Max Homa wins Genesis Invitational in playoff

SAN ANTONIO – In a Hall of Fame career that took him all over the world, Greg Norman spent very little time at historic Riviera. He played a couple of PGA Championships there but was never in contention. He made one start at the regular PGA TOUR stop, missing the cut. Ten total rounds. Still, his limited visits left an impression. Riviera was on his mind less than a decade ago when he was designing the AT&T Oaks course at TPC San Antonio. Specifically, Riviera’s sixth hole, memorable because it has a pot bunker in the middle of the green, dividing the putting surface essentially into four quadrants. “I always liked that hole,� Norman said. “I liked the concept. Can’t do it everywhere. Just has to be the right topo (topography), the right distance.� Norman thought he found the right spot as he sketched out the holes for TPC San Antonio. But he wanted to make sure. Luckily, the player-consultant on his design was Sergio Garcia, who at that point in his career had played Riviera in 22 competitive rounds, more than double Norman’s total. Garcia loves Riviera. When Norman brought up the idea, Garcia was quickly on board. They discussed it, tinkered with it, then finally went through with the idea. The end result is the 183-yard 16th hole. Inspired by George Thomas’ masterpiece, but distinctly Norman, on display again this week at the Valero Texas Open. “He obviously liked the sixth hole there, so he wanted to do something kind of similar but with his touch and a different flair to it,� said Garcia, playing at TPC San Antonio for the first time since 2010. “I think this one, the nice thing about it is you have more pin positions than you do at Riviera. “For example, the green is a little bit bigger, the bunker is also a little bit bigger. It just brings a different element to it. It’s a different look and it’s just kind of like a par 3 with two greens if you look at it that way.� More than that, according to Norman. “Once we drew it out and you could actually see that there were like three or four different greens in one, depending on where the PGA TOUR puts the tee markers,� he said. “It’s a challenging hole because it’s not just a regular par 3. It’s like three or four different par 3s in one.� A year ago, the first round pin placement was front right, the second was back right, the third was back left, and the final round was front left. Different looks each day, and with the wind that often whips through the course, different conditions. Brendan Steele, the 2011 Valero Texas Open champ, recalled having a 185-yard tee shot last year with a helping wind. He took out a wedge and finished pin-high. “It gets so windy here that it can play really different,� Steele said. “… It’s basically four different greens – and they’re all very small.� Adam Scott, who won at TPC San Antonio the first time it hosted the event in 2010, said he played a 6-iron into a front pin placement with the wind into his face during Wednesday’s practice round. “It’s interesting for sure, but it’s got us talking about it, which is a good thing,� said Scott, making his first start here since 2011. Most players are adept at avoiding the bunker in the middle of the green. In fact, in last year’s final round, just three players found that bunker with their tee shots; in the second round, it was just two, with the majority of misses being far right of the green. Overall, less than 25 tee shots in the four rounds landed in the middle bunker (there are four other bunkers guarding the green). A look at where Kevin Chappell hit his tee shot at the 16th in each round during his 2017 win at TPC San Antonio. “The bunker’s actually OK to the back pins and not very good to the front pins,� Steele said. “You have to kind of know where your miss is and then stand in there and hit a great shot in order to get it close to the hole. There’s not a lot of room for error.� Of course, finding the bunker is not the quirkiest result about the 16th tee shot. Instead, it’s finding the green – but on the wrong side of the bunker, forcing players to chip over the bunker to the pin. That’s what happened to Kevin Chappell in the first round in 2013. With the pin set in the back right, his tee shot landed 20 yards away on the front left of the green, forcing him to use a wedge. “I think I did all right,� Chappell said, recalling the shot. Indeed, he did. Finished 4 feet from the pin for par. That’s the only time in 25 career rounds at TPC San Antonio that Chappell has landed on the wrong side of the bunker. A year ago when he broke through for his first PGA TOUR win, he played the hole in 1 under, saving par from the middle bunker in the first round, and rolling in a 11-1/2 foot birdie putt to the back left pin in the third round. Chappell doesn’t worry about the middle bunker. Depending on the set-up, he has bigger concerns. “I was talking to my pro-am group today about it,� Chappell said Wednesday on the eve of his title defense. “That back right pin or middle right pin’s one of the scarier pins we play all year. Not because of penalty shots and that side of it, but the pin is 9 feet from the people, so you can hit a good shot and hit someone. “That’s never a comfortable feeling.� And it’s never comfortable having to take out a wedge when you’re on the putting surface. Steele hasn’t had to during his seven starts at TPC San Antonio. But he has been on greens that required him to chip over an obstacle to reach the pin. It happened once on the 18th green at Bay Hill when his approach landed front right, with the pin tucked to the back right on the green that wraps around the back portion of the pond. At the time, Arnold Palmer was waiting to greet players as they finished – making an uncomfortable shot even more nervy in front of the legend. “I’ve heard a lot of guys say, well, they shouldn’t put the pin over here and put the green over there if they don’t want us to hit a chip,� Steele said. “I mean, how else are we supposed to get it there? “I didn’t want Arnie to see me take a big chunk out of Bay Hill – but that’s the shot. I needed to play it that way.� And at various times this week, players will play a similar shot at the 16th. Sticking a bunker in the middle of the green may challenge the traditional approach of golf course design, but if it was good enough for George Thomas, then it’s good enough for Greg Norman. Plus, it just makes livens up things. “It’s just a bigger version of Riviera,� said Martin Piller, who tied for fourth at Valero last year and made his first TOUR start at Riviera this season. “I think it’s fun. It’s cool. It gives a lot of different looks at it. It’s like every day is a new hole, with the bunker in the middle of it. Everytime you play it, based on where the pin is, it’s got a new set of challenges.�

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2019 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, End of Round 1: Round 1 course scoring averages: Pebble Beach (PB): -0.6 strokes per round Spyglass Hill (SH): 0.0 Monterey Peninsula (MP): -2.1 Current cutline: 67 players at -2 or better (T54th position) Top 3 most likely projected cutlines (cut is after 3rd round to low 60 and ties): 4 under par: 16.9% 5 under par: 16.8% 3 under par: 14.9% Top 5 win probabilities (first round course listed): Dustin Johnson (MP, T9, -5) : 14.9% Jason Day (MP, T3, -6) : 9.2% Tony Finau (PB, T29, -3): 7.3% Phil Mickelson (MP, T3, -6): 4.2% Si Woo Kim (PB, T3, -6): 3.7% NOTE: These reports are based off the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cut�, “Top 20�, “Top 5�, and “Win� probabilities every 5 minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 10K simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page.

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In many ways, Riley is your typical boy. Spunky. Spontaneous. Ready for anything, like catching lizards and frogs or jumping on the trampoline. So, when the 18-month-old started being a little “fussy,” his mom, Taylor Raney, says she thought he was just having one of his “moments.” And the bruises? Well, what kid doesn’t fall down or bump into something? When Riley started running a fever of 103 degrees, though, Taylor took him to a doctor who prescribed antibiotics for an ear infection. When the symptoms persisted five days later, she went to another physician, who thankfully decided to run some blood work. “I knew that 78,000 white blood cells was not normal,” recalls Taylor, who was studying to be a nurse. Within a day, Riley had been admitted to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. He had Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), the most common form of childhood cancer. Riley’s grandmother, Kim Raney, remembers six doctors walking into the room to deliver the news. “I thought my heart was going to hit the ground,” says Kim, who has worked at FedEx for 33 years. “ … And then that doctor smiled at his mama and … I’m here to tell you that you will see your son’s children.” Not that the next two-and-a-half years were easy. Riley had infusions of chemotherapy at St. Jude. He also took a cocktail of drug by mouth. “We had a pharmacy on our counter basically,” Taylor recalls. There were setbacks, too; infections and fevers that sent him back to the hospital. The family nearly spent one Christmas there. But Riley is now a cancer survivor, over a year removed from his last chemotherapy treatment that brought the nurses and doctors into his room at St. Jude to sing to him and throw confetti into the air. They all signed a “No More Chemo” poster, too. On Wednesday morning during the FedEx St. Jude Championship, Riley will be the focus of another celebration, one that marks the 10th anniversary of the Purple Eagle Program. FedEx started the program to honor a St. Jude patient who is also the child or relative of one of the more than 600,000 employees of the global express transportation company. Riley is this year’s honoree, and his name has been placed under the pilot’s window on a Cessna Caravan turbojet just like the ones that FedEx uses to fly packages to smaller towns in the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America. The plane, which was transported wingless through Memphis on I-240 and reassembled on the grounds of TPC Southwind is on display where the first event in the FedExCup Playoffs is being contested this week. All nine previous Purple Eagle recipients will be on hand as the rambunctious Riley, who enters kindergarten this year, unveils his logo. Taylor said the recognition almost validates the struggles her family of five endured. She and her husband Brennan have an older son, Brantley, who has Crohn’s disease, while the youngest, Finley, was just three weeks old when Riley was diagnosed. “I feel like that it’s extremely awesome for the company to do something like this,” Taylor said. “Not only are you honoring someone from St. Jude that’s been through a lot, but you’re also honoring your own employee who has made a huge career with you guys. I think that says a lot about your company.” The Purple Eagle program is the brainchild of Bill West Jr., the vice president of supplemental aircraft operations at FedEx Express and a 38-year employee of the company. He’d seen the delivery trucks on display at the tournament each year, and he thought having one of FedEx’s smaller delivery planes would be even more impactful. “Then the idea took root, I guess, as a way to further connect with the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and bring more awareness to the life-saving work that it does,” West said. “… And the dedication event is now 10 years strong, as we’re calling it. “And with all the 10 honorees returning for this anniversary event, it is just miraculous.” Riley is in remission now, and his family can take heart in the knowledge that about 90% of the children with ALL are cured, according to the St. Jude website. But some of the past Purple Eagle honorees, like 23-year-old Allie Allen, whose plane was dedicated in 2014, are still battling. She was 14 when she started having focal seizures. Allie said it was like she “spaced out” for a minute. She could hear and see everything, but she just couldn’t react. An EEG revealed seizure activity on the right side of her brain, and MRI showed a tumor the size of a golf ball. Doctors thought it was benign due to the circular shape, so the eighth-grader went with her dance team to a national competition, which they won. She returned to the reality of an eight-hour surgery and the news that the tumor was cancerous. She had 33 rounds of brain radiation at St. Jude before returning to high school. Three months later, she got another bad scan. “This time my whole brain lit up and there were only certain spots that were operable,” Allie said. Doctors told her she would not survive the assault and suggested she do the things on her bucket list while they considered treatment options. So, Allie and her family went to Disney World. When she returned and had another scan, her brain was completely clean. She says her doctors still can’t explain it. Her neurologist came to see her, crying, because it’s such a miracle that happened, Allie says. “Have you ever been to St. Jude before,” asks Allie who hopes to work in fundraising for the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities that support St. Jude. “I like to call it the Disney World of hospitals because it’s such a different atmosphere. It’s honestly amazing. They have this thing called the Alphabet Wall and it’s the ABCs of cancer that each patient writes their own letter, and my letter was letter for miracle. “It’s still up there.” But when Allie was 15, she was diagnosed with another brain tumor. Surgery followed, along with another 33 rounds of full brain and spine radiation. She lost her ability to walk and eat for a time. Doctors told her she probably wouldn’t be alive for her high school graduation. “I just graduated college,” says the Ole Miss alum proudly. “So, it truly is a miracle that I’m still here today and I’m getting married in December, too. I’m hitting all these big milestones that nobody ever thought I would be alive for.” Her fiancée is Parker Fleming, and as luck would have it, he happens to work in the IT department at FedEx. Allie still has a small tumor in her brain, as well as a cyst right next to it. There has been minimal growth for the past five or six years, though, and the doctors at St. Jude are in what she calls a “watch and waiting process.” She still has digestive issues from where the radiation burned through her stomach and suffers from alopecia that has nothing to do with the cancer. While treating Allie, the doctors at St. Jude have identified five new types of brain cancer. She is one of seven people in the world with hers, which they call a high grade neuroepithelial tumor MN1. There is no treatment yet, but the phenomenal St. Jude researchers are working to find one just as they follow Riley’s progress every year. Allie remembers feeling like a princess the day her plane was dedicated. Her father, who is a pilot at FedEx, was the one who got to tell her she was going to be a Purple Eagle honoree. “I was so excited,” she says. “… I love going every year and meeting all the new patients who are blessed to have their name on a plane as well, but also the fact that all of us are still alive is amazing.” Riley’s grandmother, the woman he calls Maw-Maw, started working at FedEx in the mail room, then moved to accounts receivable and later worked as a courier for 25 years. She now works as a dispatcher for FedEx’s massive fleet of delivery trucks. Kim was still learning the ropes of her most recent position when Riley got sick. She got the news he was headed to St. Jude at 10 p.m. on a Friday. One of her co-workers told her he’d cover her shift the next day. Her supervisor told her to go and be with her family and take as long as she needed. “I couldn’t have done it without my co-workers – that’s a fact,” says Kim, who, along with her husband, Dale, took care of Riley’s brothers while he was in the hospital. One of those co-workers encouraged Kim to submit an application for the Purple Eagle program. Her granddaughter, Maya, who has sickle cell disease, was the 2018 recipient. So, Kim filled out the form but promptly forgot about it until West came to a meeting to give her the news. “I just sat there because it went straight over my head,” Kim says. “I mean, everybody was looking at me, like how can you not be jumping up and down. … And I looked at my coworker and I said, did he just say, Riley? She said, Kim, yes, he did, and everybody started laughing.” Like her daughter-in-law, Kim was overwhelmed by the caring people at St. Jude, as well as its positive atmosphere. She said the first time she went to the hospital “it was like, oh my God. I felt like I was at home. I can’t explain it, … “You almost felt guilty from all the kindness,” Kim says, thinking about the homemade masks and blankets, even the food vouchers for the family which was never billed for Riley’s treatment. “You’re just kind of like, what can I do to pay y’all back?” The way Kim sees it, FedEx and St. Jude is a match made in heaven. “These are two of the world-renowned names,” she says. “People from all over the world come to St. Jude. But then what people don’t realize — and I’ve learned this from being a courier and being in dispatch now with trucks — people don’t realize what FedEx does for the world. “From medical supplies all over the world, the trucks that we take all over the United States for relief from hurricanes, tornadoes or fires, the truckloads of medical supplies that we send and the airplanes that we charter to fly stuff all over the world. “St. Jude and FedEx — that can’t be a better partnership.” West is thrilled to see how the Purple Eagle program has endured. He loves getting to know the recipients, and one of his favorite memories is of the first honoree, McKaylee. She had a rare and malignant brain tumor and wasn’t expected to live past 5 but she’s now 15 years old. Fredrick Smith, the founder of FedEx, was among those in attendance at the dedication that year. “She jumped up in his arms and said, ‘Thank you for my airplane,’” West remembers. That just about says it all, doesn’t it? FedEx Purple Eagle recipients For more infomation on FedEx Purple Eagle recipients click here.

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