How to watch: CIMB Classic, Round 2, leaderboard, tee times, TV times

Tiger Woods is a lock to win the TOUR Championship at East Lake next week, breaking a win gap that goes back to the 2013 World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational. Wait. What? Why? Yeah, Woods is playing well, his T6 at the BMW Championship at Aronimink marking his fourth top-10 finish since July. He’s 20th in the FedExCup, and has won at East Lake before, in 2007. But forget about all that. More importantly, a Woods win is the only result that would make sense at the end of a year in which so many people broke dry spells it was hard to keep track. “I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get back to this spot,� Keegan Bradley said after he beat Justin Rose in a playoff at the BMW Championship on Monday, when he notched a fourth PGA TOUR victory a scant six years and 160 starts after his third. “And today I did it.� I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get back to this spot, and today I did it. Maybe that wouldn’t fit on a bumper sticker or a T-shirt, but it nicely sums up the 2017-’18 season. Alternatively, if you imagine many of this season’s winners as the Tom Hanks character from Castaway, that’s a lot of guys who had time to grow a prodigious beard and learn how to spearfish in between victories. For a while the TOUR’s longest gap between wins was by Butch Baird, who triumphed at the 1961 Waco Turner Open and then, 15 years later, the ’76 San Antonio Texas Open. Long gap. Good for him. But Robert Gamez was winless for 15-plus years when he won the 2005 Valero Texas Open (since the 1990 Nestle Invitational at Bay Hill) to break it. Lesson: If you want to get your act together, go to San Antonio. Lesson II: It’s never too late.   If you imagine many of this season’s winners as the Tom Hanks character from Castaway, that’s a lot of guys who had time to grow a prodigious beard and learn how to spearfish in between victories. Jason Day went 33 starts between his win at THE PLAYERS Championship in 2016 and the Farmers Insurance Open in early 2018. Day later won the Wells Fargo Championship, going for a two-win season just a year after he enjoyed a no-win season. Speaking of THE PLAYERS Championship, when Webb Simpson waltzed to victory in May it was his fifth TOUR win but his first since the 2013 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. Speaking of children, Gary Woodland’s wife, Gabby, and their son, Jaxson, surprised him on the 18th green at TPC Scottsdale after he shot 64 and won a playoff over Chez Reavie at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, his first victory since the 2013 Barracuda Championship.  On the subject of surprises, Phil Mickelson ended the longest drought of his career, which went all the way back to the 2013 Open Championship, a span of 96 starts, when he won the WGC-Mexico Championship in March. A week later, Paul Casey ended a gap of 150 starts between the 2009 Houston Open and his second TOUR win at the Valspar Championship, denying Woods. A week after that (trend alert!), Rory McIlroy shot a final-round 64 to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, breaking a dry spell of 19 TOUR starts that dated back to his victory at the TOUR Championship in 2016. He took just 100 putts, the fewest of his career for a four-round event, and was +10.027 in Strokes Gained: Putting. He also ended the talk about 2017 being the first year since 2008 when he didn’t win on any tour. While we’re talking Europeans, McIlroy’s Ryder Cup teammate Ian Poulter’s third TOUR victory, his first of the non-WGC variety, at the Houston Open broke a win drought that dated to the 2012 WGC-HSBC Champions and spanned 93 starts. That’s a long gap, even factoring in Poulter’s 2016 foot surgery. Having slipped all the way to 207th in the world after The Honda Classic last season, Poulter is now 34th and set to play on his sixth European Ryder Cup team. Speaking of players returning to Cup-worthy prominence, Bubba Watson went 43 starts between his win at THE NORTHERN TRUST in 2016 and the Genesis Open at Riviera earlier this season. Then the floodgates opened, as he notched his 11th TOUR win, at the WGC-Dell Technology Match Play, six weeks later, and kept on going at the Travelers Championship. Kevin Na, who in July won A Military Tribute at the Greenbrier, was making his 158th start since winning the Shriners Hospitals for Children in his hometown of Las Vegas in 2011. All of these stories should more than inspire Woods, to say nothing of Tony Finau, whose last win came at the 2016 Puerto Rico Open. Finau, of course, has nevertheless risen all the way to FedExCup No. 3 with 11 top-10 finishes this season, tied for the TOUR lead. Inspiration at East Lake could go a long way. And if not? Well, there’s always San Antonio.

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SAN ANTONIO — Jordan Spieth continues to look for an older version of himself. The search shows moments of success. He shot 2-under-par 70 on a gusty Friday afternoon at the Valero Texas Open. He enters the third round with share of second place at 7 under par, two shots behind the leader, Cameron Tringale. Winless since 2017, the 27-year-old Spieth will again be a factor on the weekend in 2021. He often has been since early February at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. That was the week his work toward finding his older self — the golf swing of his youth — took a beneficial turn. He started rehearsing a move on the practice range at TPC Scottsdale in an effort to shallow the plane of his downswing. He wanted to swing like he was that freshman in 2012 at the University of Texas, beating Justin Thomas in the final match of the NCAA National Championship. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Tringale leads by two at Valero Texas Open "A swing feel that’s kind of like an artistic motion," is how he explained Friday, "like I almost can see it happening from behind me as I’m feeling it." The Valero Texas Open is his seventh start since embracing the drill. He's had three Top 5 finishes, a tie for 15th and two wins last week at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play, where he lost in the Round of 16. For those anticipating a return to form for the 11-time winner from Dallas, the trend inspires hope. He is trying, he said, "to go back in time." He wants to find his swing of his 15-year-old self, or at least the one that brough him so much acclaim so soon. Spieth wants to reverse "essentially everything," he said, "all the bad habits I got into." He said his attack on the ball got too steep after 2017, when he won three tournaments, including The Open Championship. Then came all the questions and doubts. "I could sit here and tell you six different things I'm thinking about," he said. "I want it to be one or two." He appears, at times, to have achieved that simplicity and purity. He shot 5-under 67 on Thursday at TPC San Antonio, seven birdies against two bogeys. He birdied his first two holes Friday. He was 2 under after nine. He expected stress and it came. Texas in the springtime is a windy place. He made bogey at the 11th and the 13th. But he followed those with birdies at the next two, which included an approach on the 459-yard par-four 15th to 4 feet. Spieth coasted through the last three holes, wind and all, with straight pars. "I’m really pleased with where things are at, but they’re not where I want them to be at," he said. "I’m trying to kind of take it slowly and patiently and reward myself, be excited about the good ones and not get too down about the bad ones." So on goes the search. "I’m really just trying to go back in time structurally to a place that I’ve been," he said. "Trying to work backwards."

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