Leaderboard: Simpson leads DEAN & DELUCA

For the second time in five editions, the Wells Fargo Championship will be contested on a course other than its primary so that Quail Hollow Club can continue preparing for another premier event. In 2017, Quail Hollow was the host of the PGA Championship. This September, it’ll be the stage for the Presidents Cup. Pinch-hitting is TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm. It hasn’t hosted the Wells Fargo Championship, but it’s not a stranger to the PGA TOUR and its sanctioned circuits. For analysis of the par 70, what the field of 156 can expect and more, continue reading beneath the ranking of projected contenders. RELATED: Play Pick ‘Em Live | The First Look | Inside the Field POWER RANKINGS: WELLS FARGO CHAMPIONSHIP Francesco Molinari, Tony Finau, Webb Simpson, Patrick Reed and Rickie Fowler will be among the notables reviewed in Tuesday’s Draws and Fades. A thorough history of the role that TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm has played for the PGA TOUR can be read in “Five Things to Know”. It’s experienced a variety of changes, and that’s an understatement. After its position as an annual par 71 for the old Kemper Open and its subsequent iterations into 2006, it underwent a full-scale renovation in 2007. That included a revision of overall par to 70. The PGA TOUR Champions made a stop in 2010, and then the Korn Ferry Tour descended twice in an eight-month period stretching in 2013. All who showed were challenged by what was a new, fresh examination. The course returned to the PGA TOUR to host the last two editions of the Quicken Loans National in 2017 and 2018. With a scoring average of 71.458 in the former, it was the hardest par 70 in a non-major that season. Scoring eased to 69.894 the following year when Francesco Molinari was the kind of zone that would make present-day Scottie Scheffler seem like he’s misfiring. (Molinari is committed this week; Scheffler is resting.) Both previous contests were in late June. In 2018, moderate winds gave way to calm, hot air by the final round. No such conditions this week with springtime weather in the mid-Atlantic. (TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm is about 10 miles northwest of Washington, D.C.) With the threat of rain on Friday and Saturday, daytime highs will drop from the mid-70s to potentially no higher than 60 degrees by the weekend. Winds also will freshen. After 2018, the par-5 second and 10th holes were extended by a respective 22 and 31 yards. Now tipping at 641 and 591 yards, respectively, TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm maxes out at 7,160. Bentgrass greens average just 4,265 square feet, and they’ll be ready to run 12½ feet on the Stimpmeter, weather pending. As of Monday afternoon, 44 of this week’s entrants were here in 2017. Of them, 26 returned in 2018 from which there is a total of 51 back this week. Just as it was for them a few years ago, the pair of par 5s will not be a reliable source of par breakers. Overall, for a course with small greens, the challenge to salvage par is multiplied by the combination of fescue and bluegrass rough, the longest of which is trimmed to 2½ inches, but there’s an intermediate cut that’s 1¼ inches high. Although greens are not entirely foreign, they’re relatively unfamiliar with the passage of time, so, just as Molinari showcased during his incredible display en route to an eight-stroke victory four years ago, the premiums to eliminate the big numbers are equal parts splitting fairways and hitting greens in regulation. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.com’s Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous perspectives. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers, Draws and Fades WEDNESDAY: Pick ’Em Preview SUNDAY: Medical Extensions, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Rookie Ranking * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.

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It’s been more than two years since he has won. He has tinkered with his game, altered his grip, as the search for the player who sat atop the world continues.

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PARAMUS, N.J. – Phil Mickelson has a lot on his plate these days. For one thing: Twitter. He just dove in with an account earlier this week at THE NORTHERN TRUST, where two closing bogeys dropped him out of the lead but still gave him a second straight 68 (6 under) at Ridgewood Country Club. He was within two of early second-round leader Sean O’Hair (69) with the afternoon wave yet to complete their second rounds. At the very least, the solid start promised to give Mickelson something benign to tweet about, which should put his kids at ease about Dad’s leap into the wild, wooly world of social media. “They are nervous (laughter),â€� said Mickelson, who birdied five of his first six holes Friday to jump into the lead. “And they should be, you know, rightfully so, because in time, I will mess up. It’s just my — I always kind of ride the line somewhere. Sometimes I cross it. Sometimes not.â€� On a more serious note, Mickelson is buckling down as he tries to atone for missing the TOUR Championship at East Lake last year. Things were looking good just six months ago. When he picked up his 43rd PGA TOUR win at the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship in early March, it broke a nearly five-year drought and portended a big season. Or not. Mickelson finished T5 at the Wells Fargo Championship, but otherwise hasn’t really contended. He hit a moving ball at the U.S. Open, finished T24 at The Open Championship, and missed the cut at the PGA Championship. He’s 11th in the FedExCup, and has made more news with his newly announced made-for-TV match against Tiger Woods than with his play. Now, though, Mickelson seems to be on the comeback trail, again, at age 48. A day after he hit just three fairways but saved himself with his putting, he hit nine of the first 10 in the second round. Only a few late misses marred his effort, but he was encouraged. He badly wants to be on the U.S. Ryder Cup team that will try to be the first to win on European soil since 1993, but first he has to prove worthy of a pick from U.S. Captain Jim Furyk. “Yeah, it’s important,â€� said Mickelson, who has been on every U.S. Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup team since 1994, “because this started out to be a great year, and I want to finish it off right. And usually when I have a bit of a lull in the summer, I play well in the Playoffs. So I expect to have a good first two events and try to make it really easy for Captain Furyk.â€� In the process, he’s hoping to knock off one more thing on his to-do list: Finish the season ranked first in Strokes Gained: Putting. He got off to a good start at Ridgewood this week, making over 110 feet of putts in the first round, but knows he’s still got work to do. “I’ve been No. 2 in strokes gained behind Jason Day all year,â€� Mickelson said. “So either I’m going to have a phenomenal putting stretch and get to No. 1, or I’m just going to bend his putter a little bit so he comes back, because it’s been a great putting year.â€� OBSERVATIONS O’HAIR WINNING MIND GAME … Sean O’Hair says he doesn’t really set goals. He says making his way through the FedExCup isn’t the be all and end all. He says being a member at Aronimink in Philadelphia – where the third FedExCup Playoff event, the BMW Championship, will be held Sept. 6-9 – doesn’t burden him with pressure. Nope. Sean O’Hair is just happy to be here after a tough last few months. Believe him or not, but O’Hair has played inspired golf over the opening two rounds of THE NORTHERN TRUST. He backed up his opening 66 with a 2-under 69 to move to 7 under, good enough for the clubhouse lead after the morning wave. “I’m not really much of a goal setter,â€� said O’Hair, who at 121st in the FedExCup likely needs a top-30 or better here to survive to the Dell Technologies Championship at TPC Boston. “It’s always a bonus to get in the TOUR Championship and it’s always a nice way to end the year. “I think every week is just an opportunity,â€� he added. “Every day is an opportunity. And for guys like me, every day is, you know, kind of a do-or-die situation. I actually think that just takes the pressure off. You win one of these events, and all of a sudden, thing change, and if you get in the TOUR Championship and win the TOUR Championship, you have a good chance of winning the FedExCup.â€� While the scoreboards are constantly flashing projections, O’Hair said he is taking no notice. The four-time TOUR winner is just grateful to be in New Jersey and not at the Web.com Finals in Ohio. “The last thing for me that’s going to help me is thinking about what I need to do to get to Aronimink or get to TOUR Championship,â€� he said. “I feel like the last two days have kind of happened because I’m working on the right things, and I’m focused more on maybe the process of the game right now than the actual score and result of it. “This is the end of my 14th season out here, so I’ve done this enough to know that if I go out there trying to get results, whether it be finishing a certain position on FedExCup or win a golf tournament or shoot a score; that just doesn’t work for me. That’s not how I function.â€�

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