Sleeper Picks: Shriners Hospitals for Children Open

NAPA, Calif. — Jim Knous shot a 7-under 65 on Saturday for a share of the lead with Maverick McNealy after three rounds in the Fortinet Championship. RELATED: Leaderboard | Phil Mickelson in contention at Fortinet Championship Knous had eight birdies, five on the front nine, then held on after a bogey on No. 12 to match McNealy at 14 under. McNealy, the second-round leader, had four bogeys on the front nine, then closed with three consecutive birdies for a 70. Max Homa (65) was two strokes back with Scott Stallings (67), Mito Pereira (70), Troy Merritt (69) and Beau Hossler (70). Ten others, including Phil Mickelson (67), were four strokes back heading into the final round. On a cool, sometimes blustery day when the lead changed hands several times, Knous made up for an uneven day off the tee with steady, consistent iron play that put him in good shape on the greens. The 31-year-old needed just 22 putts covering 69 feet to maneuver his way to the front of the pack. “Putter got hot there late on the back nine,” said Knous, who is winless on thePGA TOUR since making his debut at this course in 2019. “I just tend to see the breaks pretty well out here. A lot of them have big swings and you can use your imagination and that’s kind of how I like to putt, so I was able to roll some nice ones in.” Knous made an 8-foot birdie putt from off the green on 18. “Me and my caddie had a great read,” Knous said. “It was just going to break a little bit right at the end. Put a good stroke on it, perfect speed, and there you go.” McNealy entered the day with the lead, but fell three strokes behind after struggling with his driver on the front nine. McNealy was 2 over for the round midway through the back nine when he got rolling. He made a 22-foot putt for birdie on 13, rolled another long putt in for birdie on 16, then sank two more birdie putts on the final two. “It was a crazy day,” said McNealy, who, like Knous is seeking his first TOUR win. “I remember hitting a good tee shot down the middle on the 12th with a utility iron and everything seemed to slow down and calm down for me. I started seeing my lines with the putter.” McNealy stayed in the hunt despite appearing to hurt his right wrist punching out from a tree on No. 3, the first of his four bogeys on the front nine. “(I) was really lucky that I didn’t try to hit a full swing because I chipped out sideways and a softball-sized rock came out from under the ball,” McNealy said. “I stung my wrist a little bit. I’m really glad I didn’t go after that one full because I told (my caddie) I would have been out for a year.” Mickelson had his best round of the tournament and made five consecutive birdies on the back nine. The 51-year-old PGA Championship winner immediately went to the putting green after finishing his round. “I felt like I blocked a couple putts … and I just wanted to work on that,” Mickelson said. Webb Simpson also was 10 under after a 65. The 2012 U.S. Open champion had eight birdies – three more than he had in the first two rounds combined.

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With the sands to the 2020-21 PGA TOUR season quickly tumbling downward in the hourglass, this is crunch time for those on the bubble in the FedExCup standings. At the 3M Open this week outside Minneapolis, the race to finish in the top 125 to qualify for next month’s FedExCup Playoffs opener at Liberty National (THE NORTHERN TRUST) is very much front and center. RELATED: Leaderboard | Dustin Johnson looks to find form at 3M Open A handful of players on both sides the bubble have arrived at 3M and responded with some of their best golf of the season. With only three weeks remaining in the regular season – which includes next week’s break for The Olympics – count Chez Reavie (119th in the FedExCup standings) among those shining when he most needs to shine. Despite a sloppy bogey-6 at the par-5 18th – a hole he had eagled in the opening round – Reavie followed his opening 66 with a second-round, 4-under 67 to move into contention for the weekend at 3M. He is at 9-under 133. At one point this season, Reavie, who turns 40 in November, missed 10 cuts in 12 starts. In fact, you have to travel back to 2009 to find a season in which he has had as many weekends off as this one (14). Luckily for him, Reavie, eighth in the FedExCup final standings only two years ago, is experienced enough to know that if he kept his head down and kept working hard, eventually his game would turn for the better. It has. He arrived at 3M having missed only one cut in his last six starts, with top-20 finishes at Congaree and John Deere. “It was just more annoying than anything else,” Reavie said of his poor play to start the year. “Wasn’t playing bad, missed a lot of cuts by a shot and golf seemed really tough at the time. You know, I just kind of fought through it, and here we are playing well. I’ve played well the last few weeks, and that’s what I’m going to focus on.” Reavie was flawless through 17 holes on Friday, making five birdies and no bogeys. At the par-5 18th, he drove the ball into the native area down the left side and was only able to advance his second shot about 70 yards. He reached the green with his fourth shot and barely missed his 13-footer for par. Through two rounds, Reavie has been very encouraged by his quality of putting, which bodes well for a solid weekend. “Even like on the last hole, didn’t go in but I hit a great putt and it had every opportunity to go in, so that’s just what I want to focus on for the weekend,” Reavie said. Every player from Nos. 114 through 127 in the FedExCup standings ventured to Minneapolis to try to improve his positioning for the stretch run, trying to find some late-season magic. On a day with temperatures in the 90s and the heat index soaring near 100, the early scoring was proving just as sizzling. Bo Hoag (125th) came through with a 66 Friday, and names on the bubble such as Scott Stallings (117th), Brice Garnett (121st) and Rickie Fowler (124th) were responding well to the pressure of their situations as the second wave of players teed off on Friday afternoon. Fowler, 32, never has missed the Playoffs in his 11 seasons on the PGA TOUR. Hoag, 32 and in his third PGA TOUR season, shot 67 on Thursday and said it was important to keep the pedal down on Friday. He made six birdies, and like Reavie, encountered his lone bogey on his final hole, with Hoag settling for 5 at the challenging 511-yard ninth, where he drove his ball into left-side native area and had to chop out to get back into play. As for the torrid pace of scoring at TPC Twin Cities, which was softened by rains on Thursday? Hoag said he embraces it. “You only have one option,” said Hoag, who has been lifted by recent solid showings at the Memorial (his hometown event in Ohio), where he was T13, and last week’s Barbasol Championship (T11). “You know you’re going to have to shoot a good round or else you’re going to get left behind. There’s no real guessing game. Just got to be pretty aggressive with the scoring clubs in your hands and try to make some birdies out there.” With Friday’s afternoon wave still on the golf course, four players shared the lead at 9-under 133: Roger Sloan (69); Reavie; Hoag; and Jhonnattan Vegas (69). Others on the bubble who finished in the early wave on Friday and made needed moves: No. 118 Camilo Villegas, who played his last seven holes in 4 under (including an eagle at 18) to shoot 69; No. 123 Chesson Hadley (at 3-under 139 after shooting 72); No. 126 Chase Seiffert, who rallied with a bogey-free 67 after shooting 73 Thursday; and No. 131 Michael Thompson, the tournament’s defending champion, who shot 67 to move inside the cutline at 3 under. “There’s a lot to play for this week,” Thompson said.

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LAS VEGAS - Bryson DeChambeau knows some people consider him a one-dimensional player solely obsessed with distance. He thinks that is an unfair characterization of his game, however, and he used Friday's post-round press conference to defend his groundbreaking approach to golf. This week's Shriners Hospitals for Children Open is DeChambeau's first start since his six-shot victory in the U.S. Open. He shot a 9-under 62 in Thursday's opening round at TPC Summerlin and added a 67 on Friday to sit just one shot off the lead. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Fowler makes putter switch | Hole-out eagle has Garcia back in contention DeChambeau's incredible length has been on display again this week. No one had driven TPC Summerlin's seventh green in the ShotLink era until DeChambeau did it Thursday. He repeated the feat Friday and made eagle, then added another eagle at the par-5 16th, where he had just 148 yards to the hole. Distance isn't the only factor in his success at TPC Summerlin, though. He's third in greens hit (32 of 36) and 17th in driving accuracy (21 of 28). He also leads the field in driving distance, averaging 352.2 yards. Hitting it that far takes incredible strength. There's no denying DeChambeau has packed on the pounds in the past year. It was at this event a year ago that he announced his intentions to bulk up in a quest for increased length off the tee. But hitting a golf ball as hard as DeChambeau does, and keeping those tee shots in play, also takes skill. And while long tee shots help him shoot lower scores, there's more to the game than just hitting it far. That's something DeChambeau thinks his critics are missing. He replied to the latest round of criticism after being told that Matthew Fitzpatrick, a fellow former U.S. Amateur champion, said Friday that DeChambeau's play makes "a bit of a mockery of the game." DeChambeau responded, "I appreciate that comment. It’s a compliment to me honestly. I think he’s looking out for certain set of players, and I appreciate that. My whole goal is to play the best golf I possibly can, and this game has given me the opportunity showcase something pretty special. "A year ago I wasn’t hitting in anywhere near as far as I am today. It took a lot of work, a lot of hours to work through the night to figure out a lot of this stuff... from my perspective, I think it takes a little bit more skill to do what I’m doing, and that’s why there are only a few people doing it out here... and albeit my fairway percentages are a little bit down, I’m still believe I’m hitting it straighter than what I was last year with the distances that I was hitting back then. "I feel like I’ve started to go down a path that’s allowed me to have an advantage over everyone, and I think that is a skillset when you look at it. For me out there today, I was still able to hit a lot of fairways at 360 yards. That’s tough to do with drivers." Fitzpatrick is listed at 5 feet, 10 inches and 155 pounds. He finished 121st in driving distance last season but has won five times on the European Tour thanks in part to his incredible work on the greens. He was second on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting last season. He shares the 36-hole lead in this week's European Tour event, the BMW PGA Championship, with reigning Open Championship winner Shane Lowry. It was after his second round at Wentworth that Fitzpatrick made his comments about DeChambeau. "I'm biased because I'm not quite the longest. But in the U.S. Open at Winged Foot, fair play to Bryson, he won and shot six under. But the fairways were tight as hell. I drove it brilliantly and actually played pretty well but I was miles behind. He's in the rough and miles up and he's hitting wedges from everywhere. It just makes a bit of a mockery of the game," Fitzpatrick told reporters after getting into a tie for the 36-hole lead at Wentworth. "I looked at Shot Tracker yesterday, to see some of the places Bryson hit it (in Vegas). He was cutting corners. And when he's on, there's no point. It doesn't matter if I play my best. He's going to be 50 yards in front of me off the tee, and the only thing where I can compete with him is putting. Which is just ridiculous. "In my opinion, it's not a skill to hit the ball a long way. I could put on 40 pounds. I could go and see a bio-mechanist. I could gain 40 yards; that's actually a fact. I could put another two inches on my driver. But the skill is to hit the ball straight. That's the skill. He's just taking the skill out of it in my opinion. I'm sure lots will disagree. But it's just daft." But what Fitzpatrick and others have overlooked is DeChambeau adds finesse with his power game. Last season, he ranked 10th on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting and at Winged Foot he ranked inside the top three in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee (2nd), Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green (1st) and Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green (3rd) on his way to victory. He joined Vijay Singh (2008 WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational) as the only two winners who ranked inside the top three in these three categories since 2004. "I would love to have a conversation with him about it and say, Hey, man, I would love to help out. Why couldn’t you do it, too? You see Rory and DJ doing the same thing, too. They’re seeing that distinct advantage, and I feel like it’s great are for the game of golf," DeChambeau said. "I don’t think it takes less skill. I’m still putting it great; still wedging it mediocre, the same, maybe a little bit better. It shows out here that I’m still hitting fairways. "I do hit a couple errant shots like on 9 today, but I do hit a lot of fairways, I still hit great irons, and I make a lot putts. I still think there is a lot of the skill in that."

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