PGA Tour golf best bets: AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

How it works: Each week, our experts from PGATOUR.COM will make their selections in PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf presented by SERVPRO. Each lineup consists of four starters and two bench players that can be rotated after each round. Adding to the challenge is that every golfer can be used only three times per each of four Segments. The first fantasy golf game to utilize live ShotLink data, PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf presented by SERVPRO allows you to see scores update live during competition. Aside from the experts below, Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton breaks down the field at this year’s Sony Open in Hawaii in his edition of the Power Rankings. THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN OUR EXPERTS? The PGA TOUR Experts league is once again open to the public. You can play our free fantasy game and see how you measure up against our experts below. Joining the league is simple. Just click here to sign up or log in. Once you create your team, click the “Leagues” tab and search for “PGA TOUR Experts.” After that? Pick your players and start talking smack. SEASON SEGMENT

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SAN DIEGO – They say the appendix is a useless body part but Talor Gooch wondered if his mojo went with his into the medical waste bin after it was removed last season. But any sense of that notion is gone now as he backed up his fourth-place finish at the Desert Classic with an impressive tie for third at the Farmers Insurance Open. It has rocketed the 27-year-old to a career high 27th in the FedExCup and given him every opportunity to make his first FedExCup Playoffs. In his rookie PGA TOUR season in 2017-18 the Oklahoma native was by no means playing amazing but still found himself inside the top 125 on the FedExCup list heading into summer. While he had failed to post a top 10 he had started to grow in confidence, particularly after a T13 at the Wells Fargo Championship. And then the appendix had to come out. “Up to that point I was playing decent and I think I made one cut after that,â€� Gooch said. “That kind of threw me off a little bit.â€� He decided against taking a minor medical exemption and instead tried to fight his way through. But it was apparent he came back a little early and the results dropped. His poor finish meant he missed the FedExCup Playoffs but did manage to stay inside the top 150 to gain conditional status this season. Starts from this position are hard to come by. Gooch had to Monday qualify into the Sony Open in Hawaii where he missed the cut only because he hit the wrong ball and was penalized. Rather than dwell on a potentially very costly mistake he surged his way up the leaderboard at the Desert Classic and booked a ticket via his finish to Torrey Pines. Now he’s booked another start next week at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. “Last week was the first time I was in contention and I kind of came through the final round and that obviously gave me a lot of confidence,â€� he said. “Never having done it before, now kind of doing it … I know I can do it now. It feels good. “There’s no doubt that the physical parts have been there the last couple weeks and then it’s just a matter of getting out of your own way. I’ve figured out how to do that the last couple weeks and hopefully we can keep doing it.â€� The goals have certainly lifted now. Forget top-10s, he’s now thinking wins. He’s not a complete stranger to success having won the 2017 News Sentinel Open on the Web.com Tour. A win on the PGA TOUR would take away all the uncertainty of when starts are coming his way. “I think the results would indicate I’m closer to winning,â€� Gooch said. “It’s a funny game as far as winning. People kind of got numb to how hard it is to win out here because of Tiger over the last couple decades. “You have to have things go right, you have to be there in that position a lot as well … If I can get that first one out of the way, then hopefully they start tumbling after that.â€�

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Marc Leishman doesn’t have an office with four walls, where one might hang his kid’s art project. But tapping into infinite kid-wisdom, his oldest, Harvey, 6, came up with a solution: Why not scrawl the art directly on what passes for Leishman’s office, his enormous golf bag? This was in early 2017, and Leishman wasn’t thrilled. “At the beginning, I’m kind of like, ‘No,’â€� Leishman said after shooting 65 for a five-shot win at the CIMB Classic at TPC Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. “Then I was like, ‘Yeah, write your name on my bag,’ so he wrote his name. Then my other son (Ollie, 5) wanted to write his name. “So now every golf bag that I have, they write their name on it and they love doing it,â€� Leishman added. “They see it on TV. And then every time I look at my golf bag, I think of them doing that or I think of my kids and that’s never a bad thing to think of your kids. Yeah, that’s a pretty cool thing that they do, and it will keep happening.â€� Leishman, who was solo in Malaysia as wife Audrey looked after the kids back home in Virginia Beach, Virginia, said he was hitting it every which way on the driving range. He kept at it, though, and figured something out with his driver as he recorded scores of 68-62-67-65. His 26-under total tied the CIMB record at TPC Kuala Lumpur, and left him well clear of T2s Emiliano Grillo (66), Chesson Hadley (66) and Bronson Burgoon (68). Two-time CIMB winner and 2017 FedExCup champion Justin Thomas shot a final-round 64 to tie for fifth. Now the TOUR heads to THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES at Jeju Island, Korea, where Thomas beat Leishman in a sudden-death playoff last year. It’s helpful, sometimes, to view the TOUR as one long story with lots of similar themes. Last week, Kevin Tway, son of eight-time TOUR winner Bob, got his first win at the Safeway Open as Dad watched through tears on TV. The CIMB was also, in its way, about fatherhood. In April, 2015, Leishman’s wife, Audrey, nearly died from a combination of sepsis, toxic-shock syndrome (TSS), acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and pneumonia. She was in a coma for five days and given a 5 percent chance at survival. Marc was nearly a single father, but Audrey not only survived, she also gave the couple a daughter, Eva, 1. Audrey and Marc started the Begin Again Foundation to support survivors of sepsis, TSS and ARDS. “I won’t say it made golf less important, but it made me realize that golf’s not life or death,â€� Leishman said from the CIMB, where he saluted his family’s willingness to forgo sleep in order to watch him win on TV. “We’ve been through that and that’s not fun. “Yes, I want to win trophies and lucky enough today to be leaving with one, which my kids will be very happy about, by the way,â€� Leishman added, “but if I wasn’t to walk away the winner today, that’s all right, too. As long as I give it my best shot, that’s what it’s all about.â€� The CIMB was not life or death for Audrey and the kids, either, but it was still tense. Marc was tied for the 54-hole lead with Gary Woodland (71, T5) and potential Presidents Cup teammate Shubhankar Sharma (72, T10). Not surprisingly in Asia, Sharma, of India, was the fan favorite. Audrey took the boys to a theme park Saturday in order to think about something else. That night, she organized her schedule around the late telecast. After napping from 9 p.m. to midnight, she turned on the TV as Leishman birdied four of his first five holes while his playing partners struggled. He cruised from there, and she woke up Harvey to watch the last putt at 3 a.m. A year and a half ago, before Leishman won the 2017 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, and the BMW Championship, Harvey put the pressure on. He’d seen Jason Day’s kids, Dash and Lucy, scamper onto the 18th green to celebrate Dad’s victories, and wondered aloud why he and Ollie weren’t doing the same to greet their own dad. Then came Bay Hill and Conway Farms, and the Leishman family celebrated. Last season saw Marc notch two runner-up finishes but no wins as he still made it all the way to the 30-man TOUR Championship. He must have sensed a win was imminent, though, because prior to the CIMB he booked the family plane tickets from Australia to Maui at the end of this year. “I just booked them for Maui thinking that I’ll either be playing in the (Sentry Tournament of Champions) or we’ll go for a vacation there,â€� Leishman said. “Now I’ll be playing a golf tournament.â€� (He tied for seventh at last year’s Sentry TOC, despite a third-round 76.) “I know Audrey will be very excited, as my kids will be,â€� Leishman added. “Hawaii’s an awesome spot, that’s one of my favorite places in the whole world. To be able to play two weeks there at two of my favorite golf tournaments is certainly something to look forward to.â€� Before he left Kuala Lumpur, Leishman pocketed a few toy airplanes to bring home to the kids, a gift of tournament sponsor Malaysia Airlines. Miniature airplanes? A trip to Maui? A fourth TOUR win? Yep, Marc Leishman banked some major Dad points even from half a world away.

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