Fantasy Golf: Sleeper picks for the Valspar Championship

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SOUTHPORT, England  — Jordan Spieth did his part on a day of low scoring at The Open, and now is one round away from the third leg of the Grand Slam. The lowest score in major championship history was already in the books Saturday when Spieth was still warming up on the range at Royal Birkdale. Then the 23-year-old Texan delivered a bogey-free performance at Royal Birkdale that he punctuated with a 20-foot birdie on the final hole for a 5-under 65. That gave Spieth a three-shot lead over Matt Kuchar, who did his best to keep pace and shot 66. It was the second round this week that Spieth kept bogeys off his card, and this time he really didn’t come close to one. “Pretty stress-free,” Spieth said. “On a Saturday with a lead in a major, that’s as good as I can ask for.” Adding to the pressure was knowing that Royal Birkdale, with a clear sky until the final hour and barely any wind, was never more vulnerable. No one took advantage quite like Branden Grace, who finished birdie-birdie-par and became the first player to shoot 62 in a major. More than half the field broke par. Spieth was among seven players who shot 65 or better. “You knew scores would be lower,” he said. “It’s tough to hold a lead when par is not necessarily a great score, when you want to watch out and play a little safer.” He was at 11-under 199, stealing a birdie at the end when his approach into the 18th stayed just left of the bunker and left him 20 feet away. Spieth clenched his fist when it dropped for birdie, and then Kuchar missed from about 12 feet. They will see each other again tomorrow, and they put some distance from everyone else. Austin Connelly, who grew up in Dallas and shares a swing coach with Spieth, extended his remarkable run with birdies on his last two holes for a 66. The 20-year-old who plays under the Canadian flag was six shots behind at 5-under 205, tied with U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka, who had a 68. Grace wound up seven shots behind even after his 62. Missing from the mix was Rory McIlroy, who looked to be a big threat when he began with three birdies in five holes, driving the green on the shortened par-4 fifth hole. He lost it around the turn, making back-to-back bogeys, and then a double bogey at No. 10 when he blasted out of one pot bunker left of the fairway and it spun toward another, resting in the thick collar. McIlroy had a 69, rarely a bad score in the third round of a major. This one left him nine shots behind. “If you keep it in play, it’s almost hard to make a bogey out there, you know?” McIlroy said. “I’ve always been good when I get off to fast starts, being able to keep it going, and I didn’t today. And I needed to — that’s the disappointing thing.” Ian Poulter felt even worse. Still lurking, he ran off three straight bogeys early on the back nine and shot 71 to fall nine back. Spieth was rarely in trouble. He stuck to his simple plan and kept making all the right putts. He never lost the lead after any hole, though Kuchar kept close. He matched Kuchar’s birdie on the third hole to stay one shot ahead. An even bigger moment came at the 15th, when Spieth ran his 60-foot eagle attempt 10 feet by the hole. Kuchar lagged his eagle putt to tap-in range to reach 9 under and momentarily join Spieth in the lead, but only until Spieth poured in the tricky birdie putt. Kuchar’s big lapses came on the 16th when he drove into a pot bunker, could only blast out to the fairway with a sand wedge, hit an indifferent shot to the green and then three-putted for double bogey. Just like that, he was three shots behind. Kuchar got up-and-down from a pot bunker on the par-5 17th when Spieth made par, but as usual, Spieth had one last birdie in his bag. “I played well today,” Kuchar said. “Certainly, I’m not out of it. I’m playing some good golf. I’m very excited for tomorrow.” It will be the first time the 39-year-old Kuchar plays in the final group at a major. Spieth, who turns 24 next Thursday, has been there before. It will be his third time playing in the final group at a major. He won the Masters with a four-shot lead in 2015 and lost the Masters the following year with a one-shot lead at the start of the final round, and a five-shot lead at the turn. Spieth has a chance to join Jack Nicklaus as the only players to capture three different majors at age 23. He won the Masters and U.S. Open two years ago, and then finished one shot out of a playoff at St. Andrews. Nicklaus won the U.S. Open at 22, and then added the Masters and PGA Championship the following year. The forecast was for stronger wind on Sunday, which should be a stronger test for Spieth going for his third major, and Kuchar going for his first.

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ORLANDO - The strict constructionist would say Tiger Woods and 11-year-old son Charlie are in a six-way tie for sixth, four off the lead, after shooting a 10-under-par 62 in the first round of their debut at the PNC Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club. Matt Kuchar and his son, Cameron, 13, lead the 20-team field after shooting a 14-under 58. But how does one measure enjoyment? Because by that metric Charlie, who played from the most forward tees, may just be winning. With Team Woods playing alongside Team Thomas - Justin a sort of big brother figure to the uber-competitive Charlie, and Justin's father Mike a longtime PGA professional and Charlie's occasional coach - fun was going to be baked into the PNC regardless. RELATED: Full leaderboard Saturday, which brought warmer temperatures, did not disappoint, and what happened at the dogleg-left, par-4 13th hole said it all. With Team Thomas having hit, Charlie, way ahead, uncorked a gem. He walked down the fairway without looking back, and Tiger shrugged and walked off the way-back tee without bothering to hit. How could he top that? Some PNC employees and friends laughed, and Charlie spun around. "Like that?" he said. He marched toward his ball, which had settled short of a greenside bunker, but made a detour to Mike's ball, which had not drawn enough and found the right fairway bunker. Justin was the first to that ball and bent down to check the lie. "Charlie left you a note," he said. They read it. "Draw hole," Mike said. He and Justin laughed. "Payback is hell," Mike said. The punch line: Mike had been playing in the group ahead of Charlie in the pro-am earlier in the week and when Charlie hit it through everything and into the trees. Mike tore off a piece of paper, wrote Draw hole and placed it under Charlie's ball. "In typical Woods fashion," Justin said, "he kept the piece of paper, and when my dad hit it in the bunker, he took that same exact piece of paper and put it right behind his ball. It was a little bit of karma. It's just special. The kid's a gamer, he's a grinder. He's competitive. "But he's just so young," Thomas added, checking himself. Indeed, such is Charlie's game, such are his Tiger-like mannerisms, that it's all too easy to get carried away. "This is the first tournament that I've played in that Tiger Woods is playing in that he's not the star of the show," Padraig Harrington said. "He should note that himself. And that's amongst the players and the pros, because we're all goin' down that range and everybody's stopping to watch Charlie. Move out of the way, Tiger. Let us see. It's incredible the buzz it's created." And for good reason. Charlie eagled the par-5 fifth hole on his own ball. He hit his approach to a foot or two at the par-4 16th hole. Tiger didn't even bother to tee off on holes 13, 14 or 18. In a scramble format, with Charlie already in perfect position, why bother? "I knew he was going to wow a lot of people," said Thomas, who with Mike also shot 62. Added Tiger, "I've seen this all along. Probably not a lot of people have, but a lot of the shots he's hit I've seen back home at the Medalist this entire year, this entire pandemic. He's hit these shots. The (nine-hole) junior events he's played in he's hit a lot of these. It's just a matter of stringing these out for three and a half hours, which is a totally different deal." When Charlie walked in his birdie putt at the ninth hole, Woods said, it wasn't anything he hadn't seen before. "He did," he said when asked if Charlie had carried him. "He hit just some of the most incredible golf shots." He paused, then got back on message. The important thing, he said, was that Charlie is enjoying it. He's doing that in part by applying the needle like his dad. When Thomas double-crossed his tee shot on the first hole, Charlie said, "I thought you were trying to cut it." Thomas laughed about the exchange, and said he and Woods spoke mid-round about how much they were pulling for their respective partners, a powerless position their own parents have known all too well. Mike played from tees that made the course feel a little long, Justin said. Charlie, though, seemed to settle into his first televised competitive round like a warm bath. "I was pulling for him," Justin said. "I wanted every shot he hit to be the best one that he hit that day. It was a perfect balance of everything; it was competitive, it was joyful, it was memorable, and we had a little banter in there as well."

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