Phil Mickelson wins PGA TOUR Champions debut

HOUSTON – Defending champion Carlos Ortiz, fresh off a runner-up finish last week in his native Mexico, has withdrawn from the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open. Ortiz earned his first PGA TOUR victory last year in Houston, making birdie on the final hole to beat Dustin Johnson and Hideki Matsuyama by two shots. Ortiz has been struggling with a shoulder injury, however, that also forced him to withdraw after two rounds of last month’s ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP. “Unfortunately, I’ve been battling a left shoulder injury since Japan and after meeting with my doctors this morning, it was recommended that I take the rest of the season off to recover,” Ortiz said. “This is incredibly disappointing to me as I was looking forward to defending my first PGA TOUR title in Texas, my second home. I’m honored to be a champion of this event and I look forward to returning next year.” His runner-up finish at last week’s World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba was his best showing since the win. He shot four rounds of 67 or better at Mayakoba to finish alone in second, four shots behind winner Viktor Hovland. Mayakoba is one of the shorter courses on the PGA TOUR, and that allowed Ortiz to stay in contention despite dealing with the injury. “A little sore, it’s still bothering a little bit. Keep grinding,” he said. “(Mayakoba) is a good golf course to kind of bunt it around, that’s what I did today and it worked out perfect.” The renovated Memorial Park, which is in its second year hosting the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open, is nearly 400 yards longer than last week’s venue, though. Playing more than 7,400 yards, it was the second-longest par-70 used on the PGA TOUR last season. Only Winged Foot Golf Club, the venue for the 2020 U.S. Open, was longer. Memorial Park also was the eighth-toughest course used on TOUR last season, in relation to par. Ortiz handled the unique Tom Doak design better than anyone. An injury will keep him from defending that title, however.

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ORLANDO, Fla. – This is all you need to know about the close relationship enjoyed by Tiger and Charlie Woods and Justin and Mike Thomas. When the Thomases teamed together to win last year’s PNC Championship, they celebrated by donning their bright red Willie Park champions’ belts and strutting over to Tiger’s house to show them off. Laughter all around. “We would expect them to do the same thing,” Justin said. The Thomases – Justin and his parents, Mike and Jani – are a tightknit bunch, so Justin and Mike appreciate being allowed inside Tiger’s inner circle. It’s fitting that they’ll be playing alongside Team Woods as Tiger returns to golf at 12:18 p.m. Saturday for the first round of the PNC Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando. “My excitement level is high just for him being out here and being somewhere other than his house, and getting to see a lot of familiar faces,” Justin Thomas said. “And I know spending time with Charlie is a huge deal to him. I know he’s excited for that part. “In terms of the competing, I think his expectations are very low. But at the same time, he is who he is for a reason, so I’m sure he’ll be (ticked) off if he didn’t play well.” Mike Thomas, 62, is the son of a PGA club professional who went into the family business, working for years as the professional at Harmony Landing in Goshen, Kentucky. He and his son are defending champions at the PNC (Mike joked on Thursday he probably hasn’t defended a title of any kind in at least 20 years). Mike’s only child, Justin, is ranked sixth in the world, having seen the view from No. 1, a perch in the world pecking order that Woods occupied for 683 weeks of his meteoric career. Justin Thomas is 28 and the owner of 14 PGA TOUR victories, including this year’s PLAYERS Championship and the 2017 PGA Championship. His career is off to a nice start. Tiger Woods is two weeks shy of turning 46. He already has climbed his mountains. He currently shares the record for most PGA TOUR victories (82, along with Sam Snead) and has won 15 major titles. He’s not sure when, or if, he will compete again on the PGA TOUR, stating he’ll never again be a full-time player. If he does choose to play, he expects his appearances to be very limited. This week’s PNC, where Charlie can hit drives from a forward tee about 1,000 yards ahead of Dad’s (Tiger will play at 7,106 yards) and Tiger can ride along in a cart, marks one small step in his journey. The bond that the Thomases have built with Tiger and Charlie Woods represents an interesting mix of golf generations, a high-flowing conversation of information that lives within the game they all love. Tiger has mentored Justin, just as Justin now serves as a sounding board and mentor to 12-year-old Charlie. (“It’s probably less sage advice that he’s passing on,” Mike said, “and more of verbal comedic abuse, just because that’s what we do.”) Mike Thomas is in the picture frame, too, serving as a valuable set of eyes as he watches all three work on their golf swings. Justin hasn’t played golf with Tiger since last December, but Mike recently played with Tiger and Charlie, and came away quite impressed with both. “I mean, he’s still – he’s got some speed,” Mike said of Tiger. “He’s got some length. Hits a lot of really, really flush shots. I mean, I was surprised.” The constant jabbing and sharp needling that goes on between the four golfers require all of them to have thick skin, and to stay sharp and quick on their feet. A year ago, Charlie walked to his ball inside a fairway bunker and found a funny note left from the Thomases: Draw hole. A few holes later, Charlie, who’d wisely kept the note, responded with the same. All expect more of the same fun banter come Saturday. “It’s going to be the same as if us four were just playing at home,” Justin said. “I mean, we’re all rooting for each other. We want to go out there and have fun. It’s the same thing for all of us, is that I’m here to spend time with my dad, and Tiger is here to spend time with Charlie, and vice versa. And it just so happens we’re playing in a televised tournament. “That’s really — at least for me personally, that’s how I’m looking at it. I’m sure we’ll have our needling here and there. But at the end of the day, we’re all pulling for each other, and we just want to have a good time and see each other do well.” Justin Thomas said Woods has been invaluable to his career, letting him inside the vault to one of the toughest competitors – mentally and physically – the game has seen. After they played for the first time in a TOUR event years ago, Thomas reached out to Woods and asked for an honest assessment. No surprise, that’s exactly what he received. “Immediately, he’s like, ‘You don’t have near enough shots. … You can work it, but you don’t have enough shots to be, you know, as dominant as I was’ kind of thing,” Justin said. “He’s like, … ‘You have some (shots) that you can hit, but you don’t have all of them, and you don’t have enough.’ It’s like, all right.” Thomas went to work to figure it out, and today says he has so many more different types of shots in his arsenal, something that allows him to shape shots and get after flags he might not have been able to access in the past. “It’s helped,” he said. Just as Justin is willing to answer anything that Charlie might pose to him, and how Mike is willing to help all three. On Saturday, finally, Tiger Woods will be back on the golf course once again. And rest assured, all four players in the group will be thankful for that.

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Tiger Woods is headed back to TPC Sawgrass and THE PLAYERS Championship, where he has authored some of the most unforgettable chapters of his storied career. A 79-time PGA TOUR winner who has missed significant time with injuries, Woods announced late Thursday afternoon that he will tee it up at THE PLAYERS for the first time since a T69 finish in 2015. He won the tournament in 2001 and 2013, and also won the 1994 U.S. Amateur at TPC Sawgrass. Injuries have limited the 14-time major winner, but Woods’ comeback at age 42 has been a big storyline this season. Although he finished a forgettable T32 at the Masters, he captivated fans at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard (T5) and Valspar Championship (T2), where a birdie at the last would have forced a playoff in his first-ever start at the Valspar. The only player to win the FedExCup multiple times (2007, ’09), Woods is 50th in the current FedExCup standings and 91st in the Official World Golf Ranking. He has a 69.9 scoring average this season. His performance this season has been a pleasant surprise. Few knew what to expect after his most recent back surgery, a fusion operation that shelved him for most of 2017, but the procedure seems to have worked “I’m a walking miracle,â€� Woods has said more than once. His overriding goal was to be able to live without pain, but he’s been able to do so much more than that both on and off the course. Last month he was named captain of the 2019 U.S. Presidents Cup team, which will take on the Internationals at Royal Melbourne on Dec. 12-15. And in just the last week, Woods has given a kidsclinic at Big Cedar Lodge in Ridgedale, Missouri, and a private golf lession to a Nepalese teenager in South Florida. Meanwhile, he’s been practicing amid his traditional post-Masters hiatus.   This has been a big season for comebacks on TOUR, with Jason Day, Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy and others picking up victories after long droughts. A Woods victory at TPC Sawgrass would end one of the game’s most talked-about dry spells and move him ever closer to the TOUR’s all-time victories leader Sam Snead (82). One of Woods’ few flaws has been the long game, where he is 202nd in driving accuracy (51.97 percent) and 151st in strokes gained: off-the-tee (-.174) this season. TPC Sawgrass is demanding off the tee, though it will allow him to hit less than driver off many tees. The watery Pete Dye course may be even tougher on mediocre approach shots, though. “It’s disappointing that I didn’t hit the ball well enough,â€� Woods said at the Masters, where he faulted his imprecise iron play. “But to be able to just be out here competing again, if you had said that last year at this particular time, I would have said you’re crazy.â€�

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