No one could catch Scottie Scheffler on Sunday at the Players Championship

Tyrrell Hatton endured one of the toughest tests on TOUR to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. It’s the first win on American soil for the 28-year-old Englishman. Let’s take a closer look at his win and the week that was at Bay Hill. RELATED: Hatton keeps his cool at Bay Hill | What’s in Hatton’s bag? 1. FOUR!: Hatton’s winning score was 4-under 284. It matches the highest winning score on TOUR in the past 10 years. Hatton also is the first player since Geoff Ogilvy in the 2006 U.S. Open to win with two over-par rounds on the weekend. 2. HALF AND HALF: The field hit 50.5% of the greens in regulation at Bay Hill. That’s the lowest percentage of greens hit in an event on the PGA TOUR since the 2008 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. Hatton hit just 42 greens, but that still ranked ninth in the field (he was second in Strokes Gained: Approach, as well). It was the fifth-fewest greens hit by a winner since 2010. 3. CLOSER: Tyrrell Hatton played Nos. 17 and 18 in 3-under-par for the week, gaining nearly six strokes on the field on those two holes alone. It was the best score on those two holes by a Bay Hill winner not named Tiger Woods. 4. FIVE FOR FIGHTING: It was a difficult weekend for Rory McIlroy, who shot a final-round 76. He started the day in second place, but fell into a tie for fifth. It was McIlroy’s sixth consecutive top-5 finish. He’s finished in the top-5 in more than half hist starts since last season, the best rate on TOUR by a wide margin.

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PALM HARBOR, Fla. — Sam Burns kept piling up birdies Friday, turning a solid start into a great round of 8-under 63 for a share of the lead in the Valspar Championship. RELATED: Leaderboard | Max Homa ties ShotLink record to contend at Valspar Keegan Bradley got there with one shot. Bradley ended his round by holing out for eagle from 100 yards in the ninth fairway, over a deep bunker to the elevated green. The shot left him guessing until he saw the fans jump out of their seats. That gave him a 66 and the best uphill walk at Innisbrook. “I turned a good day into a great day,” Bradley said. “Man, it was a fun day. And what a way to finish. It was a blast.” Bradley and Burns were at 12-under 130, and their play in the steamy afternoon on the Copperhead course gave them a little separation starting out the weekend. Lucas Glover (65), Charley Hoffman (66) and Max Homa (68) were four shots back. Only 10 players were within five shots of the lead through 36 holes. Bradley, whose longest par putt was 4 feet in his bogey-free opening round, opened with two quick birdies before coming up short of the green on the 12th hole and making his first bogey. Birdies were hard to come by the rest of the way, but he made up for it with one swing. With the steep hill, he played the 100-yard shot as if it were 119, and then he added 6 yards to account for a little wind. It was a gap wedge. “A perfect shot,” he said. “You can’t see the green from down there, so you have to wait for the crowd’s reaction,” he said. “And when everyone puts their arms up, normally that means it goes in. So another bonus of having fans out here. It makes it a lot more exciting for everybody.” Maybe not for Phil Mickelson. The five-time major champion said he is struggling to keep his focus, or to regain his focus after distractions in the gallery, such as a phone ringing. He bogeyed two of his last three holes for a 69 to miss the cut by one shot. “My physical ability to refocus, to back away and then refocus and so forth, I’m physically not able to do it right now,” the 50-year-old Mickelson said. Burns had a few key par saves early in his round, and he took off after making the turn. He holed an 18-foot birdie putt on No. 10, reached the par-5 11th in two for a birdie and then holed a bunker shot on the 12th. “Birdied the first three on the back and then just kind of we’re off,” he said. Burns had a one-shot lead after 54 holes in the Vivint Houston Open in November and closed with a 72 to tie for seventh. He had a two-shot lead at Riviera going into the last round and shot 69 to finish one shot out of a playoff won by Homa. “For me it’s just sticking to what I’ve been doing, having a good game plan going into the day,” he said. “I know over the weekend there will be some challenges, and I’m excited for the opportunity.” Homa still has plenty of confidence from his win two months ago at Riviera, and it shows. He doesn’t feel as though any part of his game is out of order, and his putting has been superb. Homa has made five putts of 25 feet or longer. And his short track record at Innisbrook — three appearances, three missed cuts, all six rounds over par — is a distant memory that comes with a simple explanation. “I think I’m just better at golf now,” Homa said. Among those at 7-under 135 were Sungjae Im, one of the best iron players on TOUR at a course renowned for rewarding good ball-strikers, and past Innisbrook winner Charl Schwartzel. Due to the great finishes of Burns and Bradley, the top two players have their work cut out for them. Dustin Johnson (68) was nine shots back, while Justin Thomas (71) was 10 behind. Glover had a good stretch of his own, hitting 6-iron from 209 yards to 4 feet on No. 3, the hardest hole of the second round on the Copperhead course. He followed that with a chip 7-iron to a front pin just over the bunker on the par-3 fourth, settling 4 feet away for another birdie. Glover is trying to build confidence. Unlike Homa, he doesn’t have a recent victory to give him a spark. The last win for the former U.S. Open champion was 10 years ago at Quail Hollow. Still, there is a rhythm to how he plays and how he walks that is starting to look familiar. Glover doesn’t waste any time stepping over the ball and making contact — usually in the middle of the clubface — nor does he get overly excited on a Friday. But it’s a step in the right direction. His iron play has been average. His short game has bailed him out. All he wants now is to get his game a little more tidy. “Two more rounds to go. A lot can happen,” Glover said. “But I’m happy the way I’m playing, happy with the way I’m putting and just want to have a shot.”

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Matt Kuchar turned on the afterburners during the closing holes to claim a ninth PGA TOUR win and second win in three starts. Welcome to the Monday Finish where Kuchar pleased his family by booking a return trip to the Hawaiian Islands a year from now and by adding a family pet, albeit a robotic one. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Matt Kuchar has a killer instinct to go with his killer smile. Don’t be fooled by Kuchar’s trademark grin. He’s a stone-cold killer sometimes on the golf course. After looking like he was wobbling with three bogeys in his opening five holes on Sunday, Kuchar found a way to stare down his competitor and claw out of a hole when it mattered. He made a very important birdie putt on the ninth hole to stay in touch with Andrew Putnam, and when Putnam looked to make his move on the 13th hole, Kuchar responded with back-to-back birdies from 12 and 11 feet. Making putts down the stretch is not easy to do but Kuchar made it look so. The result was a comfortable four-shot triumph. 2. The old guys on the PGA TOUR still have fire. Kuchar now has two wins since he turned 40 and believes he still has plenty more in him. While it might be tough to replicate what Vijay Singh did in his fifth decade (win 22 times including a FedExCup) there is nothing to say he can’t continue a renaissance of serious note. “I would certainly like to (do what Singh did),â€� Kuchar said. “He set a great example. Certainly showed that is possible. A number of guys showed that it is possible. It’s nice to know that. It’s not like you hit 40 and you have to go away. There are guys that have done great.â€� Another of those guys is his good friend Davis Love III. The 54-year-old grabbed his first top-10 finish since the 2017 Wyndham Championship at Waialae. Love III is already the third oldest PGA TOUR winner of all time from his 2015 Wyndham triumph at 51. Maybe he can set a new benchmark this season. 3. Putnam can putt the dots off it. Andrew Putnam is clearly disappointed with his runner up result but if he keeps putting like he did at Waialae it won’t be long before he does claim his second PGA TOUR title. Over the course of the four rounds he gained 10.894 strokes on the field in Strokes Gained: Putting to lead the field. His first round gained an impressive 6.871 strokes on the field, one of the more impressive performances we’ve seen. By the end of the week Putnam had made 447 feet, 7 inches worth of total putts. Now replicating this sort of week will be very tough, but the fact he has this in his memory bank should give him plenty of confidence on the greens going forward. 4. Keep an eye on Marc Leishman and Hudson Swafford over the next two weeks. Swafford was the 2017 champion at the Desert Classic and now he returns off the back of a T3 at Waialae Country Club. Last week he ranked fifth in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green and was second in proximity to the hole at 26 feet, 10 inches. If he brings that ball-striking again and gets hot on the greens he is certainly a great chance at another victory. Leishman has to be penciled in as a red-hot chance at the Farmers Insurance Open where he’s been runner up twice, in 2010 and 2014, and has two other top 10s. The winner of the CIMB Classic in the fall Leishman was T4 at the Sentry Tournament of Champions and T3 at the Sony Open over his two weeks in Hawaii. Prior to that he was runner up at the Australian PGA Championship and the ISPS Handa Melbourne World Cup of Golf. More wins are imminent. 5. Charles Howell III should buy a house at Waialae. That is if he hasn’t already. He’s now made the cut in all 18 trips to the Sony Open in Hawaii and his T8 last week was his 10th top 10. While he has yet to win the event he has two runner-ups and two thirds. Earlier in the week Howell III explained that winning isn’t everything for him but even still a trophy at Waialae would seem very fitting on his resume. “If I stay healthy I’ll never miss this one,â€� Howell III said. “I can control the showing up part… The finishes, I don’t know…. but it would be awful special to one day win here.â€� FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Kuchar won his ninth PGA TOUR event in his 430th career start on TOUR and moved from ninth to second in the FedExCup standings. It is the first time since week 33 of the 2013 PGA TOUR season where he has ranked inside the top two of the FedExCup. 2. Since 2009 Kuchar is the seventh player to win on the PGA TOUR after opening with two consecutive rounds of 63 or lower and first since Jason Day (2015 BMW Championship). Kuchar’s 258 total score marks a career-best and ties the 10th-best on the PGA TOUR in 72-hole stroke play events. 3. Kuchar is the 103rd player with 100 or more top 10s in official PGA TOUR events and just the fifth player to reach this mark since 2001. 4. Kuchar ranked inside the top 10 in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green and Strokes Gained: Putting, becoming the fifth Sony Open in Hawaii Champion to accomplish this feat since 2004. 5. Almost three quarters (74-percent) of Kuchar’s total strokes gained for the week came from his approach the green and putting performance. Kuchar hit a field leading 83.33-percent of the greens in regulation, averaging 29 feet, 6 inches in proximity to the hole on all approach shots which was 5 feet, 2 inches closer than the field average. Kuchar made 63.64-percent of his putts from 10 to 15 feet (seven of 11) and each of his made putts were birdies from this distance. WYNDHAM REWARDS The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is in its first season and adds another layer of excitement to the FedExCup Regular Season. The top 10 players at the end of the FedExCup Regular Season will earn bonus payouts from the Wyndham Rewards Top 10. Xander Schauffele remains in top spot while Matt Kuchar moves to second with his second win of the young season. Andrew Putnam goes from 31st to 10th after his runner-up finish.

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