Woods put himself in position to make the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open — assuming the line doesn’t go to 2 under.
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PGA TOUR LIVE is back. This week's The American Express marks the return of the streaming service, which showcases exclusive early coverage from the PGA TOUR. The broadcast from PGA West will include Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Rickie Fowler, Matthew Wolff and tournament host Phil Mickelson. They'll be competing on two courses at PGA West, including Pete Dye's famed Stadium Course and its island-green 17th nicknamed Alcatraz. Related: Tee times | The First Look, How to Watch A star-studded charity match also will be available Wednesday on PGA TOUR LIVE. Country music artist Jake Owen and soccer star Landon Donovan will team with Tony Finau and Paul Casey in the nine-hole match from PGA West's Stadium Course. Mickelson will host the match and participate through "Phil's Challenges." Each player, including Mickelson, will take a shot at a $1 million hole-in-one for charity on Alcatraz, as well. The match will tee off at 2 p.m. Pacific. The Featured Groups, which will tee off at 1:40 and 1:50 p.m. Eastern each day on PGA West’s Stadium Course, are listed below. To prepare you for PGA TOUR LIVE’s coverage, our roundtable of writers convened to answer a burning question around each group. Enjoy. THURSDAY Patrick Reed, Andrew Landry, Gary Woodland (1:40 p.m. ET, No. 1 tee, Stadium) – Andrew Landry has a win and playoff loss in his last three American Express starts. Will he finish as low man in this group? SEAN MARTIN: Landry has nine career top-10s on TOUR. Two have come at this event. But I think Reed is the man to beat in this group. Reed has a win at this event, in 2014, and earned his PGA TOUR card at a Q-School on the two courses in use this week. He has exhibited some incredible consistency lately, finishing in the top 25 in two-thirds of his starts since the start of last season, including all four in 2020-21. BEN EVERILL: Not this time. Patrick Reed is a desert warrior who has surprised us by playing in this desert instead of being in a Middle East one. He should threaten to win the whole thing. CAMERON MORFIT: I'll subscribe to the horses-for-courses theory and go with defending champ Landry here. I know he didn't show much at the Sentry TOC and missed the cut at the Sony Open, but he won here last year after missing five consecutive cuts. It wasn't that long ago that he finished T4 at The RSM Classic. I'll say he picks up right where he left off in the desert and notches another top-10 finish. Kevin Na, Matthew Wolff, Tony Finau (1:50 p.m. ET, No. 1 tee, Stadium) – Na had one win in his first 369 TOUR starts. He has four in his last 55, including last week's Sony Open. Finau has one win in his first 170 starts. How many will he finish his career with? MARTIN: Finau is just 31. He has plenty of time left. I think 10 is within reach but seven seems more realistic. I still think Finau could have some multiple-win seasons ahead of him. EVERILL: Should be 10 (or more), I want to say six but I'm going to take the under and say four. MORFIT: With his talent I would have guessed double digits, but it's just so hard to win on TOUR, and he's let a few victories pass him by already. I'll say he ends up with six wins, and I wouldn't be at all shocked if one of those was a major. FRIDAY Cameron Champ, Brooks Koepka, Paul Casey (1:40 p.m. ET, No. 1 tee, Stadium) – What do you expect out of Koepka this year? MARTIN: He had two top-10s in the fall but also ended the year with a missed cut. I think he will return to East Lake but I'm not sure about a win. He had opportunities to win late last season but wasn't able to capitalize on them. He said Tuesday he feels good, so this week will be an opportunity to show us what to expect. EVERILL: If he's fully fit, a return to some dominant wins. When he's at his peak, he's a beast. I'd love to see him and DJ down the stretch in a tournament at some point. MORFIT: That's just it, Ben - the big IF remains. Is he healthy again? If so, I'd expect him to make a strong run at the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines South, which is precisely the type of big, brawny course that sets him apart from the rest. Patrick Cantlay, Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler (1:50 p.m. ET, No. 1 tee, Stadium) – More likely to join Cantlay as a winner on the PGA TOUR this season, Mickelson or Fowler? It's been two years since each won. MARTIN: Mickelson finished runner-up not long ago at the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, and he has some winning mojo after his back-to-back triumphs on PGA TOUR Champions. His recent results haven't been very good, in part because of his obsession with hitting bombs, but if he could back off the gas a bit, and the putter gets hot, he can pick off another win after age 50. EVERILL: I'm not sure either will but of course both could! I'll stick with youth and say Fowler. His good stuff is more likely to turn up over four days while Mickelson's mistakes continue to get punished exponentially on this TOUR. MORFIT: I'm guessing we haven't seen the last of Fowler in the winner's circle, even though his swing changes have taken longer to solidify than he probably thought they would. It's the old story of working so hard on the swing you neglect your putting, but his above-average ability on the greens will return, and I'm guessing his swing change is pretty close to being complete.
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SOUTHPORT, England – At high noon here Sunday, Jordan Spieth should have a full grasp of the gameplan he hopes will produce his third major title. Although he’ll still be 2-1/2 hours away from his opening tee shot in the final round at Royal Birkdale, he’ll have benefitted from watching the earlier coverage of The Open Championship on TV. He’ll see how the course is playing, where the pins are, how the greens are rolling, how the conditions are impacting scores. Will it be a tough, hang-on type of day like Friday? Or will he need an aggressive approach, the kind he used Saturday when Royal Birkdale handed out red numbers like it was last call at the local pub? Yet there are two things he already knows he must do: (bullet) Play like he’s tied for the lead. Spieth is 11 under par and goes into Sunday with a three-shot cushion over Matt Kuchar. The next closest pursuers – U.S. Open champ Brooks Koepka and Spieth’s fellow Dallas resident Austin Connelly — are six shots back. It would be easy for Spieth to simply lay back and wait for anybody to challenge him. To play safe. But taking a defensive posture would be a detriment. After all, trying to avoid making mistakes is a recipe for making more of them. “I think I will assume that we are tied for the lead,â€� Spieth said. (bullet) Hit as many greens as possible. One of the key strategies all week for Spieth has been staying out of Royal Birkdale’s pot bunkers. He’s found a few, but he’s made just four bogeys this week, all in the second round in rainy, windy conditions. He shot bogey-free 5-under 65s in the first and third rounds, and there’s every reason to think he can avoid trouble again Sunday, provided his driver cooperates to set up the crisp irons he’s displayed here. “It’s all about greens in regulation,â€� said Spieth, who hit 15 of them on Thursday and 14 on Saturday. “If the conditions are tough and you have to lay it further back and play further away from holes, so be it. But having a putter in my hand for birdie is the most important thing for tomorrow.â€� Spieth’s ability to execute his gameplan at Royal Birkdale is why he’s on the verge of adding the Open to his major resume and moving three-quarters of the way to the career Grand Slam. Entering Saturday with a two-shot lead over Kuchar, he knew early on that scoring conditions were incredibly favorable – even though he saw only one hole of Branden Grace’s major-record 62. Previously anticipating that pars would be a really good score, Spieth adjusted his thinking, approaching par as just “OKâ€� on Saturday. “Royal Birkdale, notoriously difficult, had just become one of the easier golf courses that we play for one round for the year,â€� Spieth said. “You just kind of got to change that in your mind.â€� By the time he arrived on the first tee Saturday, he had an additional gameplan. This one included Kuchar. “Our gameplan when we stood on the tee was, let’s push each other to separate and get this pairing tomorrow,â€� Spieth said. “That’s kind of what we wanted to do.â€� While Spieth shot 65, Kuchar shot a 4-under 66 that included a double-bogey at the par-4 16th in which he found a bunker and also three-putted. Kuchar is hoping to become the eighth consecutive first-time winner in a major, but that double may come back to haunt him. On Sunday, Kuchar won’t be worrying about separating from the pack. His focus now is pretty easy: catch Spieth. But even though Kuchar has plenty of success in match play-type environments – he won the World Golf Championships-Dell Match Play in 2013 — he plans to avoid any kind of head-to-head showdown with his playing partner. “I’ll be playing with him but not focused on him,â€� Kuchar said. “My goal is to go out and play Royal Birkdale. “I’ll know exactly where we stand but I don’t know how much that ever helps you. You just have to go out and hit the best shot for that situation. I’ve been on some good form. The formula has produced a lot of good golf, and I hope it continues to produce some good golf tomorrow.â€� He’ll probably need some help from Spieth, but the 23-year-old Texan – he turns 24 next week – seems to have a pretty good formula for holding 54 holes. Of his last nine 54-hole leads on the PGA TOUR, he’s converted eight of them into victories. The lone miss was the 2016 Masters, when he put two balls in the water at the 12th in the final round and shot a 73, opening the door for Englishman Danny Willett. It was a harsh lesson, but one Spieth thinks ultimately will prove valuable. “I understand that leads can be squandered quickly, and I also understand how you can keep on rolling on one,â€� Spieth said. “It was a humbling experience that I thought at the time could serve me well going forward.â€� No matter the outcome on Sunday, Spieth doesn’t think the 2016 Masters will have a specific impact at Royal Birkdale. “If I don’t win tomorrow, it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with it was someone else’s day, and I didn’t play as well as I should have,â€� Spieth said. “And if I win tomorrow, it has nothing to do with that, either.â€� What it will come down to is simply this: executing his gameplan. Spieth’s been nearly flawless for the first three rounds. Difficult to imagine that Sunday will be any different.
