Predicting the partnerships for Presidents Cup

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Gary Woodland will have to hold off the game’s best players if he wants to win on one of the game’s iconic venues. There isn’t a better way to win a major. Woodland has a one-shot lead over Justin Rose entering the final round of the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. It is his first 54-hole lead in a major. Related: Leaderboard | Tough day for Woods, Mickelson “My game is in a great spot,â€� Woodland said. “I’m at a beautiful golf course. I came here to win, and that’s what we’re going out to do tomorrow.â€� He’s made just two bogeys this week, the fewest in the field. He’s bogey-free in three trips around Pebble Beach’s back nine, too. Woodland is in the top 15 in both Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and Approach-the-Green, hitting 74% of the fairways and 69% of the greens. The putter has been the most impressive important club in the bag, though. He is third in that statistic. “Gary, when he’s on, makes golf look easy,â€� said Matt Kuchar, who won a World Cup with Woodland and sits six shots back. Winning a major is never a simple task, though, especially when your closest pursuers form a roster as strong as the 1927 Yankees. Of the next five names on the leaderboard, four have won major championships. That list includes Rose, the reigning FedExCup champion. Woodland has some space over the rest of the field – Rose is the only player within three shots of him – but his pursuers all have impressive resumes and have proven themselves in the game’s biggest events. “I know if I play my game and play like the way I’ve been playing, the guys from behind me are going to have to do something really, really special,â€� Woodland said. “So I’m going to go out, stay within myself, stick to my game plan and try to extend that lead more than anything.â€� Brooks Koepka, the most intimidating man in majors since Tiger Woods, is in third place, just four behind. He’s tied with Chez Reavie. His success in these championships diminish the size of his deficit. Confidence may be the most important attribute in golf, and Koepka is brimming with it. That’s what happens when you’ve won the past two U.S. Opens and PGA Championships. “I don’t need to go out and chase,â€� Koepka said. “I don’t need to do much.â€� Louis Oosthuizen won his Open Championship at the Home of Golf. If he were to win a U.S. Open, it would be fitting, then, to do it at this championship’s most historic venue. And then there’s Rory McIlroy, who, like Koepka, owns four majors and has every reason to be confident. The final round falls one week after he shot a final-round 61 to win the RBC Canadian Open. Woodland has never been better than third entering the final round of a major. That was at last year’s PGA Championship, when he shot a final-round 69 that was overshadowed by the duel between Koepka and Tiger Woods. Woodland was paired with Woods on that final day. He struggled with the chaos that surrounded Woods’ pursuit of his first major in a decade, but gained valuable experience. “I don’t know if I enjoyed it to start the round, I think there was a lot of moving pieces going on, and I think I kind of got caught up in it a little bit,â€� Woodland said. “Once I settled in, … I was back to being myself. And that’s what I’ve learned from that situation, is I can’t control everybody else. I can control my attitude, and I can control my game. And that’s what I’m out here to do.â€� Woodland finished sixth, his best finish in 30 majors. He may face unprecedented pressure, but nothing will match the chaos that surrounds a final-round pairing with Woods when he is in contention. His game has continued to progress under Pete Cowen, though. The former college basketball player now has a more complete game. He isn’t just relying on athleticism. “I feel very comfortable on this golf course,â€� he said. “(Swing coach) Pete Cowen has got me comfortable working the ball both ways if I need to. And that just frees me up a little bit. I have a short game now I can rely on.â€� Rose, a former U.S. Open champion, can be an intimidating opponent, but he’s also a friendly face. They met in 2008, when Woodland joined Lake Nona just before heading to the final stage of Q-School. Rose introduced himself and gave advice about the challenge ahead. Woodland went on to get his card. Woodland is ninth in the FedExCup this season, the highest-ranked player without a win. He has seven top-10s, including two runners-up, in 17 starts. The most recent of his three PGA TOUR wins came at last year’s Waste Management Phoenix Open. Pebble Beach’s inviting holes allow Woodland’s closest pursuers to apply pressure early. They are among the easiest on the course. Pebble Beach is firming up, though. After a week full of red numbers, the course is starting to offer a more traditional U.S. Open test. That means players will have to be selective about when to be aggressive. “The golf course is firming up. It’s not as receptive as it was early in the week,â€� Woodland said. “Hopefully I can go out and control myself.â€� If he does, a trophy will be waiting for him in one of golf’s most beautiful spots. He’ll have to earn it, though.

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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Pat Perez leads by one stroke halfway through the CIMB Classic after carding a 7-under-par 65 around a four-hour delay for rain on Friday. Fellow American Xander Schauffele was on Perez’s tail after a long-range eagle on No. 3 set up his 5-under 67. Defending champion Justin Thomas had another poor round by his high standards, a 71. A three-peat at TPC Kuala Lumpur, where he clinched his first PGA TOUR title in 2015, seems a tall order. Two bogeys compounded by a double bogey on the 12th meant Thomas was 10 shots behind Perez, at 3 under for the tournament. Perez, meanwhile, was hoping for more gusty winds and rain after making eight birdies, including four in a row. He’s at 13-under 131 overall. “I don’t want sunshine at all. It’s too hot, way too hot,” Perez said. “I like it just the way it is right now, perfect. Cloudy, no wind. “I didn’t think I really played that well. I got off to a slow start, I was 1 over through four. We had the break, and … I like the front (nine), I play better on the front.” Sung Kang of South Korea (68), Thomas Pieters of Belgium (67) and overnight leader Cameron Smith of Australia (71) are tied for third, four shots off the pace at 9 under. TOUR Rookie of the Year Schauffele said he was comfortable. “Everything’s kind of coming easy,” Schauffele said. “Today was one of those weird days where (I had) all the breaks. I had some squirrely tee shots and a couple of weird drops. But they all kind of went my way.” More unsettled weather is expected over the weekend.

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In pursuit of his first PGA TOUR victory, Texas product Andrew Landry proves he’s got what it takes with a 4-under 68 in the final round at TPC San Antonio. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Landry shook off short misses at the par-4 12th hole (just inside five feet) and par-5 14th (inside four feet) to win and move from 42nd to 9th in the FedExCup. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Landry knows his game. “My game is built for hard golf courses, tough conditions, just because I’m pretty accurate with the driver,â€� he said a few years ago. Yep. Shortly after that, Landry went on to contend at the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont before a final-round 78 and a T15 finish, and he was at it again at difficult TPC San Antonio. He led the field in strokes gained: tee-to-green, and his 17-under total was the lowest winning score since the Valero moved to TPC San Antonio (AT&T Oaks Course) in 2010. “Every single player out here is good,â€� said Landry, who lost to Jon Rahm on the fourth hole of a playoff at the CareerBuilder Challenge earlier this season. “Every single one of them is great. We’re all here for reasons, because we worked really hard and we’re really good at what we do.â€� 2. Zach Johnson, 42, the 54-hole co-leader with Landry, was exactly the right guy for the 30-year-old Landry to play with as he tried to chase down his first win. In fact, Johnson was such a perfect playing partner it was almost eerie. Landry, interviewed on camera after he had finished 21st on the 2015 Web.com Tour money list, was asked which players he looked up to. Answer: Jason Day (not in the Valero field) and Zach Johnson. “Zach’s such a good guy and he is so—he just gets it,â€� Landry said after winning the Valero. “He was telling me good shot after good shot, just keep pushing. He would change the subject every now and then to just kind of lighten the mood. I just knew what I had to do. I just stuck to my game plan and saw it happen.â€� 3. As for Johnson, the 12-time TOUR winner struggled with a final-round 72, but he says he doesn’t mind being a shoulder to lean on for the younger players like Landry. “What I’ve seen lately is that I’m getting questioned a lot by the young guys, about not just golf stuff but life stuff,â€� Johnson said at the RBC Heritage. “That just means I’m getting old. But I asked the same questions myself with David Toms, Chris DiMarco, Davis Love, Corey Pavin, Tom Lehman, Lee Janzen, guys that I really admired.â€�     Johnson was vying to become the third player to win the Valero three times, after Arnold Palmer (1960-’62) and Justin Leonard (2000-’01, ’07). 4. Sean O’Hair isn’t far off. After a T2 that saw him sign for the lowest final round (66), the 35-year-old four-time TOUR winner was a mixture of disappointed and encouraged. The upside: He’d just racked up eight birdies on a course that’s notoriously stingy with them. The downside: He was still chasing his first win since the 2011 RBC Canadian Open. “That fifth [win] has been hard to come by,â€� he said. “… I’ve had some close calls. “I feel like my game’s kind of coming into form a little bit,â€� added O’Hair, who with partner Steve Stricker won the unofficial QBE Shootout late last year. “But this year’s been a little bit erratic and I’ve just got to clean that up a bit. I’ve been driving it really well all year and I felt like this golf course really called for that. Felt like if I could just hit a few more greens, because this golf course is all about that as well, make a few putts, which is what I did, I was going to have a good week.â€� O’Hair chipped in for birdie from 55’ 1â€� on the final hole for his seventh runner-up finish in 345 starts, including one in each of the last four seasons. 5. There were breakthroughs all around in San Antonio. Landry is the seventh first-time winner of the season, with three coming in the last five weeks (Landry, Satoshi Kodaira, Brice Garnett). He’s also the third first-time winner in the last five editions of the Valero, joining Steven Bowditch (2014) and Kevin Chappell (2017). Trey Mullinax shot 62-69 on the weekend for a career-best T2 in his 41st TOUR start. Jimmy Walker (67, solo fourth) had his best finish since a third at TPC Boston in the fall of 2016. Then there was former No. 1-ranked amateur Joaquin Niemann of Chile. The 19-year-old merely birdied his last three holes for a second straight 67 and solo sixth place. “It’s one of the best week of my life,â€� Niemann said. Even better, while becoming the first player since Anthony Kim (T2, 2006) to finish in the top 10 at the Valero in his professional debut on TOUR, Niemann also gained entry into the Wells Fargo Championship without having to burn a sponsor’s exemption. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Although he came into the Valero at 91st in strokes gained: tee-to-green, Landry was first in the field in that stat at TPC San Antonio. He came into the Valero at 84th in strokes gained: approach-the-green, but led that category, too. He was 98th in greens in regulation entering the Valero, but first last week. In fact, his 53/72 greens in regulation was tied for his second-best effort on TOUR. And he’s now one-for-one at converting a 54-hole lead/co-lead into a victory.    2. Landry became only the fourth player to rank in the top 10 in strokes gained: approach-the-green (1st) and strokes gained: putting (8th) while winning this season. The others have been Dustin Johnson at the Sentry Tournament of Champions (7th in sg: approach-the-green, 6th in sg: putting); Ryan Armour at the Sanderson Farms Championships (3rd in sg: approach-the-green, 2nd in sg: putting); and Patton Kizzire at the Sony Open in Hawaii (3rd in both). 3. Zach Johnson, who won the Valero Texas Open twice before it moved to TPC San Antonio, might have won the tournament had the front nine been closed for the week. Johnson was even on the front but 13-under on the back over the four rounds. 4. The margin of victory at the Valero, two strokes, qualified as something of a blowout relative to the rest of this season. Going into the Valero, eight of 14 tournaments had been decided by a playoff, and the average margin of victory was one shot. 5. Since the Valero moved to TPC San Antonio in 2010, six third-round leaders/co-leaders have held on to win, with Landry doing so on the heels of Kevin Chappell in 2017. That makes the TPC San Antonio – AT&T Oaks Course one of the best places on TOUR to be a 54-hole leader/co-leader. So far this season, just 12 of 24 leaders/co-leaders have held on for the win in stroke-play events, with Patrick Reed at the Masters the most recent to do it before Landry.

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