Joshua Creel fired up for first start as TOUR member

During the coronavirus pandemic, the PGA TOUR is making PGATOUR LIVE free and available for streaming, and adding new content every week. Currently the free content is limited to those in the U.S. There are features on two-time FedExCup champion Rory McIlroy, Payne Stewart, Ben Hogan and many more, plus tournament rewinds to get the juices flowing for the TOUR’s return next month. To get started, click here. McIlroy’s 2016 TOUR Championship victory: Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson are expected to make a formidable team at the TaylorMade Drives Relief charity skins game at Seminole on Sunday. At the 2016 TOUR Championship, though, they were competitors, with McIlroy prevailing in a thrilling stretch run that included a three-man playoff (Ryan Moore and Kevin Chappell) on his way to the FedExCup title. Wolff’s first title: McIlroy, Johnson and Rickie Fowler, three of the four players in this Sunday’s TaylorMade Drives Relief charity match, are veteran stars. Relatively little is known of Fowler’s funky-swinging partner Matthew Wolff, who had just left Oklahoma State when he held off fellow newly-minted pro Colin Morikawa to capture the inaugural 3M Open in Minnesota. Fowler’s epic PLAYERS Championship playoff win: It’s the second week of May, so head down memory lane to THE PLAYERS Championship before it moved back to March. Arguably the best finish of any PLAYERS was Rickie Fowler’s surge in 2015. He took just 11 strokes over the final four holes of regulation (3-3-2-3), a PLAYERS Championship record. He was 6 under for his last six holes. Then, in the playoff, he birdied the par-3 17th for the second and third time of the day – after sticking his tee shot inside seven feet all three times. Electric. Tiger’s second title at TPC Sawgrass: At the 2013 PLAYERS Championship, Tiger Woods, the 2001 champion at Sawgrass, joined two-time PLAYERS champions Fred Couples, Steve Elkington, Davis Love III, and Hal Sutton. The victory was No. 78 of Woods’ gilded PGA TOUR career (82 and counting!), and it was in doubt until Sergio Garcia hit his wedge in the water on the way to a quadruple-bogey 7 at the 17th hole.

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Author Ryan Holiday is admittedly not a golf guy. That would be his father, who lives in Kapalua, Maui. But golf and particularly FedExCup No. 3 Rory McIlroy—always a favorite at the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow—have lately popped up on Holiday’s radar. That’s because McIlroy, who won THE PLAYERS Championship in March, name-dropped four books during his long, introspective press conference at the Masters four weeks later. Two of them—“The Obstacle is the Wayâ€� and “The Ego is the Enemyâ€�—were written by Holiday, who is more known in NFL circles and has immersed himself not in golf but Brazilian jiu-jitsu. “It’s been really amazing to see the books make their way through professional sports over the last few years, but this one was different because it was probably the first one that impressed my dad!â€� Holiday, 31, said via email this week. “I know I had heard Cameron McCormick had been recommending it to golfers recently, but really curious to hear about how Rory heard about it.â€� McCormick, the well-known coach who works with Jordan Spieth and Kramer Hickok, among others, confirmed he has recommended the book but declined to elaborate. Was there a Rory bump from the Masters? Hard to tell. The book is already a juggernaut—the No. 1 seller in Philosophy and Movements on Amazon’s Audible. Which is to say McIlroy could have heard about “The Obstacle is the Wayâ€� through a number of channels. A 2014 release, the book preaches the ancient Greek philosophy of stoicism—meeting obstacles with equanimity instead of unhelpful emotion. It has found disciples in, among others, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon, sideline reporter Michele Tafoya, NFL teams like the 2015 Super Bowl-winning New England Patriots, and LL Cool J. “Stoicism as a philosophy is really about the mental game,â€� Holiday said in a Sports Illustrated article in 2015, when the book was taking the NFL by storm. Given how much time there is to think in golf, no wonder it’s now making its way to the course. Still, for as much as it resonates with athletes, this is not nominally a sports book. The late tennis player Arthur Ashe and Alabama football coach Nick Saban show up in its pages, but mostly Holiday draws lessons from other leaders and achievers: John D. Rockefeller, Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, U.S. presidents, Amelia Earhart. All of them, he argues, kept a cool head in lieu of flying off the handle, which dulls thinking and impedes right action. Related: Featured Groups, tee times | Power Rankings | Rose looks to rebound | The harsh lessons of losing can pay big dividends | Tiger’s inspiring message to Varner’s friend For McIlroy, stoicism dovetailed nicely with his stated goals as he enters the next phase of his career: maintaining patience, looking at longer time horizons, and refusing to get caught up in the emotional bungee-jumping of results, i.e. not letting his happiness be dictated by his scores. Perspective, Persistence and Poise. The 15-time TOUR winner drew on all three at TPC Sawgrass as he answered all the questions about not closing—five straight top-six finishes but no wins going into PLAYERS week—and then claimed one of the most significant trophies of his career. Afterward, McIlroy said the big win, like all those close losses, wouldn’t change him. Because that’s stoicism, too. “It’s to make the most of the next 20 years of my career,â€� he said at the Masters of his mental approach, which now includes meditation and juggling. “It’s not just about one week. This is a lifelong journey of trying to improve and learn and try to master my craft, which is golf.â€� You could hear echoes of Holiday there. The author, who writes and raises cattle, goats and donkeys on a ranch outside Austin, Texas, has been fascinated by the response to his work. He was on vacation in Florida when he heard about the shout-out from the 2016 FedExCup winner. “Completely unexpected and humbling,â€� Holiday said. Coincidentally, he added, he was already thinking a lot more about golf than usual. That’s because his next book, “Stillness is the Key,â€� will impart lessons gleaned in part from the career of one Tiger Woods. “It’s fascinating to me the way that athletes have become voracious readers and how openly they share these recommendations,â€� Holiday said. “It’s obviously great for authors but I think it sets an even better example for young people. … When you write a book, you are basing it on your experiences and your research, but you just don’t know how it’s going to stand up under pressure when people go out and use it in real life, in their difficult jobs. “Playing at the level that Rory plays at is quite a test of anyone’s material,â€� he continued, “so that he liked it enough to talk about it is a reward for the many frustrating hours I spent, alone at the keyboard, trying to get it right.â€�

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Golf is a game with a simple objective: get the ball in the hole in the fewest strokes possible. But several different skills must be mastered to accomplish that task. There's driving, iron play, short game and putting. Players must attain, and maintain, a certain level of proficiency in each aspect of the game to have success. That's why Stewart Cink compares golf to another game, one that's often found in an arcade or at a carnival. The six-time winner says it's like Whack-A-Mole because once a player fixes one fault in his game, another one is quick to pop up. "You correct one thing, and something else flares up, and it’s just constantly you’re searching for where you’re going to put the next fire out." he said. "We’re not robots. We’re human beings. "It’s just the way golf is, and it’s part of what makes it such a great game." Players can only practice for so long, though. Daylight presents a natural limit. Some players have parental commitments to schedule around. Then there's the law of diminishing returns, and the increased risk of injury that comes from excessive work. Swinging a golf club more than 100 mph can be hard on the body. That's why players turn to data and technology to make their practice time more efficient. Rory McIlroy, the reigning FedExCup champion, is among the players who relies on stats to show him what to work on. For example, a report he received after the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship showed him that his sand shots weren't up to his standards. "I got a stats report after the three weeks that I had at Torrey Pines, at Riviera, and Mexico, and that’s what I based my practice off going into the next few weeks," McIlroy said at this year's Arnold Palmer Invitational. "My bunker play wasn’t up to the same standards it needed to be. I needed to get better (with putts) from 6 to 12 feet. It’s stuff that you sort of know anyway, but it’s nice when you have that objective data in front of you." PGA TOUR players are finely-tuned athletes but they aren't always attuned to the true state of their game. They hit thousands of shots in a season but often remember the outliers the most vividly. This can make it difficult to produce a true assessment of their game. "What happens to athletes, because they're always in the thick of it, they start telling themselves stories,” instructor Sean Foley said at the 2014 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, an annual meeting of the best minds in sports statistics. These stories aren't always accurate. Foley tells the story of former pupil Justin Rose, who considered himself a poor wedge player. The statistics actually showed that he was No. 1 in strokes gained from 100 yards and in. "It’s nice to look at some numbers to back it up, because you can get a little blinded out there thinking I’m not putting well, when in actual fact you’re hitting a lot of great iron shots and you’re giving yourself a lot of 15-, 20-foot looks that you’re not going to make a lot of, and therefore you think you’re putting badly," said four-time PGA TOUR winner Graeme McDowell. Charles Howell III hired data analyst Richie Hunt to help him prioritize his practice. "I've always been a guy who really likes to practice, but there have been some times when I'm practicing really hard and not getting any better. Richie would come in and say that's because you're practicing the wrong things," Howell said. "Every part of the game matters, but certain things matter more to certain people." Technology like force plates and 3-D motion capture also help players get more out of their training, especially when they are struggling. This technology helps players more quickly find a solution to their swing problems. Some players use such high-tech training aids when they are playing well, in order to capture data on their swing when it is working its best. This data serves as a benchmark against which players can compare when things go awry. "If someone is playing really well, you collect that data and put it in a vault and save it for a rainy day," said instructor Chris Como, who works with Bryson DeChambeau, Emiliano Grillo, Jamie Lovemark and Trevor Immelman. "And if they get in a funk, you can compare their current swing to when they were playing well." Brooks Koepka credited force plates for his recent success at the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. They showed him that he wasn't getting enough weight on his left side through impact. "Usually at impact, I'm at 70% (of my weight) on the left side. I had 70% on the right side," Koepka said. After struggling for most of the season, he finished second at TPC Southwind to lock up his spot in the FedExCup Playoffs. Injuries, travel and different weather and course conditions can all lead to small changes in a player's swing over the course of a season. Hard data can diagnose problems more quickly than the naked eye. As Bobby Jones once wrote, "Golf is a difficult game to play consistently well because the correct swing is not a thing the human body can accomplish entirely naturally." Technology and data can help players when they get off-kilter, however.

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