‘He is winning people over’: Golf is subscribing to Bryson DeChambeau

2020 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, End of Round 2. Top 10 win probabilities: Patrick Cantlay (T1, -12, 22.5%) Lucas Glover (T1, -12, 9.3%) Kevin Na (T1, -12, 6.6%) Brian Stuard (T1, -12, 6%) Adam Scott (T11, -9, 5.1%) Webb Simpson (T11, -9, 4.9%) Collin Morikawa (T11, -9, 4.3%) Matt Jones (5, -11, 4.2%) Adam Hadwin (T11, -9, 2.5%) Nick Taylor (T6, -10, 2.4%) Top Strokes-Gained Performers from Round 2: Putting: Kevin Na +5.6 Around the Green: Brandon Hagy +3.5 Approach the Green: Kyle Stanley +4.7 Off-the-tee: Martin Laird +2.2 Total: Kevin Na +6.9 NOTE: These reports are based off the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cut�, “Top 20�, “Top 5�, and “Win� probabilities every 5 minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 20K simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page.

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KAPALUA, Hawaii – Justin Thomas hits 2020 craving more. Much more. More than the FedExCup he’s won. More than the four weeks he spent at world No. 1. More than being one of just 10 players to shoot a sub 60 round on TOUR. More than the 11 PGA TOUR wins, including a major championship, that sit on his resume at just 26 years of age. The drive behind Thomas remains stronger than ever despite past success. There is no resting on laurels. Quite the opposite. A pesky wrist injury last season helped take a win “droughtâ€� to just over a year before he connected in the FedExCup Playoffs with a BMW Championship triumph. His previous 11 starts prior to the win had been devoid of a top 10 – the longest such drought of his entire PGA TOUR career – including his amateur starts. RELATED: Power Rankings | Top 30 Players to Watch: Justin Thomas But the victory in Chicago reasserted Thomas as a class above most. He then opened 2019-20 with a T4 at the Safeway Open before winning the THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES. Adding a T17 at THE ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP in Japan means he enters the Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua this week sitting fifth in the FedExCup. “I’m disappointed I haven’t achieved more to be honest until this far. I shouldn’t say disappointed… but I feel like I could have and should have won a lot more tournaments and definitely should have contended and won some more majors,â€� an honest Thomas said from Maui. The 2017 FedExCup champion won at Kapalua that same year and was third here 12 months ago. It makes sense that he hopes to continue his rise back up where fond memories are in abundance. His competitive fire is so strong it can sometimes be mistaken for a chip on his shoulder. With other players taking a bigger share of the spotlight in the last year one might think Thomas is driven to prove any doubters – or even those who may have slightly forgotten about his incredible talents – wrong. Not so. “All the motivation I need to get to No. 1 in the world is in myself. I don’t need to try to prove anybody wrong. I don’t need to do it because people said I can’t. Because I want to be there is big enough motivation for me,â€� he explains. “I wouldn’t say anybody slept on me last year. I didn’t play very well to start the year, and I hadn’t won at all, and I dropped five to ten in the world rankings, so there’s a lot of people that were playing better than me and winning more tournaments. “I could have had a pity party and asked for more attention, but I definitely didn’t deserve anything special. I hadn’t done what I had the year before and definitely not two years before that. I tried to stay patient, and I was glad to see it kind of come back to how it felt like it should have been at the end of the year.â€�

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PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan met with select members of the media on Sunday at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, touching on a variety of topics. A few of the highlights: 2019 PRESIDENTS CUP QUALIFYING. The 2019 Presidents Cup in Australia is scheduled for the week of Dec. 9 – two months later in the year than when the 2017 event at Liberty National was played. Monahan expects adjustments in when teams will be formed; in 2017, qualification ended after the second FedExCup Playoffs event. “I think that there will probably be more flexibility in 2019 than there might be in a different year, just based on timing,� he said. “I think the captain selections would probably move themselves closer towards the competition than the end of the FedExCup season. The specifics of that, we’re kind of working on right now.� Monahan said the TOUR will assess, as it always does, the format of the Presidents Cup, but that there will not be an overreaction to the U.S. Team’s lopsided victory at Liberty National. “This is not about responding every year to what the score is,� Monahan said. “You go back and you got to look at the next 20, 40 years and make certain that you got a format that’s sustainable. … It’s hard to say where it will net out but at this point, the same rules are going to apply as we go forward, which is the team with more points is going to win.� 2019 PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP. Monahan said that when the PGA TOUR schedule is revised for the 2018-19 season, THE PLAYERS Championship will be played on the third weekend of March. THE PLAYERS will be moving to March starting that year, while the PGA Championship moves from August to May, allowing the FedExCup Playoffs to be moved up to an earlier completion. Monahan also said the 2019 portion of the schedule will once again be held in Hawaii, with the Sentry Tournament of Champions in the first week of January, followed by the Sony Open in Hawaii. In another schedule tidbit, Monahan expects to have a week off between the end of the 2018-19 season and the start of the 2019-20 season. “It’s likely that you would see a little bit of separation,� he said. He added that “good progress� has been made toward finalizing 2018-19 schedule and that it may be announced “in a couple months.� RICKIE’S UNTUCKED SHIRT. Consider Monahan a fan of Rickie Fowler’s Hawaiian shirt that he debuted in the first round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions. “I was at my house on Thursday night watching the opening broadcast and I thought it was fantastic,� Monahan said. “… Obviously, he’s someone that’s very thoughtful. And he was respecting Hawaiian culture and everything that makes this island and this area so great, and he did it in his own way and brought a lot of attention – not just to Rickie but to the tournament, to the area. … I think it’s representative of what makes our athletes so special. I don’t see any negative to it.� PGA TOUR/LPGA TOUR CO-EVENT. Monahan said he remains in discussion with LPGA and its commissioner, Mike Whan, about having an event that would include pros from both tours. He called the Sentry Tournament of Champions a “logical� option but not the only one. “That’s something that we’ll continue to talk about as we go down the road,� Monahan said. “And we’ll continue to talk to the LPGA about – if not here, how do we accomplish this at one of our tournaments. “That’s something that I’ve talked to Mike about at length and it’s something that we think is important, and I would like to think that we’ll get there at some point.� TIGER’S RETURN. Tiger Woods is scheduled to make his first start on TOUR in a year at the Farmers Insurance Open the week of Jan. 22. “We have been so fortunate that some of our young players and our players generally stepped up and carry the game forward,� Monahan said, “but to bring Tiger back into the mix and have the question that you’re asking out in front of everybody – I think it’s going to be fascinating to watch and we’re blessed that it’s happening.� CHARITY. The PGA TOUR and its tournaments across all tours announced Sunday that it generated more than $180 million for charitable causes in 2017, a record amount for a single year (click here for more details). That brings the all-time total to $2.65 billion. “It’s kind of weird – we talk about numbers, and numbers are numbers and it’s really hard to put your arms around it because they’re so big and they’re so significant,� Monahan said. “But it’s obviously the impact that our tournaments are having and our players are having by virtue of their participation in tournaments and support of the tournaments, which is the most powerful … “It’s a big part of who we are. We like to think that we do it better than anybody else – and we’re going to keep growing that number. That’s our scorecard.�

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