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PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico – Danny Lee is certainly not the first golfer on the PGA TOUR who is trying to chase a little more speed with his driver. But he may be the first to cause a bit of a last-minute panic by one of his fellow TOUR members after just one swing. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Inside Hovland’s strengths Wednesday afternoon at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba, Lee, who finished T2 last week at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, was in the middle of a speed-training session. He was getting up to about 185 m.p.h. ball speed but Viktor Hovland, who was next to him, wanted to see how much more speed Lee could generate with his driver – which is about an inch longer. Lee stepped on one, and the shaft shattered. “That was very unexpected,” said Lee. “I felt so sorry for him. If I had a spare driver, I would have given it to him, but I didn’t.” “I just looked up after he hit the shot and it was in pieces,” said Hovland. Enter James Hahn, who had another Ping G-425 driver to nearly the same specs as Hovland’s usual gamer. “(Hovland) kept hitting it on the driving range and surprisingly he was hitting great with it,” said Lee. Kenton Oates, who is a PGA TOUR rep for Ping, said the driver Hovland put into play on Thursday was the same model, same loft, and had the same swing weight – with a slightly different shaft – as Hovland’s usual driver. “You give something pretty close to a guy like Viktor and he’ll figure it out,” said Oates. Hovland didn’t seem to have a problem with it. The defending champion in Mexico fired an opening-round 4-under 67 and missed only two fairways – both, he said, when he didn’t actually hit driver. “It’s a little bit shorter, it’s a different shaft, but honestly, almost helped me this week because it’s a little shorter,” said Hovland. “It probably goes 10 yards shorter, but I just felt like I could really hit it a little lower and a little straighter. So I’m hitting that thing really well.” Hovland, who was fifth on TOUR last season in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, ventured to another golf course in the area to try the new driver on Wednesday into different winds. But it was a quick learning session for Hovland. “As soon as I like, hit a couple with it, I was like, ‘this feels pretty nice. I think I can work with this,’ said Hovland. Oates said Hovland’s driving has always impressed him and Hovland’s consistent shot shape has been combined with a gain of nearly 6 m.p.h. of ball speed since he joined the TOUR. Oates said because the break (which happened because Lee has such an aggressive recoil on his driver swing) that occurred in Mexico was a unique situation for the Ping team. If this was the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open next week, Oates said, the two-time TOUR winner would have had a new driver in about 20 minutes. Oates said PING staffer Taylor Moore, who was in Mexico hoping to get into the field as an alternate, was also willing to provide a suitable replacement to Hovland. After the driving performance Hovland put on in the opening round at El Camaleón Mayakoba Golf Course, Oates laughed when he was asked if Hovland may consider Hahn’s specs when he gets fit into some new Ping stuff next year. “Dude, next year? If he’s hitting it like this it might be next week,” said Oates. “You play this game, and a lot of times guys may be out with their friends and say, ‘you know, I hit so-and-so club.’ This is a different situation, but it does happen (on TOUR) and that ends up being the best fitting process.” While it all worked out in the end for Hovland (and Lee, who opened with a solid 3-under 68) will Lee still try to make it up to Hovland somehow? “In the future,” said Lee, “I’ll give him something for sure.”

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Numbers To Know, where we’ll take a look at the best stats from the week that was at the Travelers Championship. Dustin Johnson won his 21st PGA TOUR title and won for the 13th consecutive season. Let’s get started. 1. GREAT SINCE ’08: Johnson won his first PGA TOUR title at the 2008 Turning Stone Resort Championship. This week’s win tied him with Tiger Woods for the most on TOUR since 2008. They have three more wins than Rory McIlroy, who’s the only other player with more than 15 victories in that span. 2. END THE DROUGHT: The win was Johnson’s first since last year’s World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship, ending a 490-day winless drought. That matched the longest drought of Johnson’s career. He’s had only three victory droughts that lasted longer than a year. 3. GOIN’ LOW: Johnson’s score of 19-under 261 at TPC River Highlands tied the lowest 72-hole score of his career. It included a career-best 61 in the third round. After opening with a 1-under 69, Johnson shot 64-61 in the second and third rounds to earn a spot in the final group. His 194 score for 54 holes also was the lowest of his career. A final-round 67 gave him a one-stroke victory over Kevin Streelman. Johnson was in 79th place after the first round. That’s the worst first-round position by a winner in more than a year. Graeme McDowell was in 81st place after the first round of the 2019 Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship. Johnson had never been worse than 28th after the first round of any of his wins. 4. TEE BALL: Johnson achieved another milestone of sorts. Fourteen of his 21 victories have come in events where all four rounds were measured by ShotLink. This was the first time he won while losing strokes off the tee. He’s averaged 4.8 strokes gained from the tee in those 14 wins, and has led the field in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee in half of those 14 wins. This was just the third time he’s ranked outside the top 10 in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee in a victory. Johnson hit just half his fairways Sunday, including an out-of-bounds tee shot at the par-5 13th. “I wasn’t driving it good, wasn’t driving it really good all day, but I was hitting my irons well, and I felt like all week I’ve hit my irons really good,” Johnson said after the win. He finished the week ranked 47th in fairways hit (35 of 56, 63%) and 27th in driving distance (294.4 yards). He hit 12 of 14 fairways in his third-round 61, but hit just 23 of 42 (55%) the rest of the week. Johnson has ranked inside the top five in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee in each of the previous six seasons, but is 13th this season. He was either first or second in that statistic in every season from 2015-18. 5. FOUR!: A player of Johnson’s length is usually known for dominating the par-5s, but that wasn’t the case this week. He played TPC River Highlands’ two par-5s in just 2 under par for the week, ranking 47th in par-5 scoring average. As Johnson said, his iron play was strong. He ranked sixth in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green (+6.01). His good approach play was shown by his strong play on the par-4s. He led the field in par-4 scoring average (3.7) and birdies or better on par-4s (18). He made birdie or better on par-4s a field-leading 37.5% of the time.

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BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) — Matt Fitzpatrick of England is a champion again at The Country Club, this time with the grandest of trophies. A U.S. Amateur champion in 2013. The U.S. Open champion Sunday. RELATED: What’s in Fitzpatrick’s bag In a three-way battle at Brookline that came down to the wire, Fitzpatrick seized control with a great break and an even better shot on the 15th hole for a two-shot swing. He was even more clutch from a fairway bunker on the 18th that set up par for a 2-under 68. Victory was not secure until Will Zalatoris, who showed amazing fight-back from every mistake, dropped to his knees when his 15-foot birdie putt on the 18th just slid by the left side of the cup. Zalatoris was a runner-up in the second straight major. Masters champion Scottie Scheffler never recovered from back-to-back bogeys to start the back nine. He had a 25-foot birdie chance on the 18th that just missed and left him one behind. Fitzpatrick is the second man to win a U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open on the same course, joining Jack Nicklaus who turned the trick at Pebble Beach. Juli Inkster won the U.S. Women’s Amateur and U.S. Women’s Open at Prairie Dunes. Along with the $3.15 million in prize money, Fitzpatrick had the gold Jack Nicklaus medal draped around his neck. He moved to No. 10 in the FedExCup standings. Fitzpatrick, who briefly played at Northwestern before turning pro, won for the eighth time worldwide, and this was his first on the PGA TOUR. Fitzpatrick said he won the member-member at The Bear’s Club in Florida at the start of the year, the course Nicklaus built. “He gave me a bit of abuse at the start of the year. He said, ‘Finally. Congratulations for winning in the States,'” Fitzpatrick said with a laugh. And then slightly lifting the trophy, Fitzpatrick sent a fun message to Nicklaus: “Jack, I won a second time.”

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