Inside the Field: The Honda Classic

Round 4 of the Safeway Open begins Sunday from Napa, California with a massive 35 players within six shots of the lead at the start of the day. Here’s how to follow the action. Tee times | Leaderboard HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Friday, 4 p.m.-7 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Saturday-Sunday, 6 p.m.-9 p.m. (Golf Channel) PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday-Friday, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. (Featured Groups), Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. (Featured Groups) Radio: Thursday-Friday, 1 p.m.-7 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 4 p.m.-9 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio). FEATURED GROUPS (All times ET) Harold Varner III, Jamie Lovemark 12:50 p.m. ET Phil Mickelson, Andy Zhang 1:30 p.m. ET Russell Knox, Sahith Theegala 4:20 p.m. ET Harry Higgs, Sam Burns 4:50 p.m. ET MUST READS Race to the finish is on for young and old at Safeway Open Three share Safeway Open lead Higgs’ walk-off albatross sets up title push Mickelson helps 18-year-old Bhatia stay loose Champ reflects on year since Napa win CALL OF THE DAY

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DETROIT, Mich. – Patrick Reed has used an Odyssey White Hot Pro 3 putter for years, even before winning with one at the 2018 Masters. While he’s experimented with other putters throughout his career, he’s mostly opted for that model. Even a familiar golf club, however, needs a check up every now and then, and Reed went to an unexpected source for an evaluation. Coming into the 2019 Rocket Mortgage Classic, Reed was ranked 65th in Strokes Gained: Putting on the PGA TOUR, and he has recorded just one top-10 finish on the season. Fresh off a T30 finish last week at the Travelers Championship, Reed had an appointment set up at a Club Champion – a nationwide company that specializes in club fitting – in Royal Oak, Michigan, which is nearby Detroit Golf Club, host of the 2019 Rocket Mortgage Classic. The local Club Champion, in addition to having full-swing hitting bays equipped with Trackman, has a SAM (Science and Motion) PuttLab that analyzes putting performance in depth. As Reed explained to Golf Channel, he enlisted the services of Club Champion to verify there was nothing wrong with the specifications of his putter. “I went just to check to make sure that my specs were right,â€� Reed told Golf Channel on Thursday. “For me personally, the best way to do it is if I can find a SAM lab. Club Champions have those, and those have high enough cameras and stuff that you can actually see what’s going on. So you can tell by that rather than machines, since every machine has a different variance. But cameras don’t really lie.â€� Instead of finding an issue with his Odyssey putter, however, he found an issue with his putting setup. Adam White, a Master Club Fitter at the local Club Champion who was on site during Reed’s Club Champion session – along with Reed’s coach Kevin Kirk  — said that while his stroke was in the “88th percentile in overall consistencyâ€� and “94th percentile in rotation,â€� Reed was setting up 1.2 degrees closed to his intended target. Based on the data, according to White, the issue was not with the stroke or with the putter itself, but rather with Reed’s setup position. During the “35-40 minute session,â€� White and his staff had Reed try a few different putters, but Reed ultimately decided to stick with his familiar Odyssey putter. Reed improved on his putting performance in his second-round 68 on Friday, losing 0.952 strokes putting, versus losing 1.629 strokes in his first round 68 on Thursday. He is currently in T15 (at the time this article was posted).

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That tarpon he caught several years ago in the Florida Keys was a fighter. In fact, Brandt Snedeker battled the 120-pound fish for nearly an hour before he was able to bring it to the boat. Tarpon are known for their endurance, bullheadedness and spectacular leaping ability, and this fish had it all. “(We) had to pull up the anchor and chase it because those things are so big and so strong,” Snedeker says. So how tired was he after he reeled the fish in? Let’s just say Snedeker’s arms and shoulders were so sore he wasn’t going to hit the practice range anytime soon. “It’s funny, they’re so hard to catch that when you get one, you go, I want to try to catch another one but your arms are so gassed you just can’t do it,” Snedeker says. “But it’s fun.” Snedeker’s wife’s uncle is a fishing captain in Islamorada and he takes the family there at least once a year. He’s also gone tuna and sail fishing out in the Gulf of Mexico, and if the weather isn’t good they’ll head inshore to look for snook and sea trout and Spanish mackerel. “You name it, we’ll catch it,” Snedeker says. “It’s a lot of fun to get out there. It’s kind of hard not to be happy in the Keys when the weather’s perfect down there and it’s terrible everywhere else — you know?” Like many people, Snedeker fell in love with fishing when he was a kid. His family was on vacation in Venice, Florida, and they took a boat out into the Gulf. The 12-year-old got the bug – even though he got seasick, too.  “It was awful,” Snedeker says, grinning at the memory. “Six-hour deal and I threw up the whole time and they didn’t cut it short; we had other people on the trip with us. So I had to tough it out. “It was funny, it wasn’t going (out), it was just sitting still, the constant rocking. That’s what got me. .. It is the worst feeling in the world.” A little Dramamine now, though, just in case, and Snedeker is good to go. Snedeker also loves to fish for bass, and he’s gone fly fishing a couple of times, although he admits he’s not very good at that yet. Sometimes he even finds a river when he’s on the road and fishes before that week’s PGA TOUR event starts. Just as was the case when he was a kid, Snedeker’s kids, Lily and Austin, like to go fishing with their dad. He has some property with a pond that is stocked with bass and bluegill and catfish about an hour  — “not close, but close enough,â€� Snedeker says — from their home in Nashville, Tennessee. “They’ve even gotten to the point now where they’re big enough we can cook one and eat them if we catch them,â€� he says. “… The kids love it. I’m pretty much being their guide and just kind of do anything for them. “I’ll have fun and they get excited about what they catch and it’s a really, really cool moment for us as a family to spend the time doing that.â€� While Snedeker does most of his fishing in the Nashville area or down in the Florida Keys, he has also fished in New Zealand and tries to squeeze in a trip to Hawaii each year. Costa Rica, known for its sailfish and marlin, is another place on his must-do list, along with Cabo San Lucas. As much as Snedeker enjoys battling game fish like that 120-pound tarpon, he also enjoys just being on the water and “shutting your brain off for a little while.â€� He says he could fish for 10 hours without catching something and still have a wonderful day. “As I’ve grown up and my life’s gotten way more hectic, it’s a way to slow everything down and just get back to kind of just being me as a dad or me as a husband or me getting out on my own and hitting the reset button,â€� Snedeker says. “People deal with things differently. You read books, people go on vacations. If I can go fishing for three or four hours, I feel like a new guy.â€�  

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