Mad Bets: Tiger, Manning vs. Phil, Brady

FORT WORTH, Texas — Steve Stricker was worried about withdrawing from the first round of the Fort Worth Invitational. Now he’s near the top of the leaderboard. Stricker felt his back crack on his fourth hole on Thursday and had trouble walking on his front nine. He signed for a 5-under 65 at Colonial Country Club, though, and was two back of leader Charley Hoffman after the morning wave completed play. Stricker, who won at Colonial in 2009, started Thursday’s round on the 10th tee at 8:06 a.m. The pain hit when he made impact with his 6-iron tee shot on the par-3 13th. He bogeyed the hole to fall to 2 over par. “I felt my lower-back crack right where I had surgery back in 2014, pretty much right on the spot,â€� Stricker said. “I tried to walk to the green and that wasn’t going so well. It kind of tightened up on me. “There were a couple times there where I was wondering if I should even be trying, if I should walk off and not risk injuring it some more.â€� He did keep going, and mounted an impressive comeback around the turn. He was 7 under par and bogey-free on his final 14 holes. He played the six-hole stretch from Nos. 15-2 in 6 under, including an eagle on the par-5 first hole, where he holed out from a greenside bunker. He added another birdie on the par-4 seventh to match his lowest score of the season. “It didn’t look or feel very good for a while,â€� he said. “I somehow just managed through it. It seemed to kind of loosen up and let go the more I kept playing. “I just kept plodding along.â€� Stricker, 51, has two wins and two runner-ups in four individual starts on PGA TOUR Championship. He’s made the cut in four of six PGA TOUR events in 2018. Stricker is No. 149 in the FedExCup standings, and needs some good finishes to make it back to the postseason. He has failed to qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs just once (2015) in the 11 years since the FedExCup’s inception. This is his third consecutive week of competition. He finished T23 at THE PLAYERS and runner-up at the Regions Tradition, one of PGA TOUR Champion’s majors. “I’ve been feeling fatigued the last week or so. I don’t know if that has played a role in it. Maybe I’m old and I’ve played too much,â€� Stricker said. “It was a little scary. It was a pretty good crack and I had no idea what had happened.â€� He said that he would seek further treatment and diagnosis after his round and would skip Thursday’s post-round practice session to rest his back. NEW PUTTER PAYS OFF FOR HOFFMAN This is Hoffman’s 10th start at the Fort Worth Invitational, and seventh in a row. He’s never missed a cut at Hogan’s Alley, but he’s hardly found himself in contention, either. He has just one top-10 — a T10 in 2015 — at Colonial. That could change this week. Hoffman’s 63 on Thursday was his low round at Colonial by two shots. He missed just two greens and three fairways and didn’t record a bogey. A new putter helped Hoffman have his low round of the season by three shots. He gained more than two strokes on the greens Thursday. He dispatched the putter that he’s used for the past five years for a heavier one. “It worked today,” he said. “Putting is a fickle part of the game, so hopefully the good mojo continues.” Hoffman is one of just two players (Phil Mickelson) to qualify for the BMW Championship in every FedExCup season. That event is reserved for the top 70 in the FedExCup. Hoffman is 95th in this season’s standings, though. He has failed to record a top-10 in 15 events. NOTABLES Rickie Fowler shot 67 in his first round at Colonial since 2014. Fowler, who started on the 10th hole, made four birdies in a five-hole stretch from Nos. 15-1. Hitting fairways is a high priority at Colonial, so Fowler added a 2-iron to his bag to use from the tee this week. “That’s the name of the game on this golf course, get it in the short grass,â€� Fowler said. Jordan Spieth opened with a 1-under 69, his 17th sub-par score in 21 rounds at Colonial. His putting struggles continued Thursday, as he lost more than 1.5 strokes on the greens. He three-putted from 9 feet on the sixth hole, his 15th of the day, but birdied the next hole to get under par. He also was 0 for 2 from 7-10 feet on Thursday.

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NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. – Justin Rose enjoys an annual trip to Philadelphia, usually in the fall when the weather is cool and sweaters are a necessary article of clothing. “That’s my favorite time of year to play golf,â€� he said. “It reminds me of how I grew up playing golf in the U.K.â€� The yearly trip serves as a reminder of his biggest triumph. He takes friends to Merion Golf Club, where he won the U.S. Open in 2013. The club cuts the hole in the same back-left location that was used when he won five years ago. On Rose’s first return, all his companions wore his outfit from the U.S. Open’s final round. They forced him to change into matching clothes. “Slightly embarrassing, but it was fun,â€� he said. Merion is closed this year to undergo a Gil Hanse renovation, so Rose’s trip has undertaken a different context. Instead of playing with friends, he’s among the top contenders for the FedExCup. He’s third in the FedExCup standings with just two events remaining. If he remains in the top 5 after this week, he can clinch the Cup with a victory at the TOUR Championship on Sept. 23. Rose is playing on familiar territory at this week’s BMW Championship. Aronimink, which is less than eight miles from Merion, is on the list of historic venues where he has hoisted a trophy. He won the 2010 Quicken Loans National here. He’s also won at Colonial, Congressional, Muirfield Village, Valderrama and Royal Aberdeen. Aronimink underwent a restoration since the TOUR last visited here in 2011. Hanse, one of the top architects of this era, oversaw the work, which returned the course to its original Donald Ross design. Trees were removed, fairways were widened and bunkers were added. The greens were expanded, as well, to add hole locations. “It’s may be slightly more gentle, a bit more room out there than when I last played in 2011,â€� said Rose, who won the gold medal at the 2016 Olympics on a Hanse design. Rose arrives in good form, as well. He birdied four of his final six holes Monday to finish runner-up to Bryson DeChambeau at the Dell Technologies Championship. It was Rose’s fifth top-3 finish of the season. He has qualified for the TOUR Championship in seven of the past eight seasons, but just once has he been in the top 5 of the FedExCup entering the TOUR Championship. He was third in 2011 (after winning the BMW Championship). He finished T20 at the TOUR Championship as Bill Haas won at East Lake to claim the FedExCup. East Lake, site of the season finale, is a historic venue that would fit in nicely with Rose’s other victorious venues. He has finished second at the home course of Bobby Jones on two occasions (2012, ’15). Even in the midst of golf’s youth movement, the 38-year-old Rose is still having one of the best seasons of his career. His nine top-10s are third-most on TOUR, trailing only Dustin Johnson and Tony Finau. Johnson and Rose are the only players to finish in the top 10 in more than half their starts this season (Rose is 9 for 16). Rose also finished in the top 10 in all four of last season’s FedExCup Playoffs events, giving him 13 top-10s in his last 20 TOUR starts. The biggest improvement in his game has come on the greens. He ranks ninth in Strokes Gained: Putting (+0.51), an improvement of more than 100 spots and 2.3 strokes per tournament from last season. “Sometimes people are afraid to change what they do or how they do it,â€� said Rose’s long-time instructor, Sean Foley. “His lack of satisfaction in what he’s doing has really pushed us to look under every rock.â€� Many players suffer a fall-off in other parts of their game when making such a large improvement in another. They spend so much time practicing their weakness that they neglect their strengths. That hasn’t been the case for Rose, though. He’s remained one of the TOUR’s best ball-strikers while becoming an elite putter. He ranks ninth in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green this season. He’s also in the top 15 of Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green, a testament to the well-rounded game that has made him one of this season’s best players. Rose started using the claw grip in the fall of 2016 and has improved areas like green-reading and alignment. Rose said he employs “three or fourâ€� different strategies, including AimPoint, to read putts. “You can have a perfect stroke and not make putts,â€� Rose said. “The green-reading, the speed control, all of that is a huge factor.â€� This is just the second multiple-win season of his career. The other came in 2010, when he earned his first two PGA TOUR titles in a three-event span. He sandwiched a ninth-place finish at the Travelers Championship – where he shot 75 after starting the final round with a three-shot lead – between wins at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide and AT&T National. The latter was played at Aronimink. Rose started the final round with a four-shot lead. He led by five strokes after eagling the par-5 ninth hole with a 5-wood that stopped inches from the hole. Three-putts on the back nine’s first two holes put the title in tenuous position, though. He made par on the final seven holes to finish one shot ahead of Ryan Moore. Moore’s 65 matched Sunday’s low score. “I knew having not closed out last week, it was important for me to do it today,â€� Rose said after that win. He knows what it takes to win at Aronimink. That experience could help him hoist the FedExCup for the first time.

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