Stats Report: Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, Round 1

TPC Craig Ranch makes its debut in the big leagues this week. The newest host of the AT&T Byron Nelson located 25 miles due north of downtown Dallas is in it first of a five-year agreement with the PGA TOUR, but it’s not new to TOUR-sanctioned competition. It was the site of the Korn Ferry Tour Championship in 2008 and 2012. A field of 156 is assembled this week. For a breakdown of what it will attempt to tackle, how the course comps to familiar nearby tracks and more, scroll past the ranking of projected contenders. RELATED: The First Look | How the field qualified POWER RANKINGS: AT&T BYRON NELSON Brooks Koepka, Lee Westwood, Rickie Fowler, Thomas Pieters and defending champion Sung Kang will be among the notables reviewed in Tuesday’s Fantasy Insider. For both editions of the KFT Championship, TPC Craig Ranch played to a par of 71 with three par 5s. For the AT&T Byron Nelson, it’s been stretched by 30 yards and will play as a stock par 72. The par-5 12th tips at 547 yards. Previously, it was a 493-yard par 4 and played as the toughest hole on the course in both KFT Championships. The only other change in length occurred at the par-3 17th. Now 147 yards, it’s down 24 yards. TPC Craig Ranch features bermudagrass rough and bentgrass greens. That matches the combination of grasses at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, site of the Charles Schwab Challenge in two weeks. However, while the fairways at Colonial also are bermuda, the target off the tee at TPC Craig Ranch are zoysiagrass. That matches the same at Trinity Forest (which has bermuda greens), host of the last two editions of the AT&T Byron Nelson. While it’s making its PGA TOUR debut, TPC Craig Ranch isn’t new to PGA TOUR membership. For one, AT&T Byron Nelson defending champion Sung Kang practices here. For another, 12 of the participants of the more recent KFT Championship are in this week’s field (as of Monday). They are led by James Hahn, who was the runner-up in 2012. Typically, because of the learning curve required for the putting surfaces, largely unfamiliar tracks reward ball-strikers. The primary rough will be allowed to grow north of two inches, but because scoring should be low, the combination of greens in regulation and converting those chances into par breakers likely will define the majority of the final leaderboard. Consider that Justin Bolli posted 16-under 268 en route to victory at the 2012 KFT Championship and Matt Bettencourt hung up 17-under 267 in 2008. Now that the 72-hole par is 288, 20-under very much is in play this week. Greens average almost 6,800 square feet and they are prepped to run upwards of only 11-and-a-half feet on the Stimpmeter. They’re governed in part so that Texas winds don’t take control of the wheel. It’ll be relatively calm early in the tournament before breezes will intensify with encroaching inclement weather on Sunday. Otherwise, comfortable springtime conditions are forecast with daytime highs in the 70s and an 80 or two on the weekend. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.COM’s Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous angles. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers; Fantasy Insider SUNDAY: Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Medical Extensions, Rookie Watch * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.

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SAN ANTONIO — The co-leaders after three rounds at the Valero Texas Open spoke on a darkening Saturday night about their hopes to play hard and well for one more day. Neither mentioned the personal stakes. One wants to win for the first time in 83 starts on the PGA TOUR. The other wants to win for the first time period. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Wallace plays with new cross-handed swing The last group in the final round of the oldest professional tournament in Texas, the one celebrating its 99th year on the TOUR, will feature Jordan Spieth and Matt Wallace at 12 under par, with Charley Hoffman two strokes behind them. Spieth, a Texan who has yet to triumph in his home state, looks to summon the brilliance of his first five seasons, when he won 11 times, including three majors. Wallace, an Englishman with 36 TOUR starts since 2017, has never finished better than third. Hoffman has no victories since the 2016. That was right here at TPC San Antonio, in the sixth-oldest professional golf tournament in the world. The three of them separated themselves on a cool, gloomy afternoon after rain postponed play for two and a half hours. Spieth and Wallace shot 5-under 67. Hoffman shot 65. They played the back nine in a combined 14 strokes under par, which bodes well for those who believe in momentum carried over. Spieth has had his opportunities in a resurgent 2021 season. He held a share of the 54-hole lead at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, his first since 2018. He finished tied for fourth. He did the same thing a week later, at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, but this time he had the 36-hole, too. He tied for third there. "I was pretty anxious to start that next day" in Phoenix, said Spieth, whose struggles since 2017 have been documented well and discussed widely, including after his even-par 72 in the fourth round in the desert. "I felt really calm at Pebble," he said, "and then been in contention a few times since." In his five starts in stroke-play tournaments since a missed cut in January at the Farmers Insurance Open, Spieth has had a reasonable chance to win four (he tied for 48th at THE PLAYERS Championship). In every one of them, he failed to break 70 in the final round. That pattern must end. "The goal this week was to get myself into contention and have a chance to win," Spieth said. "The next goal is to try and get myself into position to be in control on the back nine." Wallace knows and accepts that spectators at the Valero Texas Open, even in modest numbers in a pandemic, unanimously agitate for a Texan to prevail — or maybe even Hoffman, a Californian who, since 2006, has four finishes here inside the Top Five and six inside the Top 10. "Hopefully I won over some fans there today," Wallace said. Wallace, 30, has four international victories, all of them on the European Tour, but none in the U.S. "There's times in rounds where you know you need to make things happen and know you need to hole a putt at the right time," he said. "So I'll prepare myself for that and I'll think of the good stuff," he added. "That I've holed putts this week. I've pulled shots off." The winner of the Valero Texas Open gets a pair of Lucchese boots — crafted in Texas since 1883. Those are stakes of a different shape. The player who holes the most putts, pulls off the shots and produces enough of the good stuff gets to try them on for size.

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