RBC Heritage, Round 3: Leaderboard, tee times, TV times

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – THE PLAYERS Championship’s return to March has just one negative impact on Webb Simpson. It shortens his reign as THE PLAYERS champion by a couple months.  Simpson had endured 4 ½ years without a win before last May’s triumph at TPC Sawgrass. He’ll return to THE PLAYERS Stadium Course in March to defend his title. He’ll be playing for a new trophy, as well. The crystal that he hoisted last year has been replaced by a sterling silver trophy dipped in 24-karat gold vermeil. No one has gone back-to-back at TPC Sawgrass. And Tiger Woods is the only man to win THE PLAYERS in both May and March. Simpson has never played the tournament in March – he was still in college when the tournament first changed dates – but he thinks he’ll be up to the challenge. He got a sneak peek of the conditions when he visited TPC Sawgrass on Monday for THE PLAYERS Championship’s media day. He also donated a sand wedge to the display of past champions’ clubs. He used that club to hole out from a bunker for eagle on the par-5 11th hole in the third round. A barbecue sandwich, inspired by his North Carolina roots, was also unveiled. The brisket sandwich—named Simpson’s Sandy—will be served at the TPC Sawgrass clubhouse now through tournament week and will also be available at select venues during tournament week. “The course is in phenomenal shape,â€� Simpson said Monday. “I’ve been living at Quail Hollow since 2010, so I’m familiar with the overseeding process and how tricky it can be, and how you need a lot of things helping you, weather and rain and all that kind of stuff. It looks like they’ve done a phenomenal job here.â€� March has provided a much larger range of winning scores at THE PLAYERS. Greg Norman set the tournament scoring record with a 24-under 264 total in 1994. Five years later, David Duval shot 3-under 285 to win the hardest PLAYERS at TPC Sawgrass. By contrast, Simpson’s 18-under 270 was the 10th consecutive winning score that was double-digits under par. From 2009-16, there was only a four-stroke range in the winning scores, from 12 under to 16 under. Thirteen under par was the winning score for four consecutive years. “I think the new date is actually going to make the event even bigger and more special, and I think more attention will be on it because … this is the first really big tournament of the year,â€� Simpson said. “I think that’s special knowing that when the guys come here, they know that the best players in the world are going to be here for the first time maybe all season competing for the trophy.â€� Cooler weather and softer fairways will make the Stadium Course play longer and force players to hit driver more often. The final two holes, which usually played downwind in May, are more likely to play into the wind during the earlier date, making one of golf’s most famous finishing stretches even tougher. Simpson hit hybrid off the 18th tee in last year’s final round. He estimated he’d need to hit driver or 3-wood off the tee next month. Simpson said a par on 18 was one of the underrated moments from last year’s victory. He was on course-record pace in the second round, going 11 under par on his first 16 holes. He was caught between clubs on 17, though, and pushed his tee shot into the water surrounding the Island Green. Making par on water-lined 18th, where the threat of another double-bogey lurked, not only allowed Simpson to tie the course record of 63. It also allowed him to erase the memories from the 17th. “I just kind of said to myself, walking to 18, I said, it happens,â€� he said. “Plenty of guys are going to hit it in the water this week. Got to refocus. Par here is going to be big. And I end up two-putting and making par. “I quickly forgot about 17 after parring 18. I think that gave me a lot of confidence going into Saturday. I think if I had slipped up again on 18 and made bogey, that would have been tough, so that hole for me was the biggest hole of the week.â€� Simpson shot 68 in the third round to take a seven-shot lead and ended up winning by four shots. The rest, as they say, is history. And next month Webb Simpson has the chance to make some more.

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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — A day after saying he needed to be patient about results, Jordan Spieth matched his career-best round with a 10-under 61 on Saturday for a share of the third-round lead with Xander Schauffele in the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Winless since The Open Championship in 2017, Spieth is trying recapture the form that carried him to 11 PGA TOUR victories — three of them majors — in his first five seasons on TOUR. The 27-year-old Texan raised the volume considerably at TPC Scottsdale, drawing the biggest roar of the week from the limited crowd on the par-3 16th when he curled in a 36-footer for birdie and the outright lead. He followed with a fan-thrilling 30-footer for birdie on 17 after driving well right on the short par 4. Instead of the usual Saturday crowd that has topped 200,000, attendance is capped at 5,000 fans a day, the most for a TOUR event during the COVID-19 pandemic. Spieth gave them a show to remember. After making four birdies on the front nine for a share of the lead, he had an unexpected birdie on the par-4 10th when he chipped in from 68 feet after driving left and hitting his approach long and left. Spieth hit inside a foot from 170 yards for birdie on the par-4 11th, then just missed eagling the two back-nine par 5s. On the 13th, he couldn’t get a 5 1/2-foot eagle putt to fall after hitting a 208-yard second shot from the desert hardpan. On the water-guarded 15th, he left a 24-foot eagle putt 6 inches short. Spieth had a career-best 10 birdies and matched his TOUR best of 61 set in the third round of his 2015 victory in the John Deere Classic. Schauffele, coming off a second-place tie last week at Torrey Pines, shot a 65 to match Spieth at 18-under 196. He made a 7-foot birdie putt on 17 to tie Spieth, then missed an 11-footer on 18. Scottie Scheffler and Kyoung-Hoon Lee each shot 66 to get to 14 under. Justin Thomas, third the last two years in the event, had a 64 to join Louis Oosthuizen (63) at 14 under. Thomas squandered five strokes on two holes late Thursday and early Friday, making a triple bogey on 17 in the first round and opening the second round with a double on 10. Steve Stricker, the 53-year-old U.S. Ryder Cup captain trying to become the oldest winner in PGA TOUR history, had a 69 to drop into a tie for seventh at 13 under with Brooks Koepka (66) and James Hahn (66). Stricker began the day a stroke behind Schauffele after opening rounds of 65 and 66.

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SAN ANTONIO — Jordan Spieth continues to look for an older version of himself. The search shows moments of success. He shot 2-under-par 70 on a gusty Friday afternoon at the Valero Texas Open. He enters the third round with share of second place at 7 under par, two shots behind the leader, Cameron Tringale. Winless since 2017, the 27-year-old Spieth will again be a factor on the weekend in 2021. He often has been since early February at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. That was the week his work toward finding his older self — the golf swing of his youth — took a beneficial turn. He started rehearsing a move on the practice range at TPC Scottsdale in an effort to shallow the plane of his downswing. He wanted to swing like he was that freshman in 2012 at the University of Texas, beating Justin Thomas in the final match of the NCAA National Championship. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Tringale leads by two at Valero Texas Open "A swing feel that’s kind of like an artistic motion," is how he explained Friday, "like I almost can see it happening from behind me as I’m feeling it." The Valero Texas Open is his seventh start since embracing the drill. He's had three Top 5 finishes, a tie for 15th and two wins last week at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play, where he lost in the Round of 16. For those anticipating a return to form for the 11-time winner from Dallas, the trend inspires hope. He is trying, he said, "to go back in time." He wants to find his swing of his 15-year-old self, or at least the one that brough him so much acclaim so soon. Spieth wants to reverse "essentially everything," he said, "all the bad habits I got into." He said his attack on the ball got too steep after 2017, when he won three tournaments, including The Open Championship. Then came all the questions and doubts. "I could sit here and tell you six different things I'm thinking about," he said. "I want it to be one or two." He appears, at times, to have achieved that simplicity and purity. He shot 5-under 67 on Thursday at TPC San Antonio, seven birdies against two bogeys. He birdied his first two holes Friday. He was 2 under after nine. He expected stress and it came. Texas in the springtime is a windy place. He made bogey at the 11th and the 13th. But he followed those with birdies at the next two, which included an approach on the 459-yard par-four 15th to 4 feet. Spieth coasted through the last three holes, wind and all, with straight pars. "I’m really pleased with where things are at, but they’re not where I want them to be at," he said. "I’m trying to kind of take it slowly and patiently and reward myself, be excited about the good ones and not get too down about the bad ones." So on goes the search. "I’m really just trying to go back in time structurally to a place that I’ve been," he said. "Trying to work backwards."

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