Dustin Johnson takes 4-shot lead at WGC Mexico Championship

Tiger Woods has reached one of golf’s great milestones. His win Sunday at THE ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP was the 82nd of his stories career, tying him with Sam Snead for the most in PGA TOUR history. Let’s use the numbers to take a closer look at Woods’ incredible achievement. RELATED: History Loves Company | Visual Stories: Tiger’s Top 10 shots | Final leaderboard 1. A CLASS OF THEIR OWN: Snead and Woods are the only players to win more than 80 PGA TOUR titles. Jack Nicklaus is the only other player to win more than 70. 2. NOTHING BUT A NUMBER: Snead’s 82nd career TOUR title at the age of 52 at the 1965 Wyndham Championship. Woods won his 82nd nine years earlier, at the age of 43. Here’s a look at the age that each player reached various victory milestones. 3. PLAYING THE PERCENTAGES: Woods has won 22.8% of his PGA TOUR starts. He’s finished in the top 10 in more than half of his starts (55.2%). Woods has the highest winning percentage in PGA TOUR history. Ben Hogan is the only player with at least 200 career starts to win at least 20% of the time. 4. FAST LANE: Woods won five times in his first 263 days as a professional, passing 487 players who had four or fewer PGA TOUR Wins. At the time, Woods needed to pass 160 players for the most all-time TOUR wins. The below table shows the number of players who had one or more victories than Woods at the time of his win at the event. 5. FRONT-RUNNER: Since 1996, Woods has won 93.2% (55 of 59) of PGA TOUR events when leading or co-leading after 54-holes in official 72-hole stroke play events. That’s the best win percentage of any player with four or more 54-hole leads and co-leads. When the outright leader, his win percentage increases to 96% (44 of 46), while the PGA TOUR average is 44% over the last decade. Woods is 25 of 25 when holding outright 54-hole leader and leading by three or more strokes (last win: 2019 ZOZO Championship).

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PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Justin Thomas hopes his winner’s check doesn’t take too big of a hit, but he just couldn’t help himself. Thomas used an expletive to emphasize his excitement after winning The Honda Classic on the first playoff hole. He admitted afterward that he’d hoped the cameras missed his celebratory remarks “Let’s go. (Expletive) yeah, baby,� he said after holing his 3-footer for the win. He just got caught up in the moment after a hard-fought victory on one of the PGA TOUR’s toughest tests. “Please don’t fine me very much, PGA TOUR,� he sheepishly pleaded in his post-tournament press conference. “That’s not something I wanted to get on TV. It just was an emotional win and I was happy to get it done.� Thomas continued his incredible play with his second win of the season. The reigning FedExCup champion now leads this season’s standings. He’s won seven of his past 31 PGA TOUR starts (23 percent). Increased consistency was his goal after last season’s five-win campaign. He seems to be on the right track, finishing no worse than T22 in seven starts this season. He believes he’s playing even better than in his FedExCup-winning campaign, which also included six missed cuts and nearly as many top-10s (12) as finishes outside the top 25 (11). “I feel very confident in pretty much every part of my game right now,� he said. It showed as Thomas parred PGA National’s penal finishing holes, then stiffed a wedge shot on the final hole of regulation to tie Luke List atop a tightly-packed leaderboard. On the first playoff hole, Thomas flew a 5-wood over water and two-putted for victory. His victory at last year’s PGA Championship also came on a tough track with a finishing stretch notorious enough to earn its own nickname, but the margins were much slimmer this time. At Quail Hollow, Thomas had some shots to work with after his chip-in at the 13th hole. The final-round leaderboard at The Honda Classic saw as many as four players share the lead on the back nine. “I just hit some really, really well-executed shots coming down the stretch. I haven’t done that on this difficult of holes before,� Thomas said. “One swing equals a double on those holes. It just was a big confidence booster, really.� It’s surprising Thomas would need one, considering his success over the past year, but each win is unique. He spoke on the eve of the final round about the satisfaction he’d get from winning on a course with such a penal reputation. The scoring average on the par-70 Champion Course at PGA National was more than two strokes over par. Thomas and List tied for the lead at 8-under 272; only 11 players broke par this week. Thomas’ five bogeys were second-fewest in the field (he also made one double-bogey). “When you get out of position, you have to get back in and try to salvage a par. That’s what I did so well,� he said. Three years ago, he estimates that he took nine penalty drops in 36 holes en route to a missed cut. He finished third here in 2016, but missed the cut again last year. He returned to PGA National to congratulate Rickie Fowler on his win, and Fowler returned the favor this year. “It’s definitely very satisfying when you can get the job done on a course that tests all parts of your game,� Fowler said as he watched Thomas accept the trophy. Thomas was bogey-free on the back-nine, making birdies on 13 and 18 and executing several clutch up-and-downs. He drove in the rough on the final hole before stuffing a 117-yard wedge shot to make birdie and match List.   “This was a hard win, it was,� Thomas said. “I was very calm and comfortable kind of those first 14 holes, and that’s the first time I’ve had to play the Bear Trap in that much pressure, and it was pretty nerve-wracking.� Mike Thomas was impressed with his son’s ability to go 72 holes without a penalty shot on a course lined by so many water hazards. “He’s ultra-aggressive, and he’s good enough to be aggressive,� Mike Thomas said. “I think he’s learned that he doesn’t have to attack every flag. … He just didn’t make any mistakes.� And so he walked away with yet another trophy.

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PEBBLE BEACH, Calif — Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and current NFL commentator Tony Romo, fresh out of the broadcasting booth at Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta, is set to play in the 2019 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am this week. In a field full of celebrity golfers, he’s arguably the most competition-tested. Romo made his PGA TOUR debut in 2018 at the Corales Resort and Club Championship in the Dominican Republic, although he missed the cut following a second-round 82. Being a high-level player without an equipment contract, the clubs Romo chooses to use are particularly noteworthy. Below, I take you through the clubs and shafts in his bag this week, along with insight from two different equipment TOUR reps. Driver, fairway wood and hybrid After calling the Super Bowl game on Sunday, Romo was out on the Pebble Beach range on Monday afternoon, braving the rainy and windy 40-degree weather for a practice session. He hit buckets and buckets of wedges and irons, and he eventually broke into a driver testing session. He showed up to the range with a TaylorMade M3 driver and a Fujikura Atmos Blue shaft, but he tested a TaylorMade M5 with a Fujikura Ventus 7X shaft in it, under the supervision of Fujikura TOUR rep Patrick McCoy. I caught up with McCoy for his insight on how the testing session went: “The driver that we made him was standard, 45.75 inches end of grip, (swing weight) D3, which was his gamer specs with the Atmos Blue,â€� McCoy told me. “We had him try a Ventus 7X in a 10.5 (degrees) M5… as we went thru the fitting we slowly opened up the face a little bit and then moved the weights a little bit forward, which lowered his launch and then also eliminated some spin. His misses were either low on the face or high on the face, but at the same time he was kind of working on his golf swing… I have not worked with him on a launch monitor in a while, but he’s gotta be over 170 ball speed… we know Ventus was a little bit weaker in the handle for him, and you could see that in transition, he’s got a very fast move from top to bottom.â€� As McCoy explains, Romo is currently making changes to his golf swing with teacher Chris O’Connell. “His body has a tendency to outrace his hands at times, which changes his low point of impact, or the bottom of his arc,â€� McCoy said. “He wants to feel like he’s more level and he’s still driving. That’s his miss, the handle gets up, shaft droops, and the face gets open. So (his miss is) high on the face where there’s more loft, or low on the face … he knows how to fix it and that’s awesome that he can make the changes. He likes to see it fall a little bit right. His misses are probably a little on the spinny side, but at his speed, that’s OK because it keeps him in the fairway. Or when he’s off, he’s just a little off … Once he got where he liked the face angle, he said the shafts — both Atmos and Ventus — felt good. They felt stable… it looked like he tended to bend the Ventus a little bit more from the top, yet it didn’t sacrifice anything at the bottom with his impact location and his face direction.â€�  It will be interesting to see which driver – the TaylorMade M3 with a Fujikura Atmos Blue shaft, or the TaylorMade M5 with a Fujikura Ventus shaft — Romo ends up using come competition time on Thursday. It should be noted that the Ventus comes stock in a Dallas Cowboys’ colorway. To fill out the top end of his bag, Romo is using a Callaway Rogue 3+ fairway wood with a Mitsubishi Diamana W-series 70X shaft, and a Titleist 818H2 hybrid with a Mitsubishi Tensei CK Pro White 90HY shaft. Mizuno irons, per usual Jeff Cook, a Mizuno TOUR rep, told me that he and Romo go way back to when Romo was just a second-string quarterback for the Cowboys, and he had a “hodge podge set of clubs.â€� Romo and Cook met through Cook’s college roommate, who was a General Manager of Trophy Club, a country club in Dallas, at the time. “We actually had a cookout at my buddy’s backyard (in Dallas) and Tony came over,â€� Cook told me. “I didn’t even know who he was, because he was the second string quarterback. He came over, we had a cookout, and we ended up throwing the football in the backyard, talking golf. And then we ended up playing golf while I was down there. He was good. I mean, he’s always been basically a scratch golfer, and obviously a gifted athlete. And that’s how it all started. He didn’t really have any clubs, he had kind of a hodge podge set of clubs. And I took care of him on Mizuno clubs. He’s been in our clubs ever since he came to Dallas.â€� Flash forward to 2019, and Romo is using a combo set of Mizuno MMC MP-18 irons (4-6 iron) and MP-18 blades (7-PW), each equipped with Nippon N.S. Pro Modus3 Tour 120 shafts. Jordan Spieth’s wedge You may recognize Romo’s Titleist Vokey SM7 wedge; it’s a hand-me-down from Jordan Spieth. “He’s best friends with Jordan,â€� Cook said. “He plays a lot with Jordan at the same club, they play all the time at home. When Jordan gets done with his and gets new ones, he gives them to him, or whoever else he gives them to.â€� In addition to the 60-degree, University of Texas-stamped “JSâ€� wedge, Romo also has a 50-degree SM6 F-Grind and a 56-degree V-grind Vokey prototype. The 60-degree wedge has a Project X 6.0 shaft, while the 50- and 56-degree wedges have a True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 shaft in them. Tiger Woods’ putter Romo is also the recipient of another hand-me-down golf club from a champion golfer. Inside Romo’s bag is one of Tiger Woods’ old Method 001 putters, stamped with Tiger Woods on the hosel, Woods’ classic dot alignment aid on the topline, and a blacked-out Ping putter grip. It’s the same style putter that Woods used to win THE PLAYERS Championship in 2013.

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