Details of Mickelson’s ‘Tiger Slayer’ putter

Emergency 9 Here are nine tidbits from Round 3 of the Valero Texas Open that gamers can use tomorrow, this weekend or down the road. The AT&T Oaks Course in San Antonio has been the host since 2010 and plays 7,435 yards to a par-72. Final Paring The experience factor falls squarely in the lap of Zach Johnson in the final round as he’s won in the state of Texas on four previous occasions (twice at La Cantera and Colonial). He backed up his career-best round of 65 at The AT&T Oaks course with his T-second-best round of 68 to share the last tee time with Andrew Landry on 13 under par. Johnson finished strongly as he played his final 14 holes 5 under par. … Landry played in the final group at the CareerBuilder Challenge in January and fired a 68 before losing in a playoff to Jon Rahm. The Texan shouldn’t be out of his depth and the underdog role should suit him well. He didn’t square a bogey in Round 3 and only had one in Round 2 so he’s on point. Trey, Bien Trey Mullinax set the course record with 62 in Round 3 that included seven birdies, two eagles and only one bogey. He’s only posted two top-10 finishes in 40 previous events but his T8 at Valspar was just two starts ago. Playing out of the 126-150 category he’s been under plenty of pressure already this season. He’s 14 under the last two rounds and is leading the field in SG: putting. Walker, Texas Ranger Jimmy Walker was pleased after the round that he finally racked up some birdies, seven of them, as he fights to find four-round form dealing with the effects of Lyme disease. The 2015 champion will be the fan favorite tomorrow and gets to sleep in his own bed tonight just four shots behind. His worst final round in four previous tries is 70 so I’d expect him to be in the mix late tomorrow. He is T2 with 17 birdies. Keen on Joaquin Former world No. 1 amateur Joaquin Niemann has improved each round in his first start as a professional. After opening with 72 he went two lower in Round 2 before posting an excellent 67 in Round 3 to sit T11. His round tomorrow is huge because a top-10 finish will save him a sponsor’s exemption down the road. Gamers should have him on their radar and his 67 today should have added plenty of more eyeballs. Been There, Done That 2013 champ Martin Laird saw his co-course record fall today but sitting at T5, four-shots back has his focus elsewhere. After ripping off nine birdies in Round 2 he only posted two (and an eagle) in Round 3. I’m more interested in the 17 holes he played without a bogey after stubbing his toe on No. 1. … Chris Kirk, who has also won at Colonial, backed up his bogey-free 66 with a 68 in Round 3. He’s hit three more greens each day since opening with just nine in Round 1 so it’s not surprising he’s only squared one bogey in the last 36 holes. Moving Day A bogey-free 65 that included an eagle saw Sean O’Hair jump 20 spots into the conversation at T5. O’Hair finished T2 at Colonial last year and constantly plays well at Bay Hill, a course that has an interesting correlation this week. He’s only squared four bogeys and a double this week. He’ll play on Sunday with Walker and next week as they are paired in New Orleans … Defending champ Kevin Chappell continues his weekend mastery at this event as his 67 moved him up 28 spots to T20. His closed with 68 the last two years to finish T4 or better. I’m riding him until my spurs fall off as it looks like his back is behaving again. Moving Day: Wrong Way 54-hole co-leader Ryan Moore posted 70 today and dropped to fourth alone, reinforcing how “gettable” The AT&T Oaks Course was today after the threat of storms and rain never materialized. Of the six nines he’s played this week his only bogeys were on his outward round Saturday. In two previous Sunday rounds here he’s posted 68 and 72 and will be looking to pick up his first win since the John Deere Classic in 2016. Knocking Again I see you creeping again, Beau Hossler. His 69 in Round 3 moved him to T11 and six shots back. He closed with a 67 in Houston (P2) followed by a 68 at Harbour Town (T16) last week to continue his excellent second season. He’s T7 GIR for the week after hitting 16 of 18 in Round 3. Study Hall With 80 players making the 36-hole cut, MDF took place after Round 3. If Xander Schauffele or Bill Haas were in your lineup, among others, please be aware and adjust! … Round 3 played the easiest of the week at 70.925, down from 72.052 in Round 2. There were eight, bogey-free rounds, two more than Round 2. … 2016 champ Charley Hoffman finally posted a round in the red (71), ending a streak of five rounds above par. It’s a case of too-little-too-late for gamers in any format, sadly. … The mystery that is Si Woo Kim continues to baffle most players as he also sits T59, tied with Hoffman, entering the final round.

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DETROIT – Jeff Roth was hard to miss in a loud orange golf shirt, light blue shorts and PGA-crested Titleist staff bag as he hit balls at Detroit Golf Club on Wednesday. He has a squat, unchiseled build that harkens to an earlier era, and is the only person in the field this week who’s 63, making him the club pro equivalent of Bernhard Langer and the bookend to big-hitting Bryson DeChambeau. While DeChambeau and others have flirted with 200 mph ball speed, Roth is at 140. He will be playing a very different game when the Rocket Mortgage Classic begins Thursday. “The obvious – making the cut and playing the weekend,” he said of his goals for the week. “I’ve got people coming in from New Mexico, California, and of course I’ve got family and friends here in Michigan. My daughters are putting together a couple of Fatheads of me, so it’s gonna be pretty cool. I’m really looking forward to it.” All told, he added, his gallery might number 50-70 friends and family. Older players are having a bit of a moment. Phil Mickelson won the PGA Championship at nearly 51. Tim O’Neal, 48, won The John Shippen tournament earlier this week to earn his place in the field at the Rocket Mortgage. Dick Mast, 70, Monday-qualified for this week’s DICK’s Sporting Goods Open on PGA TOUR Champions. And now we have Roth, who admires them all. A resident of Farmington, New Mexico since 2010, Roth teaches at Michigan’s Boyne Golf Academy in the summer. He is, to borrow a movie title from 10 years ago, a human hot tub time machine. He played collegiately for Arizona in the 70s and made his first PGA TOUR start at the 1983 Buick Open won by Wayne Levi at nearby Warwick Hills Golf and Country Club. His game didn’t blossom until the 90s. He qualified for the Rocket Mortgage by winning the 2019 Michigan PGA Professional Championship; his spot in the field was held over a year because of the pandemic. If you haven’t heard of him, then maybe you’re not from here; Roth has won six Michigan majors. TOUR pro aspirations? Yeah, he had those, but once he settled down with his wife, Maureen, they began to fall away. “Plus,” he added, “I just wasn’t that good.” He made five of 20 cuts on TOUR. Still, not everyone has played in six PGA Championships in four decades, from 1988 to 2020. Roth has stood the test of time, and will have 40 years on players like Davis Thompson and Joaquin Niemann this week. “We figured when they met that it was the oldest and the youngest in the field,” said Thompson’s caddie Damon Green, who competed against Roth at the 2011 U.S. Senior Open at Inverness. Green’s recollections of that week are commonplace amongst those who have seen the Roth magic up-close. Green was longer off the tee, sometimes by a lot, but Roth wouldn’t go away. “I was outdriving him by 40 yards,” he said, “and then he hit his hybrids inside my wedges and short irons. It was impressive. My brother turned into a Jeff Roth superfan that week. “He’s very accurate,” Green continued, “and very disciplined.” He has to be, since he has no margin for error. Roth is so short, relatively speaking, that when he played in the 2020 PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park, he couldn’t reach six of the par-4s in two. “So it was a par 76 for me,” he said. He shot 74-75 and missed the cut by eight shots. And yet it would be foolish to write him off this week. “I was always a long hitter,” said friend and college teammate Dan Pohl, who had a 30-plus-year PGA TOUR career before he built Pole Cat Golf Course in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. “Jeff was a thinker who manages himself around the course very well. He doesn’t make many mistakes. “Now at 64,” Pohl said with a laugh, “we make mistakes just getting up in the morning, but he’s still got the passion and the want to play at this level. He doesn’t have anything left to prove.” Roth wears his staying power like a badge of honor. “We grew up in an era where longevity was part of the formula for being a good player,” he said. “It’s just my opinion, but I don’t think today’s players look at it like that. I think they look at it where a career could be like five to 10 years. I don’t know if that’s the money, I don’t know if it’s that the physical part of what they put into it is so much greater than what we did. “Nobody trained like that in my era, so there were probably fewer injuries,” he continued. “Or you never heard about them because you just played through them.” If he could be gifted the career of Jay Haas or two-time U.S. Open champion Curtis Strange, Roth added, he would take Haas, “because he’s still playing, still grinding, still lovin’ it. “That to me is what it’s all about,” he said. Roth will go off the first tee at 8:45 a.m. Thursday, with much younger Mark Anderson and younger still Daniel Wetterich. Roth will have a nice gallery in tow, Fatheads included. He figures his personal par will be 73, which means he’ll have to shoot around 6 under to make it to the weekend. He’s still playing, still grinding, and still lovin’ it.

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BROOKLINE, Mass. — Will Zalatoris and Matt Fitzpatrick avoided the carnage and calamity that took down golf’s best Saturday at a U.S. Open that set the tone for a final day of survival. Zalatoris, who lost in a three-hole playoff at the PGA Championship last month, made only one bogey — a staggering feat on a beast of a Brookline course — for a 3-under 67. “Felt like I shot a 61,” Zalatoris said. “Whenever I made a mistake I was able to get away with it or pull off something miraculous.” Fitzpatrick, already a champion at The Country Club with his U.S. Amateur title in 2013, was equally steady and ran off three birdies over his last five holes for a 68. He will be in the final group of a major for the second straight time. Most telling was they didn’t make any double bogeys. That’s what knocked defending champion Jon Rahm out of the lead on the final hole. The Spaniard thought he had seen it all — including a shot he played back-handed from the base of a tree on the eighth hole — when he took three swipes from sand in two bunkers. Rahm’s first shot from a fairway bunker hit the lip and nearly rolled into his footprint. His next shot found a plugged lie in a greenside bunker, and two putts later he had a 71 and went from one ahead to one behind. Rahm wasn’t upset with his swing on the final hole. If anything, he said it was getting dark and he didn’t notice his ball sitting down in the sand. Rahm was looking ahead instead of what he left behind. “I have 18 holes, and I’m only one shot back,” he said. “That’s the important thing.” Zalatoris and Fitzpatrick were at 4-under 206, the same score of the 54-hole lead when the U.S. Open was last at The Country Club in 1988. It’s not like Rahm had full rights to the lead. This Saturday at Brookline was so wild that Rahm was among eight players who had at least a share of the lead at some point. Three of them didn’t even finish among the top 10, including two-time major champion Collin Morikawa. Morikawa, who shared the 36-hole lead with Joel Dahmen, had double bogeys on the seventh and 13th holes, and might have had a third after a chunked wedge on No. 4 except that he made a 25-foot putt for bogey. He finished with a 77. Masters champion Scottie Scheffler was not immune. The world’s No. 1 player looked to be pulling away when he holed a wedge from some 80 yards for eagle on the par-5 eighth. He was at 6 under and cruising until his wedge to a back pin on the 141-yard 11th hole bounced hard over the green and into deep rough. He took two to the green and two puts later was no longer leading. And it only got worse as three straight bogeys followed and he shot 71. Seven of the top 12 players going into Saturday made at least one double bogey in strong wind and cool temperatures that made this sweater weather in June. Rory McIlroy was not on that list. His was more of a slow bleed, mostly from a putter that wasn’t behaving. He made one birdie in his round of 73. All that, and this U.S. Open was far from settled. “It was one of the toughest days on a golf course I’ve had in a long time,” McIlroy said. “I just needed to grind it out, and I did on the back nine. To play that back nine at even par today was a really good effort, I thought. Just kept myself in the tournament. That’s all I was trying to do. Just keep hanging around.” Twenty-three players were under par going into the third round. Only nine remain with 18 holes remaining, all of them separated by three shots. That includes a local star — maybe not the Francis Ouimet variety, but Keegan Bradley is big enough in Beantown that he heard his name chanted loudly and proudly as he marched up toward the 18th green. A former PGA Championship winner, he called it “probably the highlight of my whole entire life.” He gave them reason to cheer. Three over through seven holes, Bradley answered with passion and birdies, five of them over his last 11 holes for a 69. He was two shots behind with Adam Hadwin (70) and Scheffler). McIlroy was three back along with Sam Burns (71) and Dahmen, who didn’t make a birdie in his round of 74 but stayed in the game because he didn’t have any big blunders. The average score was 73.5 and only seven players broke par. Denny McCarthy made the cut on the number at 3-over par. He finished his 68 before the leaders even arrived at the course. By the end of the day, he was tied for 11th, five shots behind. The U.S. Open played every bit like one. “I knew it was going to be hard,” Dahmen said. “I didn’t know it was going to be that hard.”

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