Monday Qualifiers: Shriners Hospitals for Children Open

NAPA, Calif. – Tony Romo didn’t come close to making the cut in his first three PGA TOUR starts, twice at the Corales Punta Cana Resort & Club Championship and once at the AT&T Byron Nelson. Still, as was the case when he quarterbacked the Dallas Cowboys, he was undeterred by a little adversity. “Same thing I did in football,� Romo said after birdies on his last two holes for a 2-under 70 at Silverado, his best round on TOUR by four shots. “You just start from the beginning. You’re not very good, not very good, and then all of a sudden you make the leap somewhere and all of a sudden you can be more efficient and you can do things a little bit better.� With the afternoon wave still out on the course, Romo was tied for 24th place and squarely in contention to make his first cut. He made 122 feet of putts and beat his playing partners Beau Hossler (74) and Michael Gellerman (76) with ease. Related: Leaderboard “He played well, so that was fun to watch, and he’s a good guy,� said Gellerman, who calls himself a fan of the Minnesota Vikings. That’s the team that will play the Chicago Bears in Chicago on Sunday, a game Romo is scheduled to call for CBS, his day job. If he makes the cut, he has said he will stay at Silverado to finish out the tournament. Few observers gave Romo much of a chance to make the cut. When he shot 79-80 at the Corales last season, he missed the cut by a wide margin and beat only one pro who did not withdraw. He shot 77-82 there the year before. His best result came at the AT&T Byron Nelson on his home course, but scores of 76-74 weren’t even close to good enough to play into the weekend. “It’s embarrassing to stink,� Romo said after his five-birdie, three-birdie round at Silverado on Thursday. “I stunk a lot, so just trying to continue to improve and get better.� His highly public failures told him what he wasn’t good at, especially putting, but he worked hard with instructor Chris O’Connell on every aspect of his game. He’d seen that hard work pay off in his scores at home in Dallas, but executing in a TOUR event is another matter. “Just the scoring back home and in practice sessions have shown that I’ve done things a little better,� Romo said. “So that makes you excited to come out and test your game. I think it’s rewarding on a tough golf course to come out here and do that.�

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Hitting it straight is inconsequential if your alignment is off. That was the problem for Matt Wallace. A small tweak helped him get back on track and take the first-round lead at The RSM Classic. After switching to a putter with no sightline on the head, Wallace gained more than four strokes on the greens in his first-round 64 at Sea Island. GolfWRX had the chance to speak with Odyssey Tour Manager Joe Toulon about Wallace's new magic wand. Here's what he had to say. “Matt texted me after he finished up at Augusta saying he wanted to look at something different this week. He works with Mike Kanski (who works under Phil Kenyon) and Mike plays a big factor in deciding what putter works or will work for Matt," Toulon said. "Matt liked the numbers he was getting with his Las Vegas (model) in terms of how the face angle was matching up to his arc but something was off. He asked to try a couple different putters, one of them being an Atlanta with no sight line. We made sure the Atlanta had the same hosel as his Las Vegas because, again, his path was very good. However, we went with no sight line on the Atlanta as opposed to the top sight line on the Las Vegas. "We were able to make the putters and get them to him on Tuesday morning. Fortunately, Phil Kenyon has an Odyssey studio at Sea Island and Matt was able to do some solid testing with a few different putters. He worked with David Angelotti at the studio on Tuesday and we found that Matt aimed the Las Vegas about 2 degrees right of his intended line. When he tested the no sight line Atlanta, he aimed it just less than 0.5 degrees left. So obviously, because his path was still very good, he was all the sudden seeing his line much better and starting it on-line.” Here are the specifications of Wallace's new putter: • Atlanta H7 (flow neck) • Tour Black Finish • No Sight Line • 2.75 degrees loft/75 degree lie • 32.75 inches in length (to end of grip) • Black shaft • A6 swing weight • 666-gram overall weight • Grip: Two Thumb Light (Blue)

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Welcome to the Stats Insider, where we’ll take a closer look at Adam Scott’s long-awaited (official) win at historic Riviera Country Club. Scott also won here in 2005, but the victory was unofficial because the event was shortened to 36 holes. Riviera rewards ball-striking, and that’s exactly what happened this week. Scott is one of the best iron players in the game and that was on display at the Genesis Invitational. RELATED: Aussie Presidents Cup pact propels Scott | The clubs Scott used to win at Riviera 1. ON THE DANCE FLOOR: Scott finished third in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green, behind only Sung Kang and Collin Morikawa. Scott led the field in greens in regulation, hitting two more than anyone else in the field. Riviera’s firm greens annually rank among the toughest to hit on TOUR. The field hit just 56% of the greens last week. That was the lowest greens-hit percentage this season and 12% below the TOUR’s season-long greens-in-regulation percentage. 2. STRONG APPROACH: We shouldn’t be surprised. Adam Scott has been the best iron player on TOUR over the last five seasons. He has the highest Strokes Gained: Approach per round among the 135 players who’ve played at least 200 ShotLink-measured rounds since the start of the 2016 season. 3. GOLDEN OLDIE: Riviera also rewards experience, and Scott is the latest example. He turns 40 on July 16. Since 2010, only The Open Championship has had a higher average age of winners. 4. IN THE WOODS: Tournament host Tiger Woods got off to a promising start, shooting 4-under-par on his opening nine holes. He was 15 over on the next 63 holes, though, and finished last in the field at 11-over 295. This marked the fourth-highest 72-hole score of Woods’ career. 5. PUTTING STRUGGLES: Woods finished second-to-last in Strokes Gained: Putting, losing more than 8 strokes on the greens. It was the worst Strokes Gained: Putting performance of his career. Four of Woods’ five worst Strokes Gained: Putting performances have come since 2018. Woods four-putted the 13th hole in the third round. He also four-putted in his previous start, at the Farmers Insurance Open. Of Woods’ 14 recorded four-putts in his PGA TOUR career, four have come since the 2018 U.S. Open, a span of 82 rounds. It took him more than 1,100 rounds to record his first 10 four-putts on the PGA TOUR. This is just the second season in which Woods has had multiple recorded four-putts. He had four four-putts in 1998. Woods also four-putted Riviera’s 13th hole in 2000, making it the only hole on which he’s recorded multiple four-putts in his career. He went on to win three majors that year.

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