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FORT WORTH, Texas — Webb Simpson shot a 3-under 67 on Saturday to break out of a crowd and take the third-round lead at the DEAN & DELUCA Invitational. At 9-under 201, Simpson was two strokes ahead of Danny Lee and Paul Casey after both of them made long birdie putts at the 18th hole. Stewart Cink and Kevin Kisner were three strokes off the lead. Part of a four-way tie for the 36-hole lead, Simpson went ahead alone to stay after consecutive birdies to start his back nine. He made a 6-foot birdie putt at the 387-yard 10th and a 12-footer at the 630-yard 11th before finishing with seven consecutive pars. It is only the second time in 12 years at DEAN & DELUCA for the 54-hole leader to have more than a one-stroke advantage. Defending champion Jordan Spieth shot a 68 with a caddie switch after making the turn, and was at 4 under. Spieth’s regular caddie, Michael Greller, left the course after 11 holes because of heat exhaustion on a steamy day with temperatures in the 90s and the heat index higher than that. Damon Goddard, the personal trainer for the player and the caddie, carried the bag the rest of the round — a stretch when Spieth had a bogey and two birdies. Lee and Kisner also were tied for the second-round lead, along with Scott Piercy, whose shot 72 to fall five strokes back. After three birdies and three bogeys his first eight holes Saturday, Lee had a steady stream of pars until finishing with a 16-foot birdie for a round of 69. Casey, who shot 68, was alone in second for only a couple of minutes. He made a nearly 25-foot birdie putt that had just enough speed to fall into the cup at No. 18, while Lee was playing in the group behind him. Casey was 1 over for the day without a birdie until starting his back nine with three birdies in a four-hole stretch that included a bogey. Piercy was still within a stroke of the lead at 8 under after a par-saving 13-foot putt at the 12th hole after driving into the rough and hitting his approach in a greenside bunker there. Piercy then promptly hit his tee shot at the par-3 13th into the pond on way to a double-bogey. He followed with another bogey at 15 when he drove into the rough and then hit into a greenside bunker, and did the same at No. 18. Simpson, the 2012 U.S. Open winner playing in the final group, started the round with birdies at the first two holes. He gave one of those back with a bogey at the par-3, 192-yard No. 8 after missing the green with his tee shot. Since losing a playoff to Hideki Matsuyama at Phoenix, Simpson had missed four of nine cuts before this week. The four-time PGA TOUR winner’s best finish in that stretch was a tie for 11th at the RBC Heritage.

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KAPALUA, Hawaii — KAPALUA, Hawaii — All it took was one round for the new year to feel like the end of last season on the PGA TOUR. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Viktor Hovland reunited with clubs just in time in Maui Cameron Smith of Australia opened the Sentry Tournament of Champions with a pair of long eagle putts and to offset an early bogey for an 8-under 65 and a one-shot lead at Kapalua. For the rest of the warm, gorgeous afternoon, the focus quickly shifted to the two players golf hasn’t seen in quite some time. Patrick Cantlay, who last competed on Sunday at the Ryder Cup on Sept. 26, seized on the scoring holes and the soft conditions and started running off birdies and one eagle. He had to settle for par on the par-5 18th hole and posted a 7-under 66. Not bad for his first competition in 102 days. Jon Rahm, who was in dire need of a break from a chaotic 16 months of majors and parenthood and COVID-19, was bogey-free and still mildly irritated by the pair of birdie putts he left short on the par 5s. He also had 66. They were the leading contenders for the FedExCup last year, when Cantlay closed with a superb 6-iron for birdie on the final hole and a one-shot win at the TOUR Championship, giving him the $15 million and ultimately PGA TOUR player of the year. They will be paired Friday. “Again,” Cantlay said with a smile. There was plenty of good golf, and attribute that to day in paradise that felt and looked like one. The sun was blazing. A few humpback whales were breaching. The wind was not raging. The Plantation Course was soft from rain. Scoring was simply ideal. Twenty-two players from the 38-man field of PGA TOUR winners broke 70. Justin Thomas, Patrick Reed and Lucas Glover, all at 74, were the only players over par. But while everyone had a holiday break — that meant more fishing than golf for Smith while at his U.S. base in north Florida — Cantlay and Rahm seemed to have been gone forever. It just didn’t look that way. “I still think I’m a little rusty and I saw that in my start,” said Cantlay, who missed the first green and saw his chip run with the grain some 12 feet by the hole. “I got away with a couple of loose swings and one flier on the sixth hole where I was able to make a par, but maybe shouldn’t have.” His shot sailed well over the green, some 40 yards away. He chopped that out to 8 feet for an unlikely par, had a two-putt par from 70 feet, saved par from the rough on the par-3 eighth. He was holding it together. And then really got on a roll on the back nine,” Cantlay said. It started with the 13th hole and a birdie, and while Cantlay missed a good chance at birdie on the 18th that would have tied Smith for the lead, he still played the final six holes in 6-under par. The big shot was a 35-foot eagle putt on No. 15. The most pleasing was a full pitching wedge over the ravine to a front pin on the picturesque 17th. Rahm was a lot cleaner, playing bogey-free. He ran off three straight birdies on the front nine and then got hot, as Cantlay did, on the closing six holes. Rahm finished with a long two-putt birdie in his first round in 83 days. “You can always expect a little bit of rust,” Rahm said. “I took time off, but I wasn’t on the couch doing nothing. I was still working out. I was still practicing as if I was still in the season. I took maybe three weeks off of golf, which were very needed. But even though I was home, I was practicing. “Again, not that I’m surprised that I played good, but it’s really good to come out and start the year off the right way.” Throw Daniel Berger into that category. He joined Cantlay and Rahm just one shot off the lead. Berger, who had to reconfigure a caddie’s clubs to practice earlier in the week when his golf bag was delayed two days, also opened with a 66. Berger also went missing after the Ryder Cup, turning up in the Bahamas with plenty of rust and no lack of belief. He practiced a little bit more in the week before Kapalua, only to show up on Maui with his golf clubs nowhere to be found. He had them two days later — Berger borrowed the clubs of caddie Brett Waldman, and even took the liberty of changing the lies and lofts on the irons — and didn’t miss a beat. His only lapse was a long three-putt that was down the slope but into the grain on the 17th, though he atoned for that with a birdie on the last. Players could reach the 663-yard closing hole with a long iron in fast conditions last year. Berger couldn’t get home with a 3-wood. He was no less pleased and it was hard for anyone to be terribly upset given the location. Never mind that he still isn’t sure which island is Lanai and which is Molokai as he gazes out toward the ocean. “I’m not good with islands. There’s too many of them,” Berger said. “I know we’re in Maui.”

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