Jason Day puts putter from five win season back in the bag before THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES

AUSTIN, Texas – Tiger Woods walked off Austin Country Club glad he did not have to record a stroke play score. The three-time champion returned to the World Golf Championships – Dell Technologies Match Play for the first time in six years as a winner… but it wasn’t exactly pretty. The 80-time PGA TOUR winner was far from crisp in his match against PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year Aaron Wise, but prevailed 3 and 1 in a scrappy affair. Despite having just four birdies in his 17 holes with four bogeys, Woods outlasted a wayward Wise. The 22-year-old had more birdies than his illustrious opponent with six, but also carded seven bogeys and a double bogey to fall to the three-time event champion. “The way we were playing today, we’re very thankful it’s not stroke play… I broke 80,â€� a relieved Woods joked afterward. “I won the match. It wasn’t exactly the best of golf out there from both of us. We gave a few holes away with bogeys and three-putts, and we won a few holes with some good birdies. It was an emotional round because there weren’t a lot of halved holes.â€� Wise admitted his first ever round with one of his idols had him a little nervous during the first couple of holes, but stopped short of saying it contributed to his wayward play. The former NCAA champion and winner of last season’s AT&T Byron Nelson actually turned an early two-hole deficit to a 1-up lead through 10 holes, but was unable to hold firm. Four bogeys in his last five holes sealed his fate. “(I was) a little bit (nervous). The first hole is always where I’m most nervous. I’m never kind of nervous coming down the stretch. I’m always nervous starting the round, because there’s a lot of uncertainties,â€� Wise said. “I got off to a really bad start but luckily in match play you’re still two down through 2, and I knew I could come back from that. It wasn’t like the world was over.” “I don’t think either of us played as good as we wanted to, but he played a little bit better than me and got the win.â€� While bummed with the loss Wise said he will take plenty away from the experience of going head to head with one of the greatest of all time. “It was pretty cool to get in his group today, be able to play him, especially in match play, where it’s me against him. It was a fun experience,â€� Wise said. “I really respect what he’s done in the game, and it was pretty cool to be able to watch him compete today and be alongside of him.â€� The 13th seeded Woods takes on 44th seed Brandt Snedeker on Thursday as he seeks to advance from the group. Snedeker halved his match with Patrick Cantlay thanks to a clutch birdie on the 18th hole.

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida – Today the PGA TOUR introduced PGA TOUR AR, a brand new augmented reality (AR) app bringing live AR tournament coverage to life for fans around the world on their iPhone and iPad. Live AR coverage on PGA TOUR AR will begin in conjunction with the opening round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard on Thursday, March 15. The PGA TOUR AR app is available for free exclusively in the App Store. Mastercard is the Official Launch Partner of the PGA TOUR AR app that will feature exclusive branding within the AR app and will showcase the app in fan areas at Bay Hill Club. “Exploring unparalleled technologies like AR helps the PGA TOUR reach new audiences around the world,” said Rick Anderson, PGA TOUR Chief Media Officer. “Tapping into ARKit in iOS 11 allows us to showcase real-time data provided by ShotLink and CDW in a rich, visual way for fans. The PGA TOUR takes pride in bringing new technology to the sports world as a way of communicating to a large, diverse audience.” PGA TOUR AR puts augmented reality golf experiences into the hands of hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPad users, allowing fans to interact with 3D featured holes and live 3D shot trails on any flat surface right in front of them. On featured holes throughout the season, fans will be able to select their favorite player on the golf course, compare shot trails from each round and compare the shots of different players. Starting at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the featured hole is the par-5 No. 6, while the par-3 seventh hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links will be available for fans to go back and review shot trails from this year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. THE PLAYERS Championship will feature Nos. 16, 17 and 18 live and in AR, and at the season-ending TOUR Championship, East Lake Golf Club’s No. 18 will be highlighted. The PGA TOUR plans to add more holes from other tournaments leading up to the TOUR Championship and ultimately plans to feature at least one hole at every tournament on the PGA TOUR schedule. “We are thrilled to partner with the PGA TOUR in bringing live AR to fans this week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational,” said Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Mastercard. “Mastercard shares a common bond with the PGA TOUR that revolves around innovation, and this technology aligns with our promise to our cardholders to provide Priceless experiences. We are excited about continued conversations on how the PGA TOUR’s AR app will rollout new enhancements and provide consumers from around the world a new way to engage with the game of golf.” An update to the PGA TOUR AR app later this year will enable an on-course AR experience where fans at a golf tournament can hold up their device in front of any hole and the technology will display shot trails for selected players live or during a past round of the user’s choosing. The development of the PGA TOUR AR app in collaboration with POSSIBLE Mobile, part of the creative agency POSSIBLE, was aided by existing data gathered by ShotLink powered by CDW, the TOUR’s longstanding state-of-the-art scoring system. ShotLink through CDW technology captures and reports real-time vital information on every shot, by every player, during tournament competition. Every shot is translated into thousands of statistics, changing the way fans watch – and now interact with – the PGA TOUR, bringing them closer to the action. ShotLink and CDW’s vision is to turn data into information, information into knowledge, and knowledge into entertainment. “This app empowers us to creatively display and share data captured by ShotLink and CDW with fans in an entirely new way,” said Devon Fox, PGA TOUR Director, Digital Platform Innovation, who was recently named as one of the Top Women in Digital by Cynopsis. “Utilizing the biggest AR platform in the world, we can instantly reach millions of new golf fans around the world in an exciting and fun style.” The PGA TOUR AR app was built using ARKit in iOS 11 to provide immersive AR experiences for the game of golf. ARKit helps app developers like the PGA TOUR blend digital objects and information with the environment, taking apps far beyond the screen and freeing them to interact with the real world in entirely new ways. For more information on ARKit visit: https://developer.apple.com/arkit/. The TOUR is considering several enhancements within the PGA TOUR AR app for fans who attend tournaments to help them locate their favorite venues, merchandise locations and concession stands, or finding their favorite player on the course. This allows the TOUR and its partners to develop creative ways to interact with fans to form a more enjoyable on course experience. As the technology progresses, the TOUR expects to work with sponsors to display their brands within the app in innovative ways. Possible enhancements include creating custom AR experiences such as displaying branded venues on each hole, video boards that show highlights from the event, or giving fans the opportunity to take full 360 views of a product. “New technologies are exciting, but only if they can add a new and valuable dimension to an experience,” said Ben Reubenstein, CEO, POSSIBLE Mobile. “Golf is a perfect fit for leveraging augmented reality by providing a cutting-edge way for fans to interact with the sport.”

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When John Feinstein sits down to write a book, the best-selling author has a single focus in mind. “What I’ve always tried to do is not make headlines but explain headlines,â€� he says. And those headlines have been an extremely diverse collection. Feinstein has written about the two teams who played in the 1995 Army-Navy game (a book that is his personal favorite), as well as Bobby Knight and his 1985-86 Indiana basketball team, probably his best-known tome. He even delved into the December 1977 fight between the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers when Kermit Washington landed a punch that left Rudy Tomjanovich bleeding and unconscious. And that’s why when Rory tweeted when the book came out … that reading the book he felt like he was in both team rooms, that I thought it was kind of the ultimate compliment. And of the 26 non-fiction books he has written, nine have been about golf, including the most recent, “The First Major: The Inside Story of the 2016 Ryder Cup,” which was released in October. That’s more than any other sport Feinstein has researched and speaks to an enduring fascination with the game that began when he worked at Gardiner’s Bay Country Club on the eastern end of Long Island as a teenager. “I loved the esthetics of it,” he says. “I loved the fact that you could go out and practice and play on your own. I used to get off work in the summer at about 7 and would just grab a cart and go play nine holes by myself before dark, and I had the whole golf course to myself. “I always loved that.” The first person Feinstein told that he was going to write “The First Major” was Davis Love III. The conversation – the first of many over the next 18 months — came on the same day in 2015 when the soon-to-be-named World Golf Hall of Famer was selected as captain of the U.S. Team. “He said, ‘Oh, here we go again’ because he’s been involved in so many of my golf books, and that’s the great thing, though, (because) he completely understands what I’m doing and what I’m trying to do,” Feinstein recalls. So many, indeed. In fact, Feinstein’s first golf book, “A Good Walk Spoiled,” begins with Love standing in the 18th fairway at The Belfry, a bundle of nerves, knowing that his match with Constantino Rocca would decide the 1993 matches. Feinstein actually wanted to write his latest book two years earlier when Tom Watson was the U.S. captain. The two had become close when Feinstein wrote “Caddy for Life” about Bruce Edward’s struggle with ALS. As he pitched the book to Watson, Feinstein hoped to get access similar to what he had when he wrote “Season on the Brink” about the volatile Knight and his Hoosiers. Feinstein had essentially embedded himself with the Indiana team that year and he hoped to tell the story of Watson’s American team from the inside out, as well. “Tom is always honest,” Feinstein says. “And he said, I know it would be a great book, but if one guy on the team came to me afterwards and said, you know, having John in there was a distraction and we lost 14-13 1/2 or something, I’d never forgive myself, and I understood that.” So instead of focusing on the Americans in 2014, Feinstein decided to write about both teams at the 2016 event. Over the next two years he worked to develop relationships with as many of the players as possible, as well as both captains and their assistants. He’d let them take him inside the ropes and behind the scenes instead. “And that’s why when Rory tweeted when the book came out … that reading the book he felt like he was in both team rooms, that I thought it was kind of the ultimate compliment,” Feinstein says. The author was almost overwhelmed by the reception and cooperation he received in researching the book. Take his quest for a sit-down with Jordan Spieth, for example. “The first thing that happened actually that was funny and tells you a lot about Jordan, he had to postpone twice for legit reasons, and when we sat down, the first thing he did was he apologized for postponing, and I said, Jordan, come on, you’re doing me a favor giving me this time, and he said, well, aren’t you doing me a favor putting me in your book?” Feinstein says. “I’m like, really? Jordan needed to be in my book like I need to gain another 20 pounds. And so I laughed. And so then we sat and we talked for a long time, and at the end, like I said, I said, I’m going to need to circle back to you, and he said, yeah, yeah, let’s just make it simple, take my cell phone number and text me whenever you want to talk. You can’t ask for more than that.” From Oct. 2 of last year, when the matches at Hazeltine ended in a hard-fought U.S. victory, to that Thanksgiving, Feinstein estimates he touched base with 16 or 17 of the players to get their take on the event, as well as Love and his European counterpart, Darren Clark. He also interviewed all of Love’s vice captains with the exception of Tiger Woods. “But I had so much stuff from other guys on him, talking about how obsessed he became, and to me people always say, what was your biggest surprise,” Feinstein says. “My biggest surprise was definitely how into the whole thing Tiger became, especially given his past Ryder Cup participation when he was clearly just there because he thought he had to be.” Even as he was in the midst of those follow-up interviews, Feinstein started writing some of the background and historical chapters the week after he got back from Minneapolis. The 320-page book was finished on Feb. 1 of this year. “I’ve always said my newspaper training comes in because I can write fast and I can write on a deadline,” he noted. “I knew it was going to be a fast turnaround, but I was mentally ready to deal with it.” While the competition is at the center of the book, the anecdotes Feinstein gleaned from the coaches and players are what sets it apart. Two of his favorites involve Clarke and Phil Mickelson, two long-time friends as well as keen competitors. Clarke lost his first wife Heather to breast cancer shortly before the Ryder Cup matches in 2006. Mickelson’s wife Amy also has fought the disease, and among Clarke’s memories from that emotional year came at the opening ceremonies when members of the two teams walked in together. “That year it was wife, player, player, wife, two from each side walking side by side, and Darren was supposed to walk in with Amy and Phil, and of course he did not have a partner,” Feinstein says. “And so when the music started and they were about to walk in, Amy walked around Phil, got in between Phil and Darren, took both their hands and walked in with them that way. “And of course Darren never forget that, and Phil said that when Amy was diagnosed, the first phone call he got was from Darren saying, you know, I’m here for you.” Another favorite story in Feinstein’s book came from Love, who remembers seeing Clarke and Mickelson deep in conversation into the wee hours on Sunday night after the U.S. victory. “(He was) talking about sitting and watching Darren and Phil talking together at 2 or 3 in the morning and thinking, this is what Sam Ryder would have wanted the Ryder Cup to be, these guys who have been through so much more together than a golf match, coming back together after competing against one another for three days and sitting around and telling stories together,” Feinstein recalls.

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