Rickie Fowler's flub may end majors cut streak

AUGUSTA, Ga. - Bryson DeChambeau will make the cut at the Masters, but just barely. And he'll move on to the final two rounds despite not feeling 100 percent. "Not good, to say the least," he said of his play. "I was feeling something a little weird last - two nights ago, and I came out yesterday and was fine for the most part. As I kept going through the round, I started getting a little dizzy. I don’t know what was going on, a little something weird. "So I got checked for COVID last night, and I was fine, nothing," he added. "But I had to do the right thing and make sure there was nothing more serious than that. I don’t know what it is or what happened, but these past couple days, I’ve felt really, really odd and just not a hundred percent. Some of that’s played into it. I just feel kind of dull and numb out there, just not fully aware of everything, and making some silly, silly mistakes for sure." After he had bogeyed his last two holes for a 2-over 74 to sit at even par, DeChambeau needed help from Jordan Spieth at the 18th hole and Rafa Cabrera Bello at the ninth. Had either made birdie it would have moved the cut to 1 under par, knocking out everyone at even par. Spieth lost his drive in the trees and had to fight just to make the cut himself, the 2015 Masters champion rolling in a 15-foot par putt to keep his tournament alive. "You know, sometimes it’s more nerve racking trying to make the cut than it is trying to win the tournament," Spieth said. Cabrera Bello missed the ninth green but got up and down for par, also making the cut. Augusta National announced on Monday that the Masters cut would no longer use the 10-shot rule and would be changed to only the low 50 and ties. DeChambeau was part of an 11-way tie for 50th, as was Collin Morikawa, the winner of the PGA Championship. The winners of the last two majors survived by the skin of their teeth, as did Tony Finau (69-75) and past champions Zach Johnson (73-71) and Charl Schwartzel (73-71) and Spieth (74-70). Notables to miss the cut included: Matthew Wolff – Runner-up to DeChambeau at the U.S. Open and Rocket Mortgage Classic, Wolff got off to a hot start in his first Masters but scores of 70-77 weren't good enough. Tyrrell Hatton - Winner of the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard never clicked at Augusta National, shooting 73-74 to finish 3 over and miss by three. Francesco Molinari - Was in control of the Masters last year until double-bogeys on 12 and 15 sent him down to a T5 finish, two behind Tiger Woods. Shot 72-78 this time to miss cut by six. Jason Day - Trendy pre-tournament pick had four top-10 finishes at the Masters, including a T2 in 2011, but blew up with a 78 in the second round to bow out early at 4 over. DeChambeau fought a right miss in Round 2, and for the second straight round hit just 11 greens in regulation. He double-bogeyed the 13th hole in the first round, and triple-bogeyed the par-4 third hole in the second. The third and 13th holes are two of the shortest on the course. Where exactly his tee shot wound up at the third hole - he had to take a lost ball and return to the tee to hit three - is unknown. It's assumed to have plugged in the wet grass. "It just seems like there’s a lot of things going not in the right way," DeChambeau said. "I’ve certainly played worst golf than this and won golf tournaments. So, you know, it’s one of those things where it’s golf. You can’t control everything as much as you try. He had an eagle putt when he returned to the 13th hole at 7:30 a.m. Saturday to complete his second round, but missed it and settled for a birdie to get to even par. A birdie at 14, where his drive missed way right but kicked off a tree back into the fairway, got him into red numbers. More driving problems, though, left him in the right trees at the par-5 15th, where he had to settle for par. A birdie at the par-3 16th seemed to give him breathing room, but he closed with bogeys at 17 (again missed right with his drive) and 18 (airmailed green from 150 yards in fairway). As for his health, he said he started feeling dizzy Thursday night. "Yeah, every time I’d bend over and come back up, I’d like lose my stance a little bit," he said. "So I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve got to go and do some blood work and get checked out and figure out what’s going on for this off‑season."

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2022 the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, Round 2 Top 10 win probabilities: 1. Cameron Smith (1, -8, 18.6%) 2. Rory McIlroy (T9, -5, 8.9%) 3. Billy Horschel (T4, -6, 7.9%) 4. Kyounghoon Lee (T2, -7, 7.7%) 5. Cameron Young (T4, -6, 7.7%) 6. Denny McCarthy (T2, -7, 5.9%) 7. Davis Riley (T4, -6, 4.1%) 8. Sungjae Im (T13, -4, 3.8%) 9. Jhonattan Vegas (T4, -6, 3.8%) 10. Aaron Wise (T9, -5, 3.7%) Top Strokes-Gained Performers from Round 2: Putting: J.T. Poston +3.7 Around the Green: Beau Hossler +4.1 Approach the Green: Aaron Wise +3.3 Off-the-tee: Aaron Rai +1.6 Total: Francesco Molinari +5.2 NOTE: These reports are based off of the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cut”, “Top 20”, “Top 5”, and “Win” probabilities every 5 minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 20K simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Rory McIlroy is playing the most consistent golf of his career. This week, he’s visiting the site where he’s had incomparable success. It’s a dangerous combination, and he proved that Thursday. McIlroy made five back-nine birdies to shoot 66 and share the Wells Fargo Championship’s first-round lead with Joel Dahmen. Dahmen is a third-year TOUR player seeking his first win. McIlroy is the only two-time winner of this tournament. He set the course record in each of his wins. How comfortable is he here? He’s atop the leaderboard without his best stuff. “Every time I step onto this golf course, I feel like I have chance to shoot a good score,� McIlroy said. “I didn’t play my best today. I sort of managed my game well, scrambled well, but it added up to a good number at the end of the day.� Dahmen played with Tiger Woods in the third round of last year’s Quicken Loans National, shooting a 69 to Woods’ 68. Now he shares a leaderboard with McIlroy. Dahmen admits the game’s elite are at a different level than him, but 72 holes is a small enough sample to produce outliers. Dahmen is 65th in the FedExCup and 125th in the world ranking. His highlights this season include a T9 at the Farmers Insurance Open and 12th-place finish at THE PLAYERS Championship. “Golf is awesome because on any given week or given day, anybody can beat anybody,� Dahmen said. “I played as well as Rory today and I beat everybody else in the field. That’s great and there’s no reason I can’t do that for three more days.� There aren’t many opponents more intimidating than McIlroy at Quail Hollow, though. He wasn’t happy with the way he struck his tee shots Thursday, but he made up for it with his iron play. He led the field in Strokes Gained: Approach (+4.04). Signing for a good score when he’s not playing his best has been a key to his consistent play this season, he said. He finished in the top 10 in seven consecutive events before finishing T21 at the Masters. That stretch included his first win at THE PLAYERS Championship. He’s third in the FedExCup as he tries to join Woods as the only two-time winners of the Cup. McIlroy made slight swing changes after a disappointing result at Augusta National, which represented another unsuccessful attempt to complete the career Grand Slam. Some faults had crept into his address position, which caused the club to get behind his hands. He had to rely too much on timing to get the club back in front of his hands. “I’ve done a little bit of work on my swing over the last two weeks and it still doesn’t feel quite natural, but it’s started to embed in,� McIlroy said Thursday. “It felt pretty good in the practice rounds around here, and I had a decent warm-up today and I carried that into the play on the course.� McIlroy was even par at the turn. He birdied the second hole but bogeyed the par-5 seventh after driving into the water. According to Justin Ray of 15th Club, it was the first time in McIlroy’s career that he bogeyed a par-5 in the Wells Fargo Championship. He started the back nine with back-to-back birdies, but missed a 4-footer for a third in a row. Then he birdied the drivable 14th, par-5 15th and the downhill 16th, the first hole of Quail Hollow’s infamous Green Mile. His last three tee shots traveled 314, 3339 and 366 yards. “The last three tee shots were a little bit better,� he said. This was his 31st round at the Wells Fargo Championship. He’s been inside the top 5 after 10 of them. This is the fifth time McIlroy has led at the end of a round at Quail Hollow, surpassing Tiger Woods for the most all-time. He’s succeeded even as Quail Hollow has undergone a variety of changes. The course was bentgrass when he earned his first PGA TOUR win here in 2010. It was Bermudagrass when he won here for a second time. He hasn’t had the same success since the changes that were made for the 2017 PGA Championship, though. His T16 at last year’s Wells Fargo was his first finish outside the top 10 here since a missed cut in 2011. “Every time they tweak something here or there, it’s still sort of the same place and it really fits my eye,� he said. Interestingly, McIlroy didn’t hold the first-round lead in either of his Wells Fargo wins. He was seven shots back after the first round in 2010 and five shots back in 2015. Only two first-round leaders have gone on to win the Wells Fargo when it’s at Quail Hollow. If there’s someone who can buck that trend, though, it’s McIlroy. Entering this week, McIlroy was first in scoring average (69.6), Strokes Gained per round (+2.82), birdies per round (5.23) and greens hit (72%) among players who’ve played at least 20 rounds at Quail Hollow. He proved again Thursday that he’s the man to beat at Quail Hollow.

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