Featured Groups: THE PLAYERS Championship

Justin Warren says he’s good at letting the bad shots go. Well, usually, anyway. His ability to do so is being put to the test after he missed a one-foot putt in a sudden-death playoff at the Monday qualifier for the Barracuda Championship in Reno. “Honestly I’ve just been trying to forget it,” Warren said Wednesday by phone from Henryville, Indiana, where he was playing a qualifier for a Forme Tour event. “It’s just one of those things, it’s awful and it sucks and it’s s—, but I’ve always been pretty good at putting things in the past and waking up and not thinking about it. But it’s been hard because it’s getting millions of hits.” There is no glory in golf quite like Monday-qualifier glory, as the story of Michael Visacki at the Valspar Championship illustrated in April. On the flip side, there is no agony like it, either. Warren could have qualified outright for his first PGA TOUR event had he not pushed a four-foot birdie putt on the par-5 18th hole. It was, he said, an “uncommitted stroke” and the first putt inside 10 feet he’d missed all day. His 65 sent him into a playoff with Mark Baldwin, 37. The rest is history. On the first playoff hole, Warren rushed his tap-in and pulled it. Video of the gaffe quickly made the rounds as one of the most painful examples of golfing agony. Twitter went crazy, led by Warren himself, who admitted his routine “flew straight out the window.” TOUR winner Michael Thompson tweeted, “What a harsh lesson to learn. I pray Justin becomes a wiser pro because of that. There’s a reason we PGA TOUR pros take so much time over tap ins. It’s so easy to make a mistake. #everyshotcounts” Asked Wednesday for the distance of the putt, Warren said, “It was one foot. “I simply didn’t give the situation or the putt the respect it deserved,” he added. “I saw that my coin was going to be in Mark’s way, so I thought I’ll just get up there and tap it in. Make Mark have to make his eagle putt to take the spot. But I rushed. I was nervous.” To add an odd quirk to an already odd story, Warren wasn’t even supposed to be in Reno, where his “brain fart” opened the door for Baldwin to take the fourth and final qualifying spot. He was supposed to be home preparing for an Australasian Tour event followed by the first stage of European Tour qualifying tournament. (He missed getting through second stage by a shot in Spain in 2019.) Alas, Warren couldn’t get home due to the ever-evolving COVID restrictions. “I was supposed to be quarantining in Sydney right now,” he said with a rueful laugh. Until Monday, Warren was less famous than his grandfather, Barry Warren, who beat Bruce Devlin in the final of the 1957 Australian Amateur. Justin, 25, played for South Mountain C.C. in Phoenix and was an NJCAA (Div. II) champion in 2016 before finishing his collegiate career at Arkansas Little Rock. Among his professional highlights was a fourth-place finish at the 2019 New South Wales Open, one of the bigger events of Australasian Tour. “I was tied for the lead going into the last,” he said, “but I went for glory and hit into the water and made double.” Until he’s able to get home, Warren’s plan is to try to make the best of it by entering more qualifiers. He is at Indiana’s Champions Pointe Golf Club for a pair of Forme Tour qualifiers, and otherwise isn’t exactly sure where he’ll tee it up next. The Barracuda was his sixth try at Monday qualifying for a TOUR event; he still has to play in the pre-qualifiers. “I’ve had a few decent results, so I have a little money in the bank to pay for it,” he said. “And some members from my home club (Australian Golf Club in Sydney) have helped out.” It’s a precarious existence for a player who doesn’t have a car and is relying on rentals and Uber and rides from friends to get around. His caddie at the Monday qualifier at Hidden Valley C.C. was Tom Patterson, an Australian who plays for the University of Nevada – Reno. Warren is friends with fellow Australian Matt Jones and looks up especially to Rory McIlroy, whose driving game and general comportment he admires. Warren, too, is a long and generally straight driver of the ball, and if he has any regrets from his time at Hidden Valley, other than the whiffed tap-in, it’s that he failed to birdie two par 5s despite having short irons in for his second shots. But really, the tap-in was the biggie. “I’m still thinking about it because my phone is still blowing up about it,” he said before starting another practice round in another city, ever hopeful that his next competitive round might be the one in which he turns the corner. “I’m just trying to put it in the past and play well this week.”

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA – The PGA TOUR announced that PGA TOUR AR, an augmented reality (AR) app that rolled out in 2018, will add a “360° Tee Box presented by AT&T� experience on holes No. 1 and 18 on Pebble Beach Golf Links at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. The experience will bring live AR and 360° tournament coverage to life for fans in the United States on their Apple device. The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am will also showcase live featured hole AR coverage on the PGA TOUR AR app from holes 1, 7 and 18 at Pebble Beach Golf Links. The AR experience will begin in conjunction with the opening round of the tournament on Thursday, February 7. The PGA TOUR AR app is available for free, exclusively in the App Store. After selecting the 360° Tee Box within the app, fans will be directed to scan the floor and tap to start the experience. Once they tap to start, an AR green with the Pebble Beach flag will appear and direct fans to walk toward the green. Once fans walk onto the virtual green, the 360° video from either the 1st or 18th tee box will appear, and they can move their phones around to view the video. The experience will go live one hour before the first tee time Thursday-Sunday at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. “The AT&T 360° Tee Box in the PGA TOUR AR app offers fans a unique and exclusive view of Pebble Beach Golf Links,� said Devon Fox, PGA TOUR Director, Digital Platform Innovation. “Fans will be able to see holes No. 1 and 18 in an entirely new way, getting them closer to the action than ever before. Collaborating with AT&T to bring fans this exclusive experience represents a new way for the TOUR to add value for sponsors and partners in the future.� PGA TOUR AR allows fans to interact with 3D featured holes and live 3D shot trails on any flat surface right in front of them. On featured holes throughout the season, fans will be able to select their favorite player on the golf course, compare shot trails from each round and compare the shots of different players. The 360° Tee Box presented by AT&T experience will only be available for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am from February 7-10. The PGA TOUR AR app is available on iPhone 7 and above and iOS 11.3 and above and on iPad Pro. The “360° Tee Box presented by AT&T� experience will only be visible to users on the iPhone/iOS versions listed above. The 360° Tee Box experience was developed jointly by the PGA TOUR, AT&T, The Marketing Arm and Trigger Global. The development of the PGA TOUR AR app in collaboration with POSSIBLE Mobile, part of the creative agency POSSIBLE, was aided by existing data gathered by ShotLink powered by CDW, the TOUR’s longstanding state-of-the-art scoring system. ShotLink through CDW technology captures and reports real-time vital information on every shot, by every player, during tournament competition. Every shot is translated into thousands of statistics, changing the way fans watch – and now interact with – the PGA TOUR, bringing them closer to the action. ShotLink and CDW’s vision is to turn data into information, information into knowledge, and knowledge into entertainment. The upgraded PGA TOUR AR app was built using the latest versions of ARKit and Unity to provide fans with faster, more accurate surface detection and the ability to choose where they want to place the models.

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GREENSBORO, N.C. – Geoff Ogilvy has intentionally ignored the FedExCup standings this week. Zac Blair may spend his birthday obsessing over them. Postseason berths and TOUR cards are at stake Sunday, the final day of the PGA TOUR’s regular season. The top 125 in the FedExCup standings will qualify for the Playoffs, and many players need to finish inside that number to retain their full playing privileges for next season. Sunday will see fingers furiously refreshing the live FedExCup projections, which seemingly shift with every shot. The final day of the PGA TOUR season is usually a stressful one, but this one seems especially tight. Nos. 125-129 in the projected FedExCup standings are tightly packed, and all five players will be on the course Sunday. David Hearn, who’s T70 at the Wyndham, has a tenuous grip on the 125th position. Sam Saunders (T33 at Wyndham), Shane Lowry (T9), J.T. Poston (T33) and J.J. Henry (T23) are all within seven points of him. They all can pass him with just a slight move up the leaderboard. This could set the stage for a record-setting Sunday at the Wyndham Championship. In the FedExCup era, there’s never been more than five players to move inside the top 125 in the season’s final week. “We’ll play golf tomorrow and you guys can tell me how I did,â€� said Ogilvy, who started the week at No. 125 in the FedExCup. “I’m not on Twitter or Facebook, so I stay away from that. I haven’t been watching Golf Channel intentionally, because it doesn’t do you any good to see yourself projected in and then projected out (of the top 125). There’s too many other factors, too many other players who can change it. “I understand why fans find it fascinating, but for me to shoot my lowest score I don’t need to be thinking about that.â€� Ogilvy is No. 123 in the projected standings, but still needs another good round Sunday to ensure his berth in the FedExCup Playoffs. His fate is in his own hands after an adrenaline-fueled finish to Friday’s round allowed him to make the Wyndham Championship’s cut. Another 66 has him in 23rd place at the Wyndham. Ogilvy’s postseason hopes seemed destined to end Friday when he stood four shots outside the cut line with seven holes remaining. He made birdie on five of those holes, though, and now is within reach of a top-10 finish that could vault him up the FedExCup standngs.  “When the moment came (Friday), it was do it or go home,” Ogilvy said. “I hit a few good shots and I got that feeling again. It was good memories. It’s the most satisfying golf to play. The highest pressure situations are the time I’ve had the most fun.” Ogilvy isn’t just focused on making the Playoffs, though. He knows his chances of making a run at the TOUR Championship are still alive. He has a good record at the Dell Technologies Championship, the second FedExCup Playoffs event, including two runners-up. “You can be right on the razor’s edge, one round away from going home tomorrow, and then have a chance to go to Atlanta,â€� Ogilvy said. “That’s the cool thing about the FedExCup.” You can’t win if you don’t get in, though, and that will be the focus in the Wyndham Championship’s final round. Blair is 124th in the projected standings, but can only sit and wait for the final result after missing Saturday’s 54-hole cut. Blair, who turns 27 on Sunday, is at the mercy of those other players. He started the week ranked 120th in the FedExCup, but he shot 73 on Saturday to miss the 54-hole cut by two shots. He made birdies on Nos. 14 and 15, but lipped out birdie putts of 13 and 6 feet on the next two holes. He took 36 strokes on the greens in the third round. He and his wife, Alicia, planned to celebrate his birthday Saturday with an ice-cream cake before what could be a stressful Sunday. “I always look,â€� Blair said of the FedExCup standings, “but right now it’s not looking great.â€� He could still qualify for next week’s THE NORTHERN TRUST, the first event of the FedExCup Playoffs, or have a week off before the Web.com Tour Finals. His destination depends on how several players contending at the Wyndham Championship fare in the final round. That includes Johnson Wagner, who’s summoned some improbable shots to vault into contention. He’s just the eighth player since 1983 to make both an eagle on a par-4 and an albatross in the same event. The albatross came in Friday’s second round, when he holed a 5-iron shot. He eagled Sedgefield’s other par-5, the 15th on Friday, playing the two par-5s in a total of five shots. Wagner started Saturday by holing a wedge shot from the first fairway. He shot a third-round 65 and is two shots behind leader Henrik Stenson. Wagner is projected to jump from 141st to 115th in the FedExCup standings. Wagner is one of six players in the top 10 who started the week outside the top 125 in the FedExCup standings. That includes 53-year-old Davis Love III, who needs win or finish solo second to crack the top 125. He won this tournament in 2015 and was on crutches this time last year while recovering from surgery on his left hip. Love III, who’s 209th in the FedExCup, is at 13-under 197, three shots behind Stenson. The final FedExCup standings won’t be determined until Sunday’s final putt drops, but that doesn’t mean players will be able to ignore them.  “I’m very aware of where I stand,â€� Saunders said. 

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