Featured Groups: FedEx St. Jude Classic

GUYANCOURT, France – Team golf is a different animal. Passion lies in every one of the 24 players in this week’s Ryder Cup, yet it comes in different forms. There are the fire guys. The ones whose eyes roll in the back of their head with every birdie and whose fist pumps have the power of a Mike Tyson uppercut. And there are the ice guys. The cool, calm and collected assassins. The ones who can crush you without changing expression. Seemingly immune to nerves. For Europe the powder kegs ready to explode are led by veterans Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia and include Rory McIlroy plus rookies Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton. Team USA counters with the likes of Captain America Patrick Reed, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Justin Thomas. On the ice side of things the Euros have current and former FedExCup champions Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson, plus Open Champion Francesco Molinari and Alex Noren. The U.S. looks to the likes of Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka here. So when you have such differing styles at each end of the spectrum, what is the best plan of attack when it comes to pairings for the crucial Fourball and Foursomes formats? Should you put two fire guys together and hope they get hot enough to scorch a trail toward a point or is that just opening you up to self-combustion? Are two ice guys too perfect to complement each other – will they just frustrate the passion out of their opponents with clinical precision? Or will the lack of fire bring a lull? Or is the best method a blend of both? A fire guy to lift the ice man and the ice man to calm the fire? “Those are personalities you want. You want to have a bit of everything on your team, and they can fit into every situation that you’re going out in,â€� European Captain Thomas Bjorn says. He’s been weighing up the merits of what balance will work best for him for months given his side particularly has quite a few players at the far ends of each spectrum. “It’s more about how they get on with each other and how their games match,â€� Bjorn counters. “There’s a lot of things that play into it. They all are very different, but some guys that are calm can deal with a guy that’s very fiery on the golf course, but some guys want to have it a little bit different and a similar type. “It’s about talking to them individually and not say, okay, you two do the same thing and then you play well together. That doesn’t always happen. It’s about talking to them individually and figuring out what they actually like to play with.â€� Team USA Captain Jim Furyk – a guy who would fit perfectly into the ice side – says it’s about a balance. “You look back to Luke Donald and Sergio García, the fiery and the stoic, and they made a great pairing together,â€� Furyk says. “I think as a captain, I like to talk to the guys throughout the year, do you like to play with someone who is fiery and pumps you up, or do you want someone who is a little bit quieter? “You try to get an idea of everyone, what makes them tick and what makes them play their best, and you try to pair those type of personalities together.â€� Fresh off his FedExCup victory, Justin Rose opened up on the subject. With a fire man in Poulter, Rose has a 4-1 record in the Foursome and Fourball formats in the Ryder Cup. With the quintessential iceman in Stenson he sports a 4-2 record. So Rose has had success with fire and ice. “I feel I can feed off both. But if anything the fire helps me,â€� Rose admitted. “Henrik has fire deep down though, he keeps it hidden. But the only thing with two of us like that, you can go flat sometimes, I’ve experienced that. So it is good to have options in the team room and we have plenty of those options this week.â€� Furyk is fundamentally against two of the same type together, saying you rarely see two fiery guys or two ice guys do great together. “You might not pair Bernhard Langer with himself because they are just even keel. You pair him with a guy that’s feisty, a Seve, and you kind of get the ham-and-egg effect of things,â€� Furyk said. “If Patrick (Reed) and Sergio (Garcia) were on the same team, there would be a lot of fire, I’ll say that. There would be a lot of passion for one grouping,â€� he added. “You don’t often see that.â€� Yet if practice pairings are anything to go by, Furyk could indeed send out a blazing pair with Woods, Reed, Thomas and Spieth potentially in a pod together. Woods and Reed, or even Woods and Thomas, would certainly bring a new level of intensity, rivaling what Reed and Jordan Spieth have come with in the past. On the European side, with two very fiery rookies in Rahm and Hatton, Bjorn has to decide how best to harness that. “I can play with anybody, but I believe I will play with somebody experienced,â€� Rahm says. “They are not going to put two rookies up on Friday morning. So I will be playing with somebody, either Stenson, Sergio, Rory, Rosey, Poulter, Fran, somebody who knows what’s going on and who can most likely keep me under control on a Friday morning. “I feel like I’m going to have electricity coming out of me, so you can imagine I might tee off with somebody who is a little more calm than me, which is not hard to do. “It’s like two players becoming one, so I think we feed off the best of each other. “It will help me, if I’m playing with somebody like Justin Rose, it will help me calm down a little bit and my emotion will maybe help pump him up a little bit. So I think it benefits both ways.â€� While Rahm admits he might need a calming influence, the European side is very cognizant of not changing a player’s natural demeanor. “There’s no point in trying to be something that you’re not,â€� Molinari says. “I’ll be the same me that I’ve always been, and we’ll see, if I get paired with someone that has a bit more flair, probably there will be a balance.â€� Hatton might be the wildcard in many senses of the word. Known as a hot head on the course when things don’t go his way the Englishman has admitted to needing to monitor his temper. He made a point to say he’s looking to stay more “level-headedâ€� in the heat of battle this week and “not turn into the Hulk.â€� But Bjorn wants the fire to stay. So he’s looking for someone to ride it with him. “I want him to be Tyrrell Hatton in everything that he does, so you’ve got to find somebody that deals with those things very well,â€� Bjorn says. “I’m not here to try and change any of those 12. They are here because of who they are and that’s what they have got to go with. It’s not my job to change Tyrrell. He will go out and play with the passion and heart he has.â€� However each team slices it, it will be fascinating to watch.

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On a firm, hard course, Italy’s Francesco Molinari enjoys the best putting performance of his PGA TOUR career for a final-round 64 and a two-shot victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Molinari went bogey free over his last 28 holes, soared from 151st all the way to 20th in the FedExCup, and looked ahead to a potential second straight title and golf history at THE PLAYERS Championship. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Molinari eyes API-PLAYERS double. No one has ever come off a win and then backed it up with another at THE PLAYERS at the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. Don’t count out Molinari, 36, who is one of the hottest players in golf and has four top-10 finishes in eight starts at THE PLAYERS. And here’s another reason for optimism: While Molinari’s 146’ 9’’ worth of made putts in the final round at the API marked the best putting day of his career, the second best was his 144’ 8’’ worth of made putts in the first round of THE PLAYERS in 2014. “I know that I can shoot low scores pretty much on every golf course,â€� he said. Now he drives some two hours north to try and accomplish the API-PLAYERS double. With three wins in his last 12 starts on TOUR, Molinari seems like as good a bet as anyone to win. “I had quite a long off-season, but I was hoping to hit form around THE PLAYERS,â€� he said. “And things have gone even better than I thought.â€� 2. Europeans love Bay Hill. Between the winner Molinari (64), runner-up Matthew Fitzpatrick (71), and T3s Tommy Fleetwood (68) and Rafa Cabrera Bello (69), four of the top five finishers at Bay Hill were from Europe. Add fellow T3 Sungjae Im and the top five finishers were international players. Molinari joins recent winners Rory McIlroy (2018), Marc Leishman (2017) and Jason Day (2016). Matt Every (2014, ’15) was the last American winner. 3. Fitzpatrick earned Special Temporary Membership. It wasn’t all doom and gloom for runner-up Matthew Fitzpatrick (71), who couldn’t hold the lead but at 24 years old still earned 300 FedExCup points and Special Temporary Membership on the PGA TOUR. Once he accepts, he will be eligible for unlimited sponsor exemptions for the remainder of the 2018-’19 TOUR season. Special Temporary Members are not eligible for the FedExCup Playoffs, but can become regular TOUR members by winning an official event. Those points, plus any points earned previously, would be counted on the FedExCup points list, and the player would then be eligible for the Playoffs at the end of this season. “I’m delighted for solo second,â€� Fitzpatrick said, “but I just felt like the way I played and the way I was hitting it, I could have been a little more aggressive.â€� 4. McIlroy a top-10 machine. Rory McIlroy has six straight top-6 finishes on TOUR and moved from 15th to 11th in the FedExCup, an improvement over a year ago because he’s been far more consistent. Last season, after winning the API, he was only 24th in the FedExCup. That’s because last season he came into Orlando with two missed cuts in four starts. “I’m playing well,â€� McIlroy insisted after struggling on the greens and taking 30 putts on Sunday. “I’m getting myself into contention every week.â€� His biggest regret: “I could have played the par 5s better.â€� 5. Im making an impact. Sungjae Im (T3, -9) was one of the most highly touted rookies after earning Web.com Tour Player of the Year last season. Now he’s climbed 13 spots in the FedExCup standings to 26th. This was his best result since finishing T4 at the season-opening Safeway Open. Im was the first player ever to lead the money list wire-to-wire for the entire season on the Web.com Tour last season. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Molinari perfecting final-round surge. He won The National last summer with a final-round 62. This time, Molinari’s 8-under 64 tied the lowest final round in relation to par at the API since 1983. It had been done three previous times: Rory McIlroy (64, ’18), Mark O’Meara (64, ’90) and Gary Koch (63, ’84). Molinari’s five-stroke come-from-behind victory matches the best this season, equaling Xander Schauffele at the Sentry Tournament of Champions. 2. It was a dream day on the greens. Molinari was a perfect 12/12 from inside 10 feet. And his 43’ 9’’ birdie putt on 18 Sunday, which pleased him because he’d seen Tiger Woods make it from the same line, was the longest putt he’s made on TOUR this season and the longest made putt all week on 18. He was 4th in Strokes Gained: Putting (+1.699), but led the field in SG: Off-the-Tee (+1.269). He was 34th in SG: Approach-the-Green (+.346) and 45th in SG: Around-the-Green (+.009). He was first in the field in SG: Total (+3.323). 3. McIlroy’s Sunday struggles continue. A 14-time TOUR winner, McIlroy has not won the last nine times he’s played in the final group on Sunday, dating back to the start of 2018. His 72 left him four shots behind and in a tie for sixth. He was the only player among the top 14 finishers not to break par in the final round. 4. Aaron Baddeley (74, T17) joined the sub-100 club. Baddeley needed just 99 putts for the week, becoming the third player this season to take fewer than 100 in a tournament. Kiradech Aphibarnrat (WGC-HSBC Champions) and Adam Long (Desert Classic) each required only 98 putts for the week earlier this season. 5. Bay Hill won, in a manner of speaking. Players hit 94 balls in the water in the first round, the most of any round there since 2003. The 203 water balls through three rounds were the second most through three rounds since 2003. And for the third straight year, no player managed to post four straight rounds in the 60s. Kevin Chappell was the last to accomplish that feat in 2016. WYNDHAM REWARDS   The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is in its first season and adds another layer of excitement to the FedExCup Regular Season. The top 10 players at the end of the FedExCup Regular Season will earn bonus payouts from the Wyndham Rewards Top 10. There were no changes at the top after the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, with one and two Xander Schauffele and Matt Kuchar, respectively, holding their positions. In finishing T23 at Bay Hill, Marc Leishman moved into the Top 5. This could be a big week for movement, as the winner of THE PLAYERS Championship will earn 600 FedExCup points.

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