Leaderboard: What’s happening at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open

SATURDAY MORNING FOURSOMES SHEBOYGAN, Wis. – Facing a 6-2 deficit coming into Saturday’s play Padraig Harrington’s European team was looking to stop the bleeding and begin an attempted comeback while Steve Stricker’s Americans were hoping to show no mercy and increase a lead. It looked ugly early for Europe when the opening two Foursomes matches were 3 up leads after three holes to the U.S. duos, but the Spanish resistance of Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia fought back hard to give the visiting team some hope to escape the session without further damage. Match 1: Jon Rahm/Sergio Garcia, EUR, def. Brooks Koepka/Daniel Berger USA, 3 and 1 Recap: An incredible lead off match where the Spanish resistance dropped the first three holes and things looked more than bleak for the European team in general before an incredible turnaround. Rahm and Garcia lifted their game exponentially and secured the sixth and eighth holes before Garcia chipped in expertly on the ninth to flip the script completely. The hole out came with the U.S. looking at a birdie putt, that Berger subsequently missed, and it was tied at the turn. A lovely wedge into the par-3 12th from Rahm set up a 7-foot birdie for Garcia and the Europeans grabbed a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. They doubled it at the 13th but the lead was just one soon after. A contentious ruling on the 15th hole went against the Americans before Rahm and Garcia produced two incredible shots on the par-5 16th that resulted in a conceded eagle and capped off an incredible comeback win. Score at match’s conclusion: USA 6, EUR 3 MATCH 2: Dustin Johnson/Collin Morikawa USA vs. Paul Casey/Tyrrell Hatton, EUR MATCH 3: Jordan Spieth/Justin Thomas USA vs. Viktor Hovland/Bernd Wiesberger, EUR MATCH 4: Patrick Cantlay/Xander Schauffele USA vs. Matt Fitzpatrick-Lee Westwood, EUR

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2021 Masters Tournament, Round 1 (Delayed) Scoring Conditions: Overall: -0.61 strokes per round Morning wave: -0.23 Afternoon wave: -1.32 Current cutline (top 50 and ties): 50 players at -1 or better (T34) Top 3 projected cutline probabilities: 1. Even: 37.0% 2. 1 under par: 30.6% 3. 1 over par: 17.6% Top 10 win probabilities: 1. Justin Thomas (T2, -5, 17.8%) 2. Dustin Johnson (T13, -3, 10.5%) 3. Xander Schauffele (T2, -5, 8.9%) 4. Jon Rahm (T13, -3, 6.8%) 5. Webb Simpson (T2, -5, 5.5%) 6. Paul Casey (1, -7, 5.4%) 7. Hideki Matsuyama (T5, -4, 4.5%) 8. Patrick Reed (T5, -4, 3.4%) 9. Adam Scott (T5, -4, 3.2%) 10. Patrick Cantlay (T21, -2, 2.9%) NOTE: These reports are based off the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live "Make Cut", "Top 20", "Top 5", and "Win" probabilities every 5 minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 20K simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of the Masters Tournament, or to see how each golfer's probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model's home page.

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The 2017-18 FedExCup season is now past the halfway point of the regular schedule. Twenty-one weeks are in the books; 19 weeks are left before the top 125 players in the standings advance to the FedExCup Playoffs. At the very top, nothing really has changed since last year’s FedExCup Playoffs ended. Justin Thomas won the 2017 FedExCup crown, and he’s atop the current standings for the seventh consecutive week. But with a half-season still to be played, there are no guarantees. A few FedExCup observations:  Don’t be surprised if there’s a generous amount of turnover in the next 19 weeks. Of the top 30 players a year ago at this point, 10 fell outside the top 30 by the time the FedExCup Playoffs started. Only one of those 10 players managed to play his way back inside the top 30 and advance to the TOUR Championship – Justin Rose, who posted top-10 finishes in each of the four Playoffs events. Fourteen players who made the TOUR Championship last season are currently outside the top 30, including defending East Lake champion Xander Schauffele. The reigning Rookie of the Year finished third in the FedExCup Playoffs last year but is currently 46th and has just two top-10 finishes in 11 starts. Another notable, reigning U.S. Open champ Brooks Koepka, is currently 97th and has been sidelined since late January with a wrist injury. Just four players have been atop the FedExCup standings this season – Thomas for seven weeks, Patton Kizzire for eight weeks, Pat Perez for four weeks and Brendan Steele (winner of the season-opening Safeway Open) for two weeks. Thomas currently leads Kizzire by 440 points – that’s the biggest margin between No. 1 and No. 2 in the FedExCup standings entering the RBC Heritage since 2009.  Thomas, incidentally, has now been No. 1 this season for the same number of weeks (7) he was all of last season. And get this: Since the start of the 2015-16 season, there have been 106 weeks of tournament competition. Thomas has been inside the top 15 of the FedExCup standings a total of 104 weeks in that span. The only times he was outside the top 15? The first two weeks of this season. He didn’t play the opening week, and he was 33rd after the second week. Thomas not only has the most FedExCup points, he’s also making the most of each start. Thomas leads in FedExCup points per event with an average of 176.9 in his 10 starts. The next five are Dustin Johnson (161.3 avg.), Justin Rose (144.8 avg), Jason Day (130.6 avg) and Bubba Watson (128.1 avg). If Tiger Woods can maintain his pace, he’ll be in excellent shape to make a run at his third FedExCup title. Woods currently ranks 42nd in points, averaging 79.3 points per start. A year ago, any player who averaged 70 points or better per start in the regular season found himself inside the top 12 starting the FedExCup Playoffs. Woods won the inaugural FedExCup title in 2007 and won it again in 2009. Chesson Hadley has made the biggest one-year improvement in the standings. A year ago, he ranked 217th entering the RBC Heritage; he now ranks 26th, a jump of 191 spots. In fact, seven players have made jumps of 100-plus spots – Hadley, Ryan Armour (190 to 40), Tom Hoge (180 to 48), Ryan Palmer (201 to 76), Ian Poulter (149 to 25), Bubba Watson (124 to 3), and Brian Gay (151 to 47).

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