Rahm, Smith share lead at Northern Trust in N.J.

MEXICO CITY – Jordan Spieth’s first round in nearly eight years with his father, Shawn, on the bag did not go as planned at the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship at Club de Golf Chapultepec. Spieth birdied the first hole but struggled to an opening-round 75 and was well back of leader Rory McIlroy (63). This after Michael Greller, Spieth’s regular caddie, flew home Wednesday to be with family after the death of his father, John “Bearâ€� Greller. “I wish I would have done more for him,â€� Spieth said of his father, who last caddied for him at the 2011 U.S. Amateur. “But glad he’s stepping in. Our bright moment was probably No. 1. Just trying to progress each day.â€� Spieth said Bear Greller had been in hospice, and Michael had visited him early last week. He and Spieth were caught by surprise to learn of his passing in Mexico. “I thought it would be sometime in the next month or so, based on how he was doing,â€� Spieth said. “It took a lot for (Michael Greller) to ask to go see him Monday and Tuesday of L.A., which it shouldn’t. That’s where he needed to be. When he said that, I knew it wasn’t good.â€� There was at least one bright spot Thursday: Shawn toted a lightweight carry bag instead of a staff bag, as he had for his son for nine holes Wednesday. He said he was the first option as a replacement, but not the only one. Asked what it felt like to caddie for his son, he spoke with a heavy heart. “I’ve got mixed emotions,â€� he said, “It’s great, but you want him to have his best chance, you know? When you’ve got your regular caddie, you’ve got your best chance.” “I learned a lot,â€� he added. “Hopefully that’ll help us down the road. It’s cool. It’s fun to get to do it. It’s a big stage for somebody that hasn’t caddied in six years.â€�   The Greller and Spieth families were close, as one might expect considering the long partnership. “Heavy heart for Michael and his family,â€� Christine Spieth, Jordan’s mother, wrote on Twitter. “Bear was a great father, husband, and grandfather. Heaven gained another angel!â€� Asked how well did he knew Greller’s father, Shawn said, “Fairly well. They’ve been together a long time now. He hadn’t been able to get out a lot in the last few years.â€� Jordan said the first of two services would be in Portland, and he’d been in touch with Greller. “Everyone is there,â€� Spieth said, “and he’s glad he’s there.â€�

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The TOUR says goodbye to Poa annua and welcomes, for some, the return to Bermuda as the four-week Florida Swing kicks off this week in Palm Beach Gardens. The Champion Course at PGA National, host since 2007 has plenty of Bermuda, not to mention sand, water and The Bear Trap, so a soft landing into the Sunshine State this is not. The field of 144 will tackle Tom Fazio’s Par-70 that stretches to 7,125 yards. Jack Nicklaus did some clean-up work and put TifEagle Bermuda on the greens for the 2015 edition. Water will challenge the players on 15 of 18 holes and there are 67 bunkers to avoid as well. The Bear Trap (Holes Nos. 15-17) will test the nerve and precision of everyone, especially late on Sunday. Nicklaus suggests the tournament should be won or lost here! Generous landing areas off the tee and large Bermuda greens suggest the wind is always a factor at PGA National. Missing the fairways and greens comes with over-seeded Bermuda rough at two inches that makes stopping the ball near the pin nearly impossible. On the line is $1.26 million (500 FedExCup Points) to the winner from the $7 million prize pool. RELATED: Power Rankings | Expert Picks RECENT WINNERS 2019: Keith Mitchell (-9, 271) Holed a birdie putt at the last to avoid a playoff with Rickie Fowler and Brooks Koepka and claim his first TOUR win in only his second visit. … Fourth consecutive winner to place in the top seven in driving distance (all holes). … Fourth winner in the last five to place in the top three (first) in Strokes-Gained: Tee-to-Green. … T2 in scrambling and bogey avoidance. … Entered the week MC-MC-73-MC-16 for the season. Notables in the field this week: Wyndham Clark (T7) led after 54 holes and played the final group with K. H. Lee (T7). … Mitchell co-led after 36 holes with Sungjae Im, who shot 64 in Round 2, before finishing T51. … Lucas Glover (T4) opened with 66 and closed with 66. … Ryan Palmer (T4) led the field with 20 birdies and posted the low round of the week, 63, on Sunday. … Vijay Singh (T6) joined Mitchell, Fowler and Sergio Garcia (DNS) as the only four players to post all four rounds par-or-better. … Cut was 2 over. 2018: Justin Thomas (-8, 272) Defeated 54-hole leader Luke List on the first playoff hole for his first victory in four tries here. … Led the field in Strokes-Gained: Tee-to-Green, Scrambling and Strokes-Gained: Approach-the-Green. … Fourth consecutive winner T11 or better in proximity. … Second win of the year (CJ CUP). Notables in the field this week: Tommy Fleetwood (fourth) was a quick learner as he posted all four rounds of par-or-better in his first appearance. … Byeong-Hun An (T5) closed 69-65. … Jamie Lovemark (T5) was two off the 54-hole lead. … Sponsor exemption Sam Burns and birdie leader (19) Emiliano Grillo shared eighth. … Only 11 players broke par for the week. … Cut was 5-over. 2017: Rickie Fowler (-12, 268) The eighth time was a charm as he comfortably won by four shots over Gary Woodland. … Set the 54-hole total record (-13) by two shots. … Only three players since 2013 have posted all four rounds in the 60s. … Fowler (second) is the only winner in the last five years to finish inside the top 23 in Strokes-Gained: Putting. … Fowler didn’t miss a putt inside five feet (57 of 57). … Led the field with 21 birdies. Notables in the field this week: Billy Horschel (T4) put all four rounds at par-or-better. … Jhonattan Vegas (T4) made an ace and closed with 64. … Fowler is the only player to finish in double-digits under-par since the 2014 renovation. … Cut was even-par. Key stat leaders Top golfers in each statistic on the 2018-19 PGA TOUR are listed only if they are scheduled to compete this week. * – previous top 10 finish here since 2017 Strokes-Gained: Tee-to-Green 7 *Byeong-Hun An 9 Corey Conners 12 *Brooks Koepka 13 *Tommy Fleetwood 14 *Jason Kokrak (T9, 2019) 15 *Emiliano Grillo 16 *Gary Woodland 19 Kevin Streelman 23 Joaquin Niemann 25 *Jim Furyk (T9, 2019) 27 *Jhonattan Vegas Proximity 1 Corey Conners 3 *Jim Furyk 4 Ryan Armour 4 Jason Dufner 4 Vaughn Taylor 7 *Russell Knox 8 Chesson Hadley 10 Louis Oosthuizen 10 Joaquin Niemann 10 Keegan Bradley 14 Brian Stuard 15 Talor Gooch 17 Josh Teater 21 *Russell Henley 21 *Lucas Glover 24 Kyle Stanley 24 *Brooks Koepka Scrambling 1 *Tommy Fleetwood 5 *Lucas Glover 6 Matt Jones 7 Sungjae Im 9 Denny McCarthy 9 Brian Stuard 13 *Jim Furyk 14 Bud Cauley 15 Kiradech Aphibarnrat 18 Rory Sabbatini (2011 winner) 19 Ryan Armour 20 CT Pan 21 Vaughn Taylor 22 Si Woo Kim 24 Jimmy Walker Horses Rickie Fowler: All-time leading money winner has learned how to balance winning golf during a home game. T2-MC-WIN-T6 the last four seasons suggests more than balance! Lucas Glover: Hasn’t missed in his last seven attempts and the last three have cashed T4-T17-T21. Billy Horschel: Florida born, bred and living, the former Gator has rattled off T16, MC, T4 and T8 in his last four visits. Russell Henley: The 2014 champ has cashed in six of seven with T20 and T24 in his last two visits. Cut makers at PGA National Lee Westwood: Five straight but first appearance since 2015. Nick Watney: Five straight. Gary Woodland: Seven straight. Stewart Cink: Nine straight. Jason Dufner: 10 straight.

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David Feherty was announced Tuesday as the emcee of next month’s World Golf Hall of Fame induction ceremony for Tiger Woods, former PGA TOUR Commissioner Tim Finchem, four-time LPGA Tour major winner Susie Maxwell Berning, and trailblazing golf course designer Marion Hollins. The ceremony is set for March 9 — the eve of THE PLAYERS Championship — at PGA TOUR Headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Feherty spoke to PGATOUR.COM by phone from his farm, about 90 minutes south of Dallas, about his long career covering the headliner of the next WGHOF class, 82-time TOUR winner and 15-time major winner Woods. PGATOUR.COM: How much of your career did you spend covering Tiger? DAVID FEHERTY: Yeah, well, 20 years with CBS, and it’s been seven now with NBC. He turned pro and I became a broadcaster within a month of each other, and I was assigned his group, it seemed, every time he was on our air. It was the most amazing thing. He made me look like an idiot on several occasions, saying he had to punch out or whatever when he didn’t. I had a front-row seat for the greatest golfer in history. PGATOUR.COM: One of those times when he proved you wrong, he was in gnarly rough at the last at Firestone South, about 190 out, and you said he couldn’t reach the green. He took a mighty lash with a wedge and knocked it 10 or 15 feet from the pin. You’d left your mic open when Ernie Els, who was playing with him, said something that only later got bleeped out. What did he say? DAVID FEHERTY: He said, “F— me.” I campaigned for a long time that we don’t need to show Tiger’s reaction to these shots he hits. It’s the guy he’s playing with, that’s the relevant reaction. That was when Ernie was the second-best player in the world, so you can’t get a more relevant reaction than that. PGATOUR.COM: You once called Tiger a loser because he hadn’t won, and he went along with it and said he wasn’t even the first loser. At another tournament, this one he did win, you said he played the last three holes “like a $3 violin.” Did he appreciate that you gave him the needle because he was so feared that no one else would? DAVID FEHERTY: He appreciated when someone gave him the opportunity to be self-deprecating, because he was so much better than everybody else. I think it was difficult for him to talk about it at times because it’s like a broken record. He would make birdie, they would make bogey, the gap would just get wider. Hell, he won a U.S. Open by 15 shots. I remember writing somewhere that the last person to do that was Old Tom Morris and he was playing with a badger’s testicle stuffed with seagull feathers. PGATOUR.COM: Tiger was obviously great, but from the ground, you probably saw that he was even better than everybody thought. DAVID FEHERTY: That was often the hardest part of my job, giving the viewer a realistic sense of just how difficult it was, how impossible it would be for anybody to do it in that situation. He was the yardstick by which all others measured their inferiority. PGATOUR.COM: You guys did a set piece in which he was pretending to be annoyed by you, and you were dragged away by security hollering, “I crocheted you a headcover!” Did you have a knack for cracking him up over the years? DAVID FEHERTY: Yeah, I think so, especially in the early years when he wasn’t so serious. I think the media piled on him so much that as the years went by, he was liable to give less and less, until recently where he’s kind of started to soften again. When you’re that good and nobody else has been that good — people always talk about the comparison between Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Jack Nicklaus told me nobody has ever played golf like Tiger Woods. The way I look at it is Tiger’s the best player who ever lived, Jack’s the greatest champion. PGATOUR.COM: What’s your plan for the induction ceremony? How are you going to sum up or contextualize the long celestial event that was Tiger Woods? DAVID FEHERTY: A lot of it is scripted, with gaps in it for me to tell stories. That’s the plan. I’ve written a couple of them already, things I’ve done before. In my standup act I do three or four Tiger stories, and one of them will be included. And there are three other recipients and I’ll have to have material on them, as well. PGATOUR.COM: You always wanted to have Tiger on your Golf Channel talk show. Did that ever happen? DAVID FEHERTY: No, I never asked him. He was never in the right place to do the show that I wanted to do with him, and, ironically, he’s probably in that place now. But yeah, I would’ve loved to have had him on the show, obviously. PGATOUR.COM: You mentioned that you started broadcasting at about the same time he started on the PGA TOUR. What was your first indication just how good he was? DAVID FEHERTY: I didn’t know a thing about him. When I first heard the name Tiger Woods, I thought, Is that a golf course in India? I didn’t have a clue. But from the minute I laid eyes on him and saw him play a couple holes I thought, That’s different. It was at Cog Hill, in Chicago. It was probably the Saturday; that was the first time I got assigned to his group. (Editor’s note: Feherty said he’s saving that story for March 9.) PGATOUR.COM: He hit some shots you didn’t think were possible, and you’d played against Jack and Arnold. Was he was showing off for you? Did he ever turn and throw you a wink? DAVID FEHERTY: There were a lot of, ‘Yeah, you called that one, didn’t you?’ He showed off for everybody. He just wanted to shoot as low as he possibly could and win by as many as he could every time he went out. I don’t think he’s changed. I expect him to win again and contend in majors. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he’s in the running at St. Andrews (the site of The Open Championship this July). PGATOUR.COM: You think there will ever be anyone like him? DAVID FEHERTY: My children won’t see it. Their children probably won’t see it. We evolve in sports; if you put a basketball team from the 60s against a team from today, they’d just get run over. The guys today are just bigger, stronger, faster. Golfers get better. But he was a huge peak on that bell curve, if you like, and I don’t think there’ll be anybody like him for many, many years to come.

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