Schauffele clings to 1-shot lead in men’s golf

Editor’s note: Coverage of the Monday finish at the Mayakoba Golf Classic will begin at 7:30 a.m. ET on Golf Channel. PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico – It’s far from settled at El Camaleón Golf Club. Brendon Todd was cruising toward his second win in as many starts at the Mayakoba Golf Classic until a two-shot swing on the 13th and 14th hole left him tied with playing partner Vaughn Taylor at 20-under-par before darkness halted play. “Today was a great day,â€� Todd said. “You know, I went out there and hit it well, shot 9-under-par with two bogeys. It doesn’t taste so great that the last one came on the last hole (the par-4 14th), but it’s all right. I’m tied for the lead with three to play and excited about the opportunity.â€� Harris English, the third member of their group, is just one back. Related: Leaderboard | WATCH: Kuchar, Gay make aces | Henley misses cut after violating One Ball Rule All three elected to mark on the par-3 15th green, calling it a day after playing nearly 33 holes. Todd and English have birdie putts, while Taylor still has around six feet to salvage par. They will return to the course at 7:30 a.m. ET Monday to finish the tournament. So will local favorite Carlos Ortiz of Guadalajara, who still has a shot at his first PGA TOUR victory. He’s also just a shot back, tied with English at 19 under, with the 18th hole still to play. While his playing partners, Zach Johnson (69, 9 under) and Mark Hubbard (74, 2 under), elected to finish the round, Ortiz, the only one in contention, chose to wait and play 18 in daylight.  “The whole point was to get in contention in the last nine holes,â€� Ortiz said. “I’m in contention with one hole to play. So, I mean, that’s also the position I took of not finishing. I think I have a really good chance for tomorrow and I’m pretty proud the way I played.â€� Ortiz and his younger brother, Alvaro, the Latin America Amateur champion, have been a big draw all week, with both playing well as their parents tried to follow along. But only Carlos could summon his A game in the final round, as Alvaro is 5 over through 16 holes, 7 under total. Todd is 47 under in his last eight rounds on TOUR and making his first start since winning the Bermuda Championship two weeks ago. He’s trying to become the first player to win back-to-back events on TOUR since Bryson DeChambeau at the 2018 THE NORTHERN TRUST and Dell Technologies Championship. He’s also trying to add another layer to a comeback of epic proportions. Fighting the full-swing yips, Todd plummeted down the world ranking and lost his status the last three seasons. Playing when he could on Past Champion status (2014 AT&T Byron Nelson), he had made just six of his previous 47 cuts when he turned the calendar on 2019. Taylor is seeking his fourth TOUR title and first since the 2016 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Ortiz might be the hottest player of the top four, having carded a 6-under 65 in the third round and gone 5 under for his first 17 holes of the fourth. The 28-year-old arrived on TOUR with high hopes after winning three times on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2014, but has just six top-10 finishes in 95 previous starts on the PGA TOUR. Two of those came this season, a pair of T4s at the Sanderson Farms Championship and Houston Open. A four-time All-American at Georgia, English won on the Korn Ferry Tour even before he turned pro in 2011, then promptly won twice on the PGA TOUR. Alas, his prosperity didn’t last. His average finish in the FedExCup the last three seasons has been 131, he fell out of the top 200 in the world, and had to go back to the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. Now, though, he’s already posted three top-10 finishes in four starts this season. Adam Long also has a shot. He’s two shots back at 18 under, with three holes remaining. He’s coming off a feast-or-famine season in which he won The American Express but had just one other top-10 finish, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. They’ll come back and settle it Monday morning. “Now that I’m tied for the lead, it’s kind of a new ballgame,â€� Todd said. “I’ll have to go out there and hit good shots and try and fight them off.â€�

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Because the Ryder Cup is not an official PGA TOUR event, PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf has the week off. The fantasy game will resume for next week’s Sanderson Farms Championship for which more enhancements are planned. However, before we look forward, let’s look back for a moment. RELATED: Power Rankings | PGATOUR.COM Expert Picks The 2021-22 season-opening Fortinet Championship launched the latest iteration of PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf. As expected, fantasy scoring was way down as compared to the previous version, and leaderboard finish was a strong contributor to gamer performance. JJ’sFoursome led all gamers with 315 points. That includes 101 end-of-tournament bonus points for having Max Homa (50, winner), Maverick McNealy (30, 2nd), Marc Leishman (12, T4) and Hideki Matsuyama (9, T6) rostered as starters in the final round. ChicoV1 was the runner-up with 312 points (with 111 end-of-tournament bonus points). The Golf Dons took the bronze with 305 points (with 97 end-of-tournament bonus points). The data of the podium finishers of the first completed event begs the following question: What is the balance between actual scores, end-of-round bonus points and end-of-tournament bonus points for being a high performer? (Those are the categories for fantasy scoring.) If you separate binarily between end-of-tournament bonus points and all points that are not end-of-tournament bonus points, then JJ’sFoursome scored about 32 percent of its points with end-of-tournament bonus points, which, of course, are based on leaderboard finish. ChicoV1’s split was about 35.5 percent, while The Golf Dons’ cut was about 31.8 percent. So, approximately one-third of the totals for the top-three finishers weren’t determined until the conclusion of the tournament. And that’s in an event at which the 36-hole cut landed at 3-under 141 and Homa prevailed at 19-under 269. For the week, the field averaged 71.038, or 0.962 strokes under par. As compared to all courses during the 2020-21 PGA TOUR season, the Fortinet field would have slotted just inside the top half of the easier courses and in between par-70 TPC Southwind (-0.954) and par-72 Nicklaus Tournament Course (-1.051). (Silverado averaged 70.212 last year, but last week’s average was the second-lowest of the last five editions.) Because the FedExCup points structure is static, the percentage of end-of-tournament bonus points on a harder course will increase. However, aside from maybe Memorial Park that will host the Houston Open in November – the par 70 averaged 1.025 strokes over par in its debut last fall – our takeaway from Silverado should be relatively consistent until we get into the premier events in 2022, the first of which is the Farmers Insurance Open in the last week of January. One of the slicker functions of the new platform is the ease to search for any gamer. If you executed this step for me (@RobBoltonGolf), you’d have laughed at, er, found that I totaled – totaled – 81 points at Silverado, of which 11 were end-of-tournament bonus points (about 13.5 percent) representing the only two of my six who made the cut, Will Zalatoris (6, T11) and Harold Varner III (5, T16). Because it’s golf, no matter your skill level and even if you, like I, prevailed in your fantasy league in 2020-21, you’re gonna have weeks like that. Personally, because I wanted to see how the fantasy game supported or punished, I tested the possibilities of momentum of Korn Ferry Tour graduates Stephan Jaeger and Taylor Moore, both of whom missed the cut and cost me in the vicinity of 45 points overall, if I’m projecting scoring conservatively. The moral of the matter is that there are going to be gamers who connect with the likes of Homa, McNealy and Mito Pereira (who finished third for ChicoV1), but the likelihood of them doing the same at the Sanderson Farms Championship or even again in Segment 1 is low. At the same time, because you can’t score bonus points unless your charges make the cut, shelving an aggressive philosophy is advised in favor of more reliable talent. If we can agree that we’ll develop vision in this game for targeting “safe” investments with the potential for firepower, then we’re going to be OK with accepting the sudden impact of guys like McNealy, Pereira and others who might feel, at least right now, like they overperformed. That approach should then yield nice surprises for ourselves. As you continue to familiarize yourself with the interface, new experiences will be added next week. Beginning with the Sanderson Farms Championship, you will be able to review the entire roster of any other gamer, including the bench. You’ll also be able to use the tool to compare rosters. Both of these functions have been planned since the decision was made to introduce a new format, but they weren’t guaranteed to be available for the season opener. So it goes in the world of the PGA TOUR that took only one week off. Also, live just today is the addition of “PGA TOUR Experts” to the top of the public leagues. Until it was added to this grouping, it appeared only as the featured league. You’ll note that “pga experts” also is a public league and with more members (as of Tuesday), but that’s not the same league in which those of us featured in Expert Picks are members. For the record, the only league of which I’m a member is PGA TOUR Experts. This is as good a time as any to inform or remind you that the PGA and the PGA TOUR have been separate entities since 1968. For example, the PGA of America – not the PGA TOUR – is conducting this week’s Ryder Cup. So, every time you see “PGA” attached to something, if it doesn’t have “TOUR” immediately following, it’s not a directly affiliated matter to the PGA TOUR. That goes for everything from sanctioned competitions to Twitter handles of full-time staffers to the PGA TOUR Experts league at PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf. Incidentally, you can jump in and out of public leagues without forfeiting points scored. You can do the same in a private league where a password is required. For private leagues using a customized schedule, the interface is sophisticated enough to retrieve points scored only in the selected events. The last enhancement to share, for now, is one that you won’t experience in real time until last next week. PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf will be uploading the field of commitments for the Shriners Children’s Open when it’s determined on Friday, Oct. 1. So, if you’ve selected a golfer for a future tournament and he doesn’t commit, you’ll receive an automatic alert when the field is uploaded, assuming you’ve selected notifications in your Account Settings. This occurred on Mondays or Tuesdays with the last version of the game, so this experience is improved because it’s faster and timely. POWER RANKINGS RECAP – FORTINET CHAMPIONSHIP Power Ranking Golfer Result 1 Jon Rahm MC 2 Kevin Na MC 3 Will Zalatoris T11 4 Webb Simpson T30 5 Harold Varner III T16 6 Stephan Jaeger MC 7 Maverick McNealy 2nd 8 Taylor Moore MC 9 Mito Pereira 3rd 10 Sebastián Muñoz MC 11 Greyson Sigg T30 12 Cameron Tringale T22 13 Hideki Matsuyama T6 14 Brian Stuard MC 15 Aaron Rai MC Wild Card Cameron Champ MC SLEEPERS RECAP – FORTINET CHAMPIONSHIP Golfer Result Kiradech Aphibarnrat MC David Hearn MC Ben Kohles MC Cameron Percy T64 Chad Ramey MC BIRTHDAYS AMONG ACTIVE MEMBERS OF THE PGA TOUR September 21 … none September 22 … none September 23 … none September 24 … none September 25 … Adam Long (34) September 26 … Freddie Jacobson (47) September 27 … none Visit BetMGM.com for Terms and Conditions. 21+ years of age or older to wager. CO, IA, IN,MI, NJ, NV,PA, TN, VA or WV only. Excludes Michigan Disassociated Persons. Please Gamble Responsibly. Gambling Problem? 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