Golf: Molinari and Points ace same hole at Bay Hill

When a golf course is approved to undergo a renovation, it usually means that it’s older and outdated. It’s tired. It’s getting (or has already been) passed by due to the never-ending advancement of equipment and its agronomy has deteriorated beyond the point of sustainable maintenance to achieve expectations. Then there’s what happened at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm. After it hosted the PGA TOUR from 1987-2004 and once more in 2006, it not only required an overhaul to eliminate concern over poor drainage and substandard turf, it likely wasn’t going to rejoin any sort of rotation as a host at this level until something significant occurred. Done and done. A much tougher test is in store for the field of 120 at this week’s Quicken Loans National. Continues to sizzle and remains one of the most active among the elite. Since a T14 at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, he’s 7-for-7 with six top 25s. Season-best T5 last week. The PGA TOUR’s leader in adjusted scoring took a week to lick his wounds after a T5 at the U.S. Open. Fifth in birdie-or-better percentage and 10th in bogey avoidance. To steal his phrase, wouldn’t be surprised if he just won this (the week after sitting atop the Power Rankings, naturally). Tops on TOUR in birdies-or-better percentage. The 2013 champ (a mile away at Congressional) struts in on a T12-T25-T5 burst. Sits eighth in greens in regulation, seventh in scrambling and third in bogey avoidance. His affinity for tough tracks doesn’t hurt, but foreign greens already enhance his ball-striking skill set. Four top 25s since the Masters, including breakthrough title at Valero. Keeps printing top 20s like money. A T14 at TPC River Highlands is his eighth in 2017 alone. A force throughout his bag, he’s also 13th in bogey avoidance. Scratched out four sub-70s for a T17 at TPC River Highlands, his third top 20 in the last six weeks. Ranks 10th in strokes gained: tee-to-green and sixth in adjusted scoring. Heating up again as we near the Presidents Cup. Last week’s T3 occurs just one month after he went T5-solo sixth in the final swing through Texas. Has always enjoyed a tough test. Win at the AT&T Byron Nelson and T4 at the FedEx St. Jude Classic illustrate recent connections with tiptop form. Twelfth on TOUR in GIR. Might fulfill the eye test more than any other golfer because his occasional brilliance transcends data. Always a threat to WD, but nonetheless rested since a T13 at Erin Hills. Radically improved putting has yielded progressively better top 20s in his last three starts. It’s paid off what was already a serviceable tee-to-green game. Captured his only Web.com Tour title here in 2012. Like Reed, the Swede was also sparked by a T14 at the Zurich Classic and is 7-for-7 since, albeit with one less top 25. No stranger to thriving on smaller greens is fresh off a T5 at TPC River Highlands where he ranked T3 in greens in regulation and 15th in proximity to the hole. Duties as a first-time defending champion may be distracting, but practices at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm, so he likes the level of comfort and advantage it presents. The team event in NOLA has marked a turnaround for him as well. The rookie backed up a T5 at the U.S. Open with a T14 at the Travelers. Ranks 24th in GIR. POWER RANKINGS: QUICKEN LOANS NATIONAL RANK PLAYER COMMENT Along with many other notables, Tony Finau, Jimmy Walker, J.B. Holmes and Charles Howell III will be included in Tuesday’s Fantasy Insider. Back when TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm was a regular stop on the PGA TOUR and then known simply as TPC Avenel, it played as a pushover of a par 71. Charles Howell III owns the course record with a 61 in 2004. Three golfers share the tournament record of 263, most recently submitted by Adam Scott, also in 2004. Neither mark is expected to be threatened this week even. To shed perspective on the challenge, we turn to the career of World Golf Hall of Famer Bernhard Langer. He’s made 197 starts on the PGA TOUR Champions, but in only 14 has he completed a tournament over par. One of those occasions was during the Constellation SENIOR PLAYERS Championship in October of 2010 when TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm resurfaced following its overhaul (in 2007). Mark O’Meara prevailed in a playoff after the duo completed the 72-hole competition in 7-under 273. The Web.com Tour then swung into town in October of 2012, and then again on the weekend after Memorial Day in 2013. David Lingmerth’s 8-under 272 was good enough for the first title, while Michael Putnam’s 7-under 273 secured victory in the latter. Only a combined 21 golfers finished under par for the week in the two editions. Jason Gore’s opening 63 in 2012 is the lowest aggregate of any of the three sanctioned competitions since 2010. Since Ben Curtis was the last PGA TOUR winner to pose for pictures at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm, none of the 18 holes were left alone during the upgrade and modernization. Multiple holes were completely redone and all 83 bunkers were rebuilt. Particular attention was paid to land directly affected when water rises on the Rock Run Stream Valley that crosses through the southern edge of the property. The course now tips at 7,107 yards. Bentgrass greens averaging 5,300 square feet and running at about 12 feet on the Stimpmeter place a premium on distance and accuracy on approach. They’ll also help hide poor putters, but the relative unfamiliarity of the surfaces already presents an even playing field. However, as of midday Monday, 17 in the field (including Lingmerth) competed in the Web.com Tour event in 2012 and 21 were here in 2013, including Quicken Loans National defending champion Billy Hurley III. He missed the cut. Overall, 28 played in at least one of the two with 10 pegging it in both. (All former participants will be listed in The Confidence Factor on Tuesday.) Summerlike weather is in store throughout the tournament, and that includes an increasing threat of rain and boomers into the weekend. Warm and muggy air will provide the ingredients, while prevailing winds from a southwesterly direction may play a role at times, especially early. ROB BOLTON’S WRITING SCHEDULE PGATOUR.COM’s Fantasy Columnist Rob Bolton will be filing his usual staples leading up to this week’s event. Look for the following columns this week. MONDAY: Rookie Ranking, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Medical Extensions, Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers, The Confidence Factor, Fantasy Insider WEDNESDAY: One & Done THURSDAY: Ownership Percentages in PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf and One & Done presented by SERVPRO * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf presented by SERVPRO, which also publishes on Tuesdays.

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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – The Waste Management Phoenix Open prides itself on being a zero-landfill event, with cardboard receptacles marked “Recycleâ€� and “Compostâ€� all over the TPC Scottsdale course. Now, it seemed, Rickie Fowler was throwing away the tournament. Or was it being taken from him, ripped out of hands by the golf gods? Heads shook. Jaws dropped. Minds reeled. And it fell to the PGA TOUR Vice President of Rules and Competition Slugger White to explain that Fowler, who was cruising toward certain victory, had just made a bizarre triple-bogey 7 at the par-4 11th hole, changing everything. “I hope I never have to go through that again,â€� Fowler said when it was over, and he had secured his fifth TOUR win and the first witnessed by his father, Rod, and maternal grandpa, Taka. On a course where he has sometimes seemed cursed, Fowler survived a shocking calamity the likes of which no one could remember, making clutch birdies on 15 and 17 to gut out a final-round 74 and beat Branden Grace (69) by two. Justin Thomas, Fowler’s friend and roommate for the week, shot 72 to finish third. In breaking a nearly two-year win drought, Fowler moved to 7th in the FedExCup; qualified for the Sentry Tournament of Champions; and bucked a trend that had seen him convert only one of his last six 54-hole leads/co-leads to victory on TOUR. When people remember this WMPO, though, they’ll remember the craziness at the 11th hole. MUST READS: Round 4, Waste Management Phoenix Open Winner’s Bag: Rickie Fowler, 2019 Waste Management Phoenix Open Miller’s retirement week includes Cheez Whiz story Champ marks Black History Month with black, white shoes Lyle memorial brings perspective to rowdy 16th hole “Pretty much everything that could go wrong went wrong,â€� Fowler said. Well, almost everything. His caddie, Joe Skovron, could have fallen in the water, too. The saga began when Fowler’s approach to the 483-yard hole came up short. He got too aggressive with his third, which skidded through the rain-soaked green, trickled down the hill behind it, and tumbled in the pond. “The ball looked like it was on ice,â€� he said. The shot was overdone, but slightly unlucky. Had the ball veered just a touch to the right, it would have caught the sand, from where he might’ve gotten up and down for bogey. Fowler took a drop at water’s edge and walked up the hill to look at the green. Then, as he says on one of his TV commercials, things got weird. With the rain intensifying and Fowler having turned his back, the ball that was at rest rolled down the hill and into the water. After some discussion with White, it was determined that Fowler would be penalized one more shot for the ball going in the water. He hadn’t hit it there, but it had been in play. “That’s an interesting one,â€� Fowler said of the Rules of Golf, which the governing bodies have tried to simplify and make more user-friendly. “We did nothing to cause it to happen, and it’s a one-shot penalty.â€� He dropped again, chipped his sixth shot onto the green, and rolled in a 17-foot putt for 7, or what he later called “a really good triple.â€� Grace birdied the 13th hole, Fowler bogeyed 12, and just like that he’d gone from five ahead to one behind in less than an hour. It was all slipping away again. With his mom and dad, Lynn and Rod, and maternal grandparents, Jeanie and Taka, watching again, this was going to be the day Rickie exorcised the demons of his crushing runner-up to Hideki Matsuyama in 2016. That day Fowler knocked his drive over the par-4 17th and into the water in regulation, and hooked a 3-wood into the water on the same hole in the playoff. He’d choked back tears afterward, so badly had he wanted to win in front of his dad and grandpa. He’d finished runner-up to Hunter Mahan in 2010, too. Last year Fowler had had a chance to win yet again but bogeyed three of the last four holes and finished T11. All those close calls? All that craziness this time around? “To have it end the way it did today was unbelievable,â€� said Fowler’s father, Rod. “I think that made it even more special.â€� This time, Fowler played to win instead of not to lose. He reached the green in two at the par-5 15th, his second shot from 239 yards clearing the hazard and leaving him with an easy two-putt birdie from 50 feet. He was tied with Grace, who was beginning to falter ahead of him. Fowler saved par from just right of the 16th green. He drove the green on 17, the hole that had tormented him for years. Again, he needed only two putts for another birdie. He was back to 17 under, two ahead of Grace, who’d bogeyed 17. “To hit the shots that he did on those holes, after everything that had happened, was amazing,â€� said friend Aaron Baddeley, who lives five minutes from the course and had driven over with his wife and four of his five kids to see Fowler win. (Baddeley had done the same thing last year and in 2016, only to wind up giving condolences instead of congratulations.) Friend Thomas said he believed Fowler’s win, under such harsh conditions and with bad breaks, will do more to steel him for future battles than had he coasted to victory. “It was insane,â€� Thomas said of the events at the 11th hole. The winner didn’t dispute that, or the fact that everything had turned out in the end. He flipped the winning ball to grandpa Taka, who caught it and beamed as grandma Jeanie captured the moment on her iPhone. “Cheers,â€� Fowler said, raising a glass of Champagne as he met the media afterward. “I finally got it done.â€�

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