Scheffler has 2-shot lead at Players on record day

When Billy Hurley III played in the 2005 Walker Cup, his teammates included Matt Every, Brian Harman and J.B. Holmes, all players he now competes against regularly on the PGA TOUR. But his path to the TOUR decidedly different than theirs. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 2004 and had a five-year service commitment before he could even think about making his living playing golf. That Navy career took Hurley to Pearl Harbor as well as to the Persian Gulf, where he served aboard the USS Chung-Hoon, which is a 10,000-ton, guided missile destroyer that was charged with protecting Iraqi oil platforms. And often, Hurley was the man driving the ship, winning several handling awards along the way and even navigating the Suez Canal. Hurley, who competes this week in THE PLAYERS Championship, focused on a career at the helm early on in part because he thought his eyesight would preclude him from flying. Even when the Navy decided to allow pilots who had LASIK surgery midway through his stint at the Academy, Hurley stayed the course – literally. “We have ships at the Naval Academy that we use for training just there in the Severn River and Chesapeake Bay,â€� Hurley says. “And you know, the first time doing that I knew I was pretty good at it and just really enjoyed it. “It was just a lot of fun.â€� After graduation, Hurley was selected to be a surface warfare office – and learning to drive the ship was the first order of business. He says it normally takes nine months to a year, depending on sea time, to prove competency, which is followed by an oral examination by the captain, XO and other senior officers. “That usually consists of a lot of standard kind of questions and then some situational kind of questions and then some emergency procedures to kind of make sure that you know what you would do … in an equipment failure,â€� he explains. “There’s very regimented steps.â€� “It’s already laid out. It’s not guesswork. It’s if this happens, you do one, two, three, four. If that fixes it, great. If it doesn’t, then you do five, six, seven, eight. So you kind of have to have all that memorized and know that really like the back of your hand.â€� The destroyer, which in Hurley’s case was 509-and-a-half feet long, has two rudders and two huge screw propellers. The rudders can’t operate independently except in an extreme emergency. The screws are a different story, though. “So that’s obviously just like driving a speed boat on the lake, you turn the wheel to go left, you go left,â€� Hurley says. “But the unique thing about having two propellers is that you can operate those in different ways to, to kick the ship or back the ship up in a different angle. “So we call it twisting the ship where you could make one of the propellers go backwards and one go forward and the ship will kind of nearly just twist in place if you do it right.â€� Hurley, who picked up his first TOUR victory at the 2016 Quicken Loans National about an hour from Annapolis where the Naval Academy is located, says you can even make the 10,000-ton behemoth go straight sideways by twisting the screws and doing the opposite with the rudders. “It’s really cool,â€� he says. “It’s really cool.â€� The trip through the Suez Canal, according to Hurley, was more of a management situation “where you’re just kind of making sure you’re in between the buoys and stay in the middle.â€� Once, though, he was the man giving the orders as the destroyer got underway from Pearl Harbor without using any tugboats. “We twisted and twisted and kind of just came off the pier and then, and then drove out of the slip,â€� Hurley recalls. “So that was, that was one of the cooler things. “I think I made the captain a little nervous when I told him I wanted to try. Sir, I think I can do this without tugs. He’s like, y-e-a-h, I know you can. (And I was like) well, no, I can, like, we can do this without tugs. So we had the tugs obviously there … but we didn’t end up using any of their help. So that was really fun.â€� So does driving a car seem easy now that he’s maneuvered massive destroyers through the Red Sea and the South China sea? “Honestly, it’s very, very, very different,â€� Hurley says. “The thing about a ship is when you turn the wheel, it doesn’t just go. There’s a little lag time. So unlike driving a car where you can do nearly what you want immediately, you have to be constantly thinking ahead. “Then you have wind and you have current and you have all these other things that you’re paying attention to as well, that can help you if you do it right and can make it really, really difficult if you do it wrong.â€� Not that Hurley made too many mistakes.

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PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — The words on the back of his wedges remind Kamaiu Johnson that while nothing in golf has ever come easily, he is determined not to let that get in the way of his dreams. “Enjoy the process” is stamped on one of them. “Never give up” is engraved on the other. He had reason to break both wedges over his knee two weeks ago. Johnson, a 27-year-old Black man with a most serendipitous entry into the white world of golf, had done well enough on the Advocates Pro Golf Association Tour that he was awarded a sponsor exemption into the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, his first taste of the PGA TOUR. And then he tested positive for the coronavirus and had to withdraw. “I was talking to him that Tuesday and he was barely coherent,” said Ken Bentley, the CEO and co-founder of the APGA, which aims to develop minorities for careers in golf. “I talked to him the next day and he was all fired up.” The Honda Classic reacted quickly by offering him a sponsor exemption. The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was right behind, along with a Korn Ferry Tour event, the Emeral Coast Classic at Sandestin. Johnson makes his PGA TOUR debut Thursday. The first step. The ultimate goal is be a regular out here. “I can do it,” Johnson said. “For sure. I just have to keep grinding. I’ve come way too far to give up now. I’m in too deep. The biggest thing in life is to surround myself with good people.” Bentley is one of those people. He started the APGA in 2010 with Adrian Stills, who briefly played the TOUR. The hope was that it would not only groom Black players for tournament golf but open eyes and doors to opportunities in the industry. The PGA TOUR has invested enough in the APGA to make available some of its TPC network. Instead of going to public courses in hardscrabble conditions, the schedule this year takes the 60-man fields to Valhalla and the TPC Sugarloaf, TPC Louisiana and TPC Scottsdale, all of them with a history of hosting the world’s best. “We can play a tournament on a municipal course and it’s not going to prepare us for this,” Johnson said. “Just the PGA TOUR allowing that is going to go a long way. I guarantee you’re going to see more guys who look like me out here.” And now there is a chance for some real momentum. Willie Mack filled in for Johnson at Torrey Pines and already received the Charlie Sifford exemption for the Genesis Invitational next week at Riviera. Johnson is at Pebble and the Honda Classic. Pebble’s tournament director, Steve John, gave another spot this week to Kevin Hall, a former Big 10 champion from Ohio State who is Black and has been deaf since birth. Hall played the tournament 15 years ago. He was most recently was featured on CBS when it began coverage of the Masters as someone who knows what it’s like not to hear the roars. That’s four PGA TOUR stops over two months with APGA members in the field. “It is a chance for people to see how much talent there is on the APGA Tour,” Hall said in an email interview. “All those players need is a fair shake in being able to have access to everything they need to be able to get to the next level, and the APGA Tour is part of the maturing process of being a professional golfer. “The tour is only going to get bigger and better in the coming years.” For Johnson, it always has been about access and relationships. Only one of those has come easily. Johnson dropped out of school in the eighth grade, beaten down by being stuck in a class of slow learners. He was living with his grandmother in a cramped, two-bedroom apartment adjacent to a public golf course. One day, he was outside swinging a stick when Jan Auger approached. “She could have come up and said, `Hey, you’re trespassing,’ or `Get back in the house before you get hit by a golf ball.’ Instead, she gave me a 9-iron and a bucket of balls,” Johnson said. “When she did that, I found purpose in my life.” Unbeknownst to her supervisors, she charged him $1 a day to play all he wanted. Johnson helped out around the course that became a second home. By 18, he qualified for the Florida Open. He moved to New York with a friend to caddie and earned enough to qualify for tournaments in one of the strongest golf sections in America. He has won a dozen times on mini-tours, and his big one came last year at the APGA Tour Championship, which led to an exemption to a PGA TOUR event — not the one he thought, but Pebble Beach works just fine. “I wouldn’t be here without the APGA,” Johnson said. He told stories of Bentley covering his entry fees when he was low on money, all in the name of access and opportunity. He has ambassador roles with Farmers Insurance. Titleist provides equipment, which included the first time Johnson was ever fitted for golf clubs. “An eye-opener,” said Johnson, who for years bought clubs off the rack at discount prices. Bentley said along with access, members of the APGA are still lacking when it comes to equipment and top coaching. “We surveyed the players and were shocked to learn some had never been fitted for clubs, they were using wedges that were three or four years old,” he said. “We’re starting to give guys tools to level the playing field.”

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A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier, the 2019-20 lid-lifter, featured the first hole-in-one of the season (Sungjae Im, 15th hole in round one); the first sub-60 score (Kevin Chappell, 59, second round); and the first-ever PGA TOUR winner from Chile, Joaquin Niemann. Oh, and by the way, he’s also the only player other than Seve Ballesteros and Rory McIlroy to be born outside the United States and win on TOUR before turning 21 in the last 95 years. Welcome to the Monday Finish. Related: What’s in Niemann’s bag? | The stats behind Niemann’s first TOUR win THREE KEYS TO SUCCESS 1. Niemann loves The Greenbrier. It’s not just that he finished T5 there last year, and T29 in 2017, but that he closed with a 64 each time. He shot the same score Sunday. 2. He jumped into a three-way tie for the lead with Scottie Scheffler and Robby Shelton with a second-round 62, his career low on TOUR, and never looked back. The biggest shot of the week may have been his eagle from 51 feet, 6 inches at the 12th hole in round two. 3. He putted great, leading the tournament in Strokes Gained: Putting (+8.8) for the first time in his career, with most of his production on the back nine. It was on the inward nine that he bit off +7.6 of that gaudy SG: Putting total, making double the length of putts than he did on the front, and requiring four fewer strokes on the greens.    OBSERVATIONS Familiarity breeds birdies: As with any endeavor, youth on the PGA TOUR is an advantage (strength, flexibility, resilience) and a disadvantage (not knowing where to stay or eat, which way a putt breaks, or even how to get to the first tee). Niemann has had to feel his way along, and maybe it’s no surprise that his breakthrough happened at The Greenbrier, which he first played at age 18 when he was the top-ranked amateur in the world. “I just never thought this moment was going to come,â€� he said. For more on Niemann’s big win, click here.  Hovland looks like he’s next: Viktor Hovland (T10) of Norway climbed 29 spots with a final-round 64, which also marked his record-tying 17th straight round in the 60s on TOUR. (He will skip the Sanderson Farms Championship and have to wait at least a week to potentially pull ahead of record co-holder Bob Estes.) Hovland also continues to be a fast finisher, with closing rounds of 64 (Greenbrier), 65, 64, 65, 64 in his last five starts, an indication that, like Niemann, the 21-year-old Hovland is learning fast. “I think one of the reasons I’ve been playing so well on Sunday,â€� he said, “is getting more familiar with the courses and just getting comfortable.â€� For more on Hovland, click here. Werenski has had a wild ride: Watching Richy Werenski battle over the last few months has been dizzying. First, he finished 126th in the FedExCup, just 2 points shy of making the Playoffs. Then he finished T24 in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals, becoming the last player, along with D.J. Trahan, to earn his way back to the TOUR through that avenue. Werenski wasted no time in taking advantage, shooting 67-65-65-69 at The Greenbrier to finish T3 with Brian Harman, Harris English and Nate Lashley. It was Werenski’s fourth top-three finish on TOUR; he lost a playoff at the 2017 Barracuda Championship, and last season finished T2 at the Barbasol Championship and T3 at the Mayakoba Golf Classic.   QUOTEBOARD “Next year I’m going again.â€� – Niemann on off-roading with pal Carlos Ortiz at The Greenbrier “What a fantastic win for Joaquin at The Greenbrier. I’m really proud of him, and it’s a wonderful start to his season. I’m looking forward to more of his great play.â€� – International Presidents Cup Captain Ernie Els, in a text message to PGA TOUR officials “Just trying to warm up on the driving range and … fell over and couldn’t move for a while.â€� – Joseph Bramlett (71, T14), on back issues that sidelined him for much of the last five years. “Surreal.â€� – Kevin Chappell, who shot a second-round 59, the 11th sub-60 score in PGA TOUR history, after missing last season due to major back surgery.  SOCIAL SNAPSHOT

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