Sung Kang made a 23-foot birdie on the 15th hole to finally take the lead for good at the Byron Nelson for his first PGA Tour victory.
Click here to read the full article…
| Do you like Chinese themed slots? Check the review of Golden Horns, a three-reel slot by Betsoft with a Chinese New Year theme. This is a simple and beautiful game with only a single payline, and the potential to win up to 25,344x your total bet! You can find it at our partner site Hypercasinos.com |
SHANGHAI — Already the FedExCup champion and PGA TOUR Player of the Year, Rory McIlroy has found plenty of motivation toward the back end of the year. Most of it is geared toward reaping rewards next year. McIlroy is coming off a tie for third last week at the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP, a tournament he was never going to win after a bad start. He still managed his 17th top-10 of the year out of 23 starts worldwide, inching a little closer to Brooks Koepka at No. 1 in the world. He is the leading figure at this week’s World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions, as Koepka and Dustin Johnson, two regulars at Sheshan International, are home in Florida recovering from knee issues. Koepka will not play another official event the rest of the year. He withdrew from the THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES in South Korea when his foot slipped on a piece of wet cement leaving a tee box and he planted hard with his left knee, which had received stem cell treatment during his offseason. He chose not to play the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, and still to be determined is whether he plays the Presidents Cup. McIlroy has won three times in 2019, including THE PLAYERS Championship and TOUR Championship, along with runner-up finishes in two World Golf Championships. He joins Tiger Woods as the only two-time winners of the FedExCup, and could become the first player to win the Cup three times and back-to-back. “I’ve achieved most things that I’ve wanted to this year,” McIlroy said. “Just want to finish the year off strongly because I feel the year that I’ve had deserves a finish like that.” McIlroy has gone four years since capturing a World Golf Championship, though he has performed well in them this year. He was runner-up to Johnson in Mexico and Koepka in Memphis and suffered a bitter loss in the fourth round to Tiger Woods at the Dell Technologies Match Play. Xander Schauffele is the defending champion at the HSBC Champions, and he’ll try to win again without much of a voice. Schauffele got sick during the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP and withdrew from the pro-am Wednesday to try to be in fighting shape. The field also features resurgent Hideki Matsuyama, who tied for third in South Korea and was runner-up to Woods last week before a frenzied gallery in his native Japan; and Justin Rose, who also wants to finish the year strong for other reasons. They won won the HSBC in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Rose, who was No. 1 in the world for the opening two months of the year, has gone the opposite direction of McIlroy. Rose hopes to get back on track at the tournament where he rallied from eight shots behind to kick off his FedExCup-winning campaign. The HSBC Champions also is the last chance for players to audition as wild-card picks for the Presidents Cup, and most everyone on the bubble is here — Tony Finau, Patrick Reed, Kevin Kisner and Chez Reavie for the Americans, a longer list of International players from Sungjae Im and Byeong Hun An of South Korea, Adam Hadwin and Corey Conners of Canada and Justin Harding and Erik van Rooyen of South Africa. Reavie is among 18 players who have gone to all three PGA Tour events on the Asia swing.
ORLANDO – Rory McIlroy was in the Bay Hill clubhouse when he saw a few people asked to remove their hats. If it wasn’t obvious before, he knew then that he was back at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. RELATED: Leaderboard | Featured Groups, tee times “There’s so many nice little traditions here,â€� McIlroy said after going 7 under for his final 12 holes and signing for an opening-round 66 to take the early lead. “… Still having to take your hat off when you walk into the clubhouse, that’s something that I really like.â€� Two years ago, McIlroy came to Bay Hill slightly overdue for a win. He shot a final-round 64, holing the famous, left-to-right slider on 18, and donned the winner’s red cardigan. Starting with that victory, McIlroy has finished in the top 10 in just under 70% of his starts (27/39), including a PGA TOUR-leading 14 top-10s last season and five in five starts so far this season. His round Thursday featured a bogey on his second hole, the par-4 11th, but he called it a good bogey – he made a putt from just under eight feet. It was his only wobble. At the par-4 fourth hole, he hit a 3-iron from the fairway bunker 254 yards onto the green, his ball stopping just under 24 feet from the hole. He made the eagle putt. “Harry (Diamond, his caddie) said that’s the best shot I’ve hit all year, so, you know, high praise from him,â€� McIlroy said of his 3-iron shot, which came out perfectly and rolled up to pin high. He said he feels more comfortable at Bay Hill than Club de Golf Chapultepec, where he led after the opening round of the WGC-Mexico Championship only to wind up in fifth place. The style of golf, the greens – it’s all familiar here. And to think he didn’t put Bay Hill on his schedule early in his career. What was it like to don the red cardigan two years ago? “It was special. It was warm. Alpaca isn’t as comfortable as you think,â€� McIlroy said. “But it was nice. I mean, for me at that point just to, just to win a tournament again, it was 520-whatever days, and so I think just the, I don’t know, the joy in winning again was really, really special. “You could have given me a neon cardigan and I would have worn it all the way home.â€�
As captain of the U.S. team for the Presidents Cup, Tiger Woods chose himself for a wild-card spot. After going 3-0, he was the difference in the American victory.
