Live leaderboard: Tiger in the hunt at Farmers

As we roll through the second half of the season, players look to make the final push for the FedExCup at The Old White TPC. Round 1 tee times Round 1 leaderboard HOW TO WATCH PGA TOUR LIVE: Featured Groups – (6 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. ET), Featured Holes – (3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. ET) Telecast: Golf Channel (3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. ET) Listen: SiriusXM PGA TOUR Radio, (12 p.m. – 6 p.m. ET) NOTABLE PAIRINGS Jonas Blixt, Patrick Reed, Charles Howell III 8:00 a.m. ET off the 10th tee Boo Weekley, Ricky Barnes, Luke List 12:00 p.m. ET off the 1st tee Jimmy Walker, Jim Herman, Smylie Kaufman 12:30 p.m. off the 10th tee Bubba Watson, Danny Lee, Phil Mickelson 1:00 p.m. off the 1st tee

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THE PLAYERS Championship winner Webb Simpson and fast-rising Cameron Champ headline the roster as Georgia’s Golden Isles once again serve as the backdrop to hand out one more trophy – and Sentry Tournament of Champions invitation – before the season enters its holiday break. Tournament host Davis Love III, elder statesman among pros who call St. Simon’s Island home, again leads a local lineup at least a dozen strong. Residents have yet to cheer a “true� home winner, though two of the Classic’s eight previous champions had significant ties to the island. FIELD NOTES: Patton Kizzire, the only St. Simon’s Island pro to reach the FedExCup finale at East Lake, and Zach Johnson also will fly the island’s banner along with former PGA TOUR winners Brian Harman, Harris English, Hudson Swafford and Jonathan Byrd. … Retief Goosen, set for entry into the World Golf Hall of Fame next year, makes his second start since receiving the news. That makes it a trio with Hall of Fame credentials, along with Love and Ernie Els. … U.S. Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk makes his third consecutive start since bringing his clubs out of hibernation. … Invitations were given to LSU freshman standout Garrett Barber, who won last February’s Jones Cup at Sea Island, along with Love’s son Dru. It’ll be Dru’s third chance to tee it up on home soil. FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 500 points. STORYLINES: The race remains on to become the first man to keep the RSM Classic trophy on the island. Though Chris Kirk lived there 6 ½ years, he relocated to Atlanta months before his 2013 victory. Two years later, Kisner won while in temporary housing as his South Carolina home underwent remodeling. The closest a fulltimer has come is a pair of fourths – Love in 2012 and Harman last year. … It’s the final chance for someone to punch his ticket to Kapalua in January, a timely perk for each of the Classic’s first eight winners. … Champ, winner of the Sanderson Farms Championship, makes his first visit to Sea Island as a PGA TOUR pro. The Texas A&M alum is plenty familiar with the place, though, with the SEC Championship making an annual stop. … Champ and Sam Ryder, with a pair of top-4 finishes in the new season, are among a handful with a chance to displace Xander Schauffele atop the FedExCup standings before the holiday break. Schauffele is taking the week off. … When Austin Cook won by four last year, it was just the second time in eight editions that the winner finished more than one shot clear. Kisner holds the record with a six-shot romp in 2015. COURSE: Sea Island GC (Seaside), 7,005 yards, par 70. Framed against tidal creeks, dunes and salt marshes, the layout at the southern tip of St. Simons Island got its start as a nine-hole track built in 1929 by English architects Harry Colt and Charles Alison. Bobby Jones once described Seaside as among the best nine holes he’d ever seen. Joe Lee created the “Marshside Nine� in 1973, and Tom Fazio was commissioned to bring the two together in 1999. Seaside places a premium on shot selection and sound course management. Entrants also play one of their first two rounds at the par-72 Plantation course, which joined the format three years ago after Rees Jones fused two other nine-hole layouts into an 18-hole test. • 72-HOLE RECORD: 260, Kevin Kisner (2015). • 18-HOLE RECORD: 60, Tommy Gainey (4th round, 2012). • LAST YEAR: Cook fired a second-day 62 and held off any late threats with three birdies in his last four holes, pulling away on a windy afternoon to a four-shot romp for his first PGA TOUR victory. The Arkansas pro took a three-shot lead into the final day, but saw it reduced to one over J.J. Spaun as winds made things increasingly difficult on the Seaside layout. A bogey by Spaun at No.16 allowed Cook to enjoy a little more cushion, and Cook drained a 4-foot birdie at No.15 to start his closing flourish. Cook, who finished with a 67, broke into the winner’s column in just his 14th TOUR start and fourth of his official rookie season, becoming the fifth player to win the Classic in his first pro visit to Sea Island. Brian Gay was another stroke back in third. HOW TO FOLLOW TELEVISION: Thursday-Sunday, 1:30-4:30 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). PGA TOUR LIVE: None. RADIO: Thursday-Friday, 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, noon-4:30 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com).  

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PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Tom Hoge enjoys being at Pebble Beach even in a frigid wind and relentless rain. He loved it even more Thursday in brilliant sunshine, especially with nine birdies on his card. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Peter Jacobsen’s Pebble Beach farewell Hoge began his day along the Pacific Ocean with a 30-foot birdie putt on No. 10 at Pebble Beach. He made the last of six straight birdies with a 40-foot putt on the daunting eighth hole. It added to a 9-under 63, by four shots his best score at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. “It’s hard to be in a bad mood out here,” Hoge said. “I mean, Pebble Beach and perfect weather is about as good as it gets.” He had a one-shot lead over Seamus Power of Ireland, whose round was equally stout. Power birdied his last four holes at Spyglass Hill, traditionally the toughest of the three courses in benign conditions. It was the only course that played over par Thursday. Jonas Blixt had a 7-under 64 on the Shore Course at Monterey Peninsula. Patrick Cantlay, the reigning FedExCup champion, birdied his last three holes for a 65 on the Shore. Hoge has played just over 200 times on the PGA TOUR without winning, though he’s getting closer. He finished runner-up by two shots in Palm Desert two weeks ago. Whether he gets another shot, that’s still a long way off, with two more courses to get through before Hoge gets back to Pebble Beach. The coastline along the peninsula and the desert tucked amid the Santa Rosa Mountains are nothing alike, although Hoge managed to make one comparison. Scoring is on the low side. Along with very little wind, the area has gone more than a month without rain and the courses are firm, without the greens being too fast because of amateurs in the field. To have greens running firm and fast, they might never finish. “I was in the situation a couple weeks ago in Palm Springs — scores were a little bit better there — but you keep switching golf courses and you fee like you’ve got to keep making birdies the whole way because there’s a lot of great players out here,” he said. “Conditions look pretty good for the weekend, so I know that I’ve got to keep moving forward.” There was no need to check the forecast and hope for the best — and this tournament, that means getting Pebble Beach and Monterey Peninsula on the calmest day and Spyglass in the wind. But it’s supposed to stay gorgeous all week. Cantlay nearly had his round ruined around the turn when he squandered a good start with a pair of bogeys and began the back nine at the Shore by failing to birdie the par 5s. He made up for it with three straight birdies to finish his round, one of them on the 17th when his tee shot was about 6 feet from going into a small creek, and he hit a towering wedge over a pine to 12 feet for birdie. Jordan Spieth, still trying to recover from an intestinal infection, had a 68 at Monterey Peninsula. He had hoped to be at full strength, but probably wasn’t quite there. Otherwise, it was as perfect a day as the Pebble Beach Pro-Am can offer. About one-third of the field broke 70, and no one was terribly grumpy. Power won an opposite-field event last year for his first PGA TOUR victory. He tied for third in the Sony Open in Hawaii and now sits at No. 50 in the world, needing to hold that position for two months to earn an invitation to the Masters. He played in an all-Irish pairing with John Murphy, who went to Louisville and made his PGA TOUR debut, along with Irish amateurs Dermott Desmond and Gerry McManus. That added to a day that felt like more fun than work. “I’m playing in a shirt. Normally I have a sweater and other stuff on,” Power said. “So it was nice, wind was minimal. It was a perfect day for scoring.” His best moment was scrambling for par at the par-3 fifth hole, the last that runs along the Pacific on Spyglass Hill. He went from a fairway bunker on the uphill sixth to 25 feet and made that, and then finished with three more birdies. “It’s always funny with the three courses,” Power said. “It’s great to have a good start but you’re on to a completely different challenge. Tomorrow I’m playing Pebble and it’s going to be a completely different course to today. So kind of makes it easier to reset, and hopefully we can kind of keep doing the same thing tomorrow.”

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