Power Rankings: THE PLAYERS Championship

Christian Blyden says he wasn't so sure he was going to like "chasing a ball around a field of grass." The 13-year-old didn't have a lot of options when it came to sports, though. He's a hemophiliac, which means his body has trouble making the clots that stem the bleeding when he's cut or injured. Kids like Christian bruise easily and have an increased risk of bleeding around the joints. So, kickball and softball and soccer and other contact sports weren't exactly on the agenda. But Larry Bonner, the man who would eventually become his stepfather, suggested to Christian's mom, Sarah, that he might enjoy golf. "Have you ever heard of First Tee," he asked her. She hadn't but Sarah did the research that night, immediately enrolled her son, and the following weekend, she took Christian to buy some golf clubs. He's been hooked ever since. In fact, the entire family now plays golf. They even have a practice area in the backyard where Christian, who has also been diagnosed with ADHD and depression, can work on his putting and chipping - even at night under motion sensor lights. "And if they’ve had a rough day at school or at work, they’ll just go outside and chip and putt," Sarah says. "They don’t have to go to the golf course. They just go outside and just joke and laugh." But as much as he likes golf, Christian, who lives in Pensacola, Florida, has never been to a PGA TOUR event. He wanted to see the game he watches almost constantly on the Golf Channel played up-close-and-personal - and maybe even get a chance to see his favorite player, Dustin Johnson. That's where Dreams Come True, a non-profit based in Jacksonville, Florida that grants wishes for kids with life-threatening illnesses, stepped in. Partnering with the TOUR, it arranged a VIP experience for Christian on Wednesday at THE PLAYERS Championship. And while he's at TPC Sawgrass, Christian hopes to get to meet Johnson, who sent a surprise video message with the invitation last week. Christian watched the screen of his tablet intently, without saying a word so as not to miss anything, as Johnson talked. When it was over, his face broke out into a big smile. "Dat be the DJ," Christian said excitedly, as he turned to his parents, who were filming the interaction. Christian has always liked Johnson because of his unflappable demeanor. The teenager says he's been raised to look for the good in life, so he is drawn to players like the world No. 1 who don't get rattled by errant shots and missed putts. "I used to get really upset when I would hit into the trees," Christian said in an email. "My dad would tell me, son, it’s OK, we will call that a mulligan and not count it. You’re still learning. It’s not a big deal. Remember it’s just a game and we are out here to have fun and learn the game. "So, it took me a little while to get over not getting upset at myself when I made a bad shot and to see DJ not get upset at all, I want to be like that. So, I have been working hard. Sometimes I do good, other times not so good. "But when I watch DJ play golf I he is always calm and never upset about any trouble shots, and that’s why I like him." Looking for the good in life hasn't always been easy for Christian and his family, though. He was born 27 weeks early and weighed only 2 pounds, 9 ounces at birth. He stayed in the neonatal ICU at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola for three months. At the time, Sarah lived in Fort Walton Beach, which was about an hour away from her only child. She drove to see Christian every day after work and stayed "until they kicked me out," she says. She'd spend the weekends in the Ronald McDonald House near the hospital. "I would bring all my laundry and everything, all on my laundry soap, anything I had that I needed to get done," Sarah recalls. "I would pack it in my car, and I would drive an hour and get everything done whenever he was napping or whenever the doctors had to do their stuff. … "So, it was definitely a juggle. That was an interesting three months for sure." Small wonder, Sarah battled postpartum depression. Making matters worse was the hemophilia, although as it turned out, Christian would not be diagnosed for nearly a year. He had his first blood transfusion at two weeks, though — luckily his biological father was a match. But the signs were there all along. Sarah remembers walking into his room one day and seeing an IV line sticking out of Christian's head. "I was like, what is he doing to my kid?" she says. "And they were like, well, hold on, hold on, mom. It’s okay. He just lost too much blood. That’s the only place we could get an IV." At nine months, Christian had grown enough that he was able to be circumcised. The bleeding continued for several days and despite multiple trips to the urologist, bloody diapers in hand, and even to the emergency room, Sarah's concerns kept being dismissed. "I was like, okay, well I guess I’m just crazy," Sarah recalls. The next red flag appeared when Christian started cutting teeth. The people who worked at the day care he attended put Christian in a plexiglass crib and separated him from the other children because of the mouth bleeds he got. Sarah became a fixture at the pediatrician's office. "They eventually got tired of seeing us," Sarah says. "They did lab work and they sent it out to Pensacola, and that’s whenever we found out that he had hemophilia. I was like hemo, what? I had no idea what hemophilia is. And they sent us out here to speak to hematologist." Hemophilia is a rare blood disease that generally affects males. According to the Hemophilia Federation of America, approximately 400 babies with the condition are born each year and roughly 20,000 people like Christian, who has the severe form, are living with it in the United States. The condition is caused by a deficiency in the clotting protein factor VIII, which is manufactured by the liver. At first, Christian was treated with a factor replacement therapy that was administered through an IV by a home health care worker - but only after considerable physical gyrations. "I would have to hold him in my lap and have to put one leg over his legs and one arm over his forehead and then hold his other arm down and have one arm shoved behind my back because he would kick and scream and fight," Sarah recalls. "Mommy, why are you letting them do this to me this hurts? And he would just scream and cry. And, and it’s like, but you need your medicine. You just bleed without it — without this medicine, the bleeding doesn’t stop." But even though he needed to take precautions, Christian was still a kid. He'd go out and play with his friends at recess and roll his ankle or trip and fall and he'd have an ankle bleed. When that happened, his ankle would swell up three of four times its normal size. "So, there’s no weight bearing," Sarah says. "There’s no running, there’s no walking, there’s nothing. So, he would just spend the whole year in a wheelchair." Christian ended up having two surgeries on his ankle, performed by Dr. Cynthia Gauger, who is a pediatric hematologist oncologist at Nemours Children's Specialty Center in Jacksonville, Florida, and has formed a strong bond with the teen, who sees her every three months. He had to repeat first grade because of the class time lost during his three-month recovery period. "By the time he got back, they were on adverbs and pronouns and he didn’t know what they were talking about," Sarah says. "So, he just kind of shut down and fell into depression." Christian has been through nine different clotting agents, but the most recent one appears to be working well because he hasn't had a bleed in two years. He can give it to himself with an epi-pen. If he has an active bleed, there is another medication that is given through an IV - and while it makes him "extremely nervous," Sarah says, Christian can administer that, as well. And Larry is a nurse - "How lucky did I get," laughs his wife, who had sold her house and moved to Pensacola, where she met her future husband, with Christian to be closer to a pediatric emergency room. The social environment at school has been good for Christian, who his mom describes as super shy and super quiet. Golf has had a similar affect on the dark-haired teenager. Larry suggested it would be a good outlet to get a kid with ADHD to focus and slow down. "He’s not the kid that’s rushing downstairs, first thing Christmas morning and surprised to see what Santa brought," Sarah says. "He’s your very laid-back, quiet kid. So, so whenever he took an interest in golf, his stepdad and I were like, hey, he’s interested in golf. Let’s feed this golf energy because that’ll get him to socialize more. That’ll get him out of his shell. "And it has, because whenever he’s on the golf course, he’ll make small talk with the other people behind us like at the tee box waiting for the people in front of us. And before he wouldn’t talk to anybody." Sarah says Christian was concerned about playing golf at first. What about my ankles? What if I have another bleed? She told him he could learn at his own pace and stop if he needed to. They went and got clothes, clubs, shoes, even a Garman watch to measure distance. "Then he hit it off with some of the other boys at the First Tee," Sarah says. "And then next thing I know here we are. Every weekend I’m taking him out to go play golf with the other kids. He absolutely loves it." And Dustin Johnson, of course.

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We apologize for the interruptions to today’s PGA TOUR telecasts due to a labor dispute between the Golf Channel and its live tournament technicians union. We are working closely with our partners at the Golf Channel to provide as much television coverage as possible of the Sony Open in Hawaii, The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic at Sandals Emerald Bay and the Diamond Resorts Invitational in the interim. Of course, PGATOUR.COM and the PGA TOUR app will provide real-time scoring, and fans can follow tournament action via our social media channels. PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM, which can be streamed for free on PGA TOUR digital platforms, will also provide live coverage of the Sony Open as planned. Thank you for your patience and for being a valuable PGA TOUR fan.

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Go ahead and peruse Brooks Koepka’s bag setup from his win at THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES. If you’re a gearhead, you’ll notice something feels out of place — and it’s not the Nike Vapor Fly Pro 3-iron he’s had in the bag going to 2016 when the Swoosh was still in the equipment game. Next to a Scotty Cameron T10 Select Newport 2 putter, Koepka’s Titleist Vokey Design SM4 TVD lob wedge is arguably the oldest club in his bag at the moment, with a product release date that goes back to 2011. There’s a reason why Koepka loves the wedge so much, and it has to do with a custom low-bounce TVD M-Grind he’s placed on his 60-degree for every TOUR title, including three major championships. Bottom line, Koepka and his lob wedge have some good history — so much so that when he decided to move into the current SM7 version earlier this year, Vokey Tour rep Aaron Dill added the same SM4 TVD M-Grind to the updated head. Koepka had three Vokey SM7 wedges in play during his win at this year’s U.S. Open, but like most professionals, fresh sets are needed throughout the season to ensure the grooves have extra zip for the major championships. Given Koepka’s success with SM7, many wondered why the 28-year-old suddenly decided to revert back to SM4 in his lob wedge late in the year, but retain SM7 gap and sand wedges. Of course, there’s a story behind the older model wedge getting a spot in Koepka’s bag. The week prior to the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, Koepka made a call to Aaron Dill, Vokey’s Tour rep, to have three new SM7 wedges built in preparation for the PGA Championship and FedExCup Playoffs. It was a simple ask that Dill was able to knock out — shipping the clubs to Koepka’s house prior to his departure for Firestone. But there was one problem when Koepka arrived on site in Ohio: He left the wedges at home. In need of a set at the last minute, Koepka’s caddie, Ricky Elliott, asked Dill if he could build something new in less than a day. Dill is a modern-day magician on the grinding wheel, but on short notice, even he wasn’t able to completely fulfill Koepka’s request. The issue came down to the grind on the lob wedge, which is highly complicated and takes roughly two days for Dill to add Koepka’s customized SM4 TVD M-Grind geometry on a special SM7 head. “I’d say about 10 to 15 percent of the guys I work with need something exotic on their wedge,” Dill said. “A few of those grinds just take time to get it exactly right, and that’s the case with his grind.” To help Koepka out in a pinch, Dill reached into his bag of tricks, pulling an old SM4 TVD M-Grind head from the Titleist truck. Due to the number of players who still use exotic offerings on TOUR, Dill keeps special stock — custom grinds and head offerings that may have been retired — on hand each week for unique requests. Dill would eventually build Koepka an SM7 with his preferred grind after the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, but instead of putting it in play, the PGA TOUR Player of then Year chose to keep the older model SM4 in the bag for the remainder of the season and into the new 2018-19 campaign. What makes Koepka’s M-Grind so different from the standard version? According to Dill, it comes down to bounce characteristics that are lower than most golfers would prefer on the grind. Koepka’s lob wedge sits tight on the turf, due to the relief that’s added to the heel, toe and trailing edge, making it ideal for firm conditions — something he encountered for years in Europe before he earned his TOUR card. “When it comes to his lob wedge, the bounce on it is extremely low,” said Dill, who noted the bounce on a standard M-Grind is 8 degrees. “He’s got some terrific hands and delivers the wedge impeccably. He’s able to get away with just having very little bounce. “We talk about low bounce numbers, he’s about 8 to 9 degrees less forward angle than the original. It’s quite a bit. That’s just from him experimenting and finding what’s worked best for him. He’s been using that for years.” Koepka’s SM4 may be one of the oldest wedges on TOUR, but when it comes to the way it performs on the course, there’s a reason why he continues to use the same setup. The results speak for themselves. BUY EQUIPMENT HERE: PGA TOUR Superstore

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