim seemed to think getting to play golf with McIlroy (and Rickie Fowler) was the coolest thing since the new iPhone. It was hard not to be a spectator. At the par-5 12th, for instance, McIlroy smashed a drive around the corner that was 80 yards past Kim’s. “Something you can’t copy, I think,” Kim said of McIlroy’s power. “It was really hard to just kind of play my own game sometimes. Seeing the lines he took, and it was like 380 (yards) to the runout and he was saying, ‘Sit.’ I was like, ‘Really? Like, sit?’ It was like 380, but he almost made it.” McIlroy spent a few days last week in Florida fine-tuning with Bannon, trying to get his right arm to support the club a little better at the top. Swing-wise, he’s in a nice place. And not only does he have the No. 1 world ranking back in view, McIlroy, who became the first two-time winner of the PGA TOUR’s FedExCup in August, can finish in the top spot on the DP World Tour, too. The DP World Tour Championship is Nov. 17-20 in Dubai. Plenty at stake in mid-October? That is a very nice destination. “Maybe if I didn’t have these two things to go for over the next couple of months, I would take a bit of time off, but I still feel motivated,” McIlroy said. “I think playing well motivates you even more also. There’s definitely no lack of that.” Outside of perhaps a dose more patience on that 15th tee on Thursday, Rory McIlroy did not lack for much.

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GREENSBORO, N.C. – What’s your number? It’s more than a pickup line at this week’s Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club, where those orbiting the 125th spot in the FedExCup standings are acutely aware of it. The top 125 after this week go directly to the FedExCup Playoffs, which start at Liberty National in just eight days, and also secure their playing status for next season. Others will be left to rue what might have been, and take stock of their options going forward. “It’s obviously a huge week for everybody in the field,� said Brandt Snedeker, who won here last year, when he opened with a 59, and in 2007. “For guys trying to keep their card, for guys trying to move up in the FedExCup points list, for a guy like me who, every point really matters right now trying to solidify a good regular season and get ready – I’m trying to make it to East Lake.� At 32nd in the FedExCup, Snedeker, a nine-time PGA TOUR winner who won the FedExCup in 2012, still has some work to do to get to the season-ender in Atlanta, but he’s looking good for the first two stops in the FedExCup Playoffs, The Northern Trust and the BMW Championship. As it stands now, Lucas Glover (30) would be the last man into the TOUR Championship, which is no small thing for a guy who has played in that tournament just once, in 2009 (T10). “I guess in ’17 I was 50-ish,� Glover said of the last time he was looking this good this late in the season. “Before that it had been a while. The game’s solid. Nothing’s been great; just solid.� Still, solid is a huge upgrade from a year ago at this time, when he was recovering from surgery to repair two meniscus tears in his left knee. “I’ve been working hard a couple years,� he said. “I’m finally healthy. It’s nice to be able to bend down to read a putt and not have to wince.� It’s those near that all-important 125th spot, though, who have the most on the line at Sedgefield, even if their situations are occasionally complicated. Consider the cases of Martin Trainer (128) and Jim Herman (138), who won the Puerto Rico Open and Barbasol Championship, respectively, this season. They will enjoy full status through 2021, but thanks to a spate of missed cuts for each, they have work to do to get to the Playoffs. Then there are those who find themselves way down the list, for whom a “victory� this week could be simply cracking the top 200 to earn a spot in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. Here are five players riding the bubble at the Wyndham: Alex Noren (125) – The Bubble Boy at 125th in the FedExCup, Noren finished T12 at the World Golf Championships – FedEx St. Jude Invitational, and T11 at The Open Championship. “I’ve had two pretty good weeks, so the game feels a lot better,� said Noren, who is ranked 44th in the world. “I’m just trying to play good golf and see what happens. It would be nice to make the Playoffs. I’m trying to get to next week and the following week. I’ve been working on hitting it better with the irons, hitting it closer and hitting more greens.� Daniel Berger (131) – Two-time TOUR winner Berger is still looking for a bounce-back after returning from a hand injury. When the best players in the world assembled at TPC Southwind in Memphis for the World Golf Championships – FedEx St. Jude Invitational last week, Berger, who’d won twice there, wasn’t qualified. He can still get back to Liberty National, where he clinched the winning point for the U.S. Team at the 2017 Presidents Cup. “It’s taken a whole year,� he said of his comeback from injury. “I’m finally starting to feel good. You take some time off from competitive anything and it’s tough to get back into it.� Andrew Landry (132) – After an energizing third-place finish at the John Deere Classic, he took a week off, then missed the cut at the Barracuda Championship. As the Valero Texas Open champ last year, he’s already exempt next season, but has work to do in order to make the Playoffs. “I’m never super-sharp the first week back off of a break, so that’s kind of why I played Barracuda,� Landry said. “I had sort of a weird first round, but turned it around and shot bogey-free 6 under in the second. Everything is really, really solid right now. This is one of my favorite courses to play. I’m going to contend this week; I have a good feeling about it.� Martin Kaymer (146) – He’s won two majors and THE PLAYERS Championship, but has work to do if he wants to advance to The Northern Trust. “I have to finish in the top six or seven,� said Kaymer, whose third-place finish at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide is his only top-25 result this season. “I think (Sedgefield) is an underrated golf course and is one of the better ones that we play on the PGA TOUR. I’ve played 10 of the last 12 weeks just to try to get my number up and get into the FedExCup Playoffs, so I’ve tried everything I can think of.� Alex Cejka (205) – He’s unconcerned about whether or not he gets inside the top 200 to advance to the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. That’s because Cejka will turn 50 and be PGA TOUR Champions eligible at the end of 2020, so the prospect of playing less next year is enticing. “I have no pressure,� he said. “I don’t care if I make top 125 or top 200. I’ve been 17, 18 years out here. I need a little break before I turn 50. … If I make it (inside the top 200), I go to the Finals; if not, it’s even better. I’ve got to work a little on the fitness, a little on the swing, and I’ll still get into some fall events. A lot of my colleagues who are just inside or outside the number – they’re sweating.�

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