Brendon Todd surged to the top of the leaderboard with an 5-under 65 on Friday in Memphis. Can he keep it going on Saturday?
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GREENSBORO, N.C. — Harold Varner III, Tom Hoge and Roger Sloan each shot 8-under 62 on Thursday to share the first-round lead at the Wyndham Championship, the PGA TOUR’s final regular-season event before the FedExCup playoffs. Varner started the go-low parade at at Sedgefield Country Club with an eight-birdie, no-bogey round that matched his career best on the PGA TOUR. RELATED: Leaderboard | Simpson, Todd feed off friendly energy in Round 1 | FedExCup update Hoge and Sloan, playing together, followed suit later in the round, Hoge also matched his career low on TOUR, while Sloan’s score set his personal best. There were 33 players on the course who had not finished when the round was suspended due to bad weather. Hoge looked like he might have a shot at 59 after he went eagle-birdie on the 15th and 16th holes to reach 9 under. But Hoge, who first played on the PGA Tour in 2015 and has never won, missed a 10-footer for birdie on the 17th before his only bogey on No. 18 to drop into the tie. Sloan had birdies on the 16th and 17th holes and had a chance at 9-under to take the lead alone, but came up short on a 15-foot birdie try on the final hole. The strong start was especially crucial for the 33-year-old Canadian, who came into the TOUR’s last regular-season event at 178 in FedEx Cup points — well out of the 125 cut off to make next week’s first postseason event, THE NORTHERN TRUST in Boston. Sloan is projected to rise into the top 50 should he maintain his position. “Honestly, I don’t have to do anything,” he said. “I’m very blessed that I have status on the PGA TOUR next season. That’s important. I’m going to get starts, I think that frees you up.” All three leaders are seeking their first TOUR wins. The trio were two shots in front of Harris English (64). A large group was at 5-under led by former Masters champion Patrick Reed. Past U.S. Open champion Webb Simpson led another pack at 4-under 66. Paul Casey, who tied for second last week at the PGA Championship, was at 67. Some other PGA Championship contenders last week were not as fortunate. Both Brooks Koepka and Justin Rose, each in the mix in the final round of the year’s first major, could not keep that going in this one. Koepka was 10 shots behind after a 72. Justin Rose finished a stroke worse at 73. Koepka said he was flat after playing several weeks in a row. “A bit tired, to be honest with you, so definitely came out flat,” he said. “But I’ve got to play, I’ve got no other option.” Koepka said even moving up a spot or two in FedExCup standings is helpful to advance, so that’s why he passed up a week off to compete. PGA Championship winner Collin Morikawa is off. Varner had eight birdies, including four in a row midway through the round, without a birdie his first 15 holes. He finished with three pars. Varner, who went to high school in Gastonia about two hours away and college at East Carolina, was disappointed he couldn’t play in front of friends and family due to the ongoing pandemic. “It’s unfortunate this year because I enjoy the cheers and stuff,” he said. “But we’ll get through this year and figure it out. Yeah, it’s just good to be close to home.” Hoge started crunching the numbers after he reached 9-under with two holes left. “I thought we could birdie the last two, but you’ve got to put it in the fairway,” he said after his tee shot on No. 18 went into the rough leading to bogey.
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Phil Mickelson’s dream of a career Grand Slam has survived its first hurdle but the veteran will need an incredible weekend if he is to triumph at the U.S. Open. Mickelson is a former winner at the Masters (2004, 2006, 2010), the Open Championship (2013) and the PGA Championship (2005) but is a six-time runner up at his national championship. He now craves one thing above all others, a U.S. Open title to complete the slam. He would become just the sixth player to win all four events at least once joining Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Having shot an opening 1-over 72 on Thursday, Mickelson needed to play well just to ensure weekend play. He energized the California crowd with a charge into contention during Friday’s second round only to falter late. The 48-year-old was 4-under on the day through 14 holes to get within four of the lead at the time before bogeys on the 15th and 17th holes left him to sign for a 2-under 69 and 1-under total. It leaves him eight shots back from Gary Woodland’s 36-hole lead after his fellow American birdied three of his last five holes to get to 9-under. Any comeback therefore is a tough proposition, yet not impossible. Lou Graham came from 11 shots back at the halfway point to win at Medinah in 1975. Mickelson is no stranger to success on this course having won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am five times, including earlier this season. “I’ve played this course for so many years, and I know how to shoot under par on it,â€� he said following his opening round. Now he has to balance the sense of urgency in trying to win before his best golf is behind him with what will likely be tougher weekend conditions. “Certainly that’s going to be important. But the good news for me is I’m playing really well,â€� Mickelson adds. “It’s the best I’ve played in a long time, certainly since the start of the year. If I’m patient, I’ll get better as the week goes on. The goal is just to get within striking distance for Sunday.â€�
SAN ANTONIO — Camilo Villegas chipped in twice to highlight a nine-birdie round that earned him an 8-under 64 and the first-round lead at the Valero Texas Open on Thursday. RELATED: Leaderboard | Cut prediction: Valero Texas Open Sung Kang, a 33-year-old South Korean, is two shots back with Cameron Tringale after each had a 66 at TPC San Antonio’s Oaks Course. Jordan Spieth, whose struggles the past three years appear to be subsiding after four top-10 finishes the past two months, is three back (67) with Seung-Yul Noh and Hideki Matsuyama. Phil Mickelson dropped to 15 shots back when he had a 10 on the 18th hole — he took two penalty shots and another three strokes trying to get away from a greenside stream — and ended with a 79. Villegas won the TOUR Championship in 2008 and the Wyndham Championship in 2014, but has endured injury and then the death of his 22-month-old daughter last year. His two top-10 finishes this year include a tie for eighth at the Honda Classic. “Sometimes it goes your way, and sometimes it doesn’t,” Villegas said. “The last few years I’ve been up and down with many things. We keep showing up and the results start showing up.” He bogeyed his opening hole Thursday and birdied six of seven holes in the middle of his round. That streak included putts of 23 and 20 feet and a chip-in from the fringe at his 13th hole. He finished up when he holed out from about 45 yards away to the side of the green. “Some days the hole is a little bit big,” Villegas said. “On (the last hole), I got really lucky. I hit a chip that was probably going off the green, and it hits the pin and goes in.” Kang, the 2019 Byron Nelson champ, got his round rolling with an eagle on his 11th hole. He hit the green in two on the par 5 from 292 yards and made a 30-foot eagle. “I played great today, but I didn’t start off very good,” Kang said. “I struggled a little bit with a new driver from the start, but I found a way to hit it on the back nine so started driving a lot better.” Kang birdied three of his last four, including his finishing hole with a 22-foot birdie. Spieth birdied three of his opening five holes. Looking for his first win since the 2017 Open Championship, he had steadily dropped in the world rankings until he hit No. 92 in January after missing the cut in five of eight starts. “Overall with the score, I certainly would have signed up for 5 under starting out,” Spieth said. “I felt like I played some really nice golf on our front nine. I didn’t quite hit it as good as I have been, but certainly the short game came through. I mean, 5 under around this track is a good score. I’d take four more of them.” Five of Spieth’s seven birdies came before he made the turn. For the day, three of his birdie putts came from longer than 15 feet, including a 21-footer at his second hole. “Overall, just chipped and putted really well, which was the difference-maker today,” he said. He used a putter from the fringe while 16 feet away for birdie at his second-to-last hole. He made up for hitting into the bunker on the right off the tee, but he couldn’t recover on his 18th. He pushed another tee shot right and hit a provisional. But he found his tee shot near trees, punched it out near the green, yet failed to get up and down and settled for his second bogey. “It just got a little bit off there today off the tee on contact,” Spieth said. “The rest of the swing, I mean, I feel like I’m swinging the same and out in front of it and putting a good move on it.” Spieth has used the Texas Open to bolster his game in the past. In 2015, he finished second after four straight birdies late. Two weeks later, he won his first major at the Masters and in June won the U.S. Open. In February, Spieth had a share of the lead after a third-round 61 at Phoenix and he led by two shots going into the final day at Pebble Beach. Last month at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard in Florida, he was two shots out of the lead heading into the final day and finished tied for fourth. Scottie Scheffler, a Dallas native and former Texas Longhorns standout like Spieth, shared opening-round 68s with Tom Hoge and Sebastian Munoz. Scheffler was runner-up last week in Austin at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. He made up for a bogey on his 17th with an 11-foot birdie putt at his last. “I made a few silly mistakes here and there, kind of two sloppy bogeys, but other than that, I felt like I played really solid,” Scheffler said. “I was pretty frustrated bogeying a par 5 there towards the end of the round, so having a nice bounce back will give me some momentum and make me rest a little easier.” In addition to Mickelson’s final-hole struggles, he had a three-putt inside nine feet and on the next hole missed from less than four feet. Abraham Ancer was tied with Spieth at 4 under early in his second nine, but a triple-bogey and bogey finish put an even-par 72 on his card.
