Five Things to Know: Detroit Golf Club

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Pat Perez won the CIMB Classic claiming a four-shot victory over Keegan Bradley on Sunday at TPC Kuala Lumpur. The American sealed his first title in almost a year despite carding a modest three-under 69 in the final round, courtesy of a strong start with three birdies in the first four holes. The 41-year-old only managed to make par on the back nine, but did enough to finish the tournament at 24-under 264 to take home the $1.26 million prize purse and 500,00 FedExCup points, moving him into second the in FedExCup standings. Bradley carded an unblemished 5-under 67 to finish at 20-under 268. Xander Schauffele, who started the round in second place, faltered with four bogeys to finish T3 alongside South Korea’s Sung Kang at 17-under. Defending champion Justin Thomas finished T17.

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AUSTIN, Texas – Another fun week in Austin for the world’s best culminated with a great win for Kevin Kisner at Austin Country Club. Kisner avenged his final loss from a year earlier, besting Matt Kuchar 3 and 2 in the championship match. Kuchar still continues his impressive renaissance, moving to the top of the FedExCup and Wyndham Rewards standings. Let’s take a look back at the highlights… and perhaps a few lowlights… of the week. MATCH OF THE WEEK Tiger Woods beat Rory McIlroy 2 and 1: This one might not have had the most birdies or haymakers being thrown, but it was enthralling and hyped none-the-less. Woods took an early lead thanks to birdies at the fifth and sixth holes and maintained it over the front nine as McIlroy’s putter refused to be helpful. A short par putt missed on the 10th from the PLAYERS Champion gave Woods a 3-up lead and it appeared he may cruise to victory. But then the real Rory showed up. He picked up a win on the par-5 12th, played the short par-4 13th to perfection to make it back-to-back birdies and wins and set up a grandstand finish. Woods was forced to make a fighting par save on the 15th before the critical hole – the par-5 16th. McIlroy made a statement by absolutely crushing a drive some 395-yards down breeze into the fairway. Woods pulled his tee shot left into a terrible lie in a bunker. It meant that after a lay-up, Woods was still away some 204-yards from the hole. The 80-time PGA TOUR winner then produced one of his trademark long irons up the hill, a laser to find the putting surface some 24-feet from the flag to keep birdie alive. With a shot up his sleeve and just 173-yards to the hole McIlroy executed poorly, flaring his shot to the right. He came up well short and unluckily stopped in the rough just above the lip of a bunker, creating a terrible lie and stance. His third shot came out hot and flew the green, ending up in an unplayable spot. After a few more hacks from around the green he conceded the hole and fell 2-down with just two to play. Just as Woods looked to have potentially given him life with an average tee shot and chip on the par-3 17th the three-time WGC–Dell Technologies Match Play champion drained his 13-foot par putt for the win. Honorable Mentions Louis Oosthuizen beat Marc Leishman 2 and 1 in the Round of 16: Out in front of the hyped Tiger/Rory match a pair of International Presidents Cup teammates were producing some unbelievable golf. Three birdies apiece over the opening six holes had the players all square before Leishman made the only mistake either produced in the match. Facing a 6-foot par putt to tie the hole, the Australian burned the edge to go 1-down. It was then the critical play came from Oosthuizen. He made a 31-foot birdie on the ninth hole and then hit his approach on the 10th to gimme range to race to a 3-up lead. Leishman refused to quit and birdied the 14th to cut the lead to two holes. He made a huge birdie putt on the 16th to give hope only to see Oosthuizen make his own on top of it. Leishman than gave himself a quality close look at birdie on the 17th hole only to see the South African curl in a 23-foot birdie from the fringe for the win. Lucas Bjerregaard beat Tiger Woods 1 Up in Quarterfinals: Three birdies in a row helped Woods overturn an early deficit to be 2-up on the Dane through five holes. Bjerregaard could have been forgiven if the moment got the better of him, but his fighting spirit became very evident against the wave of crowd support. Through 11 holes he trailed by just a hole and matched birdies with Woods on 12 and 13 to stay in it. By the time they came to the par-5 16th, Woods still appeared to be in control. But then Bjerregaard dropped a lengthy eagle bomb on the 80-time TOUR winner to square the match. He then poured in a must make birdie on the 17th before navigating the last better than Woods for the shock comeback win. BIGGEST “UPSETâ€� There are no real upsets when you put the best 64 players in the world head to head however: Lucas Bjerregaard beat Justin Thomas 3 and 2: The result that became the catalyst for the Danish star to make it all the way to the final four, taking out four major champions and three FedExCup champions along the way, was his first up start in the event against Justin Thomas. Thomas was 2-up through three holes and seemingly cruising as the fifth overall seed against the Dane, who came in as the 50th overall seed. But Bjerregaard had stolen the lead four holes later and then never let up. As he headed around the turn, Bjerregaard stepped up his offensive with three birdies, leaving Thomas in his wake. Kevin Na beat Justin Rose 2 Up in Round of 16: While Rose doesn’t have the greatest WGC–Dell Technologies Match Play record, he was still the number two overall seed coming up against Na, the 57th seed. And Na had limped into the final 16 despite a loss in his group. Through 11 holes, Na was 2-down and Rose was seemingly heading to a win, a result that would have seen him return to world No. 1 status. But Na made back-to-back birdies on the 12th and 13th holes to square the match and then Rose made back-to-back bogeys to relinquish his grip on advancing. BIGGEST ROUT John Rahm beat Si Woo Kim 7 and 5: Jon Rahm won five holes in a row on the back nine to give former PLAYERS champion Si Woo Kim a match play bath. Sadly he couldn’t continue the form, losing to J.B. Holmes and tying Matt Kuchar to miss out on the round of 16. PRESIDENTS CUP WATCH International Team captain Ernie Els might have hoped for more but a quarter of the final 16 were players eligible for his team for December’s Presidents Cup to be held in Melbourne, Australia. Three of them – South Africans Louis Oosthuizen and Branden Grace and Australian Marc Leishman are basically certainties to be part of the team as former standouts. China’s HaoTong Li continues to stake his claim to be the first Chinese representative to play in the Cup. For Tiger Woods and his American team, the case for inclusion was clearly put forth by finalists Matt Kuchar and Kevin Kisner. Kisner was unlucky not to be part of the Ryder Cup in Paris and has now surely ensured he won’t be overlooked again. WEIRDEST MOMENT Sergio Garcia’s brain fade in his quarterfinal against Matt Kuchar proved to be the most talked about quirk of the week. Already 1-down in his match, Garcia had a seven-foot par putt on the par-3 7th hole to bring the match back even following a Kuchar bogey. But he pulled it slightly offline, missing barely to the left. Before Kuchar could verbally concede the four-inch tap in for a half, Garcia swiped at it with the back of his putter and the ball lipped out of the hole. Without a concession Garcia was then ruled to have lost the hole, sending him 2-down. But rather than let it lie, Garcia then spent the next few holes trying to get Kuchar to concede a hole to square the ledger. While Kuchar said he didn’t feel comfortable with what happened, he stopped short of acquiescing to Garcia’s proposal. “It is quite simple. I screwed up. Simple as that,â€� Garcia said. “The only issue was that Kuch was like I didn’t say good, but I don’t want to take the hole, I don’t want to do this like this, and I was like OK that’s fine  – so what do you want to do?” “Because there are many options that you can do if you don’t want to take the hole, even though you’ve already lost that hole. Obviously, he didn’t like any of the options that were there. So it’s fine. At the end of the day I am the one who made the mistake.â€� THREE NAMES TO WATCH GOING FORWARD Lucas Bjerregaard: Just take a look at the players the Danish 27-year-old star beat to make the final four. Among them major winners Justin Thomas, Keegan Bradley, Henrik Stenson and Tiger Woods. Those four players combine for 17 majors, 99 PGA TOUR wins and four FedExCups. Justin Harding: The South African has been in hot form of late on the European Tour with a win and runner up over the last month or so. Only a red-hot Rory McIlroy stopped him coming out of group play. Does Ernie Els have his eye on this guy for the Presidents Cup in Melbourne? Abraham Ancer: Nerves – and a pretty good opponent in Paul Casey – got the better of Ancer in his WGC–Dell Technologies Match Play debut. But the Presidents Cup hopeful rebounded from a first up loss with impressive wins over Cameron Smith and Charles Howell III. Put up eight birdies in 15 holes against Howell.

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Rory McIlroy is seven weeks away from turning 30, and a decade removed from getting kicked out of bars in nearby Jacksonville Beach for underage drinking, a missed cut at THE PLAYERS Championship in 2009 leaving him with a free weekend. His once untamed hair has been replaced by a shorter, more professional look. But that’s just a visual difference of his maturity. Having entered what he describes as the “second phase of my career,â€� McIlroy has replaced peak-and-valley results with consistency and patience. He has replaced confidence – perhaps at times bordering on cockiness – with comfortability. Soon, he’ll celebrate his second wedding anniversary; no longer does he define himself by his golf results. He sees life through a different lens now. “I’ve been preaching perspective,â€� he explained, “and I feel like I’ve got a pretty good handle on that perspective.â€� Ten years into a PGA TOUR career that will one day end up in the World Golf Hall of Fame, McIlroy also has experiences. Many on the positive side; some not so good. Call it scar tissue, call it seasoning – all of it paid off Sunday in the pressure cooker at TPC Sawgrass. RELATED: Champion’s Wall | Winner’s Bag | By the numbers: No. 17 | Round 4 review | Furyk shines with runner-up finish Shaking off an early double bogey, McIlroy worked his way back up the leaderboard, then delivered the key shots down the stretch to emerge with the new gold trophy as THE PLAYERS champion, beating 48-year-old Jim Furyk by a stroke. It ends a drought of just over a year since his last TOUR win at Bay Hill. More important, it should end any chatter that McIlroy can’t deliver down the stretch. McIroy entered this week with top-6 finishes in each of his five previous starts. He had chances to win in Hawaii, in Mexico and last week in his defense at Bay Hill two hours down the road at Orlando. Some saw the results as a precursor to the inevitable. “At the start of the season when I was looking at his setup just on TV, he just looked a lot more relaxed,” said Jason Day, paired with McIlroy on Sunday. “You could tell that he was, just his demeanor was a lot different compared to last year, and it was just a matter of time, it was going to happen.” Yet his failure to close – he also had not won a tournament worldwide in the last nine times he had played in the final group – had the buzzards circling. However, McIlroy entered Sunday drawing on the positives he had seen in that stretch. In his first 23 rounds of 2019, just one was over par. He was playing brilliantly – and he drew on those positive vibes in his final-round 70. “I think all the experiences I’ve had over the last few weeks in terms of trying to win and not getting over the line definitely helped me today,â€� McIlroy said. “Maybe if I hadn’t had those experiences, I wouldn’t be sitting up here with this trophy. I’m thankful and grateful for those experiences.â€� But it wasn’t just the last two months that McIlroy leaned on to navigate a leaderboard in which a half-dozen players had a share of the lead at one point or another. As he saw the jumbled leaderboard, McIlroy thought back to his BMW Championship win in the 2012 FedExCup Playoffs at Crooked Stick (which, like TPC Sawgrass, is a Pete Dye course). It was another stacked leaderboard against the game’s biggest names – Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, to name a few. McIlroy emerged with three back-nine birdies to take the tournament “by the scruff of the neck.â€� “I sort of thought back to that today,â€� McIlroy said. “I don’t know why it popped into my head – I guess all these experiences are so helpful to draw on.â€� At the par-5 16th, McIlroy two-putted from 19 feet for birdie to pass Furyk and take the solo lead at 16 under. As he walked toward the iconic 17th – perhaps the toughest Sunday walk in golf with a one-shot lead – he told himself that he needed just three more good swings. The first one came when he choked down on a 9-iron at the 17th, his tee shot landing safely on the green for a sigh-of-relief par. The second was off the tee at the par-4 18th – among the toughest tee shots in golf. The night before, McIlroy spent time on the range, hoping to straighten out a driver that had hit just 4 of 14 fairways in the third round. He doesn’t usually make those post-round range visits, but the driver is the most important weapon in McIlroy’s bag, and he could ill afford a repeat in the final round. “It was the club yesterday that didn’t behave,â€� he said. “I gave it a couple of slaps on the range and it behaved itself today.â€� And he also drew on another experience – this time at the 2008 Hong Kong Open, when Rory was a teenager playing on the European Tour. He had a chance to win, even though he was uncomfortable with the tee shot at 18 all week. That Sunday, he pulled the 3-wood, committed to the shot and piped the drive. Although he eventually lost a three-man playoff that day, that one tee shot 11 years ago paid off this time. “I don’t believe in anything really, but I think the golf gods will reward you for just making a good, committed swing,â€� McIlroy said. “And any time I have a tough tee shot, I stand up, I pick my target and I swing as hard as I can. And it usually works out because you’ve committed to it, you’ve got a clear head.” “The last two days I’ve piped it down 18 by just remembering that tiny little thing from Hong Kong.â€� Safely on the fairway, he now faced the last of his three swings. From 155 yards, his approach covered the flagstick – a courageous line, to say the least, given the front-left pin placement just steps from the water. When he reached his ball 13 feet away, he knew the tournament was his. The win is the 15th of his TOUR career, and he now joins Tiger Woods as the only golfers to win a PLAYERS, the FedExCup, a World Golf Championships event and multiple majors. And his 15 wins before age 30 have been matched by just five other golfers – Woods, Mickelson, Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller and Tom Watson. Pretty heady company. But the celebration was muted as he rolled in his winning putt and headed to the scoring area. Sure, he was happy to win. His newfound perspective, though, has him keeping his emotions in check. He wants success in life, not just inside the ropes. “I desperately wanted the win today, but it’s just another day, it’s just another step in the journey,â€� he said. “… It’s a huge tournament to win. I’m very proud and very honored, but it’s just a step in the right direction.â€� Maybe it was just meant to be, a Northern Irishman winning on St. Patrick’s Day. Asked if he had ever previously won on this holiday, McIlroy mentioned last year at Bay Hill, when the third round was on St. Patrick’s Day, a two-day celebration. Then he pulled up the sweater he was wearing to reveal a green shirt. “It’s not a bad weekend for me,â€� he said, his Irish eyes doing all the smiling.

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