How to watch Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, Round 4: Live scores, tee times, TV times

Short of winning any tournament, it’s arguable that emerging as one of the 30 at East Lake in Atlanta is the hardest objective on the PGA TOUR. Of the 35 unique winners this season, 15 didn’t advance to the finale of the FedExCup Playoffs. Identifying the most confident golfers at the TOUR Championship isn’t too hard. Just read the field. Reaching the summit is one reason why each qualifier is treated to exemptions into the first three majors of 2018 as well as spots in the first two World Golf Championships. It’s nothing short of a life-changing achievement for the eight first-timers in the field. The other lane of confidence isn’t as smooth and fluid, but it matters more when making decisions for your fantasy lineups. This is where you determine who deserves the attention and your faith as a fit at East Lake. Billy Horschel caught such a blazing heater in 2014 that a kneejerk reaction would be to ignore how he prevailed by three strokes in the TOUR Championship. However, upon closer inspection, his formula for success was no more out of the ordinary than the two champions since. Horschel, Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy showcased the complete game en route to their titles. All four identifiers below align with what worked for them and what projects to work for this week’s champion. East Lake’s putting surfaces average 6,200 square feet and could touch 12-and-a-half feet on the Stimpmeter, but they are not dastardly, devilish or diabolical. From just about every metric, they’re easier on average to solve and they are fair. With that accepted component factored in, we can widen our focus to use bogey avoidance as the catchall for short game and putting. In a nutshell, that explains why East Lake is a ball-striker’s paradise. Something to keep in mind as your watch, listen to and/or read about the tournament, since Tiger Woods won the FedExCup without winning the TOUR Championship in 2009, which was the inaugural year of the first iteration of the current points structure, every champion at East Lake also captured the FedExCup. NOTE: Golfers inside the top 20 in each statistic in the FedExCup Playoffs are listed only if they are scheduled to compete in the TOUR Championship. * – Finished inside the top 10 at the TOUR Championship in 2014, 2015 and/or 2016. Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee 1  *Dustin Johnson 2  Jon Rahm 3  *Rickie Fowler 4  *Jordan Spieth 5  Brooks Koepka 6  Xander Schauffele T7  *Kevin Chappell T7  Charley Hoffman 9  Tony Finau 11  Jhonattan Vegas 12  *Paul Casey 15  *Justin Rose 16  *Justin Thomas 18  Patrick Cantlay Greens in Regulation T2  Patrick Cantlay T2  *Jordan Spieth 4  *Gary Woodland 5  Marc Leishman 7  *Justin Rose 8  Jon Rahm T9  *Sergio Garcia T9  *Dustin Johnson 13  *Rickie Fowler T16  *Matt Kuchar 19  *Paul Casey T20  Pat Perez T20  Kyle Stanley Proximity to the Hole 1  *Dustin Johnson 4  *Justin Rose T6  *Jason Day 10  *Jordan Spieth T11  Russell Henley T13  Daniel Berger 16  Jon Rahm 19  Brian Harman Bogey Avoidance 1  Patrick Cantlay 2  *Jordan Spieth 3  *Justin Rose T4  Pat Perez T4  Jon Rahm 6  *Dustin Johnson T8  *Justin Thomas 10  Marc Leishman T11 *Rickie Fowler T13  *Sergio Garcia T15  Daniel Berger T15  *Paul Casey T15  Webb Simpson T19  *Jason Day With only 30 in the field, the usual groupings below are sparsely populated, but half of the field is still represented. Jordan Spieth (2015) is the only prior winner of the TOUR Championship back this week. NOTE: The groups below are comprehensive to assist in data mining. Inclusion doesn’t imply automatic endorsement in every fantasy game as all decisions are specific to your situation. CONFIDENCE MEN Selected golfers with multiple cuts made sorted by rank on the tournament’s money list. BUILDING CONFIDENCE Sorted by best finish, selected golfers who are either finally finding form on the course or are still relatively new to the tournament but have enjoyed some success. OTHER SIGNS OF CONFIDENCE Sorted by most recent top 10s, selected golfers for whom it’s been a few years since their last.

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Welcome to the Monday Finish where Justin Thomas is already 500 points behind in the new FedExCup race after Brendan Steele reaffirmed his love affair with California wine country. Steele reclaimed the Safeway Open with a solid Sunday to set up his season once more. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. The old “horses for courses� saying certainly rings true for Brendan Steele at Silverado. While he’s now made it back-to-back wins in the Napa Valley some of you may forget he held the 54-hole lead the year before as well before fading in the final round. His redemption last year clearly gave him some next-level confidence. As such he calmly overtook Tyler Duncan on Sunday and then, after some back nine bogeys gave others like Phil Mickelson life, he parried off the challengers with two late birdies. His maturity talking of his win was also noteworthy. Steele acknowledged he felt he stopped playing to win in the back half of last season and played to just make the TOUR Championship. Instead he drifted to 33rd in the FedExCup. This year he plans to keep the foot down and that should ensure he contends a fair bit more before the TOUR stops in Atlanta again. 2. Tony Finau is too good to have just one PGA TOUR victory. Finau was threatening on Sunday, without his best stuff, before a wayward drive finally caught up with him on the 14th hole. He’d just come off a birdie on the 13th and you figured, with the two late par-5s to come, the big-hitter was primed to add to his 2016 Puerto Rico Open. But his drive on 14 ended up behind a tree forcing a punch out – something that shouldn’t have been the death of him. The subsequent poor approach and missed short putt that turned it into a double bogey however were not his best moments. His approach game and putting throughout the rest of the round had been on point. I reckon the experience will steel him next time around. 3. Phil Mickelson surely is going to break his drought soon … right? I mean it is utterly ridiculous to think the veteran finished T3 having hit just 15 of 56 fairways for the week at Silverado. In rounds 1 and 3 he hit just two fairways each day. On Sunday, he found just three fairways. Yet, he hung around the top of the leaderboard all week. Phil did say the stats were a little misleading. “This is a very skewed golf course to judge fairways hit,� Mickelson said. “I hit three beautiful drives on 18; none of them found the fairway. The fairway’s 13 yards wide. I paced it. So on a normal TOUR course, I would have hit 10, 11 fairways today. I drove it fairly well. But out here, I think, is a way to kind of protect that, they move the fairways in so that they’re about half what they normally are.� His next chance to break the drought that now stretches back to The Open Championship in 2013, will be in China in a few weeks’ time at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions. Mickelson has won twice before at Sheshan Golf Club, so maybe …. 4. A new season means a new bunch of rookies and we got to see some talent shine early. Tyler Duncan held the 36- and 54-hole lead at Silverado before perhaps the occasion got the better of him. His final round 75 saw him drop to a T5 finish that should be as pleasing as it is disappointing to the young man. Opening Sunday with three straight bogeys is a pretty quick education in final round pressure on the main TOUR. Duncan can look to champion Brendan Steele as inspiration if he so desires. In 2015 Steele similarly let the 54-hole lead slip and now he’s gone back-to-back. Fellow rookie Brandon Harkins also marked the start of his season with a top-10, closing with a tidy 68 to be T9. Then, there was the flash of brilliance early in the tournament from Maverick McNealy. He threatened the top of the leaderboard in Round 2 before a triple bogey, and while his over-par weekend saw him fade to T52, you saw a glimpse of why some pundits are expecting very big things. 5. I really enjoyed seeing Graham DeLaet (T5) and Hunter Mahan (T13) near the top of the leaderboard this week. Both had been at the forefront of my mind recently as I watched replays of previous Presidents Cups in preparation for this year’s biennial event at Liberty National. When Canadian DeLaet was part of the International Team in 2013, a year he was 8th in the FedExCup, I figured it was just a matter of how soon a win on TOUR would come. But things haven’t gone that way. While he’s maintained enough form to keep his card each year, he also went through a period of chipping and bunker yips. Those times appear behind him as he continues from some late form last season and hopefully the drought-breaking win is coming soon. As for Mahan, well, he played in four Presidents Cups. He’s won six times on TOUR. But now he finds himself playing from the past champion category. Somewhere inside is the magic and perhaps this week is the early stages of finding the combination. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Steele collects his third PGA TOUR victory (2011 Valero Texas Open, 2016 and 2017 Safeway Open) in his 178th start at the age of 34 years, six months and three days. At the Safeway Open his results now show: (T7-2011, MC-2012, MC-2013, T21-2014, T17-2015, 1-2016, 1-2017). But since moving to the Silverado Resort and Spa in 2015, Steele is the most under par of any player at 50-under par. 2. Steele ranked 1st in the field in driving distance (327.8 yards) and T3 in driving accuracy (67.86 percent). Coupled with finding 79.17 percent of greens (4th) at an average proximity of 29’10� (6th) and you can see how he was able to repeat. 3. Chesson Hadley’s course record 61 on Friday showed why the top finisher on the web.com TOUR last season is probably destined to stay up top for some time to come. While Sunday failed to bring similar heroics and he ultimately finished T3 his 23 birdies in the tournament was tied for the most on the week. 4. Xinjun Zhang finished T37, becoming the first-ever full PGA TOUR member from China to play all four rounds in a TOUR event. 5. Graham DeLaet (T5) now owns 16 of 18 rounds of par-or-better at this event (75/R2/2017, 77/R4/2016). Prior to this week’s fifth-place effort, his previous-best result at the Safeway Open was T6 in his debut in 2010. TOP 3 VIDEOS 1. Phil Mickelson had trouble hitting fairways at Silverado but when he found one … he made sure to admire it. 2. John Daly to the weekend! 3. Jason Day’s 5-year-old son Dash is probably a better bunker player than you.

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Patrick Reed's process for handling an embedded-ball drop was declared "textbook" by PGA TOUR rules officials, Reed said in an interview after his third round at the Farmers Insurance Open. Reed's approach shot on the par-4 10th hole sailed well left into deep rough. As he approached the ball, he was told by a volunteer that his ball did not bounce after landing, leading Reed to believe his ball may have embedded. Players are permitted free relief from an embedded ball. Torrey Pines is playing soft after rain and hail hit Friday, causing the first three rounds to be played under lift, clean and place. Before checking to see if his ball was embedded, Reed told his playing partners, "Hey guys, I'm going to check it. They said it didn't bounce." When rules official Brad Fabel arrived, Reed had already determined his ball was embedded and moved it. Reed then asked Fabel to check the ground for an indentation, saying, "Since I picked it up to check - it seems like it broke ground - but I want you to double check." The official said he did feel an indentation in the ground from Reed's ball. He then guided Reed through the drop for relief. Video replay showed Reed's ball did bounce after landing, but in a post-round interview, rules official Ken Tackett said, "We're fine with the outcome of the situation." Reed got up-and-down to save par on 10. Reed birdied his final hole to shoot 70 and tie Carlos Ortiz for the 54-hole lead at 10 under par.

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