Tommy Fleetwood’s rise world top-15 golfer has coincided with the use of certain clubs, but he’s down to his last set.
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OLD WESTBURY, N.Y. – Engrave the trophy. It’s locked up. Jordan Spieth has won THE NORTHERN TRUST. Having won nine of the last 10 times he’s led after 54 holes on the PGA TOUR, Spieth’s three-shot buffer over Dustin Johnson means it is statistically likely the Texan makes it win No. 4 for the year on Sunday and takes the lead in the FedExCup. Rounds of 69-65-64 leave him at 12 under par at Glen Oaks Club with Johnson at 9 under. Spieth is five shots clear of the four-way tie for third so the buffer is too significant, right? We haven’t seen a front-runner like this since Tiger Woods, who was an incredible 51-4 when holding the lead or co-lead with a round to go on the PGA TOUR. OK. OK. OK. Hold up. Let’s not get too crazy. This is golf after all. Spieth knows as well as anyone a tournament can turn on one bad swing – or one good one. That one 54-hole lead he didn’t convert in the last 10? The 2016 Masters where he blew a 5-shot lead on the back nine. The vision of him painfully finding Raes Creek twice that day are still fresh scars for us all. His most recent 54-hole lead came at The Open Championship this year where he lost his buffer early with some crazy play, famously hit the ball off the map and played from the driving range, before sensationally turning it back around with a blitz finish for victory. The time before that it appeared he was going to let Daniel Berger get the better of him at the Travelers Championship in a playoff. Cue a sensational bunker hole-out in sudden death for the win. You couldn’t really write the script for any of these occasions. “I’d expect anything. I’ve kind of shown that anything can happen [laughing] unfortunately and fortunately,â€� Spieth said when asked to imagine what he would think if he was trying to chase down a front-runner with his record. “So anything can happen tomorrow. I expect some swings but if we stay focused on a goal, keep playing the way we’re playing, then should be fine.â€� The chasing pack can look at things one of two ways. They can go glass half-empty and lament the likelihood of Spieth’s steel to win and ability to get out of even tough situations. Or they can go glass half-full and recall his shakiness at times, and back themselves to go head-to-head if they can get him near the ropes. “I like coming from behind,â€� Johnson, fourth in the FedExCup, said. “Let’s be honest here. I’d rather have a three-shot lead. But it’s not that bad coming from three shots back, either, because that can change in one hole. “Obviously Jordan’s playing really well, so he’s going to be tough to beat tomorrow.â€� Johnson wasn’t planning on being overly aggressive. Instead he plans to just rely on his long game to potentially give himself more birdie chances than the 24-year-old. He will have to as Spieth’s putter has been a big part of the puzzle. “Maybe some of his putting will rub off on me and I’ll start holing them,â€� Johnson smiled. “I think it’s going to be a fun day. I think it’s going to be a battle but we’ll see who is on top at the end.â€� For those further back – like Spaniard Jon Rahm who is part of the crowd at 7 under – aggression is going to be needed. When the gap is five you must go super low or also hope for a stumble above. “And Spieth is not known for being one to stumble. Last time he actually made a little bit of a mistake and ended up with a finish for the ages at The Open,â€� Rahm said. “He’s not going to give it to you. That guy can seriously close it out. “We need to make up shots as fast as possible, as early as possible. Hopefully I can get off to a good start like I did today and make a few putts early and who knows.â€� Spieth for his part expects them to come at him hard. He doesn’t believe the field is playing for second. “I imagine it’s not like guys that were chasing Tiger where you almost felt hopeless,â€� he said. “I don’t think DJ is really worried about much. We’ve battled it out quite a few times. He’ll step up and just do his thing. I don’t think he’s going to think much about me, other than where he’s at as we get down the stretch.â€� Spieth, the 2015 FedExCup champion, hopes Johnson isn’t even in the hunt by the time they get down the stretch. The first of his three wins this season came at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am where he “cruisedâ€� along on Sunday. “Pebble Beach was an absolute cruise,â€� he reminisced. “It was a bogey-free 2-under round when I had a lead by a significant margin, and I think the longest par putt I had was 3 feet that day. So that’s what I would obviously like tomorrow.â€� Glen Oaks might not allow that. While the fairways are generous, the rough is thick. “This is not a course you can stand on the first tee and think 65. It can happen but you force it out here you will have a big number,â€� former U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy said. “It’s a U.S. Open with wide fairways. A good player is going to win here and if it’s not one of the really long hitters like Jordan than he’s done extremely well.â€� Odds are he will do extremely well. Again.
Once you’ve rearranged the furniture in your living room, it can be pretty much impossible to know when to stop. The allowance to be creative breeds fresh perspective that inherently doesn’t have an endpoint, even for the disciplined. When it comes to redesigning golf courses, layers of other influences come into play, but it also requires a break, if for no other reason than it’s time to play. RELATED: Play Pick ‘Em Live | The First Look | Inside the Field When Jack Nicklaus announced that his most recent redesign of Muirfield Village Golf Club – otherwise known as the natural gathering place at his home – was his last, it doesn’t mean that he’s done molding and shaping the possibilities virtually, imaginatively. It just means that he’s given the manifestation of his process his last, best shot (which assumes that he really is done molding and shaping). In its debut last year, the latest iteration of Nicklaus’ beloved track in Dublin, Ohio, stood tall in testing PGA TOUR membership as host of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, albeit with one curious anomaly, and likely a one-timer at that. It’s explained in the course review below. POWER RANKINGS: THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT PRESENTED BY WORKDAY Cameron Smith, Joaquin Niemann, Marc Leishman, Mito Pereira and 2018 Memorial champ Bryson DeChambeau will be among the notables reviewed in Draws and Fades. When considering the challenge of Muirfield Village over time, it’s always been a progressive experience tee to target, but it’s not as simple as classifying it as a second-shot track. While Nicklaus has conceded room to miss off the tee, the course tips at 7,533 yards, so muscle is rewarded. (Overall distance is down 10 yards because the par-5 seventh hole will play no longer than 582 yards this week.) At the same time, the most penal of the rough begins at four inches high, so respect and thoughtfulness when sizing up each hole is required. Still, the 120 entrants of this limited-field invitational need to step up and hit golf shots on approach. Bentgrass greens average just 5,000 square feet, and they’re annually the slickest surfaces outside the confines of Augusta National Golf Club. On second thought, that’s not true, at least it wasn’t last year. New greens at Muirfield Village ran 12 feet on the Stimpmeter last year. That’s a common expectation on most courses utilized by the PGA TOUR, but they were measurably slower by comparison to pre-redesign when readings of 13 feet and beyond were collected. As a result, three-putt avoidance was at an all-time low of 1.52 percent, third-lowest among all of 51 courses during the super season. (The previous record for the course was 2.21 percent in 1998. The stat has been recorded in earnest since 1992.) That dropped average putts per round by exactly 1.00 (to 27.99), and the conversion percentage inside 10 feet climbed in concert, but most other familiar measurements to define how it went were in line with history. The learning curve of the new greens served as a counterbalance. To wit, putts per greens in regulation and average distance of putts converted historically will not reflect the modifications. But now, with an additional year to mature, and with cooperative conditions, the governor can be lifted. After a blast of early summertime heat, a front bringing rain and cooler air will make its way into the region midweek. The tail end of it will be gone on some time on Thursday, so the turf should be receptive for the opening round. Dry weather is forecast thereafter, daytime highs might not touch 80 degrees and wind shouldn’t be an issue. Per the new norm, the winner will receive 550 FedExCup points, a three-season membership exemption (or one-year extension to a maximum of five seasons) and a three-year exemption into THE PLAYERS Championship. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.com’s Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous perspectives. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers, Draws and Fades WEDNESDAY: Pick ’Em Preview SUNDAY: Medical Extensions, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Rookie Ranking * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.
KAPALUA, Hawaii — KAPALUA, Hawaii — All it took was one round for the new year to feel like the end of last season on the PGA TOUR. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Viktor Hovland reunited with clubs just in time in Maui Cameron Smith of Australia opened the Sentry Tournament of Champions with a pair of long eagle putts and to offset an early bogey for an 8-under 65 and a one-shot lead at Kapalua. For the rest of the warm, gorgeous afternoon, the focus quickly shifted to the two players golf hasn’t seen in quite some time. Patrick Cantlay, who last competed on Sunday at the Ryder Cup on Sept. 26, seized on the scoring holes and the soft conditions and started running off birdies and one eagle. He had to settle for par on the par-5 18th hole and posted a 7-under 66. Not bad for his first competition in 102 days. Jon Rahm, who was in dire need of a break from a chaotic 16 months of majors and parenthood and COVID-19, was bogey-free and still mildly irritated by the pair of birdie putts he left short on the par 5s. He also had 66. They were the leading contenders for the FedExCup last year, when Cantlay closed with a superb 6-iron for birdie on the final hole and a one-shot win at the TOUR Championship, giving him the $15 million and ultimately PGA TOUR player of the year. They will be paired Friday. “Again,” Cantlay said with a smile. There was plenty of good golf, and attribute that to day in paradise that felt and looked like one. The sun was blazing. A few humpback whales were breaching. The wind was not raging. The Plantation Course was soft from rain. Scoring was simply ideal. Twenty-two players from the 38-man field of PGA TOUR winners broke 70. Justin Thomas, Patrick Reed and Lucas Glover, all at 74, were the only players over par. But while everyone had a holiday break — that meant more fishing than golf for Smith while at his U.S. base in north Florida — Cantlay and Rahm seemed to have been gone forever. It just didn’t look that way. “I still think I’m a little rusty and I saw that in my start,” said Cantlay, who missed the first green and saw his chip run with the grain some 12 feet by the hole. “I got away with a couple of loose swings and one flier on the sixth hole where I was able to make a par, but maybe shouldn’t have.” His shot sailed well over the green, some 40 yards away. He chopped that out to 8 feet for an unlikely par, had a two-putt par from 70 feet, saved par from the rough on the par-3 eighth. He was holding it together. And then really got on a roll on the back nine,” Cantlay said. It started with the 13th hole and a birdie, and while Cantlay missed a good chance at birdie on the 18th that would have tied Smith for the lead, he still played the final six holes in 6-under par. The big shot was a 35-foot eagle putt on No. 15. The most pleasing was a full pitching wedge over the ravine to a front pin on the picturesque 17th. Rahm was a lot cleaner, playing bogey-free. He ran off three straight birdies on the front nine and then got hot, as Cantlay did, on the closing six holes. Rahm finished with a long two-putt birdie in his first round in 83 days. “You can always expect a little bit of rust,” Rahm said. “I took time off, but I wasn’t on the couch doing nothing. I was still working out. I was still practicing as if I was still in the season. I took maybe three weeks off of golf, which were very needed. But even though I was home, I was practicing. “Again, not that I’m surprised that I played good, but it’s really good to come out and start the year off the right way.” Throw Daniel Berger into that category. He joined Cantlay and Rahm just one shot off the lead. Berger, who had to reconfigure a caddie’s clubs to practice earlier in the week when his golf bag was delayed two days, also opened with a 66. Berger also went missing after the Ryder Cup, turning up in the Bahamas with plenty of rust and no lack of belief. He practiced a little bit more in the week before Kapalua, only to show up on Maui with his golf clubs nowhere to be found. He had them two days later — Berger borrowed the clubs of caddie Brett Waldman, and even took the liberty of changing the lies and lofts on the irons — and didn’t miss a beat. His only lapse was a long three-putt that was down the slope but into the grain on the 17th, though he atoned for that with a birdie on the last. Players could reach the 663-yard closing hole with a long iron in fast conditions last year. Berger couldn’t get home with a 3-wood. He was no less pleased and it was hard for anyone to be terribly upset given the location. Never mind that he still isn’t sure which island is Lanai and which is Molokai as he gazes out toward the ocean. “I’m not good with islands. There’s too many of them,” Berger said. “I know we’re in Maui.”
