Hovland narrowly misses top 10 at John Deere Classic

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Winning THE PLAYERS Championship is difficult. Backing it up, apparently, is impossible. The 2020 PLAYERS Championship is the 47th edition of the PGA TOUR’s flagship event and yet to this point no one has managed to successfully defend the title. This is despite huge names such as Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods being among the champions list. RELATED: Leaderboard | Matsuyama ties course record | Rory gets a good read THE PLAYERS sports by far the most years without a title defense on the current PGA TOUR schedule, ahead of the TOUR Championship and Sanderson Farms Championship, each going 33 years without a successful defense. Next on the list is the Wells Fargo Championship at 17 years. Now compare that to recent results at other big tournaments on the schedule – Brooks Koepka repeating as the U.S. Open winner in 2018 and the PGA Championship winner last season; Padraig Harrington repeating as Open champ in 2008; and Woods repeating as Masters champ in 2002. In fact, since the inaugural THE PLAYERS Championship in 1974, 10 major winners have successfully defended. To be fair, there are multiple winners at THE PLAYERS, like three-time champ Nicklaus (1974, 1976, 1978) and two-time winners Woods (2001, 2013), Steve Elkington (1991, 1997), Davis Love III (1992, 2003), Hal Sutton (1983, 1996) and Fred Couples (1984, 1996) but no one has gone back-to-back. The average distance between each win for the two-time winners at TPC Sawgrass is 11 years. Nicklaus’ three titles came before the permanent move to TPC Sawgrass in 1982, but familiarity with Pete Dye’s course hasn’t made the task of repeating easier. You could argue it’s even more difficult. The best finish for a defending champion is a tie for fifth place, done by Nicklaus in 1977 (across the street at Sawgrass Country Club), Tom Kite in 1990 (at TPC Sawgrass) and Sutton in 2001 (also at TPC Sawgrass). They are three of just six top-10 finishes by champions the following season. Perhaps the best chance was Mark McCumber, who was just two strokes behind after 54 holes in 1989. He was still just two behind at the turn on Sunday but failed to make a birdie in the closing stretch. Instead, two bogeys left him with a final-round 74 and four strokes behind winner Kite. Others who had a decent chance: Nicklaus in ’77 (three shots back through 54 holes, then shot a final-round 72 to fall four back) and Kite in ’90 (three back through 54 holes before a 73 on Sunday left him seven adrift). And then there was Craig Perks, who had surprised everyone in 2002 when he was 3 under on the final three holes with just one putt. Perks chipped in for eagle on 16, made a 25-foot birdie putt on 17 and then chipped in for par on the last to win by two. A year later he was one off the pace after round one and just two back through 36 and 54 holes. Sadly for the New Zealander, he bogeyed the third and tripled the fourth on Sunday en route to a 76 and T17 finish. So why is it so tough? Well it boils down to two simple things. 1. The Field The PLAYERS Championship is 144 of the best players in the world, made up mostly of PGA TOUR tournament winners over the last 12 months, the world top 50, the top 125 players from last season’s FedExCup and those inside the top 10 of the current FedExCup season not already exempt among others. In other words … it is stacked. “There’s a lot of events where you can … narrow the field down to 25 or 30 players and say this is the group that has the best chance this week,â€� 1988 champion Justin Leonard said. “But here, that group is like 144 people because everybody here that’s in this tournament has the ability and the game to win. If anybody gives you a bet, take the field bet this week, because everybody here has got a chance to win.â€� 2. The Course TPC Sawgrass refuses to give bias to one type of player. You cannot and will not contend with just one or two parts of your game working. You need it all. “There’s places that you can kind of fake it and get around but not here. This place you have to be on top of your game physically and mentally, period, and that’s just an incredibly difficult thing to do,â€� 1999 champion David Duval said. “And year to year the conditions are different. It’s just a situation where if you’re not, for lack of a better way to put it, firing on all cylinders around this golf course, it will expose you. That’s the beauty of the design.â€� Added 2015 champ Rickie Fowler: “I saw something that was posted not long ago of the recent past champions here and what guys did well from whether it was driving the ball, approach, putting, scrambling, and there was nothing really that stood out as one thing between all players. Some guys hit more irons off tee, some guys hit a lot of drivers, some guys putted well, but there’s not one particular thing that was necessarily common between all of them. To me, at the end of the day, it’s whoever has the most control and kind of keeps it simple, fairways and greens.â€� “It is a positional course and since everyone hits it pretty far, we all are sort of going to the same spot. So it opens up the entire field with a chance here,â€� 2004 champion Adam Scott said. “It’s very open much like the Open Championship. If you are creative enough … everyone has the power to get it round an Open Championship course and you don’t overpower this golf course either.â€� Webb Simpson, the 2018 champion, said the finishing stretch also cannot be left out of the reasoning. Recent changes have ensured the back side of the course can be gettable, but still dangerous for those willing to take a risk. Rory McIlroy, Kevin Chappell and Shane Lowry all hold the record with 7-under 29s from 2016. Fowler finished the last four holes birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie to get into a playoff which he would eventually win. “It’s one of those courses where you feel so uncomfortable and unconfident with a one-shot lead or two-shot lead even with a few to go, compared to on other places you can put it on cruise control,â€� Simpson said. “So much can happen on 16, 17, 18 and really now from 12 on with it being a drivable par 4. So the back nine presents itself to have fireworks. “Even in 2018 when I had a big lead, I really didn’t feel comfortable until I hit it on the green on 17. You’re not really thinking bad thoughts, but you’re thinking you’ve seen history, you’ve seen guys hit it in the water there on 17 and make a mess out of it. That’s why it’s hard to defend, because come Sunday, anyone can shoot 6-, 7-, 8-under.â€� Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee said this sort of mental battle of when to attack and when not to is a huge part of the championship. “The straightest players are generally, from a technical proficiency standpoint, the most arrogant, so they’re not used to not being able to go at things, because they can do it. But you get here and you make mistakes of precision, arrogance, and you pay the price for it,â€� Chamblee said. “The longest hitters are the most arrogant when it comes to trajectory. They can solve problems with trajectory. They’ve got wedges in their hands so they can get over anything and around anything to difficult pins, but you make the mistake here of trajectory or angle because of your distance and you get punished. “This golf course is like a five-sided Rubik’s Cube. Nobody really is proficient at that thing. It’s a technical battle. It’s a mental battle. It’s a psychological battle. It’s a patience battle. And so much luck goes into winning a golf tournament anyway, even on golf courses that are far more prejudiced to power. But on a golf course like this, with the importance of having great luck and then the unlikeliness that you would have the absolute perfect demeanor, absolutely perfect clarity, great judgment, great technical proficiency, luck on your side. It’s just hugely unlikely that someone would come here and be able to do that (two years running).â€� Does this mean last year’s winner and current FedExCup champion Rory McIlroy is doomed? He clearly hopes not, and actually sees it as a chance to be part of history. “I’d love to give myself a chance,â€� McIlroy said earlier this week. “If I can keep playing the way I’ve been playing and get myself into contention on Sunday, it would be something extra to play for, which would be pretty cool. “It is an opportunity for sure. I don’t think you ever need an extra motivation when you come to this golf tournament, but to be the first one to defend here would be very cool.â€� Very cool indeed.

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Amid talk that this might be the strongest U.S. team ever, Europe falls into an early 0-3 hole but roars back for a 17.5-10.5 victory over the U.S. at Le Golf National, the third-most lopsided U.S. loss ever in the Ryder Cup. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where the Americans ventured across the Atlantic with high hopes to end the losing streak that has seen them lose every Ryder Cup on foreign soil since 1993, but didn’t even come close to doing so despite looking like the better team on paper. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. This was a predictable result. There were problems for the U.S. even as they touched down in Paris. Although Tiger Woods had won the TOUR Championship at East Lake, Phil Mickelson looked out of sorts and finished last (30th). Bubba Watson finished 29th, Patrick Reed 28th and Brooks Koepka shot a second-round 78 and tied for 26th. Overall, the results were worrisome. Sure enough, Mickelson went 0-2 in France and was benched all day Saturday. Reed, the vocal MVP of the U.S. side that took down Europe in 2016, struggled after being split up from his usual partner, Jordan Spieth, and didn’t earn a point until the singles. Koepka played better but went 1-2-1, and the U.S. never looked fully comfortable with the course, where Europe came in having played a combined 236 tournament rounds compared to eight for the U.S. Justin Thomas (4-1-0), the best American player, had played the French Open this year; Koepka had played it during a stint in Europe early in his career. 2. This was an unpredictable result. Mere days after collecting the 80th win of his PGA TOUR career at the TOUR Championship, Woods went 0-4, the worst Ryder Cup performance of his career. Who saw that coming? After winning the first two stops in the FedExCup Playoffs, THE NORTHERN TRUST and the Dell Technologies Championship, Bryson DeChambeau went 0-3. Wait. Wasn’t he the hottest player in golf just a month ago? Patrick Reed didn’t win so much as a half point Friday and Saturday. OK, now that’s just borderline crazy. You could say that Europe was always going to win this Ryder Cup because, well, that’s what always happens in Europe. But the eye-opening seven-point winning margin was the result of a perfect storm. It was the smart/fortuitous pairing of Francesco Molinari and Tommy Fleetwood (Moli-wood went 4-0); Jim Furyk’s hotly debated decision to split up Patrick Reed and Jordan Spieth; the U.S. players’ wildness off the tee on the tight course; Mickelson coming into the week totally out of sorts; and Woods’ struggles on the greens, among other factors. In other words, the lopsided nature of this contest must be considered something of a fluke. 3. Momentum is everything. Still. The Europeans have the Ryder Cup in their blood and seem to have a visceral understanding of it in a way that the Americans don’t. One example: The Euros’ ability to harness momentum. The U.S. was on cruise control at the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah before Ian Poulter went on a crazy run of birdies and he and Rory McIlroy emerged with a crucial point for Europe. It set the stage for the wild European comeback in singles the next day. This time around the big swing came earlier, on Friday afternoon. Europe not only whitewashed the U.S., going 4-0, no match even reached the 17th hole. The Americans, who had gotten off to a 3-0 start in the morning, were immediately on their back foot, and they never recovered. “We just didn’t quite execute,� said Mickelson, who admitted this Ryder Cup may have been his last. 4. Europe’s team ethos paid off. Thorbjorn Olesen could have gotten down after losing his first match with struggling partner Rory McIlroy, but Olesen merely bided his time until Sunday, when he beat Spieth 5 and 4 to extinguish any embers of a U.S. comeback and run his Ryder record to 1-1. Jon Rahm could have sulked after starting his Ryder Cup career 0-2-0, but instead he went out and beat everyone’s golfing idol, Tiger Woods, in another important singles match Sunday. By the time it was over, every European had earned at least a point. Three Americans, meanwhile, went winless: Woods (0-4), Mickelson (0-2) and DeChambeau (0-3). 5. Hindsight is still undefeated. It seemed like four pretty easy decisions when it came time for U.S. Captain Jim Furyk to make his four picks, adding Woods, Mickelson, DeChambeau and Tony Finau. Somehow, though, Finau (2-1-0) was the only one to earn any points for the U.S. Mickelson looked lost, Woods tired and confused by the greens, and DeChambeau like the victim of circumstances and hot players for Europe. Meanwhile, European pick Sergio Garcia, who hadn’t shown much form all season, went 3-0-0 to become the winningest player in Ryder Cup history. Henrik Stenson, who has battled injuries but also got a pick from European Captain Thomas Bjorn, also went 3-0-0. Who could have predicted that? FIVE INSIGHTS 1. The U.S. struggled mightily off the tee Friday, finding the fairway or first cut just 57 percent of the time in the afternoon Foursomes compared to 74 percent for Europe. Not surprisingly, Europe won the session 4-0, taking a lead that that they would never relinquish. Mickelson, who came into the week ranked second to last on TOUR in Driving Accuracy, looked especially lost in trying to find the bowling alley-like fairways at Le Golf National. 2. The accuracy disparity only got worse. Saturday morning Four-balls saw the U.S. hit just 54 percent of fairways/first cut, while Europe was at 74 percent. In the afternoon Foursomes, where keeping it in play is especially crucial, the U.S. was at 67 percent, Europe at a telling 81 percent. Although the U.S. would miss several putts, their scattershot ways off the tees proved especially damaging to their chances while falling behind 10-6 in Foursomes and Four-balls. 3. Ian Poulter was not perfect, losing a couple of matches with partners McIlroy and Rahm, both times at the hands of the powerful U.S. team of Spieth and Thomas. But in beating Dustin Johnson, Poulter remained unbeaten in singles and ran his Ryder Cup record to 12-4-2. 4. Woods played better than his 0-4-0 record indicates, but he could be excused for feeling tired. After not playing a full schedule for years, he was competing for the seventh time in nine weeks. 5. Italy’s Francesco Molinari was the first European to emerge with a perfect 5-0-0 record, and the fourth overall, as Europe won for the seventh time in the last nine Ryder Cups. More good news for the top European point-earner: The 2022 Ryder Cup will be in Rome.

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It’s not often when the PGA TOUR descends on what is essentially a new golf course, but that’s the reality at this week’s AT&T Byron Nelson. Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas hosts the 156-man field headlined by local native and resident Jordan Spieth. It opened in the fall of 2016. For much more on it, what it should challenge, how it should score and other nuggets, scroll beneath the ranking. POWER RANKINGS: 2018 AT&T Byron Nelson RANK PLAYER COMMENT Given value of imagination and creativity the course demands, he’s the man to beat even as he continues to struggle with his putting. Among the handful with course knowledge, too. Co-led the B flight at TPC Sawgrass for his best finish since being diagnosed with Lyme disease. Since the Masters: T20-4th-T25-T2. The Texan remains a force with his putter. Always a threat in Texas thanks in part to his profile as one of the best in the wind. Recently T7 at Bay Hill and ninth at Augusta National. Eighth on TOUR in birdies or better. Second defending champion in three weeks on a different course (Brian Harman, Wells Fargo). Horschel’s switch in putters has resulted in a phenomenal month, including Zurich title. Spieth has compared Trinity Forest to Royal Birkdale where Kuchar finished second (to Spieth) in the 2017 Open Championship. He’s been consistently (and predictably) solid ever since. Trinity Forest is the home club for the first-time PGA TOUR member. Lives locally. Terrific short game pays off confident irons. Just a few weeks removed from Houston Open runner-up. The T11 at THE PLAYERS was his best finish anywhere in 11 months. Led the field in scrambling for the first time since the 2011 Open Championship, evidence for his comfort on links. The Scot has been peppering leaderboards since a T9 at the WM Phoenix Open in early February. It’s one of four top-11 finishes during a 7-for-8 burst. Highly underrated putter. Five top 25s in his last six starts, including a career-best T17 in his 16th appearance at THE PLAYERS. Balanced throughout his bag and 26th on TOUR in adjusted scoring. Local veteran comfortable in wind and coming off a T23 at THE PLAYERS where his putting was better than every start since the 2016 PLAYERS. Has a proven record of being streaky. Possesses the entire game needed to win at Trinity Forest but hasn’t been putting four rounds together despite a 10-for-10 season. Sits sixth in strokes gained: putting. Limited in playing time due to conditional status, he’s heated up quickly with a sixth (with Tony Finau) in New Orleans and a T8 in the Knoxville Open on the Web.com Tour. Had last week off after a T5 at the Wells Fargo Championship where he led the field in scrambling and spun a career-low 62 in the third round. Five top 20s on the season. Enters with a streak of five cuts made during which he thrived in the wind at Coralas (T5) and TPC San Antonio (T8). Ranks 30th on the PGA TOUR in greens in regulation. Might own the most confidence right now after capturing victory at the Knoxville Open on Sunday. It was a much-needed jolt after failing to log a top 40 in his first 12 starts of 2018. Sergio Garcia, Hideki Matsuyama and Brandt Snedeker will be among the notables reviewed in Tuesday’s Fantasy Insider. Trinity Forest is unlike every other host course on the PGA TOUR. The irony is that there isn’t a single tree on the 7,380-yard par 71. Situated inside the eponymous woodland south of downtown, it was designed and built by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw on a landfill consisting only of inorganic material. For numerous reasons — including environmental, which is counterintuitive — the agreement was that no trees were to be planted. There isn’t a water hazard, either. And like a piano featuring an identical number of keys, the 88 bunkers will strike major, minor, diminished and augmented chords in targeting for course management due to the virtual absence of distance cues. To the eye, it’s a links-style layout sans the traditional out-and-back characteristic. However, in a recent press conference, Spieth downplayed the ground game usually required on tests that host The Open Championship, for example. “It’s like an American links,” he said. “You’ve kind of got to play it from the air, not really a bounce-the-ball-up kind of links. … You get maybe four or five, six holes where you can bounce the ball up, but the way to get balls close is to come in with a higher shot.” Trinity Zoysia grass blankets everything but the greens and its length is universal at just shy of one-half of one inch, so there is no rough. The Champion bermudagrass putting surfaces will be prepped to run no faster than 11 feet on the Stimpmeter primarily so that the wind doesn’t blow balls around. Due to these facts, the unfamiliarity for most in the field and the expected speed of the turf overall, the basic thinking of hitting fairways is superseded by placement off the tee. This will help mitigate distance and swing open the door for any skill set to contend and prevail. In what was conducted in part as a test run for the AT&T Byron Nelson, Trinity Forest hosted the Texas State Open on the first four days of August of 2017. It played as a par 70 at 7,135 yards. With three 65s and a 67, Fort Worth’s Brax McCarthy posted an eye-opening 18-under 262 en route to an eight-shot victory in both favorable and inclement conditions. This week’s forecast begins and ends with risk of rain and the potential of storms, but drier air will command the rest of the tournament. That will yield the storyline to the heat as daytimes highs easily should eclipse 90 degrees. Customary Texas winds will defend the course especially in the middle rounds. The original nines were reversed for the AT&T Byron Nelson. It isn’t unprecedented for TOUR officials to revise routing, but it is unusual that membership at Trinity Forest has retained it. The 471-yard par-4 11th plays as a par 5 for members. It also shares a 36,000-square foot green with the 412-yard par-4 third. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.COM’s Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton reviews and previews every tournament from numerous angles. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Rookie Ranking, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Medical Extensions, Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers, Facebook Live, Fantasy Insider WEDNESDAY: One & Done THURSDAY: Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Champions One & Done * – 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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