Rickie Fowler birdies last 3 holes to take Phoenix Open lead

For the first time in its 22-year history, the Barracuda Championship has a second home in the land of second homes. Situated about 17 miles west as the bald eagle flies from its aerie at Montrêux Golf & Country Club in Reno, Nevada, about 500 feet higher and across the state line into Truckee, California, Tahoe Mountain Club’s Old Greenwood Course debuts as host of the final additional event of the 2019-20 PGA TOUR season. The Jack Nicklaus Signature design opened in 2004. It’s a par 71 with three par 5s and, even more interestingly, as many as three drivable par 4s. That’ll get the juices flowing given that the Modified Stableford scoring system is being used for the ninth consecutive edition of the tournament. For more on the course, the format and the tournament, scroll past the projected contenders and others to consider in the field of 132. RELATED: Preview the Barracuda Championship’s new host| The First Look POWER RANKINGS: BARRACUDA CHAMPIONSHIP OTHERS TO CONSIDER • Pat Perez … Pieced together a nice week at TPC Twin Cities for a T23 to go 4-for-5 in the restart. Modified Stableford scoring meshes so well with his swashbuckling approach at golf and at life. • Nick Watney … Got off the schneid with a T12 and four sub-70s at the 3M Open. The Sacramento, California, native now gets to enjoy a virtual home game. It’s been a while, but he went for three top 10s at Montrêux. • Brandon Harkins … The former PGA TOUR member might have the most experience at Old Greenwood. He’s also gone 7-for-7 with three top 25s on the Korn Ferry Tour since its season restarted. • MJ Daffue … He’s not quite Patrick Reed or T.J. Vogel, but Daffue isn’t a slouch, either. He’s in the field on a sponsor exemption, but perhaps he should have declined it in favor of open qualifying. See, as noted by Ryan French in his recap of the open qualifiers for the Workday Charity Open, Daffue is 6-for-10 in the one-round races for a chip and a chair. In all six(!), he’s finished inside the top 30 in the tournament proper, including a T22 at the Workday. He’s built for the Modified Stableford scoring system, and vice versa. True to Nicklaus’ stamp on most properties, there’s room to move it off the tee on the 7,390-yard test, but there are strategic slots and spots from a handful that will separate seriously valuable drives from pedestrian fairway splitters. The entire course is blanketed with a blend of bentgrass and Poa annua not dissimilar to what many in the field experienced on most or all of a handful of recent sites where the PGA TOUR has set up shop. Of course, the big difference between locales such at TPC River Highlands, Detroit Golf Club and Muirfield Village is the altitude. At about 6,000 feet above sea level, conversions to compensate will be necessary to capitalize on scoring opportunities. Greens average 5,300 square feet, but Nicklaus-esque undulations will make them feel even smaller. Primary rough rising to three-and-a-half inches reinforces the goal to get the math right. Despite the customary challenge of the course, the overarching narrative concerning it and the week in general is to have a good time. It’s a resort community where countless locals are summering. With majestic vistas, clean and dry air, and nothing but sunshine all week with daytimes highs in the 80s, it’s golf for the soul ahead of an intense stretch of action on the horizon. Contributing to the thrill are par 4s measuring 357 yards, 345 yards and 396 yards at the eighth, 11th and 16th holes, respectively. However, with two of the par 5s and the shortest two par 3s on the front side, contenders in the final round probably will have built a foundation early in the day, and then take whatever they can coming home. Modified Stableford totals points (like a fantasy league), so positive numbers are good for the only time all season. The worst a golfer can score on any hole is minus-3 points for a double bogey (or worse). ShotLink is not used to measure performance. In addition to 300 FedExCup points and a two-year PGA TOUR membership exemption, the winner will qualify for next week’s PGA Championship. As of midday Tuesday, only nine golfers in the field are exempt into the major. Incidentally, fields for additional events entering this season were reduced to 120, but this week’s field was reset to 132 to help compensate for playing time missed due to the pandemic. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.COM’s Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous angles. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Rookie Ranking, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Medical Extensions, Power Rankings (WGC-St. Jude) TUESDAY*: Power Rankings (Barracuda), Sleepers (WGC-St. Jude), Fantasy Insider * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.

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DUBLIN, Ohio – Collin Morikawa made a putter switch for the first time in a year and turned in a 1-under 71 in the first round of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. Using a TaylorMade GT Rollback mallet, Morikawa took 28 putts, was in positive numbers in Strokes Gained: Putting, and pronounced himself satisfied with the switch. “I’ll take it,” said Morikawa, who used a TaylorMade TP Juno blade to win last year’s Open Championship and a similar blade-style flatstick in his victory at the 2020 PGA Championship. “It’s matching what I’m feeling, and that’s all I can ask for – I haven’t felt that probably since Augusta (where he finished solo 5th).” Although he started this season with six top-10 finishes in his first eight starts, the five-time PGA TOUR winner has fallen back since then. He hasn’t finished in the top 25 in any of his last four starts, including a T55 at the PGA Championship and T40 at the Charles Schwab Challenge. Morikawa, 19th in the FedExCup, said there were two things happening. He was having a hard time finding his normal left-to-right shot from tee to green, and the ball wasn’t coming off his putter quite right, either. To address his tee-to-green struggles, he said, he made a tiny adjustment in the first round. “It made the biggest difference,” he said. He hit 11 of 14 fairways. As for his putter change, he said the goal was to get a bit more upright, with his hands slightly higher. In a normal week, he said, he might have just taken his old blade to the equipment truck to have it bent. But there are no equipment trucks on site at the Memorial, so instead Morikawa had a GT Rollback mallet made up to his specs. Committed to using it, he put it in the bag Tuesday. The GT Rollback has a classic half-moon head that features an 80-gram tungsten rollbar positioned on the perimeter of the head to increase stability. He’s still rolling with the modified claw grip, inspired by Mark O’Meara. “I see him all the time when I’m back in Vegas,” Morikawa said, “and he’ll give me a little tidbit here or there. Sometimes posture changes, so all I did was change the lie to get a little more upright, get my hands in a little better spot. It feels like where I want to be putting, which is nice. Same loft. No adjustments on the grip. Technically I’m not thinking anything, which is good. “It doesn’t mean I’m not going to go back to the blade,” he continued, “but there were no trucks here, and I wasn’t comfortable bending my putter to a different lie angle, because it really was just changing the lie angle to make contact a little more consistent.”

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Justin Thomas is slow to change his equipment, adopting an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy to his gear. “I don’t change just to change,” Thomas said from this week’s World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba. “If it’s working, just keep using it.” Thomas’ irons most definitely have been working for him. He’s one of the top players on TOUR in that area of the game, having ranked no worse than sixth in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green in each of the five previous TOUR seasons, including three consecutive seasons ranked in the top three. That’s why intrigue abounded when the former FedExCup champion arrived at last month’s CJ CUP @ SUMMIT with a new set in the bag. The new irons are very similar to the Titleist 620 MB blades he’d had in the bag since 2019, but they bore a unique stamp with Thomas’ initials, signifying that these were built specifically for the reigning THE PLAYERS champion. Similar to Adam Scott’s 681.AS irons — which shared much in common with his beloved Forged 680 blades — Thomas’ 621.JT irons are, at a glance, very similar to his previous gamers. This week, he shed a little light on the irons that bear his initials. Now, “a little” is key here. The maker of the clubs, Titleist, hasn’t announced any future release possibilities of the prototype irons. Conversely, the company hasn’t said the clubs are one-offs just for Thomas. “Feedback from the best players in the world is a cornerstone of the Titleist R&D process, and these prototype irons (621.JT and 681.AS) have been developed in collaboration with each player to better understand some key design variables such as shaping, sole design and (center of gravity) placement – that ultimately may find their way into future Titleist iron development,” a Titleist spokesperson said. “We look forward to sharing additional updates on these prototypes as we gain feedback and learn more from each player’s experience.” So, while we wait for additional updates regarding the future of 621.JT (and 681.AS irons), we can at least learn a little more about the irons from JT himself. Thomas said he is just one of several players that Titleist approached, asking if their clubs needed any subtle changes to better suit their preferences. Thomas famously likes very little offset in his irons. The term refers to how far the leading edge of the club sits behind the hosel at address. More offset gives players more time to square the club at impact. Amateurs’ clubs often have a lot of offset to lessen their dreaded slice. As a general rule, better players prefer less offset, but few go so far as “zero offset,” which Thomas does. In working with Titleist engineers, Thomas also was keen to dial in the sound and feel of the new irons to complement the “clean look” he likes. “They came to me and said let’s create (a set of irons), anything that you want to change,” Thomas said. “Obviously I loved it, everything about (my irons) already, but the changes are so minor. … It just was about getting the best feeling iron, the best sounding iron. It’s one of those clubs that obviously you have to hit it properly for it to be that way, but one of those ones where you kind of hear it and you turn around like, what is that, you know what I mean?” Thomas indicated engineers experimented with sole grinds and milling techniques and “stuff that’s way, way past my pay grade” in order to produce his dream irons. The result? “They look awesome,” he said.

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