Kevin Na explains emotional interview

THE OVERVIEW HUMBLE, Texas — The Houston Open will always hold a special place in Steve Stricker’s heart, even after the 51-year-old officially hangs up his spikes on the PGA TOUR. Stricker missed 11 cuts in 21 starts during the 2005 season — he missed 27 cuts the two years prior to that — and briefly contemplated giving up the game. Unsure what he was going to do next, Stricker received a sponsor exemption the following year from the Houston Open and finished third. His best finish since a win at the 2001 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play began a torrid stretch for Stricker that saw him win nine times in the next 12 years and move as high as third in the Official World Golf Ranking. “It was a good momentum tournament for me, a good finish, provided a lot of confidence moving forward through a difficult time that I had the previous three years,” Stricker said. “So it’s always nice to be back here and I remember that tournament meaning a lot to me back in 2006.” Since that momentum-building week, Stricker has made it a point to play Houston on a regular basis. The tournament has acted as his final warm-up before the Masters, but with Stricker turning 50 last year and becoming PGA TOUR Champions eligible, the 12-time winner is teeing it up on TOUR this week in a last-ditch effort to make the field at Augusta National. “Played all four of the majors last year and I’m not in any of them this year, so I’ve got some work cut out if I want to play in some of those,” Stricker said. “It’s a long shot to come here and win, but hopefully play well and see what happens.” Stricker isn’t short on confidence at the moment, having won his last two PGA TOUR Champions starts — his other start was a runner-up finish — including a three-shot victory last week at the Rapiscan Systems Classic. Even with the near-immediate success he’s enjoyed on the PGA TOUR Champions, Stricker admitted he’s struggling to figure out the best balance when playing opportunities on both Tours. On one hand, he’s 51 years old and no longer needs to play a full TOUR schedule, but his competitive nature keeps telling him otherwise. “It’s getting harder,” Stricker said. “When I go out and win on the Champions Tour, should I be out there more? You can tell me, should I be out there more or should I be out here? I’m taking any advice I can get because that’s been the hardest part, where I should play. I’m fighting with myself with that a lot of times. What’s the right thing to do? I still feel like I’ve got game enough to win and play well out here, and that’s what keeps me coming back out here.” Last year, Stricker made 13 starts on the PGA TOUR to six on the PGA TOUR Champions. He said the plan this year is to try and do something similar and split his time. The tentative plan is to play THE PLAYERS Championship, Fort Worth Invitational, FedEx St. Jude Classic and attempt to get a sponsor exemption into the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide. He’ll also try and qualify for the U.S. Open and hope his strong play gets him into the PGA Championship. For now, though, he has his sights set on trying to make the field at Augusta. “I would dearly love to win again out here on this Tour, and that’s my goal so that’s why I continue to come out here,” Stricker said. “And the major stuff, that will all take care of itself if you play well.” THREE PLAYERS TO PONDER JORDAN SPIETH Of the top four players in the world, he’s the only one who hasn’t won a TOUR event this season. A win in Houston would be a massive confidence booster before the Masters. PHIL MICKELSON Broke the win drought in Mexico. Based on his past form in Houston and the way he’s been playing, a strong week would reinforce the good vibes. JUSTIN ROSE Finished T15 last year in Houston. Has quietly put together a strong start to the season with four top 10s in his first five starts. THE FLYOVER The par-4 18th at Golf Club of Houston is the kind of closing hole that can make or break a tournament. With a lake bordering the entire left side of the hole, players have the option to take a more aggressive line and carry a large portion of the water, or lay back and face a daunting mid-iron approach to a left-back hole location. As if the water on the left isn’t enough, bunkers on the right side of the fairway keep players honest, capturing balls from those who attempt to bail out to the safe side of the hole. The closing hole played as the most difficult on the course last season with a 4.310 average score. THE LANDING ZONE The 480-yard par-4 5th at the Golf Club of Houston was the second-most difficult hole on the course last year. Players need to avoid the water running down the left side of the hole. Here is where all tee shots landed last year. WEATHER CHECK Thunderstorms are in the forecast for Wednesday, but other than a slight chance of rain on Thursday, the rest of the week should be smooth sailing for the tournament, with temperatures hovering around 70 degrees. For the latest weather news from Houston Texas, check out PGATOUR.COM’s Weather Hub. SOUND CHECK I played a nine-hole practice round with [Tiger] at Valspar. This is for real this time, I think, this comeback. He’s looking good, he feels good, he’s talking good about his game and himself and how he feels. So it’s exciting to see, it really is. He’s walking with a bounce in his step like he did when he was out here kicking everybody’s butt. BY THE NUMBERS 63 – The percentage of Russell Henley’s total strokes gained that came from his performance on the greens. In total, he outperformed the field by +12.5 strokes with the putter during last year’s win. 40 – Padraig Harrington has hit 40 balls in the water at the Golf Club of Houston, nine more than the next player (Mickelson, 31) since 2006. 624 – Since 2006, the 18th hole at GC of Houston has yielded the second most balls in the water (624) on the final hole on TOUR. It’s one of three closing holes on TOUR with 600 or more shots finding the water 541 feet 10 inches – Last season, Russell Henley made 541 feet 10 inches of putts en route to victory, marking the most feet of putts made by a PGA TOUR winner in the ShotLink era (since 2003). 15 – The number of Phil Mickelson’s under-par rounds that have been on the weekend at Golf Club of Houston, the most of any player. 30 – From inside five feet, Jordan Spieth misses a putt every 30 holes played this season compared to one in every 45 holes played last season.

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LIUZHOU, CHINA — Amateur Cheng Jin carded a third-round, 2-under 70 to extend his lead to nine strokes and remain on-course for a wire-to-wire victory at the PGA TOUR Series-China Mainland China Qualifying Tournament. In warmer conditions compared to the first two days, Jin nailed his fifth birdie of the round at the par-5 18th to move to 7-under overall, having started the day with a three-shot lead at Wolong Lake Golf Club. Zihong Zhang, 18, moved into a tie for second as the 6-foot-6 amateur shot 71 to finish at 2-over with Dongyu Wang (75), Jin’s former national amateur teammate, heading into the final round of the 72-hole stroke play event. Guozhen Xu recorded the day’s lowest score, a 68, to lie joint fourth alongside Yixin Xing (74) and Cilin Zhou (73) at 4 over. Kaiyan Shi’s 69 vaulted him 13 places into a tie for eighth as players seek to secure full Tour cards for the 2018 season, which starts this month. Jin, who won the 2015 Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship in Hong Kong, missed a 3-foot par putt on the first hole, but the 19-year-old quickly regrouped to pick up shots on Nos. 5, 7, 8, 13 and 18 to move clear of the field. “As usual, I will just play my best and stick to my own game,� said Jin, who had five top-10 finishes on the PGA TOUR Series-China in 2014 and 2015—including a victory at the 2014 Nine Dragons Open when he was 16. “I just need to keep striking the ball well. I think my ball striking has been great this week.� The University of Southern California sophomore will have some schoolwork to catch up on when he returns to the U.S., and he remains undecided if and when he will turn pro regardless of whether he secures PGA TOUR Series-China status this week. “I think it’s a great platform that the China Golf Association and PGA TOUR China are giving us, not only for the Chinese players but also many foreign players trying to use this to go to the Web.com Tour or on to a higher stage,� said Jin. “I think as a Chinese I am doing what I am supposed to do – grabbing the opportunity. I’m really thankful to have this opportunity.� Zhang was third after an opening 71, shot a shaky second-round 76 but returned to the top three after another 71. However, the towering teen was still slightly frustrated after mixing six birdies with five bogeys. “I got six birdies, but I made a lot of mistakes. I had two three-putts and missed some short putts, so I think I can do better,� said Zhang, who made his first and only PGA TOUR Series-China cut at last year’s Clearwater Bay Open.

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CROMWELL, Conn. – Sometimes, Chelsea Hoffmann wakes up and thinks she’s on a houseboat, what with the metronomic sound of the waves lapping at the shore. She and her husband, Morgan, and their service dog, a Doberman named Yama, are bunking in their 35-foot Sunseeker RV this week, and it’s parked in the backyard of friends of theirs in Old Saybrook. Friends, meaning the parents of Hoffmann’s caddie, Sam “Ghost” Spector. “It’s beautiful,” Morgan said after shooting a 2-under-par 68 in the first round of the Travelers Championship, his final start on a medical extension, where he needs a solo fourth or better. “You wake up and look around and it’s just water. The birds are chirping. It’s very peaceful.” Hoffmann, you might recall, was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in 2016 and left the TOUR three years later. Frustrated with the limitations of western medicine, he began a healing journey that has included psychedelics, yoga, surfing, veganism, breathwork, and a grape cleanse. He’s gone from Nepal for ayahuasca (hallucinogenic medicine) to buying a home in Costa Rica for its healthful Blue Zone attributes. He’s not the same guy who reached world No. 1 as an amateur, was an All-American at Oklahoma State, and played the TOUR fulltime from 2013-17. And yet … “I’m not ready to just be a weekend golfer,” he said while drinking a smoothie outside the clubhouse earlier this week. “I’ve added 7 mph clubhead speed. It’s exciting, because when I left the TOUR, I was down to 104 with the driver, which is not ideal. I’ve seen the biggest jump in the last month and a half, in the gym, lifting hard, eating a lot, getting confidence back.” The smoothie, incidentally, is about the only thing Hoffmann can eat from player dining. He limits his menu to raw food until dinner, when he allows for cooked vegetables like spaghetti squash, lentils, spinach, sweet potatoes, and mushrooms. He and Chelsea make meals in the RV, where they were Wednesday night, checking out the definition of Morgan’s right pectoral muscle. That muscle began to atrophy as early as his junior year at Oklahoma State, and he spent much of his old TOUR career searching high and low for a diagnosis. He was poked and prodded and sampled. Doctors hypothesized, equivocated, disappeared. For years, they had no answers. Once they did, and he was diagnosed with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, Hoffmann was told there wasn’t much he could do. He disagreed, embarking on a holistic journey in which he barely touched a club. That he has returned to compete against the world’s best has been an inspiration. “He’s getting notes from players and caddies in his locker,” Chelsea said. “Because everyone is on their own healing journey.” The most sensational part of Hoffmann’s journey, the one that fairly jumped off the pages of a Golf Digest profile, was the hallucinogenic ayahuasca treatment. He recalled a “geometric butterfly” and a moth feeding him a vine, dirt, trees, and berries, after which the vine was pulled from him, an elephant appeared, and black smoke started pouring from his mouth. “It felt like the disease was coming out of me,” he said. Hoffmann has always been a polymath. He’s a pilot (but sold his plane), and has an interest in a clothing company, Greyson. He wore a groovy patterned golf shirt and pink pants for the first round at the Travelers on Thursday, his flowing, blond locks fashioned into a manbun poking out the back of his black cap, the crown of which featured his foundation’s plus-sign logo. “I got a little turned around this morning and was late,” Chelsea said, “but I saw him from afar and thought, that must be him!” She laughed as she watched the action at TPC River Highlands with a handful of Hoffmann’s friends, including one of his partners in Greyson. Hoffmann is also involved in a venture that aims to make it easier to get non-traditional medicine covered by insurance. Long range, he and Chelsea plan to open a solar-powered healing center in their adopted home of Costa Rica. They recently closed on the land. “I’ve never seen someone with more interests than him,” she said. In one way, Hoffmann resembles any other TOUR pro. When he’s not in Costa Rica, he lives in Jupiter, Florida, where he plays out of the Bear’s Club and hangs out with friends Daniel Berger and Justin Thomas. The house belongs not to Hoffmann but his mom, Lorraine, who is a flight attendant and rarely home. She is expected to be on site later this week, cheering him on. Being in Jupiter has its benefits, one of which is that Hoffmann has been working out at Coastal Performance in Palm Beach Gardens. He’s not the same guy who missed the cut by one at the RBC Heritage at Hilton Head in April, his first TOUR start since the fall of 2019. He’s bigger and stronger, part of a concerted effort to catch up to his old playing competitors. “They just opened a new gym,” he said. “It’s really cool. It’s got three different hitting bays, a TrackMan, a putting green you can adjust for slope, a putting lab, and a gym with a big turf area which is cool for agility. Medicine-ball throws. Jumping. Heavy lifting, dead-lifting, kettle-bell work, Turkish get-ups, heavy carrying for full-body stability, rolling. “Warm-ups are difficult,” he added, “and the finisher is usually like the fan bike, or the ropes, or pushing a sled. I’ve put on like 20 pounds of muscle in the last three months.” He’s also made an inner transformation, something Chelsea noticed at Hilton Head. “He thought he needed to birdie his last hole and bogeyed it,” she said. “It was frustrating, and there was a time when it would’ve ruined his whole week. But he was ready to do other stuff and be around other people almost immediately.” Instead of pouting, they took the Sunseeker to Colorado for intensive hiking and got snowed on. Three weeks after RBC Heritage, Hoffmann shot 73-80 at the Wells Fargo Championship in Maryland. That was nowhere near making the cut, but the week, while something of a disaster, provided him more information still. “I was still hitting it short,” he said, “and with the rain and cold I was even shorter. I was hitting 3-irons into those greens. That was a big motivator for me to step it up in the gym.” Chelsea is pregnant, due in late October. It will be a freebirth, at the couple’s mountaintop home in Costa Rica, without the usual medical assistance. Boy? Girl? It will be a surprise. Their home is being renovated, and they will return in July. That, too, could be a surprise – a pleasant one, with any luck. Morgan’s pectoral muscle is coming back. His game is coming back. If he gets smokin’ hot Friday and keeps it going into the weekend, he could play his way to more TOUR starts, or some sponsor exemptions. He could wind up back on the Korn Ferry Tour. But he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it; for now, it’s about embracing the present moment as he finds his way back into some version of his old life. He wants to bring the lessons he’s learned on his healing journey to others, and that includes his old TOUR colleagues. He’s especially intrigued by the treatment of supposedly incurable diseases. Where exactly competitive golf fits into his life remains to be seen, but in a perfect world it will help him fund the healing center in Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. His 2-under start at the Travelers was a decent start. He’ll need to keep going. “It could have been really good,” he said. “I feel really comfortable on this course.”

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