One & Done: RBC Heritage

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NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. – An old friend helped Tiger Woods shoot his lowest score in five years. After struggling with his putter earlier in the FedExCup Playoffs, Woods switched back to the Scotty Cameron that he used to win 13 of his 14 major championship. It was a happy reunion, as Woods shot 62 in the first round of the BMW Championship. It was his lowest score since a 61 in his victory at the 2013 World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational. Thursday’s round was an impressive combination of precise ball-striking and sure-handed putting. He hit 16 greens, matching his season-high. Thirteen of those approach shots were within 20 feet of the hole. He needed just 27 putts on the rolling greens of this classic Donald Ross design that was recently restored by architect Gil Hanse. Woods didn’t miss a putt from inside 10 feet – including all four of his attempts from 4 to 8 feet – and holed three putts from outside 10 feet. This was Woods’ second-best opening round of his career.  It looked like the Woods of old, and not just because he was holing putts with the silver Scotty Cameron, which he still tinkers with at home even when it’s not in his bag. “I’ve hit millions of putts with it,� Woods said. “I know the release point and I know how it swings.� He proved that from the start of Thursday’s round. Woods, who didn’t play Wednesday’s pro-am because of the quick turnaround from Monday’s final round at TPC Boston, made birdie on three of his first four holes at Aronimink. It started with a 20-foot birdie putt on his first hole that quickly confirmed his decision to return to his Scotty Cameron. Woods, who teed off on No. 10 in the day’s second group, added a 13-foot birdie putt at the 12th hole and 10-footer at No. 13 to quickly reach 3 under par. Something special seemed to be in the offering after Woods hit 3-iron from 241 yards on the par-5 16th hole. The shot landed softly, stopping 5 feet from the front hole location. He holed that eagle putt, then added a 4-foot birdie putt for his first sub-30 score on the PGA TOUR in more than a decade. He shot 28 on East Lake’s front nine in the second round of the 2007 TOUR Championship. He won that tournament by eight shots to put an exclamation point on his FedExCup-winning season. A win at Aronimink would give him a golden opportunity to become the FedExCup’s first three-time champion. He would likely move into the top 5 of the FedExCup standings with a win here. That would allow him to clinch the FedExCup with a victory at East Lake in two weeks. Woods added another birdie at No. 1, sinking a 13-foot putt to reach 7 under. A sub-60 score was within reach on the par-70 Aronimink, which was playing short because of the high heat that has hit the Philadelphia area. Woods changed shirts after just five holes, and he quickly ducked into the shade while waiting for his playing partners to hole out. Hanse widened Aronimink’s fairways and removed trees from the property. That allowed the field to play aggressively on a course that had been softened by recent rains. Woods wasn’t reluctant to hit driver, averaging 306 yards on all tee shots. He hit 9 of 14 fairways and never put himself in a precarious position when he did miss the fairway. He said he didn’t hit anything longer than a 9-iron on an approach to a par-4. Woods wasn’t able to keep up his hot putting on his final eight holes, though. He missed three birdie putts from within 20 feet on those closing holes.  “I gave myself good looks. I hit good putts. They just didn’t go in, which is fine,� Woods said. He missed the greens on both of the downhill par-3s on Aronimink’s front nine. He flew the green on the downhill, 165-yard fifth hole and pulled his tee shot on the 242-yard eighth hole. Woods sandwiched two birdies around his bogey at the eight hole, stiffing his 110-yard approach at the seventh hole before getting up-and-down with a putter from a closely-mown area left of the green on the par-5 ninth hole. He punctuated the round with a 7-foot birdie putt on his last hole. Rickie Fowler, who played alongside Woods, called it a “good, solid round of golf.� “He hit some close, made a couple nice putts. It was fun to watch,� Fowler said. Woods has used three putters in the first three events of the FedExCup Playoffs. He switched TaylorMade models after THE NORTHERN TRUST, which was the fourth-worst Strokes Gained: Putting performance of his career. At last week’s Dell Technologies Championship, Woods said he had “turned a corner� with his ball-striking in the past six weeks, a stretch that included strong performances at The Open Championship and PGA Championship. “It’s just a matter of getting one little hot stretch with the putter,� he said. He got that Thursday, and it resulted in one of Woods’ best rounds in years.

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It was sometime this spring – maybe March, maybe April – when Brendon Todd and his swing coach Bradley Hughes were having lunch at a club in Georgia. They had worked together for less than a year, trying to return Todd, once a top-50 player but now struggling just to make a cut, to world-class stature. Todd stared intently at his coach. Then he made a declaration. “You know I’m going to win again,â€� he said. Hughes didn’t hesitate in his response: “I have no doubt.â€� Based strictly on results, that was laughable to hear. After all, Todd had entered the 2019 calendar year having made the cut in just six of his previous 47 starts. He was not on anybody’s radar to claim a second PGA TOUR title, his first one coming at the AT&T Byron Nelson in 2014. Most observers likely had dismissed him as a golfer who had simply lost his swing. But those people didn’t know Todd, his work ethic, his fighting spirit, his ability to battle and overcome demons that might crush lesser golfers. On Sunday at the new Bermuda Championship, Todd made good on his promise of six months earlier. Rallying from a two-stroke deficit to start the day, he threatened to break 60 after a hot start (birdies in nine of his first 11 holes) before settling for a 9-under 62 and a four-stroke victory at 24 under. “Thrilled over the moon,â€� Todd said. But a trip to the moon hardly does justice to the journey Todd traveled in his return to the winner’s circle. Four years ago in the middle of the FedExCup Playoffs, he found himself in the mix at the BMW Championship, playing in the final threesome of the third round with tournament leader Jason Day and Daniel Berger. “Obviously a big moment for me,â€� he recalled. His tee shot at the 484-yard fourth hole at Conway Farms that Saturday had found the fairway. With 212 yards to the hole, Todd grabbed his 4-iron. One swing later, his golfing career began a downward spiral to such depths that he eventually contemplated a new profession. The 4-iron sailed 50 yards right of the green, past the first set of bushes and into a second set that cost him a penalty. He eventually walked off the green with a triple bogey. The score cost him any chance of winning that week, but it was the wayward shot that stuck with him. Haunted him, really. Sept. 19, 2015 – the start of Brendon Todd’s ball-striking yips. The big miss right kept appearing in his play during the wraparound fall schedule. And then it wouldn’t go away. The 2015-16 season was nightmarish – 29 starts, 25 missed cuts. At one point, he missed 15 straight cuts. He ended 2016 outside the world top 400. Eventually, he would fall outside the top 2000. “I lost golf balls. I was hitting in hazards and hitting it right,â€� Todd recalled Sunday. “A lot of it was mental. Some of it was the fact that I changed my swing – and I basically battled that scary yip feeling all of ’16. “And even if I had a tournament where I didn’t hit it, I was so scared of hitting it, I would hit it to the left and I would chip and putt my way to 72 and I missed a thousand cuts. Then you’re trying to find whether it’s a new teacher or a new method or whatever it. I basically spent ’16, ’17, ’18 doing that. … I just couldn’t figure out what it was.â€� He made just nine starts in the 2016-17 PGA TOUR season – and missed the cut eight times. He made six TOUR starts the next season, missing the cut each time. Also missed two cuts on the Korn Ferry Tour. His TOUR status was gone. He had lost, in his words, “three yearsâ€� of his career. He thought about quitting, pursuing other opportunities. “I was talking to my manager about potentially opening up another business,â€� he said. Mechanically, Todd’s swing and footwork were off-track. Former swing coach Scott Hamilton, in a 2017 interview with PGATOUR.COM, said he and Todd were trying to get higher launch angles with his driver and long irons, but it resulted in Todd hitting too far behind the ball. “His timing got all off, and then it was down the rabbit hole,â€� Hamilton said. “I taught BT when he was at his best,â€� Hamilton said in 2017, “and I’m half-involved in screwing him up.â€� In the summer of 2018, one of Todd’s former college teammates at Georgia told him to look into Bradley Hughes, an Australian and one-time TOUR member who now teaches in the U.S. and had written a golf book called, “The Great Ballstrikers,â€� which had been released earlier in the year. Todd read the book … then booked a lesson. “It talks a lot about his playing days, the history of the great players, how they swung the club,â€� Todd said earlier this year. “It has a lot of pictures and drills and models in there. That kind of resonated with me as a player, a feel player, somebody who doesn’t really want to go try and paint lines with my golf swing, I want to kind of feel like a pressure or a force and that’s what he teaches. He’s all about ground forces and pressures. So the book really hit home with me, and I went and saw him and it’s just kind of been a home run ever since.â€� Hughes was not familiar with Todd, didn’t know the troubles he was having, had never watched him play. They had never met face-to-face until that first lesson. But unlike the amateurs that he teaches, Hughes said working with pros is easy “for the most part because it’s getting back to something he previously did.â€� Despite the big miss right, Hughes instructed Todd to open up his club face even more in order to free up his body to move through the shot and to get a better release. They also used a board that helped Todd with his footwork and to feel the pressure points. Todd took six weeks off to work on some drills in his basement. “Each time we did something,â€� Hughes said, “it worked.â€� Figuring out the mechanical solution is one thing. There was still the mental side – and with the yips, that’s usually the biggest challenge to overcome. Regaining confidence, finding a light in the darkness. It just so happened that about this time, Todd got a call from a former Korn Ferry Tour caddie, Ward Jarvis, who is now a performance coach focusing on the mental aspects of golf. Jarvis has battled his own kind of yips – the language yips, if you will – as a stutterer. “I know what you’re going through,â€� Jarvis told Todd. “I think there’s a way for us to work through it together.â€� Jarvis told Todd to read a book written by former major league baseball player Rick Ankiel called, “The Phenomenon: Pressure, The Yips, and the Pitch that Changed My Life.â€� Ankiel was a successful starting pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, but during the 2000 playoffs, he struggled to simply throw a ball across a plate. “He basically just fell off the map with pitching, had to reinvent himself as an outfielder,â€� Todd said. “It was a book about the yips. I read it; it kind of helped. And then I just continued to work with Ward and Brad on my game.â€� The results weren’t always great but some signs were encouraging. A 61 in Monday qualifying to make The RSM Classic field a year ago left him feeling he was on the right track. He managed a couple of top 20s at the Wells Fargo Championship and John Deere Classic. He qualified for the Korn Ferry Tour Finals, and a second place at the Nationwide Children’s Hospitals Championship led to regaining his TOUR card for this season. Four missed cuts to open this season might’ve seemed a setback, but the reason wasn’t his ball-striking – it was his putting. The big right miss was gone now. Plus, he’s no stranger to tough stretches; in his first slump between 2009-11, he once missed 26 straight Korn Ferry Tour cuts. Three years later, he was a TOUR winner. He saw the way back. He would get there again. “Knew that once I kind of get things right, I just have to believe and keep going after it,â€� he said. On a Sunday in Bermuda, wearing a pink shirt and firing dart after dart, Todd turned that belief into a win that offers hope to anybody who has lost their way. The light can be found again.

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