Kisner keeps up the momentum at Quail Hollow

DUBLIN, Ohio – Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning will be paired together in the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide Insurance pro-am on Wednesday, May 30. In addition to Woods and Manning, the pro-am will feature top players from the tournament’s field of competitors, as well as NFL royalty Anthony Muñoz, Greg Olsen and LaDainian Tomlinson. Manning, Muñoz and Tomlinson are all former winners of the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award and Olsen is a two-time finalist.     Woods, along with FedExCup No. 1 Justin Thomas and a host of other PGA TOUR stars have committed to the 43rd edition of the Memorial Tournament. The field also includes Patrick Reed, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Jason Day, Bubba Watson, Zach Johnson and Jason Dufner, the 2017 Memorial winner. “I am pleased that the Memorial Tournament once again is drawing a wonderful field,â€� said tournament founder and host Jack Nicklaus. “To have the additional commitments of Tiger Woods and Justin Thomas gives the golf fans of Central Ohio that much more to look forward to tournament week. I have been so impressed with Tiger during his comeback, and as I said after last weekend, I think he is on the verge of winning for the first time in several years. He’s been very close, and having won five times at Muirfield Village, I wouldn’t be surprised if he contended to win his sixth. Justin Thomas, meanwhile, just ascended to No. 1 in the world, and he has been playing great golf for a while now. It is an honor well deserved, and I expect he will be among the contenders come Sunday.â€� To purchase badges for this year’s edition of the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, the public may call the tournament ticket Office 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays at 877-MT BADGE (877-682-2343) or visit www.memorialbadges.com. Kids 18 and under can attend for free with a ticketed adult. Daily practice round tickets for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are also available. The cost is $35 and they are valid for all three practice-round days.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Justin Thomas is playing his third Presidents Cup and is 6-2-2 for his career, so it’s not unusual for rookies to ask him how to handle nerves. In this case, though, the rookie was singer/songwriter/keyboardist Sam Harrop. They were at the VIP party at the Westin hotel on Tuesday night, and Harrop, who had come from the south coast of England to belt out his International and U.S. Team songs for fans on the first tee, was feeling anxious. Thomas told him that everyone, even the world’s best golfers, felt first-tee jitters, and he would be fine. Harrop was. With a 12:08 p.m. start Thursday – “Sounds like a tee time, doesn’t it?” – golf Twitter’s beloved crooner commenced playing from his perch in the stands, a Presidents Cup first. The crowd quieted down and even laughed, cheered and/or jeered at his lyrics. “It was an adrenaline rush like I’ve never experienced,” said Harrop, whose golf-themed cover songs have earned him nearly 20,000 Twitter followers, including many of the TOUR players he writes songs about. “I’ve never done this!” This Presidents Cup has set new standards with the more than 500,000-square-foot buildout, among other benchmarks, but it has also been the first of its kind in involving Harrop, a married father of two who works for a sheet music publisher in his day job. He flew here Sunday with his manager/former bandmate Jonathan Haselden not knowing what to expect. Haselden, who said they’re like an old married couple, had never even been to a golf tournament. “Sam’s generally always been pretty humble about his talents,” Harrop’s wife, Julia, a child psychologist, said via email from London. “I think he’s been more surprised than anyone by how it’s taken off. He gets really happy when any of the pro golfers reference him or re-tweet one of his songs. “He’s had cool things sent to him, too,” she continued, “like an engraved club and more recently his precious Tony Finau-signed cap!” (Harrop calls himself perhaps Finau’s biggest fan.) Harrop and Haselden used to play in a band called RedBoxBlue. Haselden was the lead singer; Harrop was the keyboardist. “We were the first band in the world to do a gig live on Facebook,” Haselden said. “London, 2008.” Alas, their fate was like that of so many bands: They broke up. For a while, Harrop scratched the creative itch by writing songs about family members, but he was always such a golf nut that it made sense to mash up two of his greatest passions. When his golf parodies began to take off, he enlisted Haselden to be his manager. Their first order of business this week was to sit with members of both teams to make a sort of music video of the U.S. and International Team songs, with the players singing lyrics. Harrop assumed they wouldn’t know him – not true; Finau, the subject of some of his earlier songs, knew who he was – and was pleasantly surprised when they played along. “They all got into it,” Harrop said. “Jordan Spieth, Max Homa, Tony Finau – they got the lines out and they’re not terrible singers. Taylor Pendrith was in a band when he was younger. He wasn’t a singer; he played guitar, so we talked about that. And Tom Kim said he’d rather run around a room naked than sing, but two minutes later, he sang.” Harrop chuckled. As for Thomas, he refused to sing, but played along, otherwise, Harrop said. “J.T. was the most engaging one,” he said. The collaboration resulted in a pair of videos that made the rounds on social media. Then came the VIP party before the man who has been called “golf’s premier parodist” took his moment in the sun shortly after lunch Thursday. Adapting the lyrics of “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis & The News to the specifics of the U.S. Team, and “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire to the makeup of the International Team, Harrop belted out his latest masterpieces. The crowd ate it up, especially the line that the U.S. Team might just win by five. “I told him, ‘You might get booed when you’re singing the other team’s song,’” Haselden said. “And he did, a bit, but in jest. What’s cool is how well received he is – no negativity at all.” Haselden and Harrop were in the hospitality chalet to the right of the first tee with the matches about to begin. Harrop, clutching a cold beer, was trying to come down off his performance high while taking in the scene. “I’m meters away from Jack Nicklaus,” he said, awe-struck. They planned to fly home after the second round Friday. Harrop said he would be taking a bus from Heathrow Airport to his house about two hours outside London. “I’m not big enough for a private car,” he said. Next week he’ll be back to his normal life, taking the kids to school. He doesn’t play as much golf as he used to, but the kids – Georgia, 9 and Theo, 7 – are old enough to go with him to the driving range. Be that as it may, Harrop will likely continue spending more time with keyboard than clubs. After all, the Ryder Cup in Italy is only a year away; now is not the time for rest.

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DETROIT – It’s not like he needed to take out his phone and call up the GPS. But Kevin Kisner did have to turn to playing competitor and tournament host Rickie Fowler Thursday morning after playing his ninth hole at Detroit Golf Club, the par-4 18th, and ask, “How do you get to the first tee?� Fowler, who is surely in demand here at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, smiled, then nodded, as if to say, “follow me.� Kisner laughed, but no apologies were necessary. Like virtually every other competitor in the 156-player field, Kisner had never seen Detroit Golf Club before this week, but extenuating circumstances kept him from a full practice look. He played Monday in Rhode Island at the CVS Charity Classic and “I felt like I needed a little more rest this week after two long weeks (U.S. Open and Travelers Championship) in a row.� He took Tuesday off, played just the back side in his nine-hole practice round Wednesday, then started on the back nine Thursday morning. Was Kisner worried as he took his 4-under score to foreign territory, Detroit GC’s front nine? Not at all. The man’s a trained professional, after all, and he had a pair of aces up his sleeve. “A good caddie (Duane Bock) who has seen the golf course and great yardage books that pretty much tell the story before you get there.� Wouldn’t you know it, Kisner’s introduction to the front nine started birdie-birdie-birdie. Quality stuff, for sure, but on this warm and sun-splashed day, the PGA TOUR’s first-ever tournament in Motown provided local fans with a parade of low scores and birdies by the buckets. It was a daytime fireworks display led by Nate Lashley, who didn’t find out he was officially in the tournament until Wednesday at noon. He took advantage, for sure, peppering Detroit GC with five birdies over the final six holes to post the lowest score (9-under 63) in his brief TOUR career (33rd tournament, 96th round). When you one-putt nine of the 13 greens you hit in regulation and require just 23 overall, it’s a very good day, so Lashley, who is currently 132nd in the FedExCup standings, was obviously content. But this figures to be a shoot-out and no pairing demonstrated that quite like the marquee draw of Kisner, Fowler and Charles Howell III. They combined for three eagles (two for Howell, one for Fowler), 14 birdies, and 17-under and when the red numbers were finalized, Howell’s 65 put him just off of Lashley’s morning pace, Kisner was at 66, and Fowler’s 68 left him thinking he had to step it up Friday. That Howell and Kisner scored beautifully made for an intriguing study, for their 2018-19 seasons have been eerily similar. Drift back to late November, the RSM Classic in Sea Island, Ga., where Howell won for the first time since 2007 and Kisner was joint seventh. Productive stuff for both and each carried it over into the early months of 2019, Howell with two more top 10s, Kisner with a win at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. But while neither can complain about their FedExCup standing (Howell is 15th, Kisner 17th), each concedes that the results the last three months haven’t been as impressive as they were early on. “The TOUR has gotten so good, it doesn’t take much out here,� said Howell, trying to explain why he piled up all four of his top 10s in his first nine starts, but hasn’t had any in his last 11. He looks like he’s still 20, jokes that “I feel 100,� but the kid from Augusta, Ga., recently turned 40 and is in his 20th season, playing his 546th TOUR tournament this week. OK, so he might not stretch back to hickory, but Howell knows what it was like out here with balata balls and fields not quite as deep as they are in this era. “It’s why you see guys working so hard out here, hiring coaches to help them. It feels like’s it’s a razor’s edge,� said Howell. “If you can get even one percent better or a slight advantage, because everyone’s so dang good out here, it’s important to push yourself and push the limit to find ways to get better.� Kisner’s only top 10 in a stroke-play event this far this year remains that RSM start in November (he won in match play and was joint fifth with Scott Brown in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans team event), but insists that’s not a true reflection of his overall play. “The consistency of my game has probably been as good as anytime in my career,� said Kisner. “I just haven’t been able to put it all together. The momentum hasn’t carried through an entire week.� Maybe it will this week, especially now that he’s actually played all 18 holes? Kisner smiled. “No time like the present,� he said.

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