Jon Rahm continues U.S. Open celebration by drinking from the trophy and blasting ‘We Are The Champions’

Another PGA TOUR season, another Dustin Johnson victory. If you are looking for the easiest prediction on the TOUR each year look no further than Johnson… he’s just made it 12 straight seasons since he joined to win at least once. Welcome to the Monday Finish where Johnson took it to 20 PGA TOUR wins for his career with another demolition job in Mexico City and Martin Trainer produced another feel-good story for the battlers with his triumph at the Puerto Rico Open. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Happy learned how to putt… Dustin Johnson is basically unbeatable when he putts well. He already mashes the ball better than most. His iron play cuts the mustard. A few years ago he dialed in his wedges incredibly, but it is when he putts at his best that he annihilates the world’s greatest. Johnson made it 12 straight seasons on the PGA TOUR with at least one win, and hit 20 career PGA TOUR wins, with a five-shot demolition job at Club de Golf Chapultepec. The kicker was he led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting. It was just the second time in his career he has done so (2016 Houston Open) and takes him to 13th on the season in the stat. Considering eight years ago he was statistically one of the worst putters on TOUR and his average Strokes Gained: Putting season rank over the last five seasons was 62nd… just imagine what he could do if he kept rolling the rock the way he did in Mexico. Don’t be surprised if win 21 comes soon… and a FedExCup title (he moved to eighth in the standings) is in his future. Read more on his great victory here. 2. Rory win party coming soon Rory McIlroy appears on the verge of a surge of victories. Well that’s how we choose to look at the fact he’s finished inside the top-5 in his last four PGA TOUR starts and is a combined 56-under in those. McIlroy tried to play spoiler to Johnson’s victory in Mexico but despite briefly pulling within two shots off the lead on Sunday, the 13-time PGA TOUR winner and former FedExCup champion had to settle for a runner up result. His ball-striking was on point for most of the week and he led the field in birdies with 25. With so much talent comes so much expectation. Some are using the near misses as ammunition against him, but don’t forget his next start will be the Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented by Mastercard… the site of his last win on TOUR a year ago. Read more about McIlroy’s Mexico efforts here. 3. Smith to lead in Melbourne Cameron Smith will be a leader in his first Presidents Cup team. The 25-year-old may have never been on an International team before, but not only will he be in Ernie Els’ team at Royal Melbourne in December, he will be a standout. And he will go there with at least one more PGA TOUR win to his name… Smith’s short game prowess is well known to those who have watched him over the years, but it is getting some more mainstream attention of late. His T6 finish in Mexico was littered with a master class around the greens, just the sort of skills that make a great match player. Smith finished T5 at last season’s World Golf Championships – Dell Technologies Match Play, but don’t be surprised if he tops it in 2019. Remember his PGA TOUR win also came in a team effort at the Zurich Classic in 2017. Smith is made for the challenge that the U.S. team will bring, but he’s also ready to burst through and win a title on his own. 4. Trainer brings hope to all On the 2017 Web.com Tour, Martin Trainer made just $9,300 for the season. He lost his status and was heading for the PGA TOUR – LatinoAmerica in 2018. In the lead up to his first event in Mexico, he decides to enter a Sunday qualifier for the Web.com Tour event also being held south of the border and survives a 3-for-1 playoff to get in. The following Sunday he was hoisting the trophy for his first Web.com title. A few months later, he wins again and locks up a PGA TOUR spot for 2018-19. From zero status to PGA TOUR rookie in a year. Amazing. But Trainer clearly wasn’t done. Despite heading to the Puerto Rico Open this week having missed five of eight cuts in his rookie season on TOUR and only boasting a T28 as his career high, Trainer blitzed his way home with a final round 5-under 67 to win in just the 11th PGA TOUR start of his career. This game always offers the chance to change your life in a week. Trainer knows it all to well. He brings hope to all the battlers out there. Read more on his incredible journey here. 5. Tiger Woods continues to knock off the rust Through the opening two rounds in Mexico City it appeared Tiger Woods may have rid himself of the putting woes he faced the week before at the Genesis Open. His opening round wasn’t spectacular on the greens, but on Friday Woods dropped them in from everywhere to gain 3.648 strokes on the field putting, the best of the round. Unfortunately, the flat stick turned ice-cold over the weekend. Woods hit 31 of 36 greens, but played those holes in just 3 under par as he took his tournament three-putt total to six. He ranked 62nd (of 72) in Strokes Gained: Putting on Saturday and 64th (of 71) on Sunday. Perhaps a move off poa annua greens to Bermuda in Florida may be just what the doctor ordered. Woods will suit up next at the Arnold Palmer Invitational where he will look to claim a ninth title at Bay Hill. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Johnson becomes the 38th player with 20 or more PGA TOUR victories: the average age of the 37 other players on their 20th win was 34, the exact age Johnson is. He is just the ninth player since 1960 to win 20 PGA TOUR titles before the age of 35: Tiger Woods (age 24), Jack Nicklaus (26), Tom Watson (30), Arnold Palmer (31), Phil Mickelson (31), Billy Casper (31), Johnny Miller (33) and Gene Littler (34). 2. Johnson now has six World Golf Championships, including three Mexico Championships (one of those was at Doral in Florida). While he is second only to Tiger Woods’ 18 WGC titles, Johnson dies have the distinction of being the only player to have won all four of the current WGC events. 3. Johnson moves from No. 57 to No. 8 in the FedExCup and from No. 3 to No. 2 in the Official World Golf Ranking, closing to within 0.01 average points of No. 1 Justin Rose. Johnson will actually take back No. 1 status next week with both players inactive. 4. Tommy Fleetwood excited the masses early in his second round by opening with back-to-back eagles in Mexico. He was the first player on the PGA TOUR to do so since 2009, but Fleetwood’s efforts were even more impressive given they came on a pair of par-4s. 5. With his win Martin Trainer collects 300 FedExCup points to move from No. 185 to No. 39 in the FedExCup standings at 322 total points. Last year it took 377 points to qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs. Trainer becomes the fourth first-time winner of the 2018-19 season, joining Kevin Tway (Safeway Open), Cameron Champ (Sanderson Farms Championship) and Adam Long (Desert Classic). He also joins Champ and Long as the third rookie winner of the season. WYNDHAM REWARDS The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is in its first season and adds another layer of excitement to the FedExCup Regular Season. The top 10 players at the end of the FedExCup Regular Season will earn bonus payouts from the Wyndham Rewards Top 10. Xander Schauffele remains on top but Dustin Johnson makes his way into the top 10 after his big win, moving from 57th to 8th.

Click here to read the full article…

Team golf. Those two words conjure images of sheer joy, of birdies and eagles, broad smiles and high-fives. The field in this week’s Zurich Classic of New Orleans, the PGA TOUR’s lone official two-man team event, went out in Thursday’s best-ball format and blistered TPC Louisiana to an average of 66.7 strokes. It was puppies and rainbows. Winning scratch tickets for all. On Friday, the format shifted to alternate-shot. Dreaded foursomes. Two players, one golf ball. On what already was a challenging day for scoring, those Thursday smiles turned into Friday grimaces and hard-bitten lower lips. Every ball deposited into watery penalty areas – and designer Pete Dye incorporated a few – represents not only individual pain, but team pain, too. It’s a multiplier. Playing for somebody else adds a tense ingredient to the team dynamic. Some players figured it out better than others. Playing in the afternoon, long bashers Tony Finau and Cameron Champ shot 4-under 68, tying the day’s low round and seizing the tournament lead 13-under 131 through 36 holes. Kris Ventura and Viktor Hovland would step up late and match them. Teammates from Norway who were on a national championship college team at Oklahoma State three years ago, Ventura and Hovland overcame a double bogey on their sixth hole (No. 16) and played their final eight holes in 4 under to shoot 69 and tie the lead heading to the weekend. A beautiful approach to 11 feet at the difficult 206-yard ninth (the team’s final hole) by Hovland would set up a rare birdie and push them to 13 under. European Ryder Cup partners Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson shot 68 despite encountering three bogeys, including one on the par-5 18th hole (their ninth of the day). They’ve played enough times in the format to exercise extra patience at times and not try to do too much, though their seven team birdies accounted for a better-than-average day’s work. The foursomes format, seldomly played outside of a handful of every-other-year cup matches (Presidents Cup, Ryder Cup, etc.), brings in more decision-making (who tees off on the odd holes?), delivers a different element of competitive pressure (hitting shots for two) and even factors in technology (golfers playing different brands of golf balls than they normally play). Stenson used a pair of “T” words to describe his Friday: Tricky, describing the format, and trust, describing his effective partnership with Rose. “Foursomes is always a tricky format,” said Stenson, the 2016 Open champion. “We know that. But it’s never going to be as tricky when you’ve got a good partner like I do. We talked about that earlier in the week, to trust, and having done this so many times before, we kind of go about things like we normally do. Yeah, we played a very solid round of foursomes out there.” Stenson and Rose each made a clutch 5-footer to open the round (Rose making his for birdie at the par-5 11th) and the pair would sandwich bogeys at 15 and 18 with two birdies. They birdied both par 5s on the front, and added another birdie at the par-4 fifth (Stenson making a 10-footer) against a lone second-nine bogey at No. 6. Rose added that as much as he wants to (and does) trust his partner, a golfer looking for success in foursomes must also keep plenty of trust in oneself, and not worry about the occasional poor shot that might leave a partner in a tough predicament. A good foursomes partnership can be like a good marriage; it’s often about never having to say you’re sorry. “I think it’s all about committing to your shots,” Rose said. “Henrik doesn’t want to hit it in the water on No. 9 and (if) he blocks it right of the green, (it) probably doesn’t do us any good anyway. But the only way he’s going to step up and hit a great shot is by not worrying about what he might leave me. I think that’s kind of the way to approach this format.” Rose and Stenson, big-time players who won Olympic gold and silver, respectively, as golf returned to the Olympic Summer Games in Brazil in 2016, form one of two major-championship winner tandems in the 80-team field. South Africans Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel form the other, and also have considerable experience playing alongside one another. (They’ve competed together at the Presidents Cup, and their friendship dates to junior golf.) Friday they made only three birdies against two bogeys, but 71 was good enough to stay in contention. They knew that going in. They are at 10-under 134. “You know, with better-ball, you play with a lot more freedom,” Oosthuizen said. “You sort of always know you have another score that can count and sort of if you fall on that score. With this format, if you make a mistake, it’s the team that’s going to make a bogey or something, and it’s stressful, especially around this golf course with a lot of water, and the wind is really picking up.” Schwartzel added that foursomes with Oosthuizen causes him other issues: “I’m not used to hitting out of so many fairways,” he said, smiling. Aussies Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith teamed up for seven birdies and an eagle in opening-day best-ball. On Friday, amid swirling winds and a TPC Louisiana layout that was becoming downright ornery, they were relieved to return to the clubhouse with a level-par score of 72. “I think foursomes is hard,” Leishman said. “You’re hitting half the shots; there’s no rhythm. You’ve got to make sure you’re loose between shots. Yeah, it’s just hard. … I was actually quite happy with even par on what was a really tough day.” Ah, but Friday evening in New Orleans, there was a sliver of light at the end of the rainbow. Saturday’s format returns to free-wheeling four-ball, a bit of a breather until those feared foursomes rear their head again on Sunday.

Click here to read the full article…

Tiger Woods said course changes at Quail Hollow Club led to his first-round struggles at the Wells Fargo Championship, but the 2007 winner did finish the day at even-par 71.

Click here to read the full article…