Near albatross ace highlights Dustin Johnson dominance

Here are nine tidbits from the third round of the Farmers Insurance Open that gamers can use tomorrow or down the road. Be looking for the Emergency 9 shortly after the close of play of each round of the tournament. Can’t Ignore Him For the second year in a row an international player is looking to win the Farmers Insurance Open as Sweden’s Alex Noren holds the 54-hole lead at 11-under-par. Noren will try and join Jon Rahm as consecutive international winners that win on their maiden voyage in the event. Before last year, Arnold Palmer (1957) was the last player to do this. Before last year, Jay Don Blake was the first player to make the Farmers Insurance Open their maiden PGA TOUR win since 1991. Noren admitted on television after the round he’s nervous but he didn’t get to be No. 19 in the Official World Golf Ranking by accident. He’s won five times in his last 46 events worldwide. San Diego Charger Torrey Pines High School alum and native San Diegan Michael Kim sits two back of Noren. I’m not sure if any gamers had him marked for the low Southern California player after 54 holes but he’s earned his spot. He sits in the top five in fairways, proximity to the hole and SG: Putting on the South Course this week. Pro gamers will remember that Kim sat two shots off the 54-hole lead in 2016 but shot 80 in the difficult conditions on the Monday finish. I’m encouraged to see what he learned from that tomorrow. Upon Further Inspection J.B. Holmes carded the lowest round of the week on the South Course with a 65 on moving day. His first nine he played in even-par 36 but he made seven birdies on the front nine, coming home in 29. He leapt 44 places to T3 and will play with Michael Kim in the penultimate group Sunday. Holmes is looking to extend his top-10 streak to three in four years with another solid round tomorrow. He also has some unfinished business as he played in the final group in 2015 but his 72 was only good enough to join a four-man playoff that Jason Day eventually won. Moving Day: Up Gamers were on edge after Thursday as Gary Woodland opened with 74 on the North Course. It’s absolutely no secret that Woodland prefers the South Course and he’s embraced the challenge the last two rounds. His 68 with four bogeys on Friday saw him jump 78 spots to T47. His round of 66 on Saturday, that included just one bogey, moved him up 42 more to T5. He is also in the “almost” club here. The big hitter was the 54-hole leader in 2014 but his 74 on Sunday saw him fade to T10. Moving Day: Down Jon Rahm played his final eight holes in 3-over-par to limp home in 38. He dropped 10 spots to T12 but I would suggest he will be ultra-focused tomorrow. Last year he shot a 65 on Sunday which included two eagles on his final eight holes. Gamers who loaded up on him in the PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf presented by SERVPRO (third-most selected) and PGA TOUR Fantasy One & Done presented by SERVPRO (most selected) will be hoping for a repeat performance. Pan-demonium Get carried away! In Study Hall last week I pointed out that C.T. Pan tweeted that he had the flu and that was part of his issue missing the cut at the CareerBuilder Challenge. He put all four rounds at 70 or better here last year as a rookie and finished T2. In his second event here he has also posted all rounds at 70 or better, including a 68 on Saturday that moved him up 18 spots to T5. He’s not long (T68 driving distance) but he’s 6 under on the South Course and has only made three bogeys. Eye on the Tiger Have you seen enough from Tiger Woods in three rounds to make up your mind for future events? I haven’t and that’s just fine. As I opined earlier in the week, this week was going to be a different test. It’s not a resort course with minimal rough and a small field. He’s accounted himself well this week as he’s grinding out scores on a course where par is a decent score. His ball-striking leaves plenty of questions so I’ll let him figure that out before I include him. ‘Siri, Where’s Suri?’ Each week Rob Bolton publishes his Sleeper Picks and each Saturday I take a look at a few who caught my eye. Julian Suri opened with a 68 on the South Course but only made ONE birdie combined in Rounds 2 and 3. He sits No. 62 in the OWGR on the back of rattling off four top-10 finishes in his last five on the European Tour. … If you jumped on the Corey Conners train because of his streak of cashing in seven consecutive events, you were rewarded again. The young bomber made it eight in a row and sits T17 after three rounds of par or better. He’s a very good driver of the golf ball but he’s T1 in GIR after 54 holes. Study Hall After his MC last week at Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, World No. 60 Haotong Li is the 54-hole leader at the Omega Dubai Desert Classic on 20-under-par. Rory McIlroy will play in the final group with the 22-year old Chinese budding star Sunday. … J.J. Henry shot a 59 at The Tradition Golf Course in La Quinta Monday. He’s currently T31. Hot golf is hot golf. … Sitting at T44, Hideki Matsuyama will need a low one tomorrow to best his T16 finish in his maiden voyage in 2014. The last three years have resulted in MC, MC and T33 last year. He’ll be the favorite regardless next week at TPC Scottsdale as he has won the last two at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. … Tom Lovelady began Saturday inside the top 10 but dropped to T25 after a 73. He’s been given a sponsor exemption for next week. Eyes open!

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The helicopter ride was actually what made him nervous. Not the 8- or 10-foot drop out of the chopper on his skis down to the pristine, snow-covered slope. Mark Hubbard admittedly isn’t a big fan of heights, and this was just his third helicopter ride. He’d never been heli-skiing before, but the chance to go with some buddies was just too good to pass up. “I’m terrified of helicopters,â€� Hubbard explains with a smile. “But the actual drop in wasn’t too bad. It’s kind of one of those things where you just kind of do it. You just kind of jump and go. “But the ride up there, it’s kind of like a roller coaster. Like, the worst part for me is the slow climb to the very top. Once you start going, it’s awesome.â€� Hubbard’s friends worked on the ski patrol and had been charged with clearing the fresh, loose snow so there wouldn’t be any avalanches. When everything was deemed safe, there was time for a little back-country skiing on slopes that had not been touched.   Hubbard felt the rush as soon as his skis hit the slope; the helicopter hovering overhead. “You’re dropping into a pretty steep grade,â€� Hubbard explains. “You kind of hit it and just start going. There’s not a whole lot of kind of drop and stop the way they angle it. … You just kind of smooth it out. “I’m a horrible surfer. But it’s got to be the same as, you know, kind of dropping into a big wave. Like there’s not a lot of hits and slap kind of thing. If you’re doing it right, you kind of just drop in and coast.â€� While heli-skiing is considered a bucket-list item for some adventure-seekers, Hubbard has only done it that one time – and he says, “that was probably enough for me.â€� After all, his appendages, fingers, arms and legs, are pretty important if he’s to be successful at his job on the PGA TOUR. “I don’t take any risks anymore for me,â€� Hubbard says. “Like, I have a better chance of falling down the stairs than falling on most of the runs that we do. I stay away from the tough stuff now. It’s just a leisurely stroll down the mountain to me now. But back in the day, I wouldn’t say no to a whole lot.â€� Hubbard, who grew up in Denver, Colorado, has skied basically since he could walk. For several years, until he was about 15 years old, he participated in the DEVO Junior Alpine program at Vail and did some downhill racing. He soon realized he wasn’t going to be the next Bode Miller, though. “I’ve always been, and this is true, you know, of running, too — I don’t know if it actually translates or not, but I’ve always been kind of quick side-to-side, like have (a good) first step,â€� Hubbard says. “And so, I’ve always kind of been agile like that on skis. “So, I’m pretty good at moguls and I’m pretty good in the trees and stuff like that. But in terms of racing, I never, never was fast enough.â€� Still, until recently, Hubbard says he’d often joke that he was probably was as good a skier as he was a golfer. But he just put together his best season on the Korn Ferry Tour – winning once – and has finished 13th or better in three of his first five starts this fall in his return to the PGA TOUR.   Hubbard ranks 17th in the FedExCup, has earned more than $1 million – nearly as much as in his three previous TOUR seasons combined – and ranks ninth in the Birdies Fore Love competition that ends this week. So now the pendulum may have slanted toward golf. “I might’ve in the last month, I might have crossed that threshold,â€� Hubbard says. Hubbard, who posted a career-high tie for second last month at the Houston Open, says the most difficult skiing he’s ever done was at the top of Crested Butte in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. “It gets really steep,â€� he explains. “There’s lots of exposed kind of trees and rocks and stuff like that and it gets a little icy late in the day. So that’s probably the toughest — especially late in the day when the conditions are just so-so, I mean, you’ve really just got to commit. “That’s why I actually, I think that’s one of the reasons I really like skiing things. You can overthink it. I know as soon as you start thinking like that’s when you’re in trouble. You’ve just kind of got to plan you route like you do, you know, the game-planning you think about. “You visualize where you’re going to go, but then once you’re going and you just kind of have got to go. … I like stuff that puts you kind of in the moment where you can’t overthink things.â€� Hubbard says his wife Meghan, whom he proposed to on the 18th green during the final round of the 2015 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, has also become an avid skier. Soon after this week’s The RSM Classic is over, the two are taking a bucket-list trip to Europe where they plan to ski in the Alps. One of the places likely on the itinerary is Zermatt, Switzerland, which is in the shadow of the famous Matterhorn. But skiing isn’t the only thing on the agenda for the month-long trip – they also plan to hit the famous Christmas markets in places like Austria and Germany. “It’s been our dream to do it,â€� Hubbard says. “And we both turned 30 this year, so our clock’s ticking a little bit. It’s been a good year, so yeah.â€�

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida – The PGA TOUR and TrackMan announced today they are expanding golf’s most advanced club and ball tracking and tracing solution. By combining TrackMan’s cutting-edge Doppler Radar and club and ball tracking technology, TOUR events will have tracing capabilities for every golf shot hit during the season. This will significantly enhance how fans experience the world’s best golfers by providing more detail for television, OTT and digital platforms. This agreement will double previous ball-in-motion tracing capabilities on the golf course, allowing nearly every shot to be traced and automatically shared with television and OTT partners and across TOUR digital platforms such as PGATOUR.COM and the PGA TOUR app. The arrangement with TrackMan begins in 2022 for PGA TOUR LIVE and TOUR digital platforms, while the domestic television partner agreement begins in 2023. This expansion will immediately offer fan enhancements such as the visualization of ball flight paths for shots inbound to the green in TOURCast. “We’re excited to increase the volume and depth of tracking and tracing for every shot on the PGA TOUR,” said Ken Lovell, PGA TOUR Senior Vice President Golf Technologies. “TrackMan’s sensors will substantially increase content available for analysis and initiate the development of new insights, while creating the opportunity for us to develop innovative visualizations for fans to view all the incredible shots on TOUR.” Fans will see more information beginning in 2022 on how and why the ball moves and arrives at a certain position. This is achieved by using TrackMan technology to capture club speed, ball speed, curve, landing spin, launch angle, spin rate, spin axis, apex, carry and more. The advanced aerodynamic models can also determine the effects of wind, weather, and altitude on a shot so that fans can understand how a shot was impacted by environmental factors. In addition to doubling the collection of radar and tracing information, the new system will substantially increase the range and sensitivity of the content that will now be layered with video for use on any TOUR media platform. Klaus Eldrup-Jorgensen, co-founder and CEO of TrackMan, commented “We have been working closely with the PGA TOUR for more than 15 years, to accurately measure and report data on club delivery, ball launch, ball flight, and tracers for the best players in the world. We are proud to be chosen to implement our new solutions with the PGA TOUR, which will ultimately include all shots for all players. The future of golf will be told in new and innovative ways, the fan experience will elevate to a new level, and the stories about how good these guys play is just beginning.” The club and ball tracking and tracing solution has become a valuable element to “ShotLink powered by CDW,” the TOUR’s real-time data collection and scoring system. As the TOUR and CDW continue to innovate the acclaimed scoring system that has benefited tournaments, broadcast partners, players and fans in countless ways over the years, the TrackMan system contributes to the automated data collection efforts by allowing ShotLink to auto-trigger on shots without input from a person. The new technology being deployed expands tracking capabilities from tee boxes only to shots hit from the fairway and around the green, where the system determines the exact 3D position of the ball at any point in its flight. The TrackMan technology has the ability to lock onto a ball that starts behind the trees and only becomes visible to the radar halfway through its flight. It’s able to accurately track balls up to 400 yards in any conditions; rain, fog, sunrise, and sunset. For a typical TOUR event, around 40 units are placed around the course to track shots with advanced radar and camera units on tee boxes and greens to capture final resting position. TrackMan also recently developed a mobile system that will be used for the capture of radar and tracing information from the fairway and will automatically integrate into TOUR media platforms, which is aided by AWS, the TOUR’s Official Cloud Provider. There are no cables or connections with the mobile system, which adds very little weight for the operator. The TOUR is testing the mobile system for expanded future use on PGA TOUR Champions, the Korn Ferry Tour and in other executions. The club and ball tracking and tracing system will utilize AWS Fargate, Media Services, and numerous other AWS products to process and deliver radar and tracing on every shot in nearly real-time. The full suite of AWS products will allow TrackMan to reduce their onsite footprint and allow fast and easy access to the devices and information from anywhere around the world.

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