Na holds 2-shot lead over Spieth, Furyk

The tournament debuts of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy are among the notable storylines entering this week’s Valspar Championship. Not surprising, those two are included among the featured groups when play begins Thursday at the Innisbrook Resort. Tee times have been set for the first two rounds at the Copperhead course, with a field of 144 players that includes defending champion Adam Hadwin. PGA TOUR LIVE will offer live streaming coverage starting at 6:45 a.m. ET on Thursday and Friday; the stream can be accessed on Twitter from 6:45 a.m. to approximately 8:15 a.m. ET. Golf Channel’s coverage begins at 2 p.m., while PGA TOUR Radio will air live play-by-play starting at noon ET. Here’s a look at this week’s Featured Groups (current FedExCup ranking in parenthesis). Gary Woodland (12), Justin Rose (15), Rory McIlroy (175) – McIlroy, who has adjusted his playing schedule this season to include a few new tournaments, is making his first start at Innisbrook after sitting out last week’s World Golf Championships event in Mexico. Woodland’s first win on the PGA TOUR came at Innisbrook in 2011. Rose is playing here for the first time since 2015. Thursday tee time on PGA TOUR LIVE: 7:45 a.m. ET. Matt Kuchar (87), Sergio Garcia (122), Adam Scott (127) – Collectively, these three have won 30 PGA TOUR events. Can you name the one they each have in common? (High-five if you answered THE PLAYERS Championship). Kuchar has been a regular at this event the last few years, but Scott’s making his first start at Innisbrook since 2015; Garcia’s been away even longer, making his first start since 2013. Thursday tee time on PGA TOUR LIVE: 7:56 a.m. ET. Tony Finau (7), Adam Hadwin (35), Charl Schwartzel (160) – Hadwin is the defending champ and Schwartzel won it the year before, but it’s Finau who comes into this event with the most momentum out of the three. He has two top-6 finishes in his last four starts and is the highest-ranked FedExCup player in the field. Friday tee time on PGA TOUR LIVE: 7:45 a.m. ET. Jordan Spieth (52), Henrik Stenson (81), Tiger Woods (132) – The last time Woods was paired with Spieth at a PGA TOUR event was in the second round of the 2015 Waste Management Phoenix Open. It’s probably a round Tiger would rather forget, as he shot 82 that day. He’s in a much better place now with his golf game, as he comes off a 12th-place finish at The Honda Classic. This will be the first time since 2014 that he’s been paired with Stenson, who has played well here in his three starts. Spieth, of course, won Valspar in 2015. Friday tee time on PGA TOUR LIVE: 7:56 a.m. ET.

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The putter remained hot during the middle portion of the match, as Johnson strung together three birdies to grab a 1-up lead on the 11th when his lengthy effort from 60 feet found the bottom of the cup. Even with the momentum in his favor, Johnson would go on to lose three of the next four holes to Poulter, en route to a costly defeat. “I felt like I played pretty well,” Johnson said. “Made some nice putts. I knew it was going to be a tough match starting out. I just didn’t hit enough fairways.” Rahm goes back to M2: Jon Rahm finished the 2017-18 PGA TOUR season ranked 3rd in Strokes Gained: Off-the-tee with a TaylorMade M4 driver. When you’re ranked inside the top-5 in any statistical category, the assumption is the clubs in the bag are working without any issues. Only that wasn’t the case for Rahm, who shelved his M4 in favor of last year’s M2 at the TOUR Championship and continued using the driver during the Ryder Cup. It’s unclear why Rahm suddenly shifted away from M4 late in the season, especially given that he never finished worse than T26 in the strokes gained category during the Dell Technologies Championship and BMW Championship; and his missed cut at THE NORTHERN TRUST was due to a balky putter and poor ball-striking week with his irons. Whether it was really a couple less-than-stellar weeks (for his standards) with the driver that led to the swap, the M2 sparked a strong week off the tee at East Lake Golf Club, where he ranked fourth in Strokes Gained: Off-the-tee. Rahm entered Sunday singles 0-2 for the week but managed to defeat Tiger Woods in a tightly contested match to squash a United States comeback that, for a brief moment, looked to be in full swing. It was Rahm’s 365-yard drive on 17 that put him in perfect position to stuff a gap wedge to three feet for the win. JT’s wedges: Vokey wedge rep Aaron Dill created something special for Justin Thomas’ maiden Ryder Cup appearance. Hoping to give Thomas some good vibes, Dill stamped stars and “Ryder Cup” on the back of his SM6 lob wedge, before adding red, white and blue paint fill to give it an American flag look. “You outdid yourself on this one AD,” Thomas said of Dill’s creation on Twitter. Thomas went 4-1 with the custom stamped wedge at Le Golf National. Free agents lead the way: Francesco Molinari (5-0) and Tommy Fleetwood (4-1) led the way for Europe in their impressive takedown of the United States. Given the success of equipment free agents last season on TOUR, it seems fitting that two key equipment free agents were at the forefront of the route. Molinari and Fleetwood were under contract with Nike Golf for their equipment until the end of 2016 when the apparel giant left the hard-goods industry. Fleetwood has remained a free agent throughout the bag; Molinari signed a ball deal with Titleist in 2017 and putter deal with Bettinardi earlier this year, but the other 13 clubs (all TaylorMade) remain up for grabs. PGA TOUR SUPERSTORE: Buy equipment here Dustin Johnson joked with reporters on the eve of the Ryder Cup that he’d “surprise” everyone with his putter selection, before confirming he’d continue with the cross-handed grip and TaylorMade Spider Tour putter that nearly helped him win the FedExCup title. While Johnson stuck to his word over the first two days of play, he opted to go away from the grip and mallet on Sunday, returning to a conventional grip and Anser-style TaylorMade TP Black Copper Juno against Ian Poulter. Johnson’s flat stick had a single white sight line on the flange and his initials stamped on the right bumper. The head shape is identical to the TP Collection Juno he used to win last year’s THE NORTHERN TRUST.

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