Live leaderboard: DEAN & DELUCA Invitational

Don't call it a West Coast Swing - that'll come around again as usual in January and February - but the PGA TOUR will be spending the next three weeks in the Pacific Time Zone nonetheless. The stretch begins familiarly with the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, a fixture of the fall since 1990. Then, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, two of the three events on the canceled Asian Swing have been shifted temporarily to Nevada (THE CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK) and California (ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP @ SHERWOOD). Of the trio, only the Shriners boasts a full field of 144 and includes a cut. The next two are 78-man invitationals with no cut. Scroll past the projected contenders for a breakdown of Kevin Na's improbable formula here last year, how TPC Summerlin sets up and more. RELATED: Inside the Field | Preview the course, storylines POWER RANKINGS: SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN OPEN Jason Day, Rickie Fowler, Francesco Molinari, Sungjae Im and Will Zalatoris will be among the notables reviewed in Tuesday's Fantasy Insider Conventional wisdom and empirical data often collide at TPC Summerlin. As one of the most vulnerable par 71s on the schedule - it was the easiest of 10 par 71s last season and its scoring average of 68.859 was a record low since its debuted in 1992 - the game plan to hit greens and sink putts is as true here as it is anywhere. However, every worthy course makes available the possibility for the winner to have lapped the field with the putter. Kevin Na proved it before outlasting Patrick Cantlay in a playoff a year ago. TPC Summerlin tips at just 7,255 yards and the greens are on the larger size due to winds that often blow in these parts, but when they don't, the tournament develops into a putting contest due to the preponderance of scoring opportunities. Consider that Na averaged 13.5 GIR per round last year (to rank T46), and he was a hair under the field average for the week. Cue the flat stick, Na's primary weapon. En route to 23-under 261, he ranked second in putting: birdies-or-better and led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting, putts per GIR, fewest putts, total distance of putts converted, one-putt percentage and highest conversion percentage from outside 10 feet. Nine of the other 11 who finished inside the top 10 on the leaderboard ranked inside the top 10 in green hit, but only three cracked the top 10 in Strokes Gained: Putting. Scoring conditions will be favorable during the first two rounds this week before a cooling pattern arrives on the weekend. With it, the breezes will intensify from a prevailing direction out of the southwest, and then shift to push in from the north. Daytime highs will tumble from right around 90 degrees on Thursday to about 80 for the finale. No rain will fall. For the third straight year, the primary rough will be limited to two inches. (It previously was three inches.) The bentgrass greens are prepped to run at about 11-and-a-half feet on the Stimpmeter, further favoring aggressive putting. ROB BOLTON'S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.COM's Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous angles. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Medical Extensions, Rookie Watch, Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers, Fantasy Insider * – 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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SILVIS, Ill.  — Patrick Rodgers is 18 holes away from his first PGA TOUR win. But the 25-year-old former Stanford star knows that it’ll likely take a lower score than the one he shot Saturday to secure such a milestone victory. Rodgers shot a 3-under 68 in the third round, maintaining a two-stroke lead in the John Deere Classic. Rodgers had a 16-under 197 total at TPC Deere Run. He’s trying to become the third player in five years to win the Quad Cities event for his first PGA TOUR title. “It’s going to be a shootout because there’s a lot of birdies to be made out here, and I’m going to have to make my fair share in order to stay at the top,” Rodgers said. Daniel Berger had a 63 to match Scott Stallings (64) at 14 under. Nicholas Lindheim (66) was 13 under, and Jamie Lovemark (66), Bryson DeChambeau (70) and J.J. Henry (68) were another stroke back. Area favorite Zach Johnson had a 70 to drop five strokes back. Rodgers, who opened with rounds of 65 and 64, was hampered by a pair of bogeys. But Rodgers also had five birdies, and he saved par on the 17th after hitting his tee shot into the gallery. “I wasn’t as sharp as I was the past couple of days. So, I guess I did a good job mentally to get in at 3-under par,” Rodgers said. “All in all, if you told me at the start of the day that I’d have the same lead I started with, that’s a positive thing.” Berger, who won the FedEx St. Jude Classic last month in Memphis and lost a playoff at the Travelers Championship in his last event when Jordan Spieth holed out a bunker shot, birdied seven of his first 11 holes. Six of those birdie putts came from inside 10 feet. Berger and Rodgers are among four players with a tournament-high 19 birdies. “In Memphis I drove the ball phenomenally. This week I haven’t driven it that well, but I’ve kind of kept it in play for the most part and I’ve made a bunch of putts, which has been the difference,” said Berger, one of only two players in the top 10 in the FedExCup standings in the field. Stallings shot a 30 on the back nine and eagled the par-5 17th hole with a 22-foot putt. He’s shot back-to-back 64s after opening with a 71 on Thursday. “I can’t control what anyone else does. I couldn’t event tell you some of the other guys that are on the leaderboard,” Stallings said. “We’ve gotten ourselves this far, and we’re happy to be in the position we’re in Johnson, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, native who won at TPC Deere Run in 2012 and notched six top-three finishes in his last eight appearances, again drew the biggest galleries. But he followed an eagle on the 14th hole with a double bogey on No. 15. Bubba Watson’s decision to skip the Scottish Open for the chance to accumulate FedExCup points might not work out in his favor. Watson had a 68 and was tied for 57th at 6 under. Kelly Kraft made arguably the day’s most impressive shot on No. 17. His tee shot landed on a walkway behind a hospitality tent, and Kraft hit his second shot over 200 yards and eventually saved par.

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