Love from Tiger Woods fires up Finau ahead of continued FedExCup push

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Jordan Spieth was good, very good, bad and relentless. It all added up to a 6-under 64 in the opening round of the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club. The 2015 FedExCup champion and former world No. 1 went 5-under-par in a five-hole stretch on the back nine, salvaged bogeys after wide-right tee shots at the 12th and 18th holes and sits just two behind co-leaders Byeong Hun An and Sungjae Im. “It’s trending in the right direction,� Spieth said. “I think it’s still a week or two away as far as the control, full control off the tee and into the greens.� In a sense, Spieth’s opening round was a microcosm of his season. He ranked 108th in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, but second in Strokes Gained: Putting (121 feet of made putts). No putts were bigger, emotionally, than his 15-foot bogey save at the par-3 12th and 21-footer to save bogey at the par-4 18th. These came after wild tee shots that missed way right of his target, the one at the 12th coming to rest on a fluffy downslope, the one on 18 going out of bounds. “What you got to see today as a fan was heart and soul and grit,� David Duval said on the Golf Channel. “Somebody that’s fighting.� Spieth came into this week at 67th in the FedExCup, meaning he’s good for THE NORTHERN TRUST at Liberty National next week, but on the bubble for the (top-70) BMW Championship. The problem for the 11-time PGA TOUR winner has been his inability to keep big numbers off the scorecard, and that results from his inability to fully tame his long game. Simply put, he still has the big miss, he knows it, and this results in what he calls “scar tissue.� Although he has worked his way back on the greens and was sixth in Strokes Gained: Putting coming into the Wyndham, he was a distant 183rd on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, which is odd for a guy who was at the absolute pinnacle of the game four years ago. The pundits continue to debate what happened. After Spieth tied his lowest round this season, Brandel Chamblee said on Golf Channel that he could be “on the edge of oblivion.� Or, history might show, he’s on the edge of finally figuring this out. Spieth thinks the latter. When he misses, he says, he gets quick. At the 18th hole, he dropped his club after blocking his first drive into someone’s backyard so far right of the fairway, he didn’t bother looking for the ball. Part of the problem, he said, was tactical. “I should have just played that, you know, that fade off the left side of the tee instead of trying to go to that draw with a driver, trying to be the hero,� he said after making birdie with his second ball. “It’s hard to cut it enough to get into trouble if you line up left there, so that’s certainly the plan the next few days.� Meanwhile, he’s looking on the bright side, and that starts with his putting. “I went from like 200th last year to the top 10,� he said. “That’s a pretty massive turnaround, and I needed it.� Whether he can get the big miss out of his bag and tighten up his tee-to-green game remains to be seen.

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Harris English … If we’re keeping it real, the seven-year TOUR member should be beyond Sleeper status by now. It was only 20 months ago when he eked inside the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking. Alas, prior to last week’s T11 at the CareerBuilder Challenge, he had sunk to 287th. Now slotted 252nd, he’s positioned to marry four strong rounds in the Coachella Valley with a perfect record in five trips to the Farmers Insurance Open. His record here includes a playoff loss in 2015 and a T14 last year, which was his second-best finish in all of 2017. Ollie Schniederjans … Speaking of talents who don’t project to cheat as Sleepers for long, the Georgia Tech product is looking to build off both a T9 at last year’s Farmers and a T7 at the Sony Open in Hawaii two weeks ago. He led the field at Waialae in fewest putts per GIR and co-led in par breakers. Piggybacking course success and solid current form is a potentially intriguing sub-narrative of where he’s deciding to compete. The 24-year-old has four top 25s this season and he’s already withdrawn early from two commitments, both at sites where he struggled previously in his brief career (Mayakoba, CareerBuilder). Each may have been for different reasons, but possessing the intelligence and patience to pick and choose layouts that best suit his game is as invaluable as the rest those decisions yield. Michael Thompson … The 32-year-old is competing with the safety net of conditional status if he doesn’t collect a little over 37 FedExCup points in his next three starts via a medical extension (in the Web.com Tour graduate reshuffle category), but those starts are still precious, so choosing where to burn the next one is critical in terms of leveraging playing time for the remainder of the season. Considering he needs no worse than a two-way T23 to get the job done, he’s made a great decision in showing at Torrey Pines where he’s 5-for-6 with top-15 finishes in 2015 and 2017. Corey Conners … He hasn’t missed yet – cuts, that is. The rookie has finished no better than T30 at the season-opening Safeway Open in northern California, but he’s 7-for-7 upon arrival for his latest tournament debut, so the former standout from Canada is figuring out how to survive. Torrey Pines will give him all he can handle, but he’s equipped with the proper skill set to make noise. Currently T34 on TOUR in total driving, T48 in greens hit and 29th in strokes gained: off-the-tee. Julian Suri … If you’re not familiar with him, that will change. A year ago at this time, he sat 1,125th in the Official World Golf Ranking. Today, he’s 62nd. That’s what happens following a pair of European Tour victories, a trio of T8s and a co-runner-up finish in his last start in Hong Kong two months ago. He finished sixth in scoring average on the European Tour in 2017, ahead of the likes of Jon Rahm (seventh), Peter Uihlein (eighth), Henrik Stenson (ninth) and Matthew Fitzpatrick (11th). Now 26 years of age, the Duke product will barnstorm the next three stops on the West Coast Swing.

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