Leaderboard: Finau leads at TPC Scottsdale

JERSEY CITY, N.J. – Notes and observations from the third day at the Presidents Cup, where the International Team is on the brink of a heavy defeat. The U.S. Team dominated morning Foursomes 3.5-0.5, then were almost as impressive in afternoon Four-ball matches to the tune of 3-1. They are just a point away (14.5-3.5) from clinching the Cup in Sunday singles. For more from Liberty National, click here for the Daily Wrap-up.  PLAYING FOR PRIDE AND PRICE The odds of the International Team winning all 12 singles matches on Sunday to win the Presidents Cup are around 15,000/1. As such, Sunday becomes mostly about pride and about the future. It also is about the past. With Captain Nick Price likely finishing up his term having now overseen three Cups, the focus is on where to from here. “We may be down, but we are not out,â€� Price said “We’ve given it our best shot this week. We’ve just come up against a juggernaut of an American Team that has not put a foot wrong, it seems like, in three days. They have had all the momentum and we’ve had nothing. “There’s an outside shot tomorrow, and the guys all know that. They are going to go play for their pride, they are going to play for themselves, they are going to play for the team and they are going to play for us (captains). “They are going to do their best. You’re not going to be able to take the spirit away out from our team, that’s for sure.â€� Anirban Lahiri, who with Si Woo Kim provided the only International Team win on Saturday, said the side would play with freedom and a determination to send Price out on a better note. Price has been the most popular International leader in some time and the score line has cut the Zimbabwean deep. “We can compete. We haven’t this week but going into tomorrow, I think we have to enjoy ourselves a little more,â€� Lahiri said. “It’s difficult to do that when you’re down the way we’ve been but I think all of us are going to go out there and try and play our best. We’ve got a mountain in front of us, but nothing to lose. “All 12 of us, caddies, and everybody, we feel terrible about this being Nick’s last captaincy, and we’ve not played well. This is not the way we’d like him to leave. We want him to go out on a happy note. So we are going to give him our all and we are going to play for our pride and for him.â€� LAHIRI REDEMPTION KEEPS SLIMMEST OF HOPES ALIVE Two years ago Anirban Lahiri had a 4-foot putt to give the International Team at least a share of the Presidents Cup. It missed. And they eventually lost the Cup by a point. Since that moment the Indian star had wanted a chance for redemption and while his impressive efforts on Saturday didn’t clinch the Cup, they did stop a dominant U.S. Team from doing so. Si Woo Kim and Lahiri sat all square with Charley Hoffman and Kevin Chappell through 15 holes before Lahiri buried a 16-foot birdie putt, pointing it into the hole as it dropped, to go 1 up. But the drama was far from over. On 17 Hoffman’s approach came up short of the green while Lahiri sat 19-feet from the hole. Hoffman chipped in and celebrated like he’d won the Cup, chest bumping Chappell and running around in euphoria. Once the deafening noise subsided Lahiri lined up his putt – and drained it – ensuring Sunday’s singles would not be dead rubbers. “I think the Americans have done it all week. They seem to make the turn, just around the clubhouse, which is the 14th, and they make birdies down the stretch. They make putts; they hole shots,â€� Lahiri said. “I was sitting in the morning when I came in, and I said one of us or some of us have got to try and do the same. We have to try and make those putts and make those birdies coming home. I guess that was just a good seed in my head when I started out today.â€� On 18 he was left with a 3-foot par putt to secure the 1-up win but as he lined it up Chappell conceded it in a display of good sportsmanship. The International Team had been privately upset at some of the American antics, including Phil Mickelson and Kevin Kisner’s three amigos dance on Friday. “There has not been as much sportsmanship as there should be up until those last two holes,â€� Lahiri added. “So I think that should kind of demonstrate to everyone here how we really should play the game, with the right kind of spirit.â€� ODDS AND ENDS Since 2015 Jason Day has won eight PGA TOUR events including a major and a WGC – Dell Match Play Championship. Unfortunately, his past two Presidents Cups in that time frame have not been as prolific. Day is now 0-7-2 in the last two Cups combined. He plays Charley Hoffman in singles on Sunday as he tries to get an elusive win. The 11-point lead by the U.S. Team heading into Sunday’s Singles Matches surpasses the previous record of nine points; the International Team led by nine points in 1998 and ended up beating the U.S. Team 20.5 to 11.5. The largest overall margin of victory in Presidents Cup history after all sessions is 11 points, when the U.S. defeated the International Team 21.5 to 10.5 in 2000. CALL OF THE DAY SHOT OF THE DAY BEST OF SOCIAL MEDIA

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One of the game’s most historic runs was just beginning. A once-promising career, beset by injuries, was coming to an abrupt end. Those storylines collided 20 years ago at Torrey Pines’ South Course. The end result was Tiger Woods’ first win at a course that has come to define his career. He needed all 72 holes, including an eagle at the last, to dispatch Billy Ray Brown, who had just one top-10 over the previous five seasons. Woods has authored some of the most dominant performances in the game’s history, but he also has been taken to the wire by a random cast of characters. Players like Rocco Mediate, Bob May and Steve Scott. Brown, the son of an NFL tackle, was the challenger this time. But Woods used his unparalleled power to dispatch him, flying his tee shot over Brown’s ball and leaving himself just a mid-iron into the green on Torrey Pines’ famous finishing hole. For a player who learned the game on the public tracks around his hometown of Cypress, it’s fitting that a Southern California muni has played such a large role in his career. He attended his first PGA TOUR event at Torrey Pines – he remembers watching the SoCal pros who would later become his peers, like John Cook and Mark O’Meara – and won there as a junior golfer. Ten percent of Woods’ 80 PGA TOUR wins have come at Torrey Pines. This week, at the Farmers Insurance Open, he can pull within one of Sam Snead’s mark for most PGA TOUR wins. From 1998-2008, Woods won seven of 12 tournaments at Torrey Pines and never finished outside the top 10. He won five titles there in a four-year span, including his most recent major championship, that memorable 91-hole showdown with Mediate. Woods’ first victim at Torrey Pines has an interesting perspective on his success there. It’s about more than his deep ties to the course. Because of its oceanside locale, players can face a variety of conditions over the course of one round. Even though every hole is within a mile of the ocean, the air is heavier on the holes that are closer to the water, Brown said. That provides another variable to consider when calculating distances. It plays into the hands of Woods, who may be the best iron player in the game’s history. “He knew exactly how far he was going to hit those shots, and that is a crucial, crucial part of playing Torrey well,â€� Brown said. “And he is very good at formatting a gameplan on the tee depending on where the hole location is. You have to do that at Torrey.â€� If Brown sounds like an analyst, that’s because it’s the way he made a living after his playing career ended prematurely. His television career started the same year that he faced Woods, after one last wrist injury was too much to overcome. Brown was only 35, but he played just 15 TOUR events after 1999. His last start was in 2002. He only made two cuts, and never finished better than 70th, after facing Woods. “It helped me with closure,â€� Brown recalled. “That was my last shot and I got beat by the World No. 1. “If I didn’t have that, I don’t know if I would have tried to hang on.â€� He’d won an NCAA individual title (and played on three championship-winning teams) for the historic Houston program and finished just a shot out of the playoff that Hale Irwin won at the 1990 U.S. Open. Brown won in each of the next two seasons, but persistent wrist injuries sapped his skill and his desire. By 1994, his wrist was bone-on-bone and he was battling the driver yips. His only top-10 from 1994 to 1998 was a win at the Deposit Guaranty Classic in 1997, played the same week that Justin Leonard won The Open Championship. Brown broke down in the post-round interview as he reflected on the road back from surgery. It was his third and final win on the PGA TOUR. “I had no confidence and don’t know how many people I bombarded in galleries,â€� Brown said after the win. “I got to the point where I didn’t even want to go to the first tee.” When the 1999 season started, there were questions about the state of Woods’ game, as well. He’d won just once in the past 18 months while undergoing swing changes with Butch Harmon. “I told everybody it’s just a matter of time before everything clicks in,â€� Woods said back then. “I’ve been so close, for so many rounds now, a few months, actually, and nothing ever jelled.â€� It did after Woods sneaked into the weekend at Torrey Pines. He was nine shots back at the tournament’s halfway point. He played Saturday’s final six holes in 5 under, including an eagle at his 15th hole after his second shot bounced off a sprinkler head and onto the green. A course-record 62 on the South Course – before it was toughened in preparation for the 2008 U.S. Open – gave Woods a one-shot lead over Brown entering the final round. “It was Tiger’s tournament to lose,â€� Brown said afterward. “All I could do was go free-wheel, and he’s the guy who had pressure on him. And you see how he responded to the pressure.â€� Woods shot 65 on Sunday, but he was still tied with Brown when they reached the final hole. What happened next reminded Brown of when he first met Woods as a teen-aged amateur. Brown was the defending champion and Woods was still in high school when they played in the pro-am for the 1993 AT&T Byron Nelson. Woods wasn’t going to play the forward tees with the other amateurs, though. He had a tournament to prepare for. “The first hole at Las Colinas is really just a 2-iron or 3-iron and a wedge. It’s a dogleg right,â€� Brown said. “What does he do? He pulls driver out. I’m thinking, ‘This kid is playing with the defending champion, he’s not even out on TOUR yet, and he’s already forced my hand.’ “That’s what he did all along. He forced your hand.â€� Brown had the honor on the 18th tee. Jim Nantz and Ken Venturi gushed over his tee shot, which he squeezed into the fairway, just right of a sand trap. Woods and Brown, who stood 6-foot-3, were separated by just a few yards all day. Woods displayed a different gear on the final hole, though. “He hit a tee shot that made a different sound than it had made all day,â€� Brown said. Woods’ ball flew the bunker and went some 40 yards past Brown’s ball. “He reaches into his bag and pulls out any shot that he needs at any time.â€� Brown tried to hit 3-iron off a downslope. He fatted it. Woods, who watched Andy Bean hit 1-iron into the 18th green when he first watched the pros play at Torrey Pines, had just a 7-iron into the green. “I almost lost the ball. It was that high,â€� Brown recalled recently. “I walked past him and he just gave me a grin like, ‘You like that, don’t you old man?’â€� After Brown missed his birdie attempt, Woods poured in his 15-footer for eagle. The victory was the first of eight wins for Woods in 1999. He won nine times in 2000, including three majors. The following year saw the completion of the Tiger Slam and Woods’ first PLAYERS title. All told, Woods won 32 times from 1999-2003, including half of his 14 majors, before undergoing another overhaul of his swing. For Brown, the end was near. Wrist injuries had plagued him since hitting a tree root the week after he won the 1992 Byron Nelson. He rushed his comeback so he could play the TOUR Championship at the same course where he won the NCAA Championship, Pinehurst No. 2. The frustration about that decision can still be heard in his voice. “I wanted to play so bad,â€� he said. “Stupid. It was stupid. I was under strict orders from people saying, ‘You’re not ready to go.’ I can’t blame anyone but myself.â€� Brown made the last cut of his career just four starts after facing Woods. He could make just one swing on that Saturday in the third round of the Bellsouth Classic. “I hit a tee shot on the first tee and that was it,â€� he said. “I went in and packed my stuff, got on the plane and went home. “I knew that was it.â€� One last showdown was solace for his career’s unfortunate turn.

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The PGA TOUR hits its third stop of the fall swing this week and enters Las Vegas, Nevada for the annual Shriners Children’s Open. The tournament will be played at TPC Summerlin, a par-71 venue that plays at 7,255 yards and has been a staple on the PGA TOUR schedule for many years now. The greens this week will be pure bentgrass. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $300K Pitch + Putt [$100K to 1st] STRATEGY The fall swing presents us with lots of courses that are set up for low scoring, and this week is no different. TPC Summerlin regularly plays as one of the easiest venues on the PGA TOUR and ranked as the third-easiest venue on the PGA TOUR in 2020-21, playing at -2.141 under par for the week. Players are helped at TPC Summerlin by the elevation — the thin air helps the ball travel longer — and it’s a course that doesn’t contain a ton of thick rough or penalty areas. Water is in play on four of the holes, but as long as players aren’t too wild with their drives, they’ll be in decent enough position to take aim at the pins on most greens. The approaches are where the scoring is really done on TPC Summerlin, and it’s no coincidence winners at this event tend to spike in the approach department. Three of the last four winners of this event have gained over 4.0 strokes on approach for the week and been in the top 10 of that statistic for the overall tournament. Greens tend to be much easier to hit at Summerlin, which means proximity stats are something to consider — hitting it close will simply mean your player has to do less to convert those approaches into birdies with the putter. That said, we’ve seen golfers dominate on these greens, and Kevin Na set a single-event record by gaining 14.2 strokes putting at TPC Summerlin in 2019. Na’s performance was somewhat of an anomaly, but this easier setup does make for a more wide-open event, where any player who is hitting the ball at least average will likely post high green-in-regulation percentages and will, therefore, have the potential to challenge if their putter gets hot. GOLFERS TO CONSIDER Cameron Davis ($9,200) Coming off a Presidents Cup where he played in five matches — and played well, grabbing two full wins against a tough American squad — should do wonders for the confidence of a player like Davis. We all know the talent Davis possesses, and his win at the Rocket Mortgage in 2021 cemented the fact this is a player who can take it low enough to win any of these regular season events where the setup demands a high rate of birdies. Davis may have had a bit of a slow start to his fall swing, logging a missed cut at the Fortinet, but he ranks sixth in long-term form in both birdie or better percentage and strokes gained: approach stats for this field. Over the summer, he posted four finishes of T16 or better and has played well in the desert. Overall, he’s 3-for-3 in made cuts at the Shriners and also has a third-place finish at The American Express in January of 2021, which is played in nearby Palm Springs. Rickie Fowler ($7,800) A new season may bring new belief for the five-time PGA TOUR winner, who started 2022-23 strong with a T6 finish at the first fall series event in Napa. Fowler’s top 10 at the Fortinet was his first since October of 2021, but it’s the way he went about achieving the result that should turn some heads. Fowler gained 6.0 strokes ball-striking at the event and was also positive from a strokes-gained perspective on and around the greens. The setup this week should also be a boon for the 33-year-old, who has had some of his best moments playing on TPC setups (winner TPC Scottsdale and TPC Sawgrass) and in the desert. In four career appearances at TPC Summerlin, Fowler is just 2-for-4 in made cuts, but two of those made cuts have yielded top-25 finishes. He’s worth a roster this week in daily fantasy, as his DraftKings price still remains somewhat depressed, and he’s not likely to draw a ton of rostership just yet, given how poor his 2021-22 season was. Joel Dahmen ($7,100) Dahmen had a solid week at the Sanderson Farms, finishing T13 while gaining over 6.0 strokes ball-striking (off the tee and approach) alone. Dahmen is a PGA TOUR veteran with a win under his belt already (2021 Punta Cana), so when we see an uptick in form from him, we should be interested for fantasy purposes. Dahmen had previously missed four of five cuts, but his record at the Shriners has seen him go 4-for-4 in made cuts over his career while also posting two top-25 finishes over the last four years. In short, he’s got a sneaky good track record at this event, and his approach game is trending well after last week, which is a huge part to having success at TPC Summerlin. Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $300K Pitch + Putt [$100K to 1st] Put your knowledge to the test. Sign up for DraftKings and experience the game inside the game. Place your golf bets at DraftKings Sportsbook and bet online by downloading the DraftKings Sportsbook app. All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests. The contents contained in this article do not constitute a representation that any particular strategy will guarantee success. All customers should use their own skill and judgment in building lineups. 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