Shibuno still leads at muddy U.S. Women’s Open

Rory McIlroy won the first match of the Sunday singles, 3 and 2 over Xander Schauffele, but with the board bleeding red, the weight of a difficult Ryder Cup showed in a tearful reaction. RELATED: Recaps from Sunday | Full scores After going 0-3 and being benched in the disastrous first four (two-man team) sessions Friday and Saturday, McIlroy never trailed against Schauffele before the emotions hit him all at once Sunday. “Incredibly proud to be a part of this team,” McIlroy said, his eyes filled with tears, in an interview with NBC’s Jimmy Roberts. “… We’ve had a great time. You know, it looks like it’s not going to pan out the way we want on the golf course. “I’ve been extremely disappointed that I haven’t contributed for more the team,” he added. “I’m glad I got a point on the board today for them.” Europe went into the singles session trailing 11-5 and needing a miracle. Although both sides had rallied from 10-6 deficits, no team had ever come all the way back from 11-5. As it turned out McIlroy and company didn’t even come close. “It’s been a tough week personally and then obviously for the team as well,” McIlroy said. “We’ve been up against it. The American team have been total class in terms of how they played. You know, they have been dominant. They have been really, really good and we haven’t been able to put up as much of a fight as we want.” Despite the heavy loss, McIlroy’s heartfelt reaction left no doubts about his feelings for the biennial showdown. He said he was especially sorry not to have gotten the victory for European Captain Padraig Harrington. “I think I’m emotional, as well, because I wanted to do this for Padraig, too,” he said. “It’s his captaincy, and he’s had a hell of a career, and It would have been an unbelievable thing to cap off with a winning Ryder Cup. “For me I haven’t been able to contribute as much as I wanted to, but it’s still such a great experience to be part of these Ryder Cup teams and this will just fill the fire even more for us in two years’ time in Rome.”

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Conditions were difficult during the first round of THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, where the 78 players in the field averaged a score of 1.3 strokes over par. Interestingly, 3 of the 4 par-5s played over par, a rare occurrence at PGA TOUR stops.  Our pre-tournament probabilities indicated that Justin Thomas was the class of this field by a wide margin. We estimated Thomas to be about two strokes better per round than the average PGA TOUR professional, while Brooks Koepka was the second-highest rated golfer at +1.6 strokes relative to an average professional. This may be surprising to readers, given that Koepka is fresh off being voted the PGA TOUR Player of the Year. Here is a closer look at Thomas’ and Koepka’s performances since 2014 (Thomas above; Koepka below): Indicated on these graphs are a player’s average adjusted (for field strength) strokes-gained at each event (their “True SG�). Thomas has shown incredible consistency over the past year and a half, which is why the model favors him over Koepka. The top of the leaderboard after Thursday’s first round is mostly comprised of golfers in the middle or bottom of the skill distribution in this field. As a consequence, no single player is capturing a significant share of the win probability. Here are our current top 10 win probabilities: It’s not common for three of the top four win probabilities after Round 1 to belong to players outside of the top 10 of the leaderboard. None of the top golfers played particularly well on Thursday, but our model expects them to make up the ground they’ve ceded over the next three rounds. NOTE: These reports are based off the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cut,� “Top 20,� “Top 5,� and “Win� probabilities every five 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 10,000 simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, 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. Follow on Twitter

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Peter Uihlein topped the leaderboard at 8-under 63 on Thursday in the Shriners Hospitals For Children Open, with Jordan Spieth 3 strokes back in his season debut.

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