Live leaderboard: Track Cup matches

KAPALUA, Hawaii – Cameron Champ knows the lessons learned from failure bring more than those from success. But it took him some time to realize it. Fair enough, too – failure in golf had never really been part of the Champ narrative as he blazed his trail through junior and amateur golf and hit the professional scene with similar gusto. But it is the lessons learned the last 12 months – where Champ had his first real sense of on-course adversity – that have given the now 24-year-old extreme confidence heading into 2020. Related: Power Rankings | Tee times | Storylines, course preview for Kapalua A year ago, Champ came to the Plantation Course at Kapalua for his first Sentry Tournament of Champions as the next big thing in golf. In the 12 months prior, he had won in his debut Korn Ferry Tour season to help earn his way to the PGA TOUR and then took out the Sanderson Farms Championship in just his second TOUR start as a full member (his ninth overall) during the fall. Champ had added two further top-10s in his following three starts, so when he came to Maui, it was almost like it had all been too easy. The hype surrounding him had been fulfilled. This kid was not just a big bomber… he was the real deal who can use brute force to overpower and finesse to outthink the competition. A year ago, he would finish a respectable T11 in his Kapalua debut and show no signs of what was about to come. A crash. In his next 20 starts to round out his rookie year, Champ missed the cut 11 times, WD’d in another, and failed to finish inside the top 20 anywhere. And a lot of it happened in the spotlight, given his earlier achievements. There was a back injury for a period, but the problems stemmed from much more than that. Champ was bringing excess baggage to the course. With early success comes almost impossible expectations. Not just from external sources, but from within as well. “Last year was a really good learning lesson for me with the way I played and what I struggled with,â€� Champ admits. “I took things way too seriously – I added pressure and frustration – and I really wasn’t being myself. With winning early… you get expectations. I ended up in the featured groups… basically being thrown in with the wolves when you are a little pup. “But I am glad it happened that way – I was blessed now that I look back on it. It was a good experience that I can use going forward. Going from winning to rock bottom basically – I think it’s like gaining three or four years’ experience in a year.â€� Sometimes it takes something much bigger than golf to put things back in perspective. And this was certainly true for Champ. His grandfather Mack taught him the game and put him on this path. His lessons about dealing with adversity, having faced racial prejudice throughout his life, had also been littered throughout. But in taking the game so seriously and getting bogged down in negativity, Champ was forgetting some of Mack’s, and his father Jeff’s, wisdom. As Mack fell ill with cancer, Champ was letting his emotions get the better of him. But as things became more dire, he was jolted back into reality. “Rory (McIlroy) even said it after one of the better statistical years in the history of golf. He says golf is sperate from your personal life and you have to separate it – but I was dragging it into both,â€� Champ says. By the time the Safeway Open was coming up – which was to be Champ’s second start of this new season – Mack was moved to hospice care and the young star wasn’t even going to play. He toyed with just staying with Mack in Sacramento instead. At the last moment ,he decided to head over and play knowing it was what his grandfather wanted. He won. “Obviously that changed a lot of things for me,â€� Champ said of the emotional second win that booked his ticket back to Kapalua and sees him sitting ninth in the FedExCup. “It was literally a last minute thing Wednesday night. Hadn’t hit a ball in three days and I just showed up to the tee and played. I took a lot from that and the whole year and now I am building off what I learned.â€� Those lessons are what gives him the confidence to not expect a repeat slump this time around. Frustration, he hopes, will be very minimal. While his goals are still lofty, he has tempered his expectations and knows patience in this game is key. He is also finding ways to manage his game when it is not fully firing – evidenced, he says, by results at the Houston Open (T23) and the Mayakoba Golf Classic (T33) following his win. Off the course he is compartmentalizing better. The death of Mack a few months back still stings – and always will – but the pain isn’t infiltrating his golf. And there is happiness also as Champ got engaged over this holiday break. “I have a clearer understanding now. For me it has always been a mental thing. When I am mentally clear I play extremely well. So it is really just trying to figure out how to get there more often,â€� Champ says. “I felt all the emotions last year… I hope to stick to one this year.â€�

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On paper, the odds are stacked against the underdog International side at the 14th Presidents Cup. With an average age of 28.8, it’s the youngest group to compete in the history of the event. The average Official World Golf Ranking for the roster is 48.9, the highest number in the event’s history. Their opposition has 10 players ranked better currently than the International side’s leading man, Hideki Matsuyama. But three years ago at Royal Melbourne, facing similar pre-event numbers, the International side nearly pulled off one of the biggest upsets in team golf history. A record eight rookies will help fuel captain Trevor Immelman’s efforts to finish the job this week in Charlotte, and pick up the second win all-time for the International Team. Tom Kim As the third-youngest player ever to compete at the Presidents Cup, Tom Kim is inarguably one of the most exciting talents to watch this week in Charlotte. With his win at last month’s Wyndham Championship, the 20-year-old became the youngest PGA TOUR winner from outside the United States since Harry Cooper in 1923. Kim is literally trying to lead the International side to something he’s never seen in his lifetime: the only time they have won the Presidents Cup was in 1998, four years before Kim was born. Kim put on a ball-striking show this summer: from July 1 through the TOUR Championship, Kim ranked No. 2 among all qualified TOUR players in Strokes Gained: Approach per round (+1.15). In that same span, he ranks 10th in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and 14th in scoring average. Kim would have ranked in the top-20 on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Total per round (+1.09) if he had enough rounds to officially qualify. Taylor Pendrith One of the only players on TOUR ahead of Kim in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking since the beginning of July is fellow International Team rookie Taylor Pendrith. The long-hitting Canadian ranked No. 4 overall on TOUR in that statistic from July through the TOUR Championship, the best of any player competing this week at Quail Hollow. Pendrith finished the 2022 season ranked inside the top-10 in both driving distance and greens in regulation. Former world No. 1 Jon Rahm is the only other player with that distinction last season. Mito Pereira The lofty ceiling of Mito Pereira’s immense talent was on full display earlier this year at the PGA Championship, when he got within one hole of becoming a major champion. Though the finish to that championship wasn’t what he wanted, the 27-year-old Chilean vaulted himself into the conversation as one of the potential future pillars of the International Team. His full 2022 statistical profile reveals a player with elite iron play: No. 9 on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Approach, 14th in greens in regulation and sixth in average proximity from the rough. Pereira finished the 2022 season ranked 19th on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Total, the fifth-best position for any player without a win. Corey Conners As one of the most known commodities on the International roster, it’s easy to forget this is Corey Conners’ first Presidents Cup appearance. Since the beginning of 2019, Conners has been statistically among the best players in the game tee-to-green. In that span, he ranks fourth in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking, sixth in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and ninth in Strokes Gained: Approach. Conners is the only player on the PGA TOUR since 2019 to average at least +0.60 Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and +0.60 Strokes Gained: Approach per round. Sebastián Muñoz There are only six players in PGA TOUR history to record multiple rounds of 60 or lower in their entire careers. In 2021-22, Sebastián Muñoz became the first player to record two such rounds in the same season, carding 60s at both The RSM Classic and AT&T Byron Nelson. Muñoz, who has qualified for the FedExCup Playoffs in each of the last four seasons, has been consistently solid for months now, making 15 of his last 17 cuts. In terms of sheer number of birdies made, Muñoz is one of the most prolific on TOUR in recent seasons. Over the last three years, only two players have recorded more birdies than Muñoz (1,070) – world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and teammate Sungjae Im. K.H. Lee Another player with a propensity for red numbers is K.H. Lee – who ranks 11th in total birdies made since the 2020 season. Earlier this year, Lee won the AT&T Byron Nelson at 26 under, one year after winning it with a score of 25 under. With the victory, Lee became the first player in TOUR history to win the same event in back-to-back years with a score of 25 under or better. At the 2021 Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow, Lee recorded four hole-outs from off the green, most of any player in the field. Can he rediscover that magic this week? Cam Davis Statistically, the defining line of when Cam Davis’ 2022 season turned around was Sunday at the RBC Heritage, when he shot a closing 63 to vault into a tie for third place. Heading to Harbour Town, Davis was ranked 178th on TOUR in scoring average and was outside the top 125 in both Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and Strokes Gained: Total. He’s been a different player since then, though – from the RBC Heritage through the end of the PGA TOUR season, Davis had one missed cut and seven top-20s in 12 starts. In that span, he ranked top-30 on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking, Tee-to-Green and Total. Christiaan Bezuidenhout Coming off a season with 10 top-25s and just four missed cuts in 24 starts, Christiaan Bezuidenhout might be the best putter competing this week at Quail Hollow. He ranked sixth on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting per round for the 2022 season, the highest mark of any player on either team this week. When isolating the numbers just since the beginning of July, it’s even more impressive: from July 1 through the TOUR Championship, Bezuidenhout averaged 1.59 Strokes Gained: Putting per round, by far the best of any qualified player.

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Brooks Koepka says he will do whatever it takes, including playing every remaining week of the season, until he can secure a spot in the TOUR Championship for a crack at the FedExCup. Koepka was originally not planning to play in the Memorial Tournament Presented by Nationwide next week, the second of two events to be played at Muirfield Village Golf Club. But poor play at the Workday Charity Open this week has forced his hand and the former world No. 1 will indeed play again. “I’m pretty far down in the FedExCup and need to make a run. I think it’s pretty simple. I didn’t plan on playing, but things change, and I’d like to be in Atlanta,” Koepka said after his second round. “That’s what you’ve got to do; I’m going to basically run the table.” Koepka came into this week sitting 155th on the season long points list but not even a scintillating late evening blitz in a storm affected second round is likely to extend his time at the Workday Charity Open and bring a chance to advance his FedExCup standing. With play suspended overnight Koepka sits a shot outside the projected cutline, needing significant help from unfinished players to survive. The 2017 and 2018 PGA TOUR Player of the Year looked a shadow of his best self through 26 holes of play at Muirfield Village this week, sitting five over par and 18 shots adrift of clubhouse leader Collin Morikawa. He was at least six shots back of the likely cut mark with 10 holes left. It was go hard or go home time. And go hard he did. Koepka put up six birdies on the closing 10 holes to shoot a 3-under 69 and finish 1 under for the week. “That’s what you’ve got to do. I never give up, never think you’re out of it, and you’ve just got to battle through it no matter what you’re doing,” he said. “That’s part of why you’re out here. You’re a pro, you just sack up and do it.” As awesome as it was, it could have easily been so much better. On three occasions he went within a whisker of hole-out eagles and did the same for a birdie after a penalty drop. He also missed two birdie putts inside seven feet during the run. It started on the par-4 9th hole when his wedge from 117 yards ended up about four feet from the pin. On the par-3 12th hole Koepka was just a foot from an ace and a hole later a wedge from 106 yards rolled desperately close to the cup. On the par-4 14th, after finding water with his tee shot, he dropped 92 yards out and flirted with a hole out birdie before a simple tap in par. His greenside bunker shot on the par-5 15th was another that wanted to go in but found a way not to. In the end back-to-back birdies on 17 and 18 still likely won’t be enough. “It was pretty gutsy. I would still take it as a chance. The guys finishing in the morning will probably hurt that. But it’s a funny game,” playing partner Justin Thomas said of the run. “I’ve been in that position before, unfortunately, or we all have, but it’s almost like when you stop caring you start playing better. There’s a lesson somewhere in that, but it’s hard to go out there and play and not care.” Among those surprisingly likely to be joining Koepka on the cut list are Jordan Spieth (E), Marc Leishman (+5), Matthew Wolff (+5), Bubba Watson (+8) and Justin Rose (+10). After this week just five weeks of tournaments remain before the top 125 get into the FedExCup playoffs.

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