Rory McIlroy scores well and shares lead at Wells Fargo Championship

ORLANDO, Fla. — Billy Horschel got a rare break at Bay Hill on a day that punished so many others, leading to a birdie on the 18th hole Saturday for a 1-under 71 that gave him a share of the lead with Talor Gooch in the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. Horschel was buried in deep rough behind the 18th green and facing a fast chip down the hill. His foot was on a sprinkler head and he received a free drop. From the collar, he was able to use putter and his 30-foot putt trickled into the cup. “To make that putt on 18, to shoot 1 under on a really tough day is really satisfying,” he said. It was a happy moment, and those were hard to find in a third round where Viktor Hovland lost a four-shot lead at the turn, Matt Jones heaved his putter into the water and Rory McIlroy lost momentum with a tee shot out-of-bounds. Scottie Scheffler managed to make a charge. After missing three straight par putts from 6 feet or closer to cap off his front nine, Scheffler made three birdies and a 20-foot eagle for a 31 on the back for a 68, matching the low score of the day. He started the day eight shots behind. He ended it two shots out of the lead. The final group was making the turn when Scheffler finished and he was asked if his round put him back into the tournament. “I didn’t really feel out of it at the beginning of the day,” Scheffler said. He and everyone else had an idea of what to expect on a course that is a strong test in any condition. Add gusts of about 15 mph and greens so baked by the sun there was barely any grass, and this was all the best players in golf could handle. Gooch, the Oklahoman who won his first PGA TOUR title in the final event of last year, was up to the task. He rolled in a 35-foot birdie putt on the tough 15th, followed with a 15-foot birdie on the next hole and was in the lead until a tee shot into ankle-deep rough on the final hole kept him from reaching the green. Gooch and Horschel were at 7-under 209. Hovland suffered as much as anyone. He three-putted from 10 feet on the par-3 second hole, only to recover by holing a bunker shot for eagle on the par-5 sixth with his ball on a slight downslope in the sand and not much green between his ball and the hole. The back nine turned into a slow bleed, twice taking three putts for bogey and missing the fairway on two other holes. He shot 40 on the back nine for a 75. Still, he was only one shot behind. Former U.S. Open champion Gary Woodland overcame three bogeys for a round of 70 and was three shots behind, followed by the group of Chris Kirk (68), Graeme McDowell (69) and McIlroy, whose 76 could have been worse. “I feel like I’ve never had as many 6-footers for bogeys as I’ve had today,” he said. McIlroy, the 18-hole leader, ran off back-to-back birdies early on the back nine and was making up ground until he lost a tee shot to the right on the 15th hole that bounced into a backyard. That led to double bogey, and he bogeyed the last two holes to fall back. “It’s so tough out there. It’s so tricky. It’s just on knife’s edge,” McIlroy said. “You’re literally talking like feet — 2 feet here, 2 feet there from 200 yards can make a huge difference in where the ball ends up.” He was among eight players separated by four shots going into the final round, and with conditions expected to be the same, Bay Hill should be primed for a shootout among survivors. Jones, meanwhile, hit a brilliant approach on the 11th hole to 8 feet only to have the putt slide off line. He reached the cup about the time the golf ball trickled there, tapped in with one hand and then heaved his putter into the lake. Max Homa made an ace on the par-3 14th hole with a pitching wedge from 163 yards, meaning a $200,000 donation by presenting sponsor Mastercard to the Arnold & Winning Palmer Foundation. A year ago on Saturday at Bay Hill, Homa was playing with Jazz Janewattananond when the Thai made a hole-in-one on the 14th hole.

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The 2,863rd time is the charm. That’s how long it took Adam Hadwin to make the first hole-in-one in PGA TOUR competition. He used a 7-iron from 194 yards to ace the 16th hole in the second round of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. Then he promptly went crazy. “I think I kind of blacked out for a second when it went in,” said Hadwin, who rallied with a 68 to get to even par for the tournament, well within the cut line. “I had been battling to get myself close to that cut line anyways. And so I knew how important every little shot was. “And to kind of see it go over the lip and fall in,” he added, “I just – you’ve got pure joy as a reaction there. Again, I blacked out. I’m not sure exactly what happened.” Jessica Hadwin, his wife, tweeted that it was the most excited she’d ever seen her husband. Hadwin threw his club in the air and hopped around as the crowd erupted. He said he’d made a hole-in-one in a junior tournament when he was perhaps 15. He also aced the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale, although not during the WM Phoenix Open, so no one saw it. This one was a no-doubter, as the roars reverberated across Muirfield Village. The shot was playing downwind, he said, and he aimed a little left, planning for the ball to cut. “And it came off perfect,” he said. “It was cutting right to it. But, you know, I’ve played this game long enough, I’ve hit enough perfect golf shots that don’t end up getting close to a hole-in-one, so there’s a lot of luck involved with that of where it lands on the green and stuff. “I hit the exact shot that I wanted to in that instance,” Hadwin continued. “And it just happened to find the right line on the green. Pretty exciting.”

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PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Relegated to the middle seat for a flight from Atlanta to San Jose, Calif., would seemingly rate as poor travel-planning. But Jonathan Byrd said that was nothing when compared to the travel woes he experienced the day before as he forgot his passport and couldn’t go through with a flight out of the country. That both travel negatives have been offset by a huge positive – a spot in the field at this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am – is just another page in the life of a PGA TOUR veteran trying to manage his career without full status. “I’ve never done that before,� Byrd said of getting to the airport in Jacksonville, Fla., Monday morning and discovering that he did not have his passport. “I had to call my car service and ask the guy to turn around and give me a ride back (to his home in St. Simons Island, Ga.) But, in the end, it has worked out well.� Byrd, who in 2018-19 is playing out of the past champion category, was not originally in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am field, so he entered the Panama Championship on the Web.com Tour. The forgotten passport made Monday’s flight out of Jacksonville a moot point, so Byrd figured he’d return to Sea Island for some practice and decide whether to try the Panama flight Tuesday. “When I got home, I had a call waiting from the TOUR, saying I was in the (AT&T) field,� said Byrd. Hello, Monterey Peninsula, where Byrd will make his 13th appearance in the iconic pro-am and his fifth start on the PGA TOUR this season. Had he remembered his passport and made the flight to Panama, then received word that he was in the field at the AT&T, Byrd said he would have likely stayed to play in the Web.com Tour tournament. So, clearly this week at Pebble Beach is a product of an unplanned mistake, which led to this Tweet by Byrd Monday afternoon: “God always had a bigger plan.� As for the middle seat from Atlanta to San Jose, Byrd shrugged. He handled it nicely. Then he smiled and said it was probably rougher for his instructor, Daniel Gray. “He was in the last row,� laughed Byrd. Then again, it’s Pebble Beach, so all is good.

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