Quick look at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions

Ian Poulter and Mark Hubbard set the pace for good scoring through a brief spell of rain at Hilton Head. Jordan Spieth was pleasantly surprised to join the chase Thursday in the RBC Heritage. Poulter holed a 30-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole and finished with a 5-iron to 4 feet for another birdie that capped a 7-under 64, a round without a bogey but not without flaws. Hubbard kept his 64 together with two par putts at the end. RELATED: Leaderboard | Featured Groups, tee times | Spieth rebounds from triple | Els gets off to fast start They had a one-shot lead Viktor Hovland, Sebastian Munoz and Michael Thompson among the early starters. Spieth didn’t figure to be part of the conversation until bouncing back from a triple bogey with eight birdies for a 66. Three holes into the tournament, Spieth stood under a cluster of trees just off the 12th fairway, looking some 20 yards to the right at his golf ball nestled in pine straw a few feet beyond the white out-of-bounds stakes. He tried to figure out which tree it hit, not that it mattered. And then he three-putted from 25 feet for a triple bogey. It was the kind of break Spieth has seen far too often during three years without a victory. “All of a sudden, I’m 3 over through three, and you start to see guys going 2 under through two, 2 under through three early. It’s not a great feeling,â€� Spieth said. So he told his caddie on the 13th tee, “That’s over. Let’s get four (birdies) today and shoot under par.” “I ended up getting a few more than that,â€� Spieth said. He answered with a birdie on No. 13, and then just like last week’s opening round at Colonial, got hot on his back nine. Spieth had a career-best six consecutive birdies. The stretch started with an 8-foot putt on the par-5 second, and it included a 7-iron to 4 feet to a left pin near the water on the par-3 fourth. He was on such a roll that Spieth began to contemplate eight straight birdies to end his round. But he saw enough mud on his ball from the fairway on No. 8 that he played conservatively to 30 feet, and then finished with another short birdie. It was another positive step, and that triple bogey on his third hole was another opportunity to put to use his magic word during his return from a three-month shutdown: grace. The idea is to not dwell on mistakes that are bound to happen as he keeps making strides, and Spieth worked as much on that with caddie Michael Greller during the break as his swing. “Michael did a great job of reminding me that today when it wasn’t going well on my front nine,â€� Spieth said. “It’s definitely a trigger to get it going. The idea … is to work yourself into contention, get those experiences, start to feel more and more comfortable under the gun. I mean, that’s the longest I’ve gone without having a chance on a Sunday. “So I’m giving myself grace,â€� he said, “but that’s not to say I’m not expecting to do better and better each week.â€� Rory McIlroy was among those who struggled, and only a pair of birdies on the back nine kept it from being worse. He opened with a 72. That ended a streak of seven straight tournaments in which he broke par in the opening round dating to the ZOZO Championship in Japan last October. He kept it entertaining. On the par-5 15th, he tried to hit a slice from behind a tree and carry it over more oaks from 275 yards away. It didn’t come off right, leaving him blocked by the trees, so he tried to hook the next one around the trees. That got caught up in the shaggy collar of a bunker, and he made bogey. “I’m sort of missing my 3-wood left and missing my driver right,â€� McIlroy said. “If you’re in any way like in two minds what to do off the tees around here and get a little bit sort of guidey, it can bite you.â€� Brooks Koepka was among those at 67, while the 50-and-older gang more than held its own. Ernie Els was tied for the lead at one point before settling for a 67. Bernhard Langer, the 61-year-old Masters champion, and Jim Furyk each had 69.

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MCKINNEY, Texas — The last group of the AT&T Byron Nelson includes a player with no wins on the PGA TOUR and a player who just got his first. The tee time Sunday for Sam Burns and K.H. Lee was moved to 10 a.m. to avoid the rain expected later in North Texas. That means Burns and Lee have even less time to ponder their circumstances, which for Lee means his first TOUR win and a berth next week in the PGA Championship. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Tee times, broadcast info Burns now is a cagey and savvy veteran of closing golf tournaments, having won his first TOUR title, the Valspar Championship, precisely two weeks ago. Lee finished a gusty third round at TPC Craig Ranch at 19 under par. His 5-under 67 briefly gave him a share of the lead, but only until Burns, playing in the pairing behind, completed his round. Burns hit the par-5 18th hole in two, as many players have throughout the 54 holes played so far at this new venue. His two-putt birdie gave him a 3-under 69, good for a one-shot lead at minus-20. A 29-year-old from South Korea, Lee joined the PGA TOUR in 2019, the same year Burns earned his card. His best finish in 79 starts is a share of second in the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Lee has played in one major championship, the 2019 U.S. Open. He missed the cut. With a win here, he would earn a spot in the PGA next week at the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island. “We have more holes, 18 holes, so never think about win,” Lee said. “So no pressure (on) myself and just keep positive and play golf and then we see.” A second-round 10-under 62 gave Burns the cushion to retain his lead on a day when nothing seemed quite as charmed. The setbacks mattered less, Burns said, because he’s learned this year that managing trials is part of success. “I don’t have to play perfect,” he said. “(I) always felt for a long time I had to play perfect on Sunday to win. That’s just not the case.” Burns made 10 birdies in the second round. He had five in the third. He ranked first in five Strokes Gained categories Friday, including Total (8.37). His best Saturday was ninth, in Around the Green. “You’re going to make mistakes,” Burns said. “You need to limit those.” His and Lee’s chasers include third-place ties Charl Schwartzel, Matt Kuchar, Alex Noren and none other than Dallas’s own Jordan Spieth, who followed his drowsy 2-under 70 in the second round with a 6-under 66 in the third. He eagled the 18th, as he did in his scintillating 63 on Thursday, to finish at 17 under. Spieth won earlier this season in his home state, the Valero Texas Open, to break a long and well-documented drought. His resurgence has rallied his supporters. All week at TPC Craig Ranch, the deepest and loudest galleries are the ones following the 12-time TOUR winner who went to high school 21 miles away. His return to prominence — he has two third places and six top 10s, including a tie for third at the Masters — is just another layer of energy this week at the Nelson. A lot of what’s transpired so far in the north suburb of Dallas has felt fresh and invigorating and, given the two men at the top of the leaderboard, momentous in its own way. The course and surrounding acreage accommodate the spectators well, much like the nearby Four Seasons TPC Los Colinas did for many years as the host site for the Nelson. Cottonwoods and other towering trees line many holes, providing shade for the walkers and walls for the cheers to bounce between. Skyboxes line the dainty par-3 17th, which is too small to resemble a soccer pitch but maybe just right for tennis — or, more appropriately, an outdoor springtime social gathering, long the tournament’s identity. “This one feels like the Byron Nelson,” Spieth said. The debutante venue has surrendered low scores: 62 eagles and 1,698 birdies so far. The average score through three rounds is 69.4. No one will par his way to victory Sunday. “I don’t think it matters if we get rain or don’t get rain,” Spieth said. “I think scores will be low regardless.”

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Sahith Theegala is the latest player to make a quick transition from the college game to the PGA TOUR. He was college golf’s consensus player of the year in 2020, sweeping the Haskins, Hogan and Nicklaus awards. Now he is a PGA TOUR rookie and coming off a T8 finish in his second start of the new season, at last week’s Sanderson Farms Championship. He held at least a share of the lead in each of the first three rounds before shooting 71 on Sunday. The top-10 finish – his third in his last four starts between the Korn Ferry Tour and PGA TOUR – also earned Theegala a start in this week’s Shriners Children’s Open. A new driver has played a large role in his recent success. He made adjustments to that club after missing the cut in the first event of the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. They paid immediate dividends. Thanks to an extra 15-20 yards off the tee and a narrowed dispersion, he finished in the top-10 of the next two events to earn his TOUR card. “It’s a longer driver. I’m like, if I’m going to hit it off line, I might as well hit it a little bit farther and funny enough I’m hitting it way straighter,” he said after his first-round 64 at the Sanderson Farms Championship. “So that helped a little bit, seeing something new. Still getting comfortable with the driver, only had it a month now. But it’s been really nice to see some of the work paying off and being in more fairways.” Theegala finished 10th in driving distance (317.1 yards) and 19th in fairways hit (60.7%) last week, a solid combination. Several changes were made to Theegala’s Ping G425 LST driver to dial in the cut he likes to play off the tee and eliminate the dreaded double-cross. Ping’s Korn Ferry Tour rep, David Bray, installed a new shaft in Theegala’s driver – True Temper’s Project X HZRDUS Smoke Black RDX 6.5 – and made it 45.25 inches long, 0.75 inches longer than Theegala’s previous shaft. The shaft was “tipped” 1.5 inches – Bray said he usually tips players’ drivers about an inch — to control the spin and dispersion of Theegala’s shots, as well. “Tipping” a shaft means removing length from the clubhead end instead of the grip end. This makes the shaft stiffer and also increases its resistance to twisting. Braylso added hot melt to the toe of the club to promote a fade. Also known as “rat glue” by gearheads — owing to the similarity between the properties of the substance and the material found in glue traps — hot melt is injected into clubheads via a hot glue gun with a long nosel. The changes dropped about 500 rpms off Theegala’s tee shots, to about 2,500, and an increase of 3-4 mph of ball speed. “He hits a high ball to begin with. This just controlled the spin for him,” Bray said. “He likes to cut the ball, so he’s going to have more spin, but this is more penetrating. It’s not ballooning on him. I would say he probably picked up 3-4 more mph because he was hitting it more in the center of the clubface than the heel misses he had before. “It just builds confidence. For these guys, everything starts with driving. When you’re struggling with driving, you press with every other part of your game.” Theegala has found a club that fits him off the tee, and is exhibiting the potential he displayed during his promising college career.

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