Expert picks for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am

SAN ANTONIO — Jordan Spieth ended a slump that lasted nearly four years, closing with a 6-under 66 on Sunday to win the Valero Texas Open for his first victory since the 2017 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. Now he heads to Augusta National as one of the favorites at the Masters Tournament. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Winner’s Bag: Jordan Spieth, Valero Texas Open “This is a monumental win for me,” Spieth said. “It’s been a long road. There were a lot of times that I didn’t know I would be here.” Spieth sealed it with a 5-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole, and he won by two shots over Charley Hoffman. Spieth went 82 starts on the PGA TOUR without a victory since Royal Birkdale. He missed the TOUR Championship the past two years and nearly fell out of the top 100 in the world at the start of this year. But the 27-year-old from Dallas showed signs of turning it around. He was tied for the 54-hole lead in Phoenix. He led by two going into the final round at Pebble Beach. He was two behind going into the last day at Bay Hill. Tied for the lead with Matt Wallace going into Sunday at the TPC San Antonio, Spieth moved out in front and didn’t let anyone catch him. He built a three-shot lead with a birdie on the 12th hole, when Hoffman made him sweat. Hoffman, needing a victory to get back to the Masters, chipped in for birdie on the par-3 13th and holed a 20-foot birdie putt from the fringe on the par-3 16th to get within one shot. But he found a bunker off the tee on the short par-4 17th and had to settle for par as Spieth moved two shots ahead, and they both made par on the closing hole. Hoffman closed with a 66. Spieth, who finished at 18-under 270, moved to No. 7 in the FedExCup standings. Wallace couldn’t keep up and closed with a 70 to finish alone in third. Lucas Glover (66) finished in fourth, while Anirban Lahiri birdied the last hole for a 69 to finish alone in fifth. Spieth typically is a favorite at the Masters, where he was runner-up in his debut in 2014, won wire-to-wire the next year and was runner-up again after losing a back-nine lead in 2016.

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HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – Wesley Bryan had a confession to make after carding a second-round 66 to get to 8 under and in contention at the RBC Heritage presented by Boeing. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Tee times | RBC Heritage kicks off Carolina Swing As a kid, on family vacations, he snuck onto Harbour Town Golf Links. Just a time or two. Nothing crazy. OK, maybe it was more than that. “I’ll be honest,” he said, “we snuck out here way more often than we probably should. We would walk out to the 10th tee and just start playing holes as kids. “Yeah, a lot of hours have been spent out here, whether they knew about them or not.” It’s fitting that Harbour Town would be the site of a mini resurgence for Bryan, given that he authored his lone PGA TOUR victory here in 2017. The Columbia, South Carolina, native and former University of South Carolina star is a popular figure around here. Even the home crowd, though, could be excused for wondering where he’s been. Bryan, 31, is 172nd in the FedExCup, 429nd in the Official World Golf Ranking, after missing five of eight cuts this season. He’s playing on a Major Medical Extension with nine starts remaining after undergoing surgery for a torn labrum in his left shoulder in January 2019. “I’ll be on a little hiatus,” he wrote on Twitter then, “but don’t worry I’ll be back.” He was coming off four straight missed cuts and a WD the previous fall. It was time. But it’s taken a while for Bryan to get back. A little hiatus? He made just nine combined starts in 2019 and 2020. “Shoulder is great,” he said after his second round, which included an eagle 3 at the second hole, plus five birdies and two bogeys. “I been feeling a lot better about the golf game than what the scores have been showing as of late. Post-surgery I picked up a lot of speed and started actually striking the ball well for the first time in my career, which was nice.” Bryan has always been streaky-good: He won three times on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2016. And he’s finally scoring, not just hitting the ball well. Now he just needs to keep it going through the weekend to become the first two-time Heritage winner since Jim Furyk (2015/2010). Asked what he learned from winning here four years ago, Bryan said the real lessons came earlier than that, on all those family trips to Harbour Town, which is more or less the same. “I’ve played this place a lot growing up,” he said. “It’s just one of the few stops even as a rookie on TOUR I felt very comfortable from day one. Not as much homework learning the golf course. “It’s more of just out here knowing where to miss it,” he continued. “You don’t necessarily have to drive the ball in the fairway out here to stay in position in the hole.” With that familiarity paying off, Bryan, too, is looking familiar – like the player he used to be.

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The PGA TOUR regained traction on the 2022-23 season with last week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions, but with only 39 golfers competing in the exclusive invitational on Maui, the rubber doesn’t meet the road in earnest until this week’s Sony Open in Hawaii. RELATED: The First Look | Five Things to Know The 144-man competition at Waialae County Club in Honolulu represents the first sizable gathering since The RSM Classic in the week before Thanksgiving. However, as Jimi Hendrix crooned, are you experienced? For why that matters so much and more, continue reading beneath the ranking of projected contenders. POWER RANKINGS: SONY OPEN IN HAWAII Billy Horschel, Webb Simpson, Matt Kuchar and Emiliano Grillo will be among the notables review in Draws and Fades. The soft reopen (and hard close … sigh) at Kapalua personified the undisputed claim that Hawaii is a remote land of extremes no matter the pursuit. Unsurprisingly, it also applies to the experience on the southeastern shore of Oahu. This is the 58th edition of the Sony Open in Hawaii. All have been staged at Waialae. Throughout the FedExCup era (2007-present), it’s been a par 70 capable of ranging to 7,044 yards, and it will again this week. Save a bunker that has been split in two beside the green on the par-4 first hole and bermuda greens allowed to stretch another foot to 12 on the Stimpmeter, the course is the same. So, sans surprises that could even the playing field, literally or figuratively, a pair of strong trends has reason to continue. Although Kapalua and Waialae never will be confused as twins, the objectives on each are the same – hit greens and sink putts. Despite vastly different topographies – Kapalua is on the side of a mountain; Waialae is flat and at sea level – wind really is the only challenge on either, and like last week, it isn’t forecast to be that at all again once the Sony starts on Thursday. With all other elements cooperating, the field will have a great chance to copy last year’s scoring average of 67.998. So, as of midday Monday, the 18 who teed it up at Kapalua and have made the short trip to Waialae have the edge to win. They are warm and arrive with the knowledge that eight of the last nine champions of the Sony played the Sentry the previous week. The other almost unbelievable fact of the matter is that, since Gay Brewer prevailed in the inaugural edition of the Sony in 1965, Russell Henley is the only winner in his tournament debut. Fitting for the phenomenon of extremes, Henley was in his first-ever PGA TOUR start as a member in 2013. The moral of the matter, then, is that first-timers who didn’t peg it at Kapalua last week are facing headwinds of trends times two. For the sixth consecutive year, all Korn Ferry Tour graduates who have committed are in the field. So, even the slowest starters aren’t penalized this opportunity after the first reorder of their category at the conclusion of the fall portion of the last wraparound season. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.com’s Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous perspectives. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers, Draws & Fades SUNDAY: Payouts and Points, Medical Extensions, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Rookie Ranking * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.

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