Leaderboard: See if Tiger makes the cut at Torrey Pines

The Round of 16 begins Saturday at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play. RELATED: Live scoring, tee times, bracket | Recaps from Friday Before play begins at Austin Country Club, here’s a look at the early matches slated for Saturday. And tune into PGA TOUR LIVE to catch the early action. Tommy Fleetwood vs. Dylan Frittelli, 8:35 a.m. ET Billy Horschel vs. Kevin Streelman, 8:46 a.m. ET Sergio Garcia vs. Mackenzie Hughes, 8:57 a.m. ET Robert MacIntyre vs. Victor Perez, 9:08 a.m. ET Scottie Scheffler vs. Ian Poulter, 9:19 a.m. ET Jon Rahm vs. Erik van Rooyen, 9:30 a.m. ET Bubba Watson vs. Brian Harman, 9:41 a.m. ET Matt Kuchar vs. Jordan Spieth, 8:52 a.m. ET MATCH RECAPS Check back here as matches conclude for analysis and player reaction.

Click here to read the full article…

Doug Ghim was lost. The former No. 1 amateur in the world had just missed the cut at the 2020 Sony Open in Hawaii, his fourth weekend off in his first five PGA TOUR starts. Swing changes suggested by an instructor he politely refuses to name hadn’t solidified, and he now wondered if they ever would. Fast forward to today and Ghim is one of the most improved players on TOUR. He contended at THE PLAYERS Championship before fading on the weekend to a T29; has made 13 of 17 cuts, including seven top-25s; and with partner Justin Suh just finished T11 at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Ghim is 70th in this season’s FedExCup, an improvement of more than 100 spots over last year. He finished 184th in 2020 and would have lost his TOUR card were it not for the pandemic, and the TOUR freezing everyone’s status for 2020-21. “I’ve always been a slow starter,” says Ghim. Not sure he belonged, he felt that way in junior golf, and college. “And then you turn pro,” he continues, “and it’s like, that’s Dustin Johnson, or Rory, or Tiger, or whoever. Honestly, when I get out here, sometimes I feel like I’m 5 years old.” Few good stories came out of 2020, but without that terrible year we wouldn’t have one of the best stories of 2021. Ghim’s fantasy camp perma-smile suggests even he can’t quite believe it. His parents immigrated from South Korea, and the family had modest means. His father Jeff, an architect who also taught golf, put up a net in their backyard in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a cube-like contraption with metal pipes. His mother Susan, a flight attendant, was gone a fair amount, but his older sister, Deborah, helped look after him. Doug graduated to a junior membership at The Arboretum Club, a nearby public course where father and son fished golf balls out of the ponds. They practiced constantly, and Ghim, no taller than a pull cart when he started, got better. He played local junior tournaments and then American Junior Golf Association events, making use of that organization’s ACE Grant in order to help defray the costs. (A cause for which Ghim remains a passionate advocate.) It was during Ghim’s sophomore year of high school, on a sunny day in September, when he came home from school to find a large box from Titleist had come in the mail. “I remember opening the box, and my dad watching me, and it was a pretty emotional moment,” Ghim says. “It was kind of one of those things like look how far we’ve come.” Having gone from regional events to the AJGA’s invitational tournaments, Ghim had climbed high enough in the rankings to qualify for free gloves and hats from Titleist. Also, golf balls. Lots of them. “These things are not cheap, and I’m getting 12 dozen at a time, for free,” he says, smiling at the memory. “They were brand new, and I could put my own markings on them instead of taking nail polish remover and removing the markings from other people’s golf balls. It was cool.” He decamped for the University of Texas, where he was an All-American and established himself as one of golf’s top amateurs. At the 2017 Palmer Cup and Walker Cup, he went a combined 3-0 with partner Maverick McNealy in the Foursomes sessions. “He was just always was in position and made my life really easy,” says McNealy, who briefly lived with Ghim in Las Vegas. “That’s a true testament to a great player, if he’s an easy person to play with in alternate shot. He made so many clutch putts He has a knack for that.” The ’17 Walker Cup team was loaded with enough stars – Collin Morikawa, Will Zalatoris, Cameron Champ, Scottie Scheffler, Doc Redman and McNealy – to give anyone an inferiority complex. Still, Ghim went 4-0-0 as the Americans cruised. He turned pro and played well enough on the Korn Ferry Tour to earn his TOUR card for 2019. Then he bonked. Thinking he had to be technically perfect, Ghim abandoned his natural, vertical swing for a more rounded, inside-out action. It didn’t work. After missing the cut at the Sony, he resolved to start over and began working with Drew Steckel at the Farmers Insurance Open. It was January 2020. Both teacher and student live in Las Vegas but have Midwestern roots, and Steckel looked at swing pictures and video of Ghim, before and after, and saw a player who had lost his way. “I said, ‘Obviously, you have something good in there as the former No. 1 amateur, so let’s not reinvent you as a golfer,’” says Steckel, who teaches out of Southern Highlands Golf Club. “He had a very upright vertical swing naturally, and he was trying to get it really in and behind him, and it was a very uncomfortable position for him to play from.” Progress was slow. One week, Ghim would miss the cut by three. The next, he would miss by one. Meanwhile, Steckel worked on his confidence, helping Ghim realize he belonged on TOUR. “I brought him around my other guys, who in some cases have been out here 20 years,” he says. Players like Pat Perez, Kevin Na, Chesson Hadley and Jason Kokrak. “It was about getting him exposed to that and comfortable with that,” Steckel says. Then came the pandemic, and everything paused, allowing Ghim to keep working outside the glare of competition – a blessing in disguise for his career. He started seeing mental coach Jared Tendler, who works mostly with poker players, and lost 10-15 pounds by continuing to work out while consulting with a nutritionist who emails him recipes on the road. The TOUR’s decision to carry over players’ status for 2020-21 was also big. Ghim could exhale, and he started with a T14 at the Fortinet (then Safeway) Championship last fall. That led to a series of made cuts highlighted by a T5 at The American Express early this year. He contended at THE PLAYERS Championship (T29), playing with winner Justin Thomas on Sunday. Ghim shot 78, but having always looked up to Thomas he was thrilled to sign the card of the winner. “First time for that as a pro,” he says. “I learned that winning is an active verb.” He smiles at this, but then Ghim smiles a lot these days. Life is good. “People forget that Doug was the No. 1 amateur in the world, low amateur at the (2018) Masters, first-team All-American in college,” says Brett Augenstein, Ghim’s agent. “He hopes to have the success that Collin and those guys have had; obviously he hasn’t had it as quickly, but I think he has the confidence, deep down, to know that he can be as good as those guys.” Adds Ghim, “It’s a second start. I’m not a rookie, but I feel like one because I didn’t get to see a lot of these courses last year. I was also trying to figure out my swing and getting used to being out here, so I didn’t really get to try to attack the courses that I did see.” With sparkly credentials, top-of-the-line equipment, and now a growing certainty that he’s good enough just as he is, there’s no question Ghim belongs. Seldom has anyone made better use of a mulligan.

Click here to read the full article…

Someday when she has time, Shannon Heath-Longino just might write that book. She can tell about the time her grandmother rode in the back of a pickup truck, shouting into a bullhorn, ‘‘Y’all didn’t kill me. I’m still here," after her apartment was firebombed. About attending rallies in Washington, D.C., and watching her grandmother get arrested as she watched in a stroller. Or, the President and Congressmen her grandmother befriended during her quest to bring change to Atlanta. Someday, Heath-Longino may find the time. When she is not advocating for affordable housing for low income families and women's issues. Or speaking at national conventions. Or attending meetings for one of the three volunteer boards on which she serves. Someday, when she's not being a wife, mother of three and bank vice president. Maybe then Heath-Longino will have time to put pen to paper and tell the life story of her grandmother, Eva Davis, the dynamic Black woman living in one of Atlanta's most distressed housing projects who came to partner with the city's most powerful businessman, Tom Cousins, to transform East Lake Meadows into a mixed-income residential development that is a model for innovative urban planning nationwide. Heath-Longino lived that life with Davis, the woman she calls Mama, the woman who raised her from the time she was two weeks old until she was a senior in high school. And with everything she does today, Heath-Longino honors the legacy of her grandmother, who died of ovarian cancer in 2012. "She was a mom, not just to me and her family, but she was a mom to a community," Heath-Longino said. "She was a mom to a movement of betterment." Each year, when the TOUR Championship is played at East Lake Golf Club, as it is this week, the story of that movement, the revitalization of what was once a neighborhood with sub-standard housing and plagued by drugs and crime, is showcased. And Wednesday, prior to the start of the FedExCup Playoffs finale, the PGA TOUR will announce a $100 million commitment to support racial equality and inclusion. (East Lake) motivates people to … be beyond what society tells you that you can be. PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan announced the TOUR's efforts on Wednesday at East Lake Golf Club. They will be led by Marsha Oliver, the TOUR's Vice President for Community & Inclusion. "We are committed to using the TOUR's platform to focus on the systemic issues that are affecting the communities in which we play," Monahan said Wednesday. "Not all communities have the same needs or the same issues that lead to racial inequities - that's one reason change is so complicated - so we're being intentional in each market to identify the root cause of the issue and partner with those who we believe can most authentically and effectively bring about change. "One of the biggest ways you'll see us working is to re-target our charitable giving to nonprofit organizations whose services directly address the inequities and disparities that affect African-American citizens as well as underrepresented and underserved populations in the communities where we play." East Lake serves as a shining example of how golf can enact change in a community. Cousins, the Chair Emeritus of the East Lake Foundation, is proud of the work Davis started and Heath-Longino continues to do in her hometown. "While we have continued to work together to recognize and celebrate her grandmother's amazing legacy in East Lake," he says, "Shannon has become a force for change in her own right as a staunch advocate for affordable housing for low income families and equitable opportunities for students in East Lake and across the city of Atlanta." Community activism was something Heath-Longino learned early in life. As a toddler, she remembers boarding busses with Davis and various Atlanta civil rights leaders and going to Washington, D.C., to rally for women's welfare rights. "And there were a couple times I got arrested in the stroller with her," Heath-Longino says with a laugh. As an 8-year-old, she was operating a tape recorder and writing the minutes as he grandmother presided over the East Lake Meadows Residents Association. She helped with the rent strikes Davis organized that persuaded the Atlanta Housing Authority to fund a day care center, sidewalks and better streetlights there. She went door-to-door and campaigned for the candidates Davis supported. "She put me to work very early," recalls Heath-Longino, whose family was the second of 650 to move into the housing project when it opened in 1971. That number swelled to thousands when you consider how many people made up the families that lived in each apartment, and Davis made it a point to meet everyone. She organized building captains, who in those days before social media helped get the word out on tenant association meetings, food banks and other community activities. "So, her networking system became crazy where she didn’t have to leave the house to know what was going on, whether it was drugs being sold, prostitution, somebody getting killed, or the police," Heath-Longino says. "The residents trusted her, where her phone rang nonstop because she made it, gave everyone her phone number, even on the flyers." Davis' sphere of influence was wide and included President Jimmy Carter and the late Congressman John Lewis, among other politicians. Atlanta mayors Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young and civil rights pioneer Hosea Williams - who used to let Heath-Longino distribute turkeys to the families of East Lake from the back of a U-Haul truck - were frequent guests in Davis' home. Community involvement became second nature to Heath-Longino after watching her grandmother. "She taught me leadership, ... taught me individuality because what she did and what we do in life isn’t always popular. It’s not always accepted. It’s not always the cool thing," Heath-Longino said. "As a child, she wanted to make sure I had the confidence to know that the more you try to do what’s right sometimes that’ll mean the lonelier you will be." When the time came for the dramatic reimagining and redevelopment of East Lake, not everyone in the project was happy, though. Davis' apartment was firebombed by drug dealers twice in advance of tenants' association meetings, and Heath-Longino found herself standing outside, scared and shivering in the cold night air, with her grandmother. "I thought that would shut her up, but that ignited her, that put more firepower," Heath-Longino says. "We, her kids, were like, ‘Mama, can’t you just let it go?' "But she called someone with a pickup truck and got a bullhorn from somewhere. She rode around the neighborhood and got on the bullhorn and she told them, ‘Y’all didn’t kill me. I’m still here.'" Heath-Longino, then in her early 20s and serving on the East Lake planning committee, saw similar resolve from her grandmother when communication broke down with Cousins' team on the East Lake project. Davis didn't think the tenants were being included in the decision-making process about floor plans and carpet or whether to have gas or less expensive electric utilities. So she filed an injunction that halted construction for about a month. Finally, Cousins stepped in to resolve the impasse. One Sunday afternoon, he came to Davis' house, bringing a bottle of wine and "prawns that looked like drumsticks," Heath-Longino remembers. Davis asked her granddaughter to get Cousins a wine glass but said she'd make her own drink. She told Cousins he wouldn't be able to handle it. "He said, ‘Try me, Eva,'" Heath-Longino recalls. "And she said, ‘It’s moonshine.' And he said, ‘Well, I want the good stuff. I don’t want this. I want the good stuff. That’s the good stuff you got.' And that’s actually how the ice was broken, where they both laughed and got the drinks. "They started talking about business, talked about life. He must have stayed with her about four hours that day. It was just the two of them and me running back and forth to make sure if they had everything. "But I tell you that started a good friendship. And he kept up with her on a regular basis and that kind of mended things. He went back to his team and that moved everything forward, but that started a friendship, a lifelong friendship that the both of them kept until she passed." Heath-Longino, who served in the Army before graduating from Alameda College with a degree in sociology, calls Davis a visionary, a person before her time. But her granddaughter has taken Davis' mission into the present at East Lake and beyond. While Heath-Longino was bussed to schools in Buckhead from the fifth grade through high school, making a 30-mile trip that took two hours each way, her children, twin boys Caleb and Corbin and their sister Ckyla, are all alumni of the Drew Charter School at the Villages of East Lake not far from where she grew up. It's one of the highest performing schools in the Atlanta area and Heath-Longino serves as Vice Chairman on the Board of Directors. Three years ago, Heath-Longino partnered with the East Lake Foundation to start the Eva Davis Scholarship. To date, 27 Drew graduates have benefitted. Another source of pride was a years-long bureaucratic struggle to get the name of East Lake Boulevard SE changed to Eva Davis Way. "If I didn't do it - and she’s buried not too far from East Lake — she said every time I come down Candler Road, she'd jump out and scare … me," Davis' granddaughter says, laughing. A senior vice president at Truist Bank, Heath-Longino works in the Affordable Housing Finance/Asset Management Division. She has worked in the industry for more than 25 years and continues to be a voice for those her grandmother served who didn't have a place at the table. "Every neighborhood has a story," Heath-Longino explains. "And I want them to know our neighborhoods have stories. East Lake is my story. And East Lake is a big story, but there are other stories. And I just like people to take time to get to know the people in the story. "I just want it to really touch people who read it for years to come, because it motivates people who are the underdog. It motivates people who are born in circumstances beyond their control. It motivates people to not allow people to put them in a box. It motivates people to be their own circumstances and to challenge their inner selves, to be beyond what society tells you that you can be." Heath-Longino has regularly been among the fans at the TOUR Championship and sometimes plays the golf course along with other members of the East Lake Women's Alliance that she helped organize. It's a far cry from peering at what once seemed like "forbidden fruit" through holes in the green mesh fence that used to circle the course and picking up errant golf balls that felt like gold. There is more to the mission than golf, though. "It's a group of professional women who are decision-makers," Heath-Longino says. "They can be at Coca-Cola. They can be at the Falcons. They come from diverse backgrounds, but to basically let people know that the impact of the PGA [TOUR] and the impact of volunteerism, the impact of us as human beings. "No matter how well we do in life, there’s someone who’s always behind us who are in need. There’s someone coming behind us that doesn’t have the resources. And I was always taught you have to reach back and help those that are coming behind you because someone had reached back and helped me." Sounds like a good idea for a book.

Click here to read the full article…