Jason Day rides new swing to first-round lead in Wells Fargo Championship

This is an important week for Morgan Hoffmann and his inspirational attempt to continue his PGA TOUR career after being diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. The Travelers Championship marks the final start of the medical extension he was granted after being diagnosed with the disease. The Oklahoma State alum returned to the TOUR earlier this year after spending two-and-a-half years away from competitive golf as he immersed himself in the world of alternative medicine and took a holistic approach to managing the disease, including moving to Costa Rica for a time. After returning to the TOUR, Hoffmann missed the cut at both the RBC Heritage and Wells Fargo Championship, leaving one start remaining on his medical extension. Hoffmann’s medical extension began in the 2018 season, so all his points earned since the start of that season are combined and compared to the FedExCup standings for that season. He was fully exempt for 2018 after finishing 81st in the previous year’s FedExCup but made only nine starts before stepping away from the game. Here’s a closer look at what Hoffmann faces this week in that final start of his medical extension. Hoffmann, who has earned 139.04 FedExCup points since the start of 2018, will be looking to surpass the 150th position in the 2018 FedExCup standings (266 points) to earn conditional TOUR status for the remainder of the season or No. 125 (383) to have full status for the remainder of the season. He is credited with all points earned since 2018, and judged against the 2018 FedExCup standings, because that is the season that was interrupted by injury. Hoffmann needs to earn 238.42 FedExCup points this week — equivalent to a two-way T2 or better — to remain fully exempt on TOUR for the remainder of the season. He needs 127.098 FedExCup points – a solo fourth or better — to remain conditionally exempt on TOUR and play out of the Nos. 126-150 category for the remainder of the season. Should Hoffmann fail to cross those thresholds this week, he will still have conditional Korn Ferry Tour status for the remainder of the season because he already has surpassed No. 200 in the 2018 FedExCup standings. Even if he does not earn any FedExCup points this week, he can play on the Korn Ferry Tour for the remainder of the season out of the category for Nos. 151-200 on the previous year’s FedExCup standings. He cannot qualify for the Korn Ferry Tour Finals entry based solely on the FedExCup points he earned during his medical extension, however, because he already competed in the 2019 Finals while on this same extension. Hoffmann could qualify for the Korn Ferry Tour Finals, however, if after this week he earns enough points to finish among the top 75 on the Korn Ferry Tour Regular Season Points Ranking. He also could play in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals this year if he earns more non-member FedExCup points than No. 200 in the FedExCup standings after the Wyndham Championship (points earned this week would count toward that total), though he will need to rely on sponsor exemptions and Monday qualifying for starts if he does not fulfill his extension this week. His TOUR status for next season will be determined based solely on his points accrued via this season, with no carryover from previous seasons. He has missed the cut in both of his PGA TOUR starts this season. He also can go to the Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying Tournament to earn Korn Ferry Tour status for 2023. He is exempt into the second stage of Q-School by virtue of having made 100 combined cuts on the PGA TOUR and Korn Ferry Tour. Hoffmann is scheduled to tee off at 8:15 a.m. ET Thursday alongside Bill Haas and Trey Mullinax.

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The field list that day in 2013 in South Florida included the world’s 32nd-ranked player, Welshman Jamie Donaldson, who would earn an automatic spot on the Ryder Cup the following year. It also included another future European Ryder Cupper, Alex Noren, ranked 59th in the world. And another top-100 player, Shane Lowry, who later than year represented Ireland in the World Cup. Lowry, of course, was still several years away from claiming the 2019 Open Championship, but a couple of his fellow competitors – Lee Janzen and Rich Beem — already had major titles to their names back then. Now add a few multi-time PGA TOUR winners in Billy Mayfair, Chris DiMarco and Vaughn Taylor, and the field suddenly had serious credentials. You might not be surprised to learn that it was the week of The Honda Classic, the annual PGA TOUR stop in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. You might be surprised that it was Monday of tournament week. RELATED: Who Monday qualified this year? | Knox’s win after Monday qualifying | Go low or go home But really, you shouldn’t be surprised. The Honda Classic has the deepest field of all Monday qualifiers for any regular PGA TOUR event. It’s the Super Bowl of Monday qualifiers, with more notable names and more high-end resumes than other qualifiers throughout the season. Perhaps its closest rival are the sectional qualifiers for the U.S. Open, especially the one held near the PGA TOUR event completed the day before, as non-qualified TOUR pros take one last shot at getting into the field. Some of the names that appeared in that sectional qualifier last year in Columbus, Ohio, can be found in this week’s Monday qualifier field at The Honda Classic. The Honda’s 2013 Monday qualifier was indicative of the strength of field, and other Monday qualifiers have included the likes of Steve Stricker, Jason Dufner and Ryan Palmer and European starts such as Thomas Levet, Robert Karlsson and Jesper Parnevik. Year after year, the Monday qualifier has numerous players in the top 100 of the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR), major champions, and multiple PGA TOUR winners. Names you expect to see on Sunday, not Monday. Take a look at the 2019 Monday qualifier at The Honda Classic: 24 players with at least one TOUR win; 11 players with more than one; a combined 47 total TOUR wins. Two players had made more than 500 career TOUR starts; three others had more than 400; and 11 had more than 200. From a career earnings standpoint, three players had made more than $20 million; six had made more than $10 million; and 13 made more than $5 million. This year was no different. Thirteen different PGA TOUR winners were in the field at Banyan Cay, along with a combined 23 European Tour wins, and 41 total Korn Ferry wins.  The field’s total PGA TOUR earnings was in excess of $212 million. Along with the United States, a dozen other countries were represented. Some of the names you might recognize – TOUR winners Jonathan Byrd, David Lingmerth and Arjun Atwal; veteran Australians John Senden and Robert Allenby; 2016 Olympian Seamus Power of Ireland; and Arnold Palmer’s grandson Sam Saunders. That’s a lot of horsepower for an event that you must play just for the opportunity to play the regular event three days later. (Of the names above, only Atwal was among the four qualifiers to earn spots; click here for full story.) “It’s a great litmus test of where you stand,â€� said Blayne Barber, who shot a 66 at Banyan Bay to get through in 2019. “Knowing you beat a bunch of players that are basically in middle of their PGA TOUR season is a great feeling.” But a deep qualifying field like the week of The Honda Classic also comes with a dose of reality. “Expectations are low in any Monday,â€� said Aron Price, who successfully qualified in 2010. “They are even lower in the Honda Monday.â€� Why does The Honda Classic have the premium Monday qualifier of the TOUR season? It’s a confluence of several reasons. The tournament itself often has an exceptional field, filled with many of the top players in the world.  The strong field leaves a lot of players with world-class resumes on the outside, looking in. Meanwhile, sponsor exemptions aren’t as easy to come by for players that in some other events might get one. This is especially true for European Tour members that aren’t members of the PGA TOUR.  In some other TOUR events, they would often be able to grab one of the sponsor exemptions, but without securing an exemption, the last resort is the Monday. The Honda is also one of the few events that attracts one of the best fields of the year and has a Monday qualifier. For instance, there are no Monday qualifiers for THE PLAYERS Championship, the four majors, the World Golf Championships events, the FedExCup Playoffs or the three elevated events — The Genesis Invitational, the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard and the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide. Those fields annually have premium fields. It’s also the first Monday qualifier to start the Florida swing, making it the closest Monday qualifier in the new calendar year for European players. The Honda’s move to PGA National in 2007 also is a significant factor, according to Geoff Lofstead, Executive Director of the South Florida PGA section, who runs the Honda Classic Monday qualifier. “The move to PGA National really moved the event to elite status and therefore helped make the Monday qualifier such a quality field,â€� Lofstead said. The same year the event moved to PGA National, the South Florida PGA section began holding pre-qualifiers. Before that, they limited the Monday Qualifier field to 312 players (two courses, two spots at each). The pre-qualifiers gave the opportunity to move the Monday to one course and try to limit the field size to finish on Monday. The reason for the schedule adjustment was simple. “Darkness has always been our biggest enemy,â€� said Brett Graf, tournament director for the South Florida PGA. The pre-qualifiers not only helped ensure an actual finish on Monday, it also increased the number of participants. This year, a total of 458 players teed it up for the four pre-qualifiers and Monday qualifier. Geography also plays a massive role in the qualifier being such a high-caliber field. According to a Golf.com story in 2018, 35 PGA TOUR pros live in the Jupiter, Florida area, about 15 miles away from PGA National. The most celebrated local pro, of course, is Tiger Woods and he’s joined by other big names such as Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka and Rickie Fowler. Of course, those guys don’t have to worry about Monday qualifying, but for the local pros still grinding and seeking better TOUR status, being able to Monday qualify without worrying about travel demands is huge. Veterans that might otherwise not chase qualifiers and instead wait to get into events based on their status, will choose to play the Honda Monday because of its proximity to their home. Consider Ryan Armour, who moved to Jupiter in 2003. He attempted to Monday qualify for The Honda Classic nine times before finally getting through in 2017, shooting a 67 at Mayacoo Lakes Country Club. “It wasn’t just another Monday,â€� said Armour, who later that year broke through with his first PGA TOUR victory at the Sanderson Farms Championship. Florida also is home to a large portion of the nation’s developmental tours, and the Monday qualifier creates an opportunity for developmental tour players to fight for one of the four spots in the Honda Classic without the expenses of traveling. One of those tours is the Minor League Golf Tour, based in Stuart, Florida, about 30 minutes away from PGA National. Armour, in fact, was one of those MLGT veterans, having won eight times on that TOUR. This year, of the 338 players who participated in the pre-qualifiers, 28 of those were MLGT players. Seventeen qualified to play in the Monday qualifier. Going to a pre-qualifier and a Monday qualifier for a player with no status can cost upwards of $1,500.  With the event in their backyard and minimal travel costs, many players sign up for the opportunity to rub elbows with the best golfers in the world. “Why not take a chance?â€� said developmental tour player Joseph Gunerman. “It’s not often you are 36 (pre-q and Mon q) holes away from playing in a great event for millions of dollars. “That is the reason we are all playing mini-tours anyway, to get to the big tour. When it was in my backyard, I thought I had to try.” Since 2013, there has been no Korn Ferry Tour event the same week as The Honda Classic, allowing many of those players to try gaining entry through Monday qualifier during an off-week. Plus, Korn Ferry members pay just $100 for the entry fee and don’t have to play in pre-qualifiers. In 2015, then-Korn Ferry Tour member Mark Silvers was one of the four qualifiers to get through to the Honda Classic. He called it “the ultimate badge of honor.â€� This year’s schedule is different, though, with the Korn Ferry Tour playing in Mexico this week. But what’s not different is the depth of field for the Honda Monday qualifier. Playing well enough to gain a tee time on Thursday is an accomplishment in itself. After all, the Super Bowl comes around only once a year.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Keith Mitchell briefly held the lead in the first round of the Wells Fargo Championship before a late double-bogey left him with a 4-under-par 67 on Thursday. It was a good round, not a great one, but in relative terms it was a whole lot better than the last scorecard he signed, a final-round 82 at the Valspar Championship outside Tampa on Sunday. How to explain the drastic turnaround? RELATED: Full leaderboard | Inside Max Homa’s mind “My putter was bent on Sunday,” Mitchell said. “It was two degrees upright and a degree or so with too much loft which effectively is like six degrees of loft which is not what you need.” Not that he knew that. All he knew was that his setup felt awful, he couldn’t get comfortable, and every time he stroked a putt it felt like the putter cover was still on. He tallied a whopping 42 putts as his 82 dropped him to last among those who made the Valspar cut. Mitchell was flummoxed. Hadn’t he been playing well? He didn’t figure out what happened until Tuesday at Quail Hollow, when his coach was the first to notice the problem: Mitchell’s mallet putter, a TaylorMade Spider, didn’t look right as he set up on the practice green. They took it to the equipment truck, where the technicians confirmed it was bent. They fixed it, bending it back true, and Mitchell went out for his practice round. He feels a little better about his horrific finish to the Valspar, but at the Wells Fargo, where he’s tied for fourth, three behind leader Phil Mickelson, he still wonders how the club got so bent. “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I got angry a couple times on Saturday, but I don’t know if it was any of those. I know I just realized all my putts were missing and I couldn’t figure out why.” Mitchell hit 10 of 14 fairways, 14 of 18 greens, and took 28 putts at Quail Hollow on Thursday. It was a far cry better than 42. Said a bemused Mitchell, “It’s got to be a TOUR record.”

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