Product Spotlight: Cobra Golf’s LTDx driver

The final round of THE CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK begins Sunday. Here’s how to follow the action. Leaderboard Full tee times HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Sunday, 5 p.m.-8 p.m. ET (Golf Channel) PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday-Sunday, 12:45 p.m.-8 p.m. ET (Featured Groups) Radio: Thursday-Friday, 2 p.m.-8 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 3 p.m.-8 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio). FEATURED GROUPS Brooks Koepka, Viktor Hovland, Rickie Fowler Sunday: 1:21 p.m. ET Hideki Matsuyama, Jon Rahm, Joaquin Niemann Sunday: 1:43 p.m. ET Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson, Sebastian Munoz Sunday: 1:54 p.m. ET Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Tyrrell Hatton Sunday: 2:05 p.m. ET MUST READS Henley takes three-shot lead at THE CJ CUP Schauffele and big names ready to chase Henley Poulter's pants get Vegas love Win probabilities: THE CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK Five things about Shadow Creek CALL OF THE DAY

Click here to read the full article…

Jon Rahm had no issue being assessed a two-stroke penalty on his chip-in for an apparent birdie at the 16th hole Sunday en route to winning the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide. While it reduced his margin of victory over good friend Ryan Palmer from five strokes to three, Rahm was still elated with the shot … and that his integrity remained intact. RELATED: Final leaderboard | What’s in Rahm’s bag? The shot in question was his second from the rough just off the green at the par-3 16th. As Rahm was at address, the ball moved slightly. Rahm then holed the shot, but slow-motion replays showed the label on the ball moving slightly. “I didn’t see it,” Rahm said. “You know, I promised open honestly and I’m a loyal person and I don’t want to win by cheating. … The ball did move. It’s as simple as that.” Rahm was first asked about the potential of a penalty during his post-round interview with CBS prior to reaching the scoring area. Slugger White, PGA TOUR Vice President of Rules & Competition, then showed the replay to Rahm and the penalty was assessed prior to signing his scorecard. Instead of birdie, he suffered a bogey at the hole, with the two-stroke penalty giving Rahm a 3-over 75 in the final round, leaving him at 9 under for the week. “The rule is 9.4,” White said. “It was a ball at rest by the player, moved, and since he didn’t put it back, he was assessed a general penalty, which is two strokes. That’s pretty much the bottom line. … “When he put the club down behind the ball, it moved ever so slightly to the left, so it changed positions. He accepted it like a gentleman and the man that he is, and we just went on with it.” Rahm, who moved to world No. 1 with the win and inside the top 10 (No. 8) in the FedExCup standings, said he was surprised when he was first informed about the potential for a penalty, and also a little confused. But after seeing the replay, he agreed with the ruling. “Had I seen it, I would have said something or maybe questioned — not questioned, asked for a rules official and explained what happened and would have gone from there. But I mean, he had to zoom it in the iPad so much to see what was a very minimal oscillation that could have basically just been me putting the club down and all the grass just simply going down,” Rahm explained. “It barely moves at all. Everything goes down with it. But the rules of golf are clear, and the ball did move. Unfortunately, it’s going to have a bittersweet feeling to what was possibly one of the greatest shots of my career, the shot that this Sunday gave me the victory, but … I accept the penalty. That goes to show that you have to fight until the end. “I could have very easily maybe just given up on the up-and-down on 17 and 18 and finished with two bogeys, and possibly after the penalty strokes given myself a scare and possibly gone to a playoff and still fought hard. Every shot counts, and I tried every shot and got those two last up-and-downs, as a true Spaniard would, and it is what it is.” The bottom line is that it didn’t change what Rahm accomplished this week. With the pressure on, he hit a great shot … and now he’s the world’s top-ranked golfer. He’s just the second Spanish golfer to be No. 1, following in the footsteps of the legendary Seve Ballesteros. “If it doesn’t change the outcome of the tournament, does it really matter? Maybe. Again, I accept what it is; it did move. It doesn’t take anything from the day, though. It’s still probably one of the greatest days of my life,” Rahm said. “I know it doesn’t sound like it because I’m still processing things and maybe in a week I’ll be completely ecstatic about everything, but proud that I did what I did, proud that I chipped that in, and proud that I finished the way I did.”

Click here to read the full article…

ORLANDO, Fla. – Fathers and sons and golf? The three have been joined together since there were sticks and small rocks and lone crooked flagsticks protruding from barren fields in Scotland, while kings still ruled. This week’s PNC Championship, which begins Saturday at Orlando’s Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, will garner extra attention as Tiger Woods, partnered once again with his 12-year-old son, Charlie, makes his return to golf following a horrific single-vehicle crash in Los Angeles in February. The 36-hole event, featuring 20 teams and played using a relaxed scramble format, will be televised by NBC to a national audience over the weekend. Many interested golf fans (and Woods’ fellow competitors) are waiting to get some inkling of where he stands in his arduous rehabilitation 10 months after his frightening accident. He counts himself a lucky man. That Woods is walking, let alone playing golf again, just days before his 46th birthday on Dec. 30 says something about his resolve, work ethic, stubbornness and steely resiliency. It also serves up a statement for the event in which he is playing and the true reason he is here. Woods said in an interview at his own Hero World Challenge two weeks ago that he is a long, long distance from competing on the PGA TOUR once more. Take away this weekend’s TV cameras and bright lights, strip the competition down to its very core, and Tiger might be as human as we ever have viewed him. As he tweeted when he committed to play on Dec. 8, he is playing as a dad. That’s all. A dad looking forward to playing the game he loves alongside his son, who seems to love it, too. Acorn, meet the tree. Charlie Woods stole the show at last year’s PNC Championship, showing off incredible skills for an 11-year-old, not to mention so many of his father’s famous mannerisms. Tiger was nervous for him, understandably, but Charlie thrived in the spotlight, showing off his dad’s laser focus, the spinning club twirls, and even his dad’s trademark fist pumps. Charlie’s 5-wood from 175 yards to 3 feet to set up an eagle-3 at the par-5 third hole in last year’s PNC made the evening highlights of every media outlet on the planet. Along with PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan and Jay’s dad, Joe Monahan, longtime IMG executive Alastair Johnston – the creator of the Father-Son event born in 1995 – joined Tiger and Charlie for a pro-am round at the PNC a year ago. Tiger was clearly different, Johnston said, so filled with joy to watch his son in the arena. Johnston has had an interesting window into the life of Tiger, not only through his management company, IMG, but as his former next-door neighbor back when Woods lived in the tony gated Isleworth enclave in Orlando. In fact, Woods was awash in accolades upon returning to Florida following his mind-blowing, 12-shot victory at the 1997 Masters, the first of his 15 major championships. He went out to retrieve his mail one day, and Johnston wanted to offer his own congratulations. You know, Johnston told Woods, you now are qualified to play in the Father-Son. “He looked at me as if I had three heads, and asked, ‘What’s that?’” Johnston said via phone on Monday. laughing. “I said, ‘Oh, you’ll see.’” Johnston, who worked side by side with Arnold Palmer for many years, made a terrific discovery during a stroll through the locker room one day during the 1995 Senior PLAYERS Championship in Detroit. There were courtesy phones set up for players to use. On one phone was Jack Nicklaus. Raymond Floyd was on a phone in a different corner. On a third phone, Dave Stockton. All three men had played that afternoon, but seemed much more interested to check in with home to see how their sons were doing in various college and junior competitions. Johnston had an idea: What if there was a tournament, a real competition, in which fathers could compete alongside their sons? And to make the tournament field elite, each father needed to be a major champion (winners of THE PLAYERS later were added). Eventually, what began as the Father-Son at Vero Beach’s Windsor Club in 1995 would evolve into something much more inclusionary, hence the name change to the PNC Championship. Today, the qualifications are to be a major winner (male or female) competing with a family member. Fuzzy Zoeller, Jerry Pate and Bernhard Langer all would compete alongside their daughters, and last year, Annika Sorenstam competed alongside her father, Tom. This week’s field includes LPGA No. 1 Nelly Korda, who is playing alongside her famous tennis-playing dad, Petr. Players have teed it up with stepsons. Bubba Watson is playing with his father-in-law. “Adding grandfathers,” Johnston explained, “allowed Arnold (Palmer) to compete, and nobody was objecting to that.” Many major champions who’d like to compete simply aren’t able because daylight limits the field to 20 teams, which makes for some tough late-year phone calls for Johnston. It’s not so much telling the famous major winner the news, but envisioning the conversation that person must then have with his relative to break the news. Johnston starts thinking about fields two and three years in advance, and said he is driven by “great narratives.” It intrigues him to see Watson, a three-time major champion, able to compete with his father-in-law. The Cinks – 2009 Open Championship winner Stewart Cink and his son, Reagan – were invited to return after they successfully paired for two PGA TOUR victories last season, with Reagan on his dad’s bag. Of course, there is no bigger, or more attention-packed, ongoing narrative than Woods hitting shots once more. A year ago, he let Charlie, who plays from forward tees, take care of many of the drives for the team, and this week, that unquestionably will be a point of strategy. “This is Dad’s ‘Take Your Kid to Work Day,’” Johnston said. “And Tiger and Charlie epitomized that. Tiger was very nervous for Charlie (last year, in Charlie’s debut). This year he’ll be relying on Charlie. “Without having done it last year, I don’t think Tiger would be playing this year. But the way Charlie handled it all … I knew that if there was a way of doing it, there was a good chance that Tiger was going to play.” So away we go. It’s a late-season “hit-and-giggle” event, as Tiger may affectionately call it, but don’t think the shots won’t count. They will and they won’t, but on a bigger scale, represent an important milestone and tiny step forward as Tiger Woods moves toward the future that remains uncertain. When Saturday dawns at the PNC, Woods will be there not as the man trying to break Sam Snead’s record for TOUR victories or a man contemplating resuming his pursuit of Jack’s major mark. Tiger Woods will be hitting shots as a dad, like many of us do on Saturdays. And there always is great importance in that.

Click here to read the full article…