PGA postponed; new date if ‘safe, responsible’

After a week off for the men’s Olympic golf competition, the PGA TOUR schedule resumes with the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. Olympian Justin Thomas will look to defend his title from 2020 while 2019 winner, Brooks Koepka, is coming into the week with four top-6 finishes in his last five TOUR events. FIELD NOTES: World No.1 Jon Rahm will not be in the field after testing positive for COVID-19 and withdrawing from the Olympic competition… FedExCup leader and recent Open Championship winner Collin Morikawa will look to add another WGC to his trophy case. He won the WGC-Workday Championship earlier this year… There will be 66 players competing in Memphis including 48 of the top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings… There are two spots open for a golfer who wins the gold medal at the Olympics (if not already in the field) and if they move inside the top-50 in the OWGR when the next edition of the ranking is released on Aug. 2… Fifteen countries will be represented… The only other golfer inside the top 50 in the world who is not teeing it up in Memphis is Christiaan Bezuidenhout. FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 550 FedExCup points COURSE: TPC Southwind, par 70, 7,233 yards. The long-time PGA TOUR host club was elevated to WGC status for 2019. Designed by Ron Prichard (with TOUR players Fuzzy Zoeller and Hubert Green as consultants) the most recent update came in 2004 under the eye of TOUR winner Loren Roberts. The course is a solid test with nearly 100 bunkers and 10 water hazards and undulating zoysia fairways. STORYLINES: With some of golf’s top names, including the defending champion Justin Thomas, competing in the Olympics, one thing to keep an eye on will be the fatigue factor of those who played in Tokyo and then traveled back to the United States… This is the final WGC event of the season. The previous winners included Collin Morikawa (WGC-Workday) and Billy Horschel (WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play)… Previous success at TPC Southwind has already been an indicator of comfort at the WGC contested at the same course. Daniel Berger, a two-time winner of the FedEx St. Jude Classic finished T2 last year, while Dustin Johnson (a two-time FedEx St. Jude Classic winner and six-time WGC winner) finished T12… Nine of the top-10 golfers in the FedExCup standings are teeing it up in Memphis, with the notable exception being Rahm. Bryson DeChambeau, who also tested positive for COVID-19 and withdrew from the Olympic competition, is back in action. 72-HOLE RECORD: 264, Brooks Koepka (2019) 18-HOLE RECORD: 61, Tom Lewis (third round, 2020) LAST TIME: Justin Thomas won by three shots – the same margin of victory as Brooks Koepka the year prior – over a foursome of golfers including Koepka himself, Daniel Berger, Tom Lewis, and Phil Mickelson who finished tied for second. Thomas fired a final-round 65 that included two birdies in his final four holes en route to winning his third PGA TOUR title of the season. This marked Thomas’ 13th career TOUR title and he became the third-youngest to ever reach that mark – the others being Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Lewis’ T2 was his best-career TOUR result and came thanks to shooting a 9-under 61 on Saturday, which matched the course record at TPC Southwind. HOW TO FOLLOW (All times ET) TELEVISION: Thursday-Friday, 12 p.m.-5 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Saturday-Sunday 12 p.m.-2 p.m. (Golf Channel), 2 p.m.-6 p.m. (CBS). PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday-Friday 7:45 a.m.-6:30 p.m. (Featured Groups). Saturday-Sunday, 7:45 a.m.-3 p.m. (Featured Groups), 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (Featured Holes). RADIO: Thursday-Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday 1 p.m.-6 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com).

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Tiger Woods resumes play in the final round of the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP today. He holds a three-shot lead and has seven holes to play. Golf Channel will air the remainder of Round 4 live at 6:30 p.m. ET. With a victory, Woods would notch No. 82 to tie him with Sam Snead for the most wins on the PGA TOUR. Follow below for live updates from the final round. RELATED: How to watch Round 4 | Chasing 82 | Visual Stories: Tiger’s Top 10 shots | Leaderboard No. 12 (par 4, 490 yards) No. 13 (par 3, 141 yards) No. 14 (par 5, 608 yards) No. 15 (par 4, 425 yards) No. 16 (par 3, 183 yards) No. 17 (par 4, 491 yards) No. 18 (par 5, 562 yards)

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Life off the course has been pretty good for Adam Scott, who with his wife, Marie, and daughter, Bo Vera, welcomed a son, Byron, last summer. On the course? That’s another story. Good results have been hard to come by for the 13-time PGA TOUR winner, who nevertheless may be starting to play his way out of a year-long slump. He shot three rounds in the 60s and finished T11 at THE PLAYERS Championship last week. It was a welcome uptick for a player who has no top-10s in 11 TOUR starts this season; is 110th in the FedExCup; has dropped to 65th in the world from ninth a year ago; and is in danger of snapping his streak of 67 straight major championship starts, second to only Sergio Garcia. “I have to back it up,â€� Scott, 37, said at THE PLAYERS. “I need three or four good weeks in a row now, but you can’t have three or four good weeks in a row without the first one.â€� Next up: This week’s AT&T Byron Nelson at Trinity Forest Golf Club, the linksy, windswept Coore/Crenshaw design in South Dallas. This is the tournament Scott won in 2008, albeit on a different course, and he has great reverence for its namesake, who passed away in 2006. So much reverence, it informed Adam and Marie’s decision on what to name their son last August. At his press conference at Trinity Forest on Wednesday, Scott recounted his first-ever meeting with Nelson at the 2002 Masters. The legend was sitting on the first tee of the Par 3 Contest when a slightly nervous Scott, then 21, approached to introduce himself. “Before I could say ‘Mr. Nelson,’â€� Scott said, “He said, ‘Adam, it’s nice to see you here, you’re going to have a great career.’ I was pretty touched by the fact that he even knew who I was.â€� In truth, the surfing town Byron Bay and poet Lord Byron also played a role in his son’s name, but Scott never forgot the gentleman golfer Nelson. “If my Byron can be anything like that,â€� Scott said. “Doesn’t have to be a champion golfer, but if he can be a gentleman, I’d be very, very proud.â€� A good omen for this week? Sure. And then there’s this: Scott and Texas golf go together like Wranglers and cowboy boots. He’s won the Houston Open (2007), the Nelson (2008), the Valero Texas Open (2010) and the Fort Worth Invitational at Colonial (2014), completing a rare Texas Slam. Another good omen. Trinity Forest, alas, is a course unlike any other in Texas. “I don’t know anything about it,â€� Scott said. “I mean, obviously, I won at the other course, but things change It’s time to move on. I don’t know that it was a sacred site for the golf tournament. “Hopefully this is a good move,â€� he added, “and it’s important, too, that the Byron Nelson tournament continues to move forward and be fresh, because it’s been named after a great player and you don’t want to see — you want to see it go from strength to strength, so hopefully moving venue will spice things up a bit for it.â€� The spiciest news for Scott is the fact that he may be emerging from the putting doldrums. He is part of a mini-revival of former anchored-putting experts that includes new PLAYERS champion Webb Simpson (first in strokes gained: putting last week) and Keegan Bradley, who tied for seventh and was 22nd in strokes gained: putting. Scott made over 330 feet worth of putts at TPC Sawgrass, which was 27th best in the field. He was 28th in strokes gained: putting (+.590). For a guy who was 193rd in that statistic going into THE PLAYERS, who merely aspires to be average on the greens, that’s pretty good. Trying to keep up with his putting travails isn’t easy, even for him. There’s a pattern, though: He makes a change, putts well, and then, after a while, the ball stops finding its target. His enviable swing is out of reach for most amateurs, but with putting he is like many fellow TOUR pros and virtually every weekend player who would try everything and anything, as long as it’s legal. An old cross-country ski with a modified claw grip attached to the bindings via one of Harry Vardon’s old pipe cleaners? Sure. Let’s give it a go. Scott started his career with a standard-length putter, winning, among other tournaments, THE PLAYERS in 2004. He used a long putter for victories at the 2011 World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational and 2013 Masters. Then, a month after Scott became the first Australian to win at Augusta National, the USGA announced it would ban anchored putting in 2016. That’s when things started to change. “It’s not a very nice thing; the vibe on the course every week was people yelling we’re cheating,â€� Scott said. “And that was a horrible situation to be in. And then the constant questioning in that 12 months before of what are you going to do, what are you going to do, when are you going to do it, how are you going to do it, all that stuff was quite frustrating.â€� The frustration, he added, began to creep into his game. “No doubt I didn’t putt very well the back half of ’15,â€� Scott admitted, “and it was more out of frustration. For a while I didn’t have to think about putting, and all of a sudden I’m thinking about putting, and thinking for me is never really a good thing.â€� Fed up with his results and the implication that he was doing something wrong, Scott went back to a standard-length putter in the fall of 2015. He practiced, trying to remember the feeling of the thing. Christmas came and went. Then New Year’s. Then something unexpected: Scott won The Honda Classic and WGC-Cadillac at Doral to come out roaring in the 2016 Florida Swing. What had happened? Was he better with the standard-length putter? It didn’t last. By last fall, Scott was struggling again. He skipped the first FedExCup Playoffs event, THE NORTHERN TRUST, to be back in Australia for the birth of his son, and his surprise return for the Dell Technologies Championship to try to extend his season didn’t work out (MC). He went 1-3-0 for the International Presidents Cup Team at Liberty National. This season brought more of the same. “Just me being a little too stubborn,â€� Scott said. At the Wells Fargo Championship, two weeks ago, he finally went back to the long putter he used to win the 2011 WGC-Bridgestone. He braced the grip against his left arm like others have done, and it worked. Although Scott missed the 54-hole cut at Quail Hollow Club, he putted better. Then came TPC Sawgrass, the most encouraging week yet. Those crucial 15-foot par saves that keep a round going? He made one or two of them each day. “It keeps the round going,â€� he said. “And I just haven’t been doing that consistently, and it makes it hard, always on the back foot.â€� Assuming his stroke traveled to Texas with him, the 65th-ranked Scott is in prime position to crack the top 60 in the world by either May 21 or June 11, thereby earning entry into the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. Otherwise, it’s off to sectionals. But that’s background noise. Scott has another Byron in his sights, this time on a course that evokes the Open Championship, a tournament he’s always played well. Given the trajectory he’s on with his new/old putter, you’d be smart to keep an eye on him.

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