Matsuyama, Johnson commit early to 2017 WGC-HSBC Championship

NAPA, Calif. – Max Homa was 6 years old when he and his dad walked into the clubhouse at Vista Valencia Golf Course and saw Joe Greiner, one of the best 10-year-old golfers around. Homa was star-struck. Even his dad was a little star-struck. “There were two guys, two kids sitting there, Brandon Christianson and Joe Greiner,” Homa said after carding a 7-under 65 to win the Fortinet Championship by a shot over Maverick McNealy (68). “I remember my dad pointed to them and said, ‘I’m pretty sure those are the two best kids here,’ and I just remember Joe’s head was just enormous. “It’s still big now,” he added, “but on that little body as a kid it really stood out.” Some 24 years later, Homa and Greiner make up one of the most potent player/caddie partnerships on the PGA TOUR. In weeks off, Homa stays sharp in part by playing against Greiner at home in Scottsdale, Arizona. And on TOUR, their easy familiarity and Greiner’s intimate knowledge of Homa’s game pays dividends. “He’s an incredible caddie all the time,” Homa said, “but he’s particularly amazing when it’s firm, just telling me what he thinks numbers or where the ball needs to land.” Case in point: Homa’s pivotal hole-out for eagle from 95 yards at the par-4 12th hole. Greiner, having watched Homa scare the hole with a succession of wedge shots, told him where to land the ball. The shot kick started a furious finish – 5 under for his last seven holes – that netted the Cal grad his third TOUR title after playing from behind for most of the day. Homa was a ball-striking machine on the weekend and made over 108 feet of putts in the final round to surpass Stanford product McNealy in what became a sort of unofficial golf version of the Cal-Stanford Big Game. All of which surprised Greiner not one iota, he said. He saw the greatness decades ago. What was Homa like at 6? “Shy,” Greiner said. “He looked up to us for whatever reason. I think he was intimidated by us until he was probably 15 or 16.” Homa was 17 or 18, Greiner added, when he really started to blossom. Greiner was playing professionally in Canada. “And I played with him,” he said, “and was like, you know, he’s got something different to him. You could just tell.” Sure enough, Homa had a solid college career, worked his way onto the PGA TOUR, and won the 2019 Wells Fargo Championship and 2021 Genesis Invitational at Riviera, beating Tony Finau in a playoff. Still, despite evidence to the contrary, and Greiner in his ear, Homa could be the last guy to realize he was great. The difference in 2021 is that’s starting to change. Homa played with world No. 1 Jon Rahm over the first two rounds at Silverado – and came out ahead. He played with Hall of Famer Phil Mickelson on Saturday – and came out ahead. His self-belief, the last piece of the puzzle, is crystalizing before our eyes. “Yeah, I think I’ve always struggled a bit with confidence and walking around like I’m the man out here,” Homa said. Each time he’s won, though, he’s gotten to compare himself to those players and seen that, well, maybe he is the man. When he won the Wells Fargo he got to play with Rory McIlroy. When he won the Genesis, it was Dustin Johnson. “When I’m out here playing with people like Rahm and Phil and DJ and Rory and JT and Berger and all the guys,” Homa said, “I see that, yes, there’s a level of excellence that’s incredible, but it’s not – I don’t feel like I’m chasing a ghost.” Added Greiner: “It’s nice to play alongside them and see that what they’re doing isn’t so different than what he’s doing.” Meanwhile, Homa, 30, has intensified his focus. He used to host a golf podcast with Shane Bacon but gave it up when he decided he wanted to keep the main thing the main thing. “I felt like it wasn’t healthy for me,” he said. Although the Fortinet was his third TOUR win, it was the first witnessed by his wife, Lacey. He joked afterward that she had only seen one top-10 finish from him, so it was about time. Greiner, though, has been there for it all. “He’s proved it that he’s a winner,” Greiner said. “He just needs to put himself in that position; that’s all he’s lacking. When he’s feeling good, he’s pretty deadly.”

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Tiger Woods memorabilia continues to be a hot seller this year. The latest example came Sunday, after a Scotty Cameron signed by Woods sold at auction for more than $300,000. The signed Scotty Cameron ‘Red Dot’ Newport 2 is the same model Woods used to win 14 of his 15 majors. This putter is said to have been made as a backup for Woods’ gamer before being signed by him at a 2005 fundraiser for the Tiger Woods Learning Center and auctioned off. Woods usually tested the backups to ensure they were to his liking but confirming that he used them is difficult because he did so in private. The signature ensures that Woods handled this putter, however. Before being auctioned this year, it was owned for the past 17 years by the same person who bought it at that 2005 fundraiser. The putter sold for $328,577, just a few months after the set of irons purported to be used by Woods in the famous Tiger Slam of 2000-01 went for more than $5 million. Four backup putters belonging to Woods have been sold at auction before this one, and this signed Cameron fell just short of the highest bid for any of those clubs. Another Woods backup sold in August 2021 for $393,000. The first one sold in 2015 for $29,000, according to Golf Digest, and another sold three years later for $44,000. In 2020, another Woods backup fetched $154,928. “The golf collecting industry has traditionally lagged behind other sports. But that’s been changing in a big way as collectors race to acquire the best Tiger Woods items,” said Ryan Carey, owner of Golden Ague Auctions, which hosted the bidding. “Over the past year, Tiger Woods has become his own collecting category. Collectors are starting to treat him and collect him like other GOATs – Michael Jordan, Tom Brady and Mickey Mantle.” This auction, which closed Sunday, also included another Scotty Cameron putter made for Woods ($86,525) and a wedge used by Woods ($39,816). Arnold Palmer’s “Old Faithful” putter was the auction’s second-costliest item, going for $126,680, followed by the Woods putter and Dwight Eisenhower’s clubs, which went for $59,731. Items from the auction can be viewed here.

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DALLAS – Full disclosure: I’m the wrong person to write this story. Anybody familiar with the writing team here at PGATOUR.COM knows that our Ben Everill – born in Wollongong, a coastal city south of Sydney — is our expert on all things Australian. He waves the Aussie flag so much that I have to remind him that yes, there are decent PGA TOUR pros from other parts of the world (especially from Texas, my home state). But Ben is not here at the AT&T Byron Nelson, taking a well-deserved week off. I’m at Trinity Forest and since I’m wearing a wide-brim hat that looks like part of Crocodile Dundee’s apparel script and have seen two Men at Work concerts, it’s on my watch to talk up the Aussies this week. Not that they need my help. Marc Leishman and Adam Scott and Matt Jones – all inside the top six through two rounds — are doing a fine job of it thus far. There are 13 Aussies in the field this week, and every time you turn around, it seems like one of them is making a move up the leaderboard. Pretty sure “Waltzing Matildaâ€� has become the unofficial dance song at the Pavilion party scene. Leishman, of course, has made the biggest move. He followed his 10-under 61 on Trinity Forest’s TOUR debut Thursday with a solid 5-under 66 and now takes a one-shot lead entering the weekend. He spent the first two days with Scott as one of his playing partners, and you would’ve thought they were playing a friendly at the National Golf Club on the Mornington Peninsula instead of a links-style course a few miles south of downtown Dallas. “It was great playing with Scotty,â€� Leishman said. “I think this course has got a real Australian flavor to it. Reminds me a lot of home. So that might have something to do with it.â€� Hitting 25 of 28 fairways, 33 of 36 greens and rolling in nearly 244 feet of putts in the first two days also might have something to do with it. Backing up a low round with another good one can be difficult, but Leishman got an early boost when he made a birdie putt from 55 feet, 10 inches on his third hole, the par-3 12th. He was off and running from there. “I love playing with Marc, especially a guy that is on form,â€� Scott said. “I almost felt like I had to hop on his coattails and get dragged along the birdie train a bit with him because he was running away yesterday. He’s a guy who I know loves this style of golf, so even feeding off some of his shot choices or club choices was easy for me. Kind of worked to my advantage.â€� Leishman was initially skeptical of the tournament move from TPC Four Seasons to Trinity Forest, mainly because his track record at the previous course was so solid – three top-5 finishes and three other top-15s in nine career starts. Once he saw the new venue, though, he was on board. He shouldn’t have been so worried. The AT&T Byron Nelson has always treated Australians well, no matter what course it’s played on. Peter Thomson was the first International winner of this event, in 1956 at Preston Hollow; the three previous winners, by the way, were Byron Nelson, Sam Snead and Ben Hogan. Bruce Devlin won in 1969 at Preston Trail; tied for second was another Aussie, Bruce Crampton. And at TPC Four Seasons, Scott (2008), Jason Day (2010) and Steven Bowditch (2015) have each won in the last 10 years. Bowditch, in fact, was even married at the resort, and took wedding photos on the 18th green. Australia is the only International country with two recipients of the Byron Nelson International Junior Golf Award, awarded to junior players not only for their performance inside the ropes but also inside the classroom and in the community. Ricky Kato was honored in 2012; Viraat Badhwar in 2013. So with that history as a backdrop, should we really be surprised that the Aussies are thriving this week? “Look, I think both of us feel comfortable on this kind of course,â€� Scott said. “You can see by the type of shots we pick to hit and some of the situations.â€� Added Jones: “I like to be able to bounce into pins, use slopes. It’s much more of an artistic way of playing golf instead of just hitting it and getting as close as you can … It just fits my eye.” It’s not just those Aussies at the top of the leaderboard. Cameron Percy is 6 under and off to one of his best starts in more than a year. Robert Allenby is 5 under and made the cut — it’s just his sixth made cut in 30 starts since the fall of 2015. Geoff Ogilvy — more on him later — made the cut, just his second in his last 12 starts. Even the guy who’s closest to Leishman sees Australian overtones. Aaron Wise — born in South Africa but raised in the United States — won the NCAA individual and team titles with Oregon, and considers Bandon Dunes a decent comparson for Trinity Forest. But he sees a better one. “I would relate it mostly to when I played over in Melbourne, Australia at Royal Melbourne,” said Wise, who’s 14 under after his 63 on Friday. “The fairways are firm and fast and the ball is going so far. You got to manage that. That’s probably the closest thing.” When developers first decided to build a course on the landfill at Trinity Forest, six golf design firms submitted bids. One of those was the firm led by past U.S. Open champ Ogilvy. Although he didn’t get the job – it went to Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore – the Australian remains so enamored of this place that he was featured in a series of videos explaining some of its nuances. Earlier this week, Ogilvy pointed out that Trinity Forest would take players out of their comfort zone – which, he noted, was a good thing. “We get cuddled in the way we get treated,â€� Ogilvy said, “but variety is one of the best attributes golf has, I think. It’s played in all sorts of different places and all sorts of different environments. “It’s a more rounded, well-rounded TOUR if we have a bit more stray in the set-up. It will make the players on a course like this, if they’re uncomfortable – it will make us better players. That can only be good for the game.â€� Australians wanting to make it big on the pro golf stage know they’ll have to give up the comforts of a Sandbelt course and play in either the United States or Europe. They’re used to making adjustments, feeling uncomfortable, having to think their way around a course. Consider Leishman’s second shot at the par-5 first hole. He pulled a 5-iron from 215 yards and aimed 50 feet left of the pin. It was a conservative approach but if he found trouble on the hole, he feared the possibility of a big number. That was his mindset for many of the holes through the first two rounds. “Very rarely aiming straight at a pin,â€� he said. “You’re always trying to play a little bit safer because you know how bad it is if you were to miss the green and then it runs off.â€� Scott and Jones, meanwhile, shot 65s to each finish at 10 under. Scott’s round was bogey-free while Jones fought back from a double bogey on his second hole of the day. Scott, of course, is trying to play his way into the U.S. Open by moving into the top 60 of the world rankings. He’s currently 65, so a big finish this weekend could do the trick. Playing a links-style course – he said it reminds him of the Lost Farm course at Barnbougle in Tasmania, and even his redesigned home course back in Royal Queensland – might have come at a perfect time. “I didn’t grow up on the Sandbelt, but I learned to play quickly as a kid down there,â€� Scott said. “Definitely the last eight or nine years, my understanding of links courses, especially at Open Championships, has gone way up.â€� Leishman and Scott are not playing together in Saturday’s third round but would love to be reunited in the final group Sunday. Two Aussies going head-to-head – that would really be something, especially Down Under. As for me, it’s time to wrap up this story. Starting to get hungry and need a little nibble. For some reason, I have a craving for Vegemite and maybe a few Anzac biscuits. Can’t imagine why.

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