Everything you need to know for Round 3 of the Players

HAIKOU, CHINA—England’s William Harrold shot a 7-under-par 65 to share the 36-hole lead with towering American Joseph Winslow (69) at the PGA TOUR Series-China International Qualifying Tournament No. 2 at Mission Hills Haikou’s Sandbelt Trails Course. Chinese Taipei’s Chunkang “Jacob� Hung (74), the first-round leader, was third at 4-under, one ahead of Ireland’s Brian O’Donovan (73), a Mission Hills Shenzhen teaching pro, and the American trio of Jesse Speirs (71), Cody Paladino (70) and Kevin Techakanokboon (70). South Korea-based Argentine Martin Kim (69) is among a group at 2-under. Others in contention include Hong Kong’s Motin Yeung (72) and Japan’s Junya Kameshiro (68), in a tie for 13th at 1-under, while Malaysia’s Arie Irawan (69), moved to even-par and a share of 18th. The top-15 finishers will earn full cards and the next 25 and ties will be conditionally exempt for a Series that rewards the top-five money winners with places on the Web.com Tour, the path to the PGA TOUR. The 6-foot-5 Winslow carded his sixth birdie of the day at the par-5 18th to set the clubhouse lead. The 25-year-old bogeyed the par-5 first and doubled the par-4 17th, but in between birdied Nos. 3, 6, 7, 8 and 12 before closing his round with his 13th birdie in 36 holes. The 25-year-old native of Kansas is on track to earn a full card on the Tour but will be mindful of last month’s PGA TOUR Latinoamerica qualifier in Bogota, Colombia, when he started the final day in second place before a closing 80 left him 17th and with only conditional status for 2018 on that circuit. “I feel pretty good. I’ve had a couple of pretty solid rounds out there. Today was more gritty, while yesterday was pretty solid in general. it’s been fun, but I feel like my best golf is still ahead out here,� Winslow said. “I just want to keep playing solid on the weekend, keep executing the strategy. I want to play the par-5s a little bit better and clean up a little bit of the slop. My wedge play today wasn’t quite as solid, so I’d like to clean that up a bit, stay focused and keep playing my game.� Harrold, who shot an opening 64 in an Asian Tour event in Xiamen, China, at the end of last year, teed off on No. 10 and carded eight birdies, including three in a row, twice, from Nos. 11-13 and Nos. 7-9. The 29-year-old was delighted with the improvement from his opening 74. “I’ve had three birdies in a row before, but I can’t remember doing it twice in a round,� said Harrold, who won a European Challenge Tour event in 2014 and has two victories on the Euro Pro Tour. “I set myself up much better today and hit nice iron shots into good positions on the green. I also holed some good putts, and that’s not always easy on these greens, which have a lot of slopes. I putted nicely in the first round, but my swing wasn’t as good as today.� The 5-foot-3 O’Donovan played with Winslow for the first two days and enjoyed the group, despite the big difference in height and length off the tee. The 30-year-old native of Ireland played his own game and kept himself in contention for Tour golf. “Joseph’s hitting his second ball from a different place to me, places I don’t see on the golf course,� said the Irishman. “I remember I hit a really good drive on one hole, and he knocked a 3-wood about 30 yards past me. That was depressing, but it’s been good fun.� Kim showed his pedigree, having played on the Korean Tour for three years and on the Japan Golf Tour last year, although he failed to retain his card. The strongly built Argentine—whose grandparents moved from South Korea to Buenos Aires— is just three shots off the lead as seeks a PGA TOUR Series-China card and a path to the U.S. “It was a good round, I think. Even when I made mistakes, I didn’t lose focus, so that’s why I could finish under-par today,� Kim said. “I’m here because I want to be on the PGA TOUR, so first I have to get my card.�

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The Valero Texas Open, which begins this week at TPC San Antonio, made its debut a century ago at a municipal golf course in a river-crossed public park that included a zoo. It left Brackenridge Park in 1959. But it never left San Antonio. Now, the VTO is the oldest tournament on the PGA TOUR to have been played exclusively in the same city. Its origin involves a journalist, a group of civic boosters, a pile of money never before seen in professional golf and the aspiration to entice players from the Midwest and Northeast to the pleasant climes of South Texas in the dead of winter. (Footnote: those climes weren’t always pleasant. But the enticement worked.) The following is an excerpt from “It’s Been a Journey,” the new centennial history of the golf tournament that opened the TOUR to Texas and the modern Southern Swing. Jack O’Brien, the Denver-born sports editor at the (San Antonio) Evening News, found himself one day early in 1921 with some idle time. He wandered over to the machine in the newsroom that spit out dispatches from the wire services. There he found two bulletins about upcoming sporting events and, more importantly, the prize money they paid. He brought them back to his desk and settled in to read. One was about the 1921 U.S. Open, played that summer at Columbia Country Club in Maryland. O’Brien read that first place paid $500. The other was about an upcoming light heavyweight prizefight featuring Mike McTigue and Louis Mbarcik Fall, known as “Battling Siki” of Senegal. The purse for that boxing match: an astounding $25,000. “What struck Jack smack in the face was the fact that a professional golfer would spent almost a lifetime making that much money,” reporter Wesley Marrito wrote in 1941 for the San Antonio Express. Like many newspaper editors of the period, O’Brien embraced competing roles. He was, first and foremost, a chronicler of the sporting scene in San Antonio in an era when athletes and their conquests took on heroic, even epic, proportions. But O’Brien also saw himself as a civic watchdog and promoter — what might be today called an influencer. He had staked an interest in the evolution of San Antonio as a good place in which to visit and live. The disparity in earnings between golfers and boxers gave O’Brien an idea. What if he could raise more money than ever before offered at a golf tournament? Such an event would show professional golfers from northern states the pleasant San Antonio winter climate. They might, in turn, tell their friends, which could boost tourism dependent at the time almost exclusively on the mission trail. A tournament on the pro circuit would introduce professional golf to residents of San Antonio. It could give the city another identity. It could make San Antonio a city known for golf; it could even grow golf as a pastime seen as beneficial to health, industry, and prosperity. It could be called the Texas Open. O’Brien saw broad potential. He made a list of people who could help him make it happen. He enlisted the San Antonio Junior Chamber of Commerce, known as the Jaycees. The newspaperman and his cadre chose as a venue Brackenridge Park, which had been open since 1916. Designed by A.W. Tillinghast, one of the principal golf-course architects of the period, Brackenridge Park was the first 18-hole municipal golf course in the state. Tillinghast, whose career portfolio would include Baltrusrol Golf Club in New Jersey and Winged Foot Golf Club in New York, employed fifty arrestees in the construction of the course, which housed a wolf den near the sixth green. He imposed his famous “reef” bunkers, diagonally crossing the third and eighth fairways. The San Antonio River curled through the back nine. John Bredemus had been appointed the professional at Brackenridge Park in 1919, by which time golf in the United States was becoming enormously popular. This was six years after the 1913 U.S. Open, won by an amateur named Francis Ouimet, a onetime caddie at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he beat the great British professionals Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in a playoff. The emergence of the Texas Open rode a wave of American enthusiasm for golf that rose from Ouimet’s conquest as a 20-year-old amateur. But there was much more to it than that. San Antonio was one of the 45 American cities with municipal golf courses (85 existed at the time). To citizens of the city, golf was something they could play, not just read and wonder about. Brackenridge Park brought them together. It gave them a hub, a sanctuary. “It is around the public golf course that you get your cross-sections of humanity,” the celebrated sports reporter Grantland Rice wrote in 1920. These were the people, Jack O’Brien knew, who would come to a Texas Open. With Bredemus and his far-reaching connections in the game, O’Brien and his collaborators planned their new event for February 1922 as the first stroke-play tournament ever in Texas. O’Brien cajoled the management of the Crockett, Menger, and St. Anthony hotels to join his effort. He got the support of business leader Frank Huntress, mayor O.B. Black, and Jack Lapham, whose wife, Edna, was a six-time Women’s Texas Golf Association champion. They raised $14,000 by November 1921. The $5,000 purse would exceed any amount that had been offered in a professional tournament. O’Brien was named — or had appointed himself —tournament manager. The three daily newspapers in San Antonio (the Light was the third) kept track of which players had arrived for the Texas Open and where they were staying. The list of committed players included Charley Hull (known as the “Babe Ruth of American Golf”), Will Maguire, Bill Mehlhorn, Abe Espinosa, Harry Cooper, and Gene Sarazen, who had yet to win the first of his eventual 48 titles worldwide. “We would play in a cow pasture for five thousand dollars,” Sarazen told a reporter upon arriving in San Antonio. Bob MacDonald of Chicago won that first Texas Open with a score of 72-67-77-80—281. The Menger Hotel threw a party after the tournament and invited all the pros to attend. The menu featured “Fore,” a shrimp cocktail, “Noisy Gallery” (consommé), “Down in Two” (relishes), “Birdie” (chicken, of course), “Sand Bunker Fruit” in the form of yams, and “Grass Greens,” a salad. Arthur Seeligson, the president of the Jaycees, announced that $1,500 already had been raised for the second Texas Open in 1923. “All our boys will be back next year,” said runner-up Cyril Walker, “(and) not only because of the unprecedented liberality of the purses, but because of the people you have down here, their cordial hospitality and because of your delightful climate, contrasting with the snow and sleet we left behind.” Professionals would come to San Antonio for the right amount of money. They would tell friends and acquaintances about the warm winter climate of San Antonio, which would become known for golf. The Texas Open would pay dividends for a city rebuilding and rebranding as a tourist destination for years to come. “Visiting golf experts, discussing the aftermath of San Antonio’s success with its first National tournament, estimate the number of people, largely of the wealthy tourist class, who will learn of this city as America’s winter playground as a result of the event, at around 25,000. This was arrived at by assuming that, on a low average, every one of the 60 visiting professionals comes into direct personal contact with 400 such people in his own club,” one newspaper speculated. “San Antonio’s winter charms have been concealed from a large part of the world for a long time,” the story continued, “but the secret is out and will travel far.” A strong field entered the 1923 Texas Open, including some new and very notable names: Tommy Armour, Jack Burke Sr., Joe Kirkwood, and Fred McLeod. Harvey Penick, not yet 20 years old, got permission to leave his post as head professional at Austin Country Club, seven decades before his little red book was published as the “Little Red Book,” to enter. Walter Hagen, the first American-born winner of the Open Championship in 1922, also committed. The first touring professional without a club affiliation, Hagen — Sir Walter, the Haig, impossibly stylish and larger than life, the indomitable winner of 45 PGA TOUR titles, 11 majors and the career Grand Slam — was a celebrity long before he won the second Texas Open. He shot a course-record 65 in the third round that thrilled a crowd of 6,000, most of whom had never seen a golfer score with such skill. Hagen and Bill Mehlhorn tied at 9-under after four rounds. Hagen won the playoff by a shot. He banked $1,500 of the $7,000 purse. Damon Runyon, the famous celebrity sports writer and short-story author from New York, covered the 1926 Texas Open on his way back from the new Los Angeles Open, whose creation was a direct result of the popularity of the San Antonio event. Another record field entered the tournament, which, for the first time, sent off groups of three. Macdonald Smith rallied from behind after two rounds to win. The Texas Open was here to stay.

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ATLANTA — Each of the top five players in FedExCup points is guaranteed to win the FedExCup with a victory at this week’s TOUR Championship. In addition, there are certain scenarios for winning the FedExCup should some other player outside the top five win the tournament. Tournament leader Paul Casey, who is two shots ahead of Kevin Kisner and Xander Schauffele, is projected to win the FedExCup. Here’s a look at how each top-5 player fared during Saturday’s third round at East Lake.  1. Jordan Spieth: Spieth is projected to fall to third in the FedExCup, but his hopes of joining Tiger Woods as the only players to win multiple FedExCup are still alive. He’s only 246 points behind Casey in the projected standings, and could win the FedExCup finish with a T4 finish, even if Casey wins the TOUR Championship. Spieth made birdie on three of his final six holes Saturday to keep his hopes alive. He is three shots out of fourth place. “I was 2 over through 11 holes and I missed about a three‑footer for birdie on the 12th and I really could be at 1 or 2 over for the tournament right now pretty easily,â€� Spieth said. “I did a great job of keeping myself in the FedExCup race and really in a solid position. I know that I’m capable of going low on this golf course,â€� Spieth said. 2. Justin Thomas: Thomas started the day with a share of the lead. He was halfway to a FedExCup-clinching victory, but he struggled Saturday and now finds himself five shots behind Casey. Thomas’ FedExCup chances are not over, though. He’s just 220 points behind Casey in the projected standings. Thomas would need to finish third to win the FedExCup if Casey wins the TOUR Championship. 3. Dustin Johnson: Johnson started the day with a double-bogey after he hit his approach shot over the first green. He made four birdies and one bogey the rest of the way. 4. Marc Leishman: Saturday’s 69 was his first career under-par score in seven competitive rounds at East Lake. His FedExCup chances appear to have ended, but he can celebrate his first multiple-win and the highest FedExCup finish of his career. 5. Jon Rahm: Rahm’s hopes of winning the FedExCup are still alive despite shooting 70 in the third round. He is trying to become the first player to win the FedExCup in his first Playoffs appearance. He must finish second or better to win the FedExCup. He is six shots out of first place and four shots behind second place.

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