Dell Match Play: Rankings the Round of 16 players

Round 4 of the CIMB Classic from TPC Kuala Lumpur takes place Saturday evening. Gary Woodland, Shubhankar Sharma and Marc Leishman share the lead at 19 under, with Louis Oosthuizen and Bronson Burgoon only two shots back. Here’s how to follow the action from Asia. HOW TO WATCH/LISTEN (ALL TIMES ET) TELEVISION: Saturday-Sunday, 11 p.m.-3 a.m. (Golf Channel). NOTABLE GROUPS (ALL TIMES ET) 9:40 p.m. off No. 1: Stewart Cink, Charles Howell III, Chesson Hadley 9:50 p.m. off No. 1: Louis Oosthuizen, Bronson Burgoon, Austin Cook 10 p.m. off No. 1: Gary Woodland, Marc Leishman, Shubhankar Sharma MUST-READS Three share the lead at CIMB Classic

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ORLANDO – What happened to Graeme McDowell? This is a question that McDowell, 39, has gone to great lengths to try to answer, and is still trying to answer in real time. Mr. Everything in 2010, when he won the U.S. Open, the decisive point for Europe in the Ryder Cup, and two events on the European Tour, he has accrued just one top-10 finish in his last 47 PGA TOUR starts. His T10 at the 2017 Shriners Hospitals for Children seems like a long time ago, and a highlight unworthy of his talent. “I think people would look at me the last four or five years and say that I’ve got caught up in other things and lost my focus on what I’m doing,â€� McDowell told the PGA TOUR recently. “Is that true or false? Did I get married and have children? Yeah. Did that take my focus off what I was doing? Maybe.â€� And yet here is McDowell again, trying to dig himself out, as he put it after carding a 4-under 68 in the first round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. He was T3 after the first round, his best start since the 2015 World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational (now WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational), when he shot 66 and went on to finish T17. McDowell is scheduled to tee off Friday at 1:19 p.m. ET. It’s been a busy week so far. D.A. Points and Francesco Molinari each aced the par-3 seventh hole. There were 94 balls hit in the water in round one, the most of any round at Bay Hill since 2003. Phil Mickelson tried to hit a right-handed shot through a mesh fence, and failed. Still, the longest accounting of this Arnold Palmer Invitational was McDowell’s two-plus-page transcript after the first round. The recipient of the 2014 ASAP Sports/Jim Murray Award for accommodating the media, he’s always been one of the game’s great talkers. “Interesting to see a lot of Europeans playing well here,â€� he said, presciently. He was talking about Spain’s Rafa Cabrera Bello, who fired an opening 65, but, in a way, also predicting the second-round surge of England’s Tommy Fleetwood (66, 9-under total), who shot into the lead. “It’s a real fairway-and-green golf course,â€� McDowell added. “The rough’s very penal this week, and the greens are very firm.â€� Every course has seemed penal for McDowell of late, and true to form, he has owned up to it, for he is not only verbose, he is candid. (Somewhere there’s a television career out there with his name on it.) Thursday brought more gems from G-Mac, who has lived at nearby Lake Nona since shortly after his runner-up at the 2005 API. He laughed about a complication of sleeping in your own bed during a tournament: trying to get the kids to go to sleep. “It’s literally just life,â€� he said of his slow fade over last five years or so. “Life. Life just got in the way. Mostly the family stuff, and I don’t think I ever sat back and rested on my laurels and thought I was — I just, my practice changed. The time that I was giving to the game changed and I was less effective in what I was doing. It snuck up on me. “It sort of happened before I realize it had happened,â€� he added. How many golfers are that self-reflective? How many athletes? How many people? Still, there are all sorts of reasons to be excited if you’re McDowell, who is playing out of the 125-150 category from last season’s FedExCup. He’s twice finished runner-up at Bay Hill, including 2012, when he shot a 9-under 63 in the second round and earned a final-round pairing with Tiger Woods. (McDowell finished second to Woods, five back.) And he’s playing better than his results indicate at 117th in the FedExCup and 259th in the world. Also, the U.S. Open will return to Pebble Beach, site of his 2010 victory. (He’s already in the field thanks to his 10-year exemption.) And The Open Championship will be held near his boyhood home at Royal Portrush, Northern Ireland. He’s not in that field, but could earn a spot as the API is now part of the Open Qualifying Series; the top three finishers in the top 10 not otherwise qualified will earn spots in the field. McDowell only found this out Tuesday. He doesn’t want to obsess, so he’s trying not to think about it. “It’s hard to do because I want it really badly,â€� he said. “I want to be back up there competing with these guys and I do feel like I have some good stuff in me. But I’ve had to ask myself some pretty hard questions the last couple years. Thankfully, I’ve came to the conclusion that if it was all gone, I would miss it. So, you know what, let’s try and enjoy it while it’s here. “It’s an opportunity,â€� he added. “It’s not an opportunity to beat my head against the wall, it’s an opportunity to try and dig myself out of a hole and look at that challenge as something to be enjoyed, and it’s going to be very rewarding when I do get out of it.â€�

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It was a nice round that got him right in the thick of it despite having traveled across 14 time zones. But Marc Leishman’s 5-under 65 in the first round of the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, two back of leader Harris English, wasn’t the story. Not in and of itself. More significant was that Paul Leishman, his father, identifiable by the sponsor logos on his shirt and cap that matched his son’s, watched it all. Pelita, his mother, took in about nine holes with Audrey Leishman, Marc’s wife. His parents hadn’t seen him in almost a year and a half amid the pandemic, but after several written appeals the Australian government allowed them to leave for America and what became a tearful reunion at the Memphis airport on Monday night. “Dad’s one of my best mates,” Leishman said. “So not seeing him and my mum for a year and a half was – really tough. Also, I was playing terribly last year, so that didn’t help, either.” Sometimes the score doesn’t really tell the story, and that was the case for Leishman at TPC Southwind. It would be hard to overstate exactly what it took for his parents to be here. The Australian borders are shut and may not reopen for several months, a decision that has prompted backlash among those who believe the government has gone too far to stop COVID-19. “It was really tough; it’s been really tough for a lot of people,” Marc said. “We had to write letters to the Australian government for them to be allowed out of the country. We all wrote letters. I wrote one, Mom and Dad wrote one, different people from different fields write them. We had the PGA TOUR write one. There were letters coming from everybody. We had a pretty good case.” Although Leishman says, “The government were very good and got back to us quickly, gave them the go-ahead,” it was also a frustrating exercise that took months. “I understand not being able to go back into the country,” he said, “but not being able to leave is an interesting one.” Finally given the green light, Paul and Pelita left Warrnambool, Victoria – three hours southwest of Melbourne – and headed to America and Leishman’s hometown of Virginia Beach, Virginia. They were met at the airport by Audrey’s brother, Michael, on Saturday night. Harvey, Oliver, and Eva – Marc and Audrey’s three children – were in the dark and shocked to open the door and find their grandparents. Audrey filmed it. Marc, meanwhile, was still in Tokyo competing in the Olympics for Australia. Two days later, on Monday, Paul, Pelita, Audrey and the kids flew to Memphis, where the family has rented a house with a pool near TPC Southwind. Although the plan was to meet Marc back at the house, the charter flight from Japan – carrying the 19 players in the field in Memphis – was early to arrive, just a few minutes after Paul, Pelita, Audrey and the kids. Improvising, Paul and Pelita surprised their son at baggage claim. “That was another emotional moment,” Paul said. He may not be able to get back to Australia for a while, but he’s not particularly worried about it. The plan is for everyone to head to the Greenbrier in West Virginia after this week, as Marc and Audrey are having work done on their house. And after that, who knows? Marc and Paul are so close, it would almost be a blessing in disguise if his dad does get stuck in America. They’ve spent countless hours playing golf together, and it was a momentous day when Marc, then 13, finally beat his scratch-handicap father in the Warrnambool Golf Club championship. Although Marc now lives in America, he saw his father frequently before the pandemic. It’s been a hard year and a half. “It’s a weight of your back, I guess, just to be able to see him again,” said Marc, who came into this week at FedExCup No. 31. (The top 30 get into the season-ending TOUR Championship.) “He’s not too worried if he gets stuck here, I don’t think. He loves it in America, coming to the golf tournaments. It’s a pretty good spot to be, especially the way Australia is at the moment.” He’ll go back out for round two Friday. His dad expects to follow every shot.

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