Phil Mickelson picked for Presidents Cup team

LA QUINTA, Calif. — Sungjae Im shot a 7-under 65 on Friday at The American Express to take a one-stroke lead over first-round leader Brandon Hagy and four others. RELATED: Leaderboard | Mickelson cards 18 pars in a round for first time on TOUR Im, the 22-year-old South Korean who was the PGA TOUR’s rookie of the year in 2019, had seven birdies in the bogey-free round on the Stadium Course at PGA WEST, highlighted by three in four holes around the turn. Hagy was in position to join Im at 11 under, but he bogeyed his final hole with a tee shot into the fairway bunker to finish his 70. Canada’s Nick Taylor (66), South Korea’s Si Woo Kim (68), Tony Finau (66) and Mexico’s Abraham Ancer (65) also were 10 under. Emiliano Grillo (66), Francesco Molinari (66) and Doug Ghim (68) were two shots off the lead. The leaderboard was crowded with low scores as usual at the Palm Springs-area tournament long hosted by Bob Hope. Im, Taylor and Ancer were among 12 players who didn’t make a bogey Friday. After splitting the first two rounds over two courses, the players will all play the Stadium Course for the final two rounds. Tournament host Phil Mickelson made 18 pars for the first time in his 2,201 rounds of PGA TOUR play. The 50-year-old missed the cut at 2 over. With his drives looking sharp and his mid-range putts dropping regularly, Im is off to another strong start at a tournament in which he has already finished 10th and 12th in his short PGA TOUR career. “I’m pretty satisfied with how I played all of my shots,” said Im, who feels his putting has improved sharply this year. “Speaking of putting, I started drawing a line on the ball as I visualize my putts, and that seemed to work pretty well today.” Im also feels he might have an edge because didn’t travel home to South Korea during the holiday break due to the mandatory coronavirus quarantine required. Instead, he stayed in the house he recently purchased in Atlanta and practiced for the new season. Hagy made 10 birdies in his opening round, but got off to a rough start Friday on the Stadium Course with two early bogeys. He rallied with birdies on his 16th and 17th holes, but his errant drive on his final hole kept him one shot off the pace. Taylor, who also led the Sony Open in Hawaii after two rounds last week, shot a 66 with six birdies on the Stadium Course. He had three straight birdies on the back nine of his bogey-free round, including a 24-foot birdie putt on the 15th and an 18-footer on the island green at the 17th. Taylor appears to be rounding into impressive form as he prepares to defend his Pebble Beach title in three weeks. “My game feels really good right now, so hopefully it keeps peaking,” he said. “It was a lot of intimidating tee shots, iron shots into greens. I feel like I missed in the right places. I drove it really nice on the par-5s and gave myself pretty easy looks on a few of them.”

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It’s that time of year again, when you turn on the TV for the Sentry Tournament of Champions and ask yourself, “Why did I go another year without booking a trip to Kapalua?” The 2021 PGA TOUR winners (and Olympic gold medalist Xander Schauffele) open 2022 in Hawaii with a no-cut event that has provided some of the wildest finishes in recent memory. We’ve witnessed two playoffs and a final-round 62 to win in the last three years. A big reason for the theatrics? The uniqueness of Kapalua. The Plantation Course is not your everyday TOUR venue. This track comes with mountains and valleys and tropical weather providing an unpredictable and dramatic four days in paradise. The unique design of Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, so we are celebrating by bringing you Five Things to Know about the course that opens the calendar year on the PGA TOUR. It’s a rare par 73 Ernie Els won at 31 under in 2003, and Jordan Spieth nearly caught him with a winning score of 30 under in 2016. These scores for a four-round event may seem crazy until you check the scorecard. Kapalua is the only par-73 course on the PGA TOUR schedule, as it comes with just three par 3s. The long holes are long and the short holes are short at Kapalua. The course has seven holes that regularly play longer than 500 yards – four of those are par 5s – but also has four par 4s playing shorter than 400 yards (all on the back nine). Weather, especially the wind, is often a factor in Maui, but six of the last seven champions have shot 21 under or better, so players making the trip to the South Pacific better be ready to make some birdies. The 18th hole is full of trouble From the tee box, the 18th hole provides one of the most beautiful drives in golf, looking straight down into the Pacific Ocean with mountains in the distance. But the journey, more than one-third of a mile when played at its longest, brings danger into play. The par 5 can stretch all the way to 667 yards, making it one of the TOUR’s longest holes. With a wide fairway, players can take a rip off the tee but need to catch some help from the ridge if they want to attack in two. On the second shot, a ravine, along with scattered bunkers, make missing short and left a disaster, and with a usual front-left Sunday pin position, this all comes into play. Justin Thomas found the hazard in 2020 and made a bogey to fall into a playoff with Patrick Reed and Xander Schauffele, which Thomas eventually won after playing No. 18 three more times. A more conservative second shot is directed out to the right, where the contours will guide the ball back toward the green upon landing. However, if the ball does not get a kick, a downhill pitch shot awaits. While having a par-5 as the 18th hole seems like an obvious birdie opportunity to finish each round, the 600-plus-yard gauntlet also provides a long strip of danger en route to the clubhouse. Birdie is manageable. Eagle is feasible, but risky. Recent renovation was also a restoration When the Plantation Course opened in 1992, Coore and Crenshaw made sure to use the West Maui Mountains and Pacific Ocean for stunning views on every hole. Those features won’t change, at least for a few thousand years. But the bounce of the course had decreased at a much faster rate and required a fix after almost three decades of existence. “Years ago, you would hit a tee shot and it would chase and chase and chase unbelievable distances. But as the grass grew and grew for 30 years, a lot of that element was lost,” Coore said before the 2020 Sentry TOC. “The course had gotten so soft that it was easy pickin’s for TOUR players and really long for resort players.” In 2019, 100 acres of the Plantation Course’s fairways were stripped and regrassed with a new surface: Celebration Bermudagrass, a denser playing turf than the original Bermuda. This surface could be mowed tighter and controlled against year-round trampling. “The idea at Kapalua always was to land a shot 60 yards short of a green and let it roll on,” Coore said in 2020. “In recent years, a ball landing 20 yards short of a green would just stop. It will play differently this year. Players will be able to use sideslopes to feed shots to a flag. And drives will roll out farther, sometimes closer to trouble.” The greens, which had shrunk over almost three decades, were expanded closer to their original sizes. “There’s no question our greens needed a little more calming to offer some more pin positions,” Crenshaw said. Perhaps 2020’s winning score of 14 under, the highest since 2007, was representative of this change. But it didn’t last. Harris English and Joaquin Niemann went low again last year, each reaching 25 under. It’s way, way up Most tourists may come to Maui for the beach. TOUR players come for the elevation. The Plantation Course reaches a high point of 510 feet and spans 316 acres of property. The following week’s Sony Open at Waialae Country Club on Oahu will peak at roughly 10 feet of elevation change on a 120-acre property. The Kapalua Golf website embraces the elevation change by noting, “This course offers plenty of downhill tee shots. You’ll feel like one of the pros when – with the aid of the aggressive slope of the 18th fairway – you will enjoy hitting one of the longest drives of your life.” While most holes feature ocean views, there is no water on the course. However, various canyons, including the notorious penalty area on 18, provide potential trouble. Mountains, not water, define Kapalua. Americans have dominated America’s 50th state has been an automatic U.S. victory for the last decade and change. Coming into the 2022 event, the Sentry Tournament of Champions has seen 11 consecutive American winners, from Jonathan Byrd in 2011 to Harris English in 2021. Former world No. 1s and FedExCup champions Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth are among those who have also won and often contend there. It wasn’t always this way. After David Duval, Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk won the first three editions at Kapalua from 1999-2001, the U.S. went nine straight years without a win on Maui. Aussies Stuart Appleby and Geoff Ogilvy won three times and two times, respectively, while Vijay Singh, Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia and Daniel Chopra each lifted the trophy once. Since last year’s Sentry, the TOUR has had 17 different international winners, including Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith, team winners of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Five of the fall’s nine winners are from countries outside of the United States. Will that trend continue at Kapalua?

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