Jason Dufner commits to gym to add speed, distance

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — Amid the wind and the havoc at Kiawah Island, there was a semblance of simplicity to the way Corey Conners navigated his way around the Ocean Course for a 5-under 67 and a two-shot lead Thursday in the PGA Championship. RELATED: Once again, 17 provides best theater at Kiawah | Leaderboard He birdied all the par 5s. He made a couple of long putts for birdie. He dropped only one shot. The scorecard alone made it look like a walk on the beach. It just didn’t feel that way. “I’d say it’s impossible to be stress-free around this golf course,” Conners said. “You can’t fall asleep out there on any holes. It’s very challenging. I was fortunate to have a good day. Made it as least stressful as possible on myself.” With a stiff wind into his face for his last five holes, the 29-year-old Canadian played the tough closing stretch in 2 under, one of those birdies a 55-foot putt from just short of the green. He led by two shots over a half-dozen players. That group included Brooks Koepka, who started his day with a double bogey and stayed largely out of trouble the rest of the way; and Cameron Davis, who overcame a triple bogey on the sixth hole. Keegan Bradley, Viktor Hovland, Aaron Wise and Sam Horsfield also were at 69. The seven players to break 70 were the fewest for the opening round of the PGA Championship since there were five at Hazeltine in 2002. “I definitely knew in my preparation that it was possible to have a decent round out here and shoot a 5-, 6-under par round,” Conners said. “So kind of started the day thinking, ‘Why not me?’ There’s birdies to be had.” No one needed them like Koepka, a major presence when conditions are severe. One hole into this major, he had reason to be more worried about his brain than his ailing right knee. His opening tee shot on the 10th hole at Kiawah Island was struck poorly and didn’t quite clear a waste area. Koepka tried to do too much from a soft lie in the sand and barely got it out. It led to a double bogey, and the toughest part of the Ocean Course was still to come. But this is a major, and this is Koepka, and that’s when he’s at his best. He knuckled down from that mess by running off six birdies the rest of the way. “You can’t do that stuff if you want to win. You’ve just got to be more focused,” said Koepka, who has played only twice in the last three months because of surgery to repair ligaments in his knee. “I don’t know if that’s a lack of not playing or what. It was just stupid. I was able to recover, I guess.” So did 50-year-old Phil Mickelson, who had four bogeys through six holes and nothing but birdies and pars the rest of the way to join the large group at 70 that included defending champion Collin Morikawa and former U.S. Open champion Gary Woodland. More telling were those on the other side of par, some of whom will be scrambling to make it to the weekend. Dustin Johnson, the No. 1 player in the world in the midst of his worst stretch in nearly two years, took a double bogey from a wild tee shot on the front nine and a double bogey on the 18th for a 76. He’s in jeopardy of missing the cut in consecutive majors in the same year for the first time in his career. Justin Thomas took double bogey on the 18th hole in the morning and two holes later sent a sand shot over the green and just into a hazard for another 6 on the par-5 second. He had a 75. Rory McIlroy, coming off a victory at Quail Hollow two weeks ago, sent his opening tee shot into a water hazard. He salvaged a bogey, but certainly not his round. McIlroy made bogey on three of the par 5s for a 75, his worst start ever in a PGA Championship. Jordan Spieth, who needs a victory to complete the career Grand Slam, shot 73. The PGA of America moved up tee boxes, as expected, to account for the wind. The course played to 7,660 yards — 178 yards shorter than the scorecard — though that didn’t make it easy. Thomas, for one, still hit 7-wood into the 214-yard 17th. John Daly was among 12 players who shot in the 80s. On the 30-year anniversary of his PGA Championship victory at Crooked Stick, he shot 85. There were birdies to be had, and mistakes to be made, and Martin Laird was example of both. So wild was his round that he made bogey on No. 12, ran off four straight birdies and then closed with two bogeys. That added to a 70, not a bad day’s work. “I kind of went out with the mindset this week, even though it’s hard, don’t give the course too much respect,” Laird said. “You still have to take on shots when you have the chance. When I had a spot where I could go at the flag, I was making sure I kept doing it and hit a lot of really nice shots and managed to make some birdies. “You’re going to hit bogeys on this golf course,” he said. “It’s nice when you can throw in a bunch of birdies, too.” Finally heeled from a left knee injury, Koepka injured ligaments in his right knee in March and has played only twice since then, the Masters and last week in Dallas. He began with a poor 3-wood on No. 10 that didn’t clear the waste area. He took on too much with a soft lie in the sand and barely got it out, leading to a double bogey. But he didn’t flinch and had few complaints about his start. “It’s a major. I’m going to show up. I’m ready to play,” he said. “I love it when it’s difficult. I think that’s why I do so well in the majors. I just know mentally I can grind it out.”

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Collin Morikawa shook off an early mistake Sunday to close with a 3-under 69 for a three-shot victory in the Workday Championship. Afterward, he paid tribute to Tiger Woods, his golf idol growing up.

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LAS VEGAS — When you get a free roll in Las Vegas, you take it. So it perhaps aptly comes to pass that Jordan Spieth feels like he’s “free-rollingâ€� it as he looks to kick start his season at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. The former FedExCup champion is coming off the first season of his career where he failed to make the TOUR Championship, being edged out by one spot thanks in the main part to his first winless season since 2014. Put bluntly, it was a very non-Spieth-like season. We’ve become accustomed to him winning. He’s done it 11 times on TOUR since his breakout rookie season in 2013 when he was a winner as a baby-faced 19-year-old. Even in 2014 — when he didn’t claim a TOUR title — he did win in the fall. It just happened to be at the Australian Open and then the Hero World Challenge. Most players who could point to a 31st place finish in the FedExCup as their worst in six seasons would be smiling. But with Spieth we expect more. And that external expectation used to grate on him a little. He was turning on sports commentary shows and seeing a heavy reliance on comparison talk. Comparing a player or team from now to before. Comparing one athlete to another. He has since come to realize that getting caught up in the, “what have you done for me lately,â€� crowd was not helping his psyche. “With the improved access that any person has via social media to an athlete, if you fall into that comparison talk it only hurts you,â€� Spieth explained as he prepares to make the first domestic fall start of his PGA TOUR career.  
“Using comparisons is unrealistic, especially in a sport like golf where you have so much that can happen so quickly. Seems like the questions I’ll get are people getting very caught up in a what have you done for me lately and your last tournament perspective. I’ll be honest, for a little while that kind of stuff got to me.â€� So has this now 25-year old matured past that now? Trying to force a win when you don’t have your best game is not going to work out. So rather than be overly frustrated with last season, he is trying to see the long-term benefits. He addressed some mechanical issues in his game — some he would talk about, others he will keep to himself. “It was a building year. I look back at last year as something that I think will be beneficial for me in the long run,â€� he said. “I really believe that. I know that’s an easy thing to say looking at kind of the positive in a negative, but there were tangible, mechanical things that I needed to address, and I was able to throughout the season. I feel like I’m free rolling this year.
 “Just having an elongated perspective, more patient view of things, helps free me up personally.â€� One of those tangible things was his putting. The guy who seemed to make everything with the putter all of a sudden wasn’t making everything. We saw nine misses from three feet. Nine. In the three full seasons prior to that, he missed just six of them combined. It left him ranked 136th on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting — unfathomable for a guy who ranked second in 2016 and inside the top 40 from 2014 through 2017. “It’s physical. It really is,â€� Spieth said. “It’s a discomfort in setup that takes away from commitment through the stroke. If you’re not committed through the stroke you’re not going to make putts. It doesn’t matter what range they are. “It was every single length I missed more than I did the previous years combined. So you just fix it into the more committed stroke and clears up everything.â€� The truth is his work on the greens was looking up in the back half of the season. While in nine of his first 11 measured tournaments last year he lost strokes to the field putting, seven of his last eight were in the positive — including ranking second at the PGA Championship. “When I’m kind of back into the same positioning, the same look, the same timing, same stroke feel that I’ve had for the last five, ten years, minus a bit last season, then my confidence is probably as high as anybody’s on the greens,â€� he said. “Certainly not ideal … last year’s putting stats. But necessary for elongated peak performance going forward.
 “It was nice to sit back and kind of go through the checks and balances and fix what needs to be fixed.â€�
 But the focus has not been solely on the putter. Spieth has put a huge asterisk on his driving accuracy, and feels just a slight improvement could bear plenty of fruit. He was ranked 54th last season in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and 98th in driving accuracy at 61.29 percent. His mark of 67.8 percent accuracy in 2013 remains his career best. “My rookie season I think was my best statistical driving season,â€� Spieth said. “I think I ranked in the top 15 in strokes gained off the tee (he was 7th). I hit it five yards further now yet have not sniffed a top 15 in that category. So that’s a goal. “That’s something that I’m certainly focused on, is trying to hit more fairways. If I can get to 65 percent in my fairways I move up to the top 15 in strokes gained, and the rest of my game will come around to play from those positions and have a chance to win golf tournaments.â€�

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