Jack Nicklaus says Jordan Spieth’s slump about over

Fresh off his Presidents Cup debut, Sam Burns returns to defend his Sanderson Farms Championship, the first of his three wins last season. This is the second event of the 2022-23 PGA TOUR season. FIELD NOTES: Burns is one of three Presidents Cup participants going from Quail Hollow to the Country Club of Jackson. Burns, at No. 12 in the world, is the highest-ranked golfer in the field… Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Sebastian Munoz (who won the Sanderson in 2019) of the International Team are the other Presidents Cup participants in the field… There will be plenty of support for Davis Riley at the Sanderson Farms Championship. Riley, a Mississippi native, returns to tee it up in his home state after a fabulous rookie campaign on TOUR that saw him finish 33rd in the FedExCup, including a runner-up to Burns at the Valspar Championship… This is the second event of the season, so look for most of the Korn Ferry Tour graduates, led by Korn Ferry Tour Championship winner Justin Suh, the winner of the KFT’s season-long points race, to try to make some early noise… Sponsor exemptions include a trio of college standouts: Sam Murphy of Louisiana Tech, Brice Wilkinson of Southern Miss (who won the 108th Mississippi State Amateur in June), and former Mississippi star Jackson Suber, who finished ninth in the 2022 PGA TOUR U presented by Velocity Global… Other notables teeing it up include TOUR Championship qualifiers Sahith Theegala (who finished T8 a year ago after holding the 54-hole lead), and Scott Stallings (the Sanderson champion a decade ago) plus TOUR winners like Sepp Straka, Seamus Power, Harris English, Keegan Bradley, and J.T. Poston, each of whom are ranked inside the top-55 in the world… Four major champions will tee it up along with nine past winners of the Sanderson Farms Championship. FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 500 FedExCup points. COURSE: Country Club of Jackson, par 72, 7,461 yards. This marks the ninth year this Mississippi beauty will host the Sanderson Farms Championship. The course was redesigned in 2008 (the tournament routing includes the Azalea and Dogwood nines) by John Fought and incorporating some Donald Ross signatures – especially around the greens. The club’s history dates all the way back to 1914. Sam Burns utilized an impressive iron game to win the title last season, as he finished T1 in greens in regulation for the week plus first in SG: Off-the-Tee and SG: Tee-to-Green. Keep an eye on impressive ball-strikers this week. 72-HOLE RECORD: 263, Dan Halldorson (1986 at Hattiesburg GC). CC of Jackson record: 266, Sam Burns (2021) 18-HOLE RECORD: 18-HOLE RECORD: 61, Keith Clearwater (2nd round, 1996 at Annandale GC). CC of Jackson record: 62, Roberto Castro (1st round, 2015). STORYLINES: There will be five golfers in the field with Mississippi ties including Riley and TOUR winner Chad Ramey of Fulton, Mississippi. Ramey won the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship earlier this year… Six of the past nine winners in Mississippi were first-time TOUR winners… Sam Burns set the tournament scoring record a year ago, and with the average score the last five seasons hovering around the 20-under mark, birdies will be a premium at The Country Club of Jackson. LAST TIME: Sam Burns captured his second PGA TOUR title in the 2021 calendar year, topping the field in Mississippi on the back of four birdies in a six-hole stretch during his second nine on Sunday. Burns finished with a 5-under 67, good enough to finish ahead of Nick Watney and Cameron Young by one shot. Burns’ back nine on Sunday featured birdies on Nos. 13-15 and when Young made an untimely bogey on the par-5 14th, Burns was able to pull away. Burns won the Valspar Championship earlier in 2021 (a title he would go on to defend in 2022) and his one-shot win in Jackson was his first of three last season. Henrik Norlander shot the round of the day Sunday, an 8-under 64, and finished tied for fourth alongside Hayden Buckley, Andrew Landry, and Trey Mullinax. HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Friday, 3:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m. ET. Saturday, Sunday, 4 p.m.-7 p.m. Radio: Thursday-Friday, 1 p.m.–6:30 p.m. ET. Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m.-7 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio) For outside of the U.S., click here for GOLFTV powered by the PGA TOUR PGA TOUR LIVE PGA TOUR Live is available exclusively on ESPN+ • Featured Groups: traditional PGA TOUR LIVE coverage of two concurrent featured groups

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HILTON HEAD, S.C. – The yellow shirt Webb Simpson wore on Sunday at the RBC Heritage wasn’t a casual fashion choice. He didn’t take it out of his closet because it would look good with that red tartan jacket that goes to the winner of the tournament, either. Of course, turns out that it did. RELATED: Final leaderboard | The clubs Simpson used to win No, Simpson wears yellow on Sundays because it was his late father Sam’s favorite color. And in an unusual quirk of scheduling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the RBC Heritage, once canceled and later postponed, was concluding on Father’s Day. “This morning I thought about him, and when I was on the golf course, I thought about him,” Simpson would later say. “… So still feeling my dad all around me from memories. He loved golf. “He would have loved watching today.” Indeed. Sam’s son took control of the RBC Heritage on the back nine, making birdies on five of his last seven holes for a 64 to earn the seventh victory of his PGA TOUR career. With the win, Simpson climbed to the top of the FedExCup standings as well as to No. 5 in the world. Of course, the U.S. Open, which was postponed until September, usually is the tournament that ends on Father’s Day. So, this actually marks the second time Simpson has celebrated victory on that holiday – and Sam was still alive when his boy won the 2012 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club. “I’ll never forget calling my dad after on the way to the press conference, and when he picked up the phone, he just was laughing,” Simpson said. “That’s kind of what he did when he was happy, he would just laugh. So, I’m going to miss that laugh today for sure.” For Simpson, who lost his dad jn 2017, the ascent is part and parcel of the hard work he’s put in over the last three years after finding himself on the outside looking in when everyone else was playing in the TOUR Championship and making Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup teams like he used to do. “I really have a desire to be in that top 10 or 15 guys in the world ranking all the time and have chances to win, not just twice a year, but as many times as I can,” Simpson said. “So that led me to just look at every part of my game, whether it’s working out or the mental approach, and see if I can get better. “That was three years ago probably. So, yeah … it feels great to see the hard work pay off and see that the process I’ve put in place is working. But we’re nuts. We always think we can get better, and I think there’s room to grow.” Sunday’s final round was a roller coaster of emotions that featured as many as seven players tied for the lead. Turning up the heat, too, on this steamy afternoon was a different kind of race – this one to finish before darkness after a weather delay of two hours and 35 minutes. Simpson, who also won THE PLAYERS Championship in 2018 on Mother’s Day, had held at least a share of the second- and third-round leads. But he had to come from behind over the final nine holes, chasing Tyrrell Hatton, Abraham Ancer and Joaquin Neimann, among others to seal the win. “Honestly, the last kind of 10 holes were a blur because guys are making birdies, we’re trying to finish before night comes,” Simpson said. “And so, to finish with five birdies like that was really special, especially after going kind of yesterday and the first 10 holes, 11 holes today not making putts. “To see the putts go in when I needed them, that was really fun to see the ball going in the hole.” The feverish competition worked in Simpson’s favor, too. As he saw birdies being posted, he knew he had to be a little more aggressive after giving up ground on the front nine. He played the final nine holes with authority and confidence, and was rewarded at the end. “It’s typically not a golf course where you can force it, but today after the storm, it softened things out, not much wind, we could go attacking,” Simpson said. “Guys kept making birdies. I was blown away with the scores, but there I hit my run, 12 through 17, and ultimately that’s what made the difference.” And Simpson, who has five kids of his own, now has a new celebration for Father’s Day.

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