Monday qualifiers: Wells Fargo Championship

It’s probably safe to say that Corey Conners is the only player on the PGA TOUR who can interpret all those mortality tables that show the probability of a person at a certain age dying before his or her next birthday. That’s just one of the things you learn when you pursue a college degree in actuarial mathematics, though. You also study financial theory and statistics, along with math, in order to better analyze and manage risk and its implications, particularly for insurance and pension programs. But Conners didn’t even know what an actuary did when he enrolled at Kent State in 2010. The Canadian was actually thinking about becoming a pharmacist or an optometrist, or maybe even a doctor like his grandfather and his twin sister Nicole, who is currently in medical school. Unfortunately, those three-hour labs for science courses Conners was taking didn’t leave much time to hit the practice range or play a quick 18 with his teammates on the Golden Flashes golf team. Conners’ plans changed when he was a sophomore, though. “Our coach was bragging, we’ve got this smart guy coming in to take a math degree, an actuary, and I started looking up what it was, and I was like, oh, this stuff’s pretty cool,â€� Conners recalled. “Math and finance — two things that I also liked as well as the sciences. “So, I said, well, maybe I’ll look into that.â€� Conners started taking some math and finance courses, liked them and eventually switched his major. His graduating class in actuarial math was pretty small, just seven or eight others, but Conners enjoyed the challenge and the camaraderie. “I’ve always been fascinated by math, and it was a great program to study in college,â€� Conners explained. “It was definitely a lot of work. Had to keep on top of things and be really organized, missing a lot of school when the team would travel. “Hopefully I’ll never have to fall back on that degree, but it’s some fascinating stuff that I really enjoy as well.â€� The 27-year-old plotted his path to golf early. He grew up in Listowel, a town of about 7,000 in southwestern Ontario about two hours west of Toronto that is known for, among other things, its two-week Irish festival called “Paddyfest.â€� Conners played hockey in the winter, a game he still loves — his favorite team is the Toronto Maple Leafs — and then switched to golf in the summer. He didn’t give up on the ice until he was 18 years old and played on a team that won a provincial championship. “I was a center all my life and the last few years, I switched to defense,â€� Conners said. “The coaching staff decided they needed someone with some brains on the back end of it to make some safe plays and keep the puck out of our net.â€� He was equally adept at getting the that little white ball in the hole, though. When Conners was 12 years old, he started working at Listowel Golf Club. The facility had 27 holes and the teenager was there pretty much every day the club was open. As he got more serious about the game, Conners and his father even found an indoor range about an hour away where he could practice in the dead of winter. “It was really cool growing up there,â€� Conners said. “We were really fortunate to have such a great golf facility. … If I grew up in a town without a golf course who knows what would have happened. “I get a lot of support from back home and it feels really special. I’m trying to put it on the map a little bit and make people proud back home.â€� So far the golf gig is working out pretty well, too. Conners heads into this week’s Desert Challenge with momentum on the heels of tie for third at the Sony Open in Hawaii, his second top-three finish of the season. Thanks to those standout finishes, the man who finished 130th in the FedExCup as a rookie last year now clocks in at very solid No. 19. So while his classmates might be working in insurance offices or as consultants, the newly-married Conners is living his dream. “They all have pretty nice jobs right now, as do I,â€� he said with a smile.

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Jordan Spieth carded a 5-under 67 in the first round of the Valero Texas Open on Thursday, good enough for the solo lead amongst the morning-wave finishers. That was good enough for a one-shot lead over Scottie Scheffler and Tom Hoge. Related: Full leaderboard "I certainly would have signed up for 5 under starting out," Spieth said. "Felt like I played some really nice golf on our front nine, the back nine. Then just kind of got a little loose off the tee on the front nine, our second nine, and was able to kind of make do. "I hit some decent drives, ended up in iffy spots," he continued. "Overall, just chipped and putted really well, which was the difference maker today. I didn’t quite hit it as good as I have been." Mired in a slump at the start of this year, Spieth has regained his form with the help of longtime coach Cameron McCormick but also an unlikely ally: fellow TOUR pro Jason Dufner. Speaking about the upcoming Masters in a conference call Wednesday, Brandel Chamblee and Rich Lerner suggested that Spieth has been copying some of Dufner's moves. "Well, if you watch him when he rehearses before he hits a shot now, it's weird," Chamblee said. "Even when he's hitting bunker shots, he'll make this very flat golf swing and then in transition, he'll bring his right elbow much closer to his left elbow than I've ever seen him, and then he will round it off and sort of curve the hub. "He'll swing very much around and to the left," he continued. "The only other person I've ever seen make practice swings like that is Jason Dufner. So it would not surprise me in the least if he was not — if he wasn't taking lessons from Jason Dufner, talking to Jason Dufner about the golf swing, or watching Jason Dufner make golf shots. Or Cameron McCormick is." Added Lerner: "He has, Brandel. I spoke to their camp at Bay Hill and he has confided in Dufner, which sort of caught me by surprise." Asked about the Dufner connection after making seven birdies and two bogeys, one of them on his last hole, the par-4 ninth, Spieth said they've been friends, but that's about it. "Yeah, he’s somebody that has a good knowledge of the golf swing," he said. "He’s helped a lot of guys. Just kind of bounce ideas off him. He’s been a good friend of mine for a long time. "He’s been somebody I can always kind of bounce off - ‘Hey, I’m trying to do this, you know, what’s this feel like to you?' - that kind of stuff," Spieth added. "He’s been a good buddy, as I’ve had a lot of different guys over the years that have been offering advice on and off the golf course to the young guys and that’s not out of the ordinary out here."

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A Skins game that revealed plenty of rust and raised more than $5 million for COVID-19 relief funds saw Rory McIlroy end the proceedings with the winning shot in the first live golf on TV since the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.

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