Tee times for the third round of the 2022 U.S. Open

SCHEFFLER’S SECOND WIN IN THREE STARTS; BREHM REMARKABLE IN PUERTO RICO It was a historically demanding weekend at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, with firm, windy conditions testing an elite field at Bay Hill Club & Lodge, just as Arnold Palmer envisioned. Scottie Scheffler held tough down the stretch to secure a one-stroke win at 5-under total, two-putting from 69 feet for par at the closing hole and watching Florida native Billy Horschel narrowly miss a 29-footer to tie in the final group. On a day where the scoring average approached 76, it was fitting that Scheffler’s defining moment came via a par-save, getting up and down from 67 yards at the par-5 16th to maintain mojo into the water-logged closing stretch. Scheffler has now won twice in his last three PGA TOUR starts (WM Phoenix Open) to complement two Korn Ferry Tour titles in a 2019 Player of the Year-winning season, and he’ll proceed across Florida to THE PLAYERS Championship holding the No. 1 spot on the season-long FedExCup standings, 550 points accrued for his victory in Orlando. After going winless in his first 70 TOUR events, the University of Texas alum might just be scratching the surface. Scheffler has recorded seven top-25s in 10 starts this season, and he joins Hideki Matsuyama as the first two-time winners of the 2021-22 TOUR campaign. Ryan Brehm, 35, arrived at the Puerto Rico Open yet to record a top-10 finish on the PGA TOUR, but he began the week with a concrete scenario. Playing on the final start of a minor medical extension, the former Michigan State men’s golf coach needed a win to earn full TOUR status, or a solo second to maintain conditional status. Otherwise, he was headed back to the Korn Ferry Tour, on which he had previously made four starts in early 2022. In a story that embodies the beauty of sports, Brehm’s game coalesced when he needed it most at Grand Reserve GC, carding a four-round total of 20-under to finish six strokes clear of Max McGreevy. After slating the Puerto Rico Open into his schedule due to a three-week Korn Ferry Tour hiatus, Brehm now re-routes his travel plans to include THE PLAYERS Championship. Making the victory even sweeter: Brehm’s wife Chelsey was on the bag, marking the first husband/wife, player/caddie duo to win on TOUR since Patrick and Justine Reed at the 2013 Wyndham Championship. Brehm earns 300 FedExCup points, moving to No. 55 in the season-long standings, and provides further proof that in golf and life, there’s always a chance. STAY GOLD TPC Sawgrass, and its iconic island green, welcomes the strongest field in golf to Northeast Florida for THE PLAYERS Championship. Justin Thomas will need to hold off a who’s who of top pros if he wants to become the first player to go back-to-back at the Stadium Course. The entire top 30 in the FedExCup standings (including JT) is set to tee it up with world No. 1 Jon Rahm, 2019 PLAYERS champion Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa highlighting a stellar field with representation from 25 countries. Reigning FedExCup champion Patrick Cantlay is surely keen to add the Goldman to his trophy case and comes in red hot with four top-10s in five starts this season. Whoever takes the title and the 600 FedExCup points will not only be up against their peers, but also one of golf’s toughest tests in Pete Dye’s Stadium Course. Built in 1980, the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass first hosted THE PLAYERS two years later when it was punctuated with one of the best celebrations you’ll ever see. VIDEO OF THE WEEK Max Homa holed his first career ace on TOUR with an incredible shot on the par-3 14th at Bay Hill MIC CHECK “Our goal coming into this week was just to improve every day, every shot, every round, every hole … It was great having Chels up there with me caddying. It was a special week. I don’t know, there was just something special about it from the moment we landed.” – Ryan Brehm on winning with his wife Chelsey on the bag in Puerto Rico BY THE NUMBERS 4 – Four of the biggest names in golf history will be enshrined in the World Golf Hall of Fame this week. Tiger Woods highlights the class that also features Tim Finchem, Susie Maxwell-Berning and Marion Hollins. 8 – Retief Goosen carded the best round of the day at the Hoag Classic with an 8-under 63. He won by four to claim his second PGA TOUR Champions title. 2/22/22 – Fred Couples married longtime girlfriend Suzanne Hannemann on February 22, 2022 before breaking the news at the Hoag Classic this past week. 2023 – Zach Johnson was announced as the United States captain for the 2023 Ryder Cup to be held at Marco Simone G&CC in Rome, Italy. COMCAST BUSINESS TOUR TOP 10 The Comcast Business TOUR TOP 10 highlights and rewards the extraordinary level of play required to earn a spot in the TOP 10 at the conclusion of the FedExCup Regular Season as determined by the FedExCup standings. The competition recognizes and awards the most elite in golf.

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SHEBOYGAN, Wis. – Forget new wave… it’s a tsunami. The U.S. Ryder Cup team, with its six rookies and eight players under 30, have opened up its biggest lead since the oldest member was still over eight years away from being born. RELATED: Day 2 recap | Pairings, preview for Sunday Singles European dominance – they had won four of the last five Ryder Cups coming into the contest – was supposed to be a scar this raw team couldn’t escape. But the young ones don’t have scars … they’re inflicting them. Captain Steve Stricker’s men extended their 6-2 opening day demolition to a 11-5 advantage at Whistling Straits as they chase down the necessary 14.5 points to reclaim the Cup from Europe. They need win only four of the 12 singles matches (three and a tie will suffice) to close the deal. While Spanish pair Sergio Garcia and world No. 1 Jon Rahm continued to show great resistance, and Irish rookie Shane Lowry found some grit Saturday afternoon, the European team was no match for a juggernaut that ran roughshod over them. All 12 of the U.S. team have now won a match and garnered at least one point while elder statesman Dustin Johnson, at 37, is undefeated with a 4-0-0 record. Should he win his Singles match he will join Arnold Palmer (1967), Gardner Dickinson (1967) and Larry Nelson (1979) as the only Americans to go 5-0-0 in Ryder Cup history. After winning the morning Foursomes session 3-1 the U.S. was in control and while for a brief moment in the afternoon Four-ball session Europe was ahead or tied in all four matches, a 2-2 split confirmed the 11-5 score line. Bryson DeChambeau and rookie Scottie Scheffler turned their match against Tommy Fleetwood and Viktor Hovland from a deficit to a win late in proceedings – a significant result given that teams trailing 10-6 have come back to win in the past. Europe famously did so in 2012 at Medinah and the U.S. had their own miracle from that position in 1999 at The Country Club in Brookline. The last time it was this lopsided was when Europe led by the same margin on the way to a 18.5-9.5 rout at Oakland Hills in 2004. The last time the U.S. led by six or more points was when they destroyed Great Britain and Ireland 21-11 in 1975 having led 12.5-3.5 heading to Singles. Since continental Europe joined the competition in 1979 no winning team has reached 19 points. Europe’s 2004 score line was matched again in 2006 while the U.S. winning record is the same margin over that period having hit 18.5-9.5 in 1981. This team shows no signs of backing off the gas pedal and might yet make history. In a tense day’s play there were numerous heated moments as players debated rulings, and non-conceded putts while the partisan American crowd was particularly raucous. Justin Thomas and Daniel Berger, sitting in the afternoon, implored them to get louder still. They even joined them and chugged a beer. “They are playing with some freedom. They are having a great time. So it’s good to see,” Stricker said. The confidence spilling out of the young Americans was obvious for all to see. And to be fair, they earned it by playing some incredible golf. “Personally I thought we could have gone 4-0 (in the afternoon). But getting 2-2 and just staying in the same place, the lead that we have created is huge. We haven’t had this good of an opportunity in a long time and hopefully we can get the job done tomorrow,” DeChambeau said. “We have the best players in the world and they have got a lot of the best players in the world too but I would say from the standpoint of average ranking, I think we’re pretty solid and we just have to play our game tomorrow.” DeChambeau is right. While the Europeans have the world No. 1, the U.S team boasts those ranked 2-7, 9-11, 13, 16 and 21. After Rahm at 1, Europe’s next best are Hovland at 14 and Rory McIlroy at 15. McIlroy has gone 0-3-0 this week – a devastating predicament for his side. “Obviously disappointing not to contribute a point for the team yet,” McIlroy said. “Hopefully just go out tomorrow and try my best to get a point, and hopefully we can rally and at last give them something to sweat about tomorrow in the middle of the afternoon.” His fellow teammates were also refusing to throw in the towel. They know they’ll need an historic effort, but 18-hole match play can always throw up left field results. “We’re still not out of it. It’s a long day tomorrow, 12 matches. If any 12 of us were going out against any of them in the match play (tournament), we would fancy our chances. We just have to believe. It’s all about believing,” Lowry said after burying an 11-foot par putt on the 18th hole to win his match. “I read a quote last night and it was – if you’ve got a 1 percent chance, you have to have 100 percent faith. And I just think that we really need to live by that tonight and tomorrow and go out and give it our best.” Rahm, who is undefeated going 3-0-1 (3-0 with Garcia), has been a shining light for his team. But he can only do so much. “From what I hear, the team is playing good. Just putts not dropping in and a couple things here and there that haven’t happened,” Rahm said. “I’d like to believe that things even out. So tomorrow, if we get off to a good start, kind of like what happened in 2012, and things start going our way, you never know. “Golf is a very complicated and ironic and sarcastic game sometimes, and teams can be capable of some great things, like the U.S. has done so far the last two days. It could be our chance, and I know everybody on the team is going to give it their all and give that a run.” Captain Padraig Harrington will need to revive the spirits of 2012 in the team room tonight – with the help of McIlroy, Ian Poulter, Garcia and Lee Westwood who were all part of the side. While Harrington was not there, his vice-captains Luke Donald, Martin Kaymer and Graeme McDowell were. With their hand forced Europe will send its stars out early in a bid to gain some momentum. McIlroy has been given a shot at redemption by leading the order where he will play against Xander Schauffele. He is followed by Lowry (v Cantlay), Rahm (v Scheffler) and Garcia (v DeChambeau) the inform players for the visitors. “They have to just go out there and win their own individual match. There’s nothing more they can do than that,” Harrington said. “They have to focus on that and not look at that bigger picture and focus on their individual self and play their game and win that and then just see how it adds up.” As brash and confident as they are, the Americans insist they’ll come out without a shred of complacency. “We go into it with the mindset that we don’t have a lead; that we are at level and go fight for every point. That was the message last night, and I think it played out well for us today,” DeChambeau said. Stricker was playing in the 2012 team under Captain Davis Love III. Love is one of his vice-captains at Whistling Straits this week. At Medinah they took the ire of many in the final wash up for – among other things – putting Tiger Woods in the anchor slot despite the big lead. “We learned a lot of lessons from 2012,” Stricker said. “Probably the thing I can say is that we didn’t do a good job putting our lineup out on Sunday. Not that we took it for granted by any stretch of the imagination, but we just could have done better with it. “And that was on our mind here today. We think about our past mistakes, and we are trying to learn from them and see what we can do to try and improve on them, and that was definitely one of the things that we were talking about up there tonight.” This time around Stricker has opened with Olympic Gold medalist Schauffele and recent FedExCup winning Cantlay – who are both undefeated this week. He has his other top point getters, Johnson and Collin Morikawa, at slot five and six to counter the top-heavy European line up. Johnson is the only current American player who felt the sting at Medinah. He won’t allow for it to happen again. He will play against Paul Casey in the middle of the Singles order, in a prime position to perhaps garner the clinching point. “We’ve still got to go out, and everybody needs to play well. We’ve still got to get three and half points. We know it’s not over,” Johnson said. “I will give my all to them, and I know they will do the same thing for me.” Surf’s up.

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Mandy Snedeker had just dropped her two children, Lily and Austin, off at school near their home in Nashville. Her husband, Brandt, was in Greensboro, North Carolina, playing in the Wyndham Championship. He was in one of the morning’s featured groups, paired with Billy Horschel and Hideki Matsuyama, so she could follow the PGA TOUR Live coverage of his round as she ran errands. “And then all of a sudden, I don’t know what hole it was, but they started mentioning that there was a chance that he could shoot 59,â€� Mandy recalls. “I kind of went, errrk, pulled over in a parking lot, and watched the rest of it.â€� Mandy sat in that parking lot for a good hour on that Thursday morning a year ago, watching the final four holes or so on her cell phone. So, she saw the 20-footer he made on the Sedgefield’s ninth hole, his last of the day, to become just the ninth player in PGA TOUR history to shoot a 59. “Oh, my gosh, I screamed and just went crazy,â€� Mandy says. And then her telephone started virtually blowing up with text messages. In relatively short order, she had probably 40 or 50; her husband’s phone pinged with roughly double that amount – all meaningful in their own way. “We have a lot of friends that are in the music industry … and obviously are huge golfers,â€� Mandy says. “So, they were all texting me. I thought that was cool. “I don’t know if I have anyone that (stood out); it was just so many at one time I couldn’t believe it because I wasn’t sure if everybody knew. It was a Thursday, Thursday morning. So, I was texting people all morning. Brandt shot 59. Brandt shot 59. It was crazy.â€� Of course, her first text was to Brandt. He was whisked away to interviews after he signed his scorecard but called as soon as he could. “He was so excited,â€� Mandy recalls. “You know, golf, it’s crazy. It’s like up and down and he hadn’t been playing that great. But out of nowhere he shoots 59. So, it’s just how the sport rolls.â€� Then came the hard part. At least for Brandt. Take that four-stroke lead he had accrued with the 59, play three more rounds and try to win a golf tournament.  “Fifty‑nine was such a cool moment and such a great place, has such a great place in my memory and the history of the game obviously, but doing it on Thursday when you’ve got three more days to deal with, A, all the questions, B, all the kind of attention you draw on yourself, and then most importantly, the expectations you have on yourself,â€� Brandt says.  “You have a … four‑shot lead after the first day, play that kind of round of golf, you can’t really think of anything other than messing it up from there, to be honest with you. So, it’s hard to kind of deal with that, try to get over it and make sure you get back into what made you successful that first day.â€� The internal pressure was one thing. After all, Brandt had already won eight times on the PGA TOUR. But the 2018 Wyndham Championship was the first time his kids, who were 7 and 5 years old at the time, really understood what was going on. “The second he (shot 59) it was, Dad are you going to win the tournament? Dad are you winning?â€� Mandy recalls with a smile. “We flew in Saturday; we go upstairs to the player dining. Dad, are you leading still? Dad are you leading? Are you going to win? I was like, oh my goodness. Stop. “So, we had joked if he can win with that pressure of the kids constantly reminding him, you know, he’s got it. He’s got it.â€� Steve Holmes, who is chairman of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts and Wyndham Destinations, had sent a private jet to Nashville to pick up Mandy and the kids. Wyndham has sponsored Brandt since shortly after he won the 2007 tournament at Sedgefield, which was his first PGA TOUR victory. Holmes was the one who presented Brandt with the Sam Snead Cup that year. “It just so happened he was coming up to New York for the first playoff event right afterwards and he offered me a ride up on his plane,â€� Brandt remembers. “And so, I hop on the plane. We celebrated and talked and just kind of grew from there and Steve’s one of the best human beings in the world. Spending that little time with them on a plane, I realized what a quality guy he was and what they stood for. “Just always have been very fortunate in my career, surround myself with really good people and make sure I have the right partnerships and it all started with him and them because they are a bunch of great people and do stuff the right way.â€� So, Brandt wasn’t at all surprised that Holmes flew Mandy and the kids in for what turned out to be another Sunday celebration with Lily and Austin racing onto the 18th green to jump into their dad’s arms. “They’ve been dear friends of ours for a long time,â€� Mandy says. “That’s what made it so special, too. It’s not just shooting the 59 … it was just like a storybook book setting. I mean, with it being Wyndham and his sponsor and just all the years that we’ve been with them and stuff. “So yeah, it was really special.â€�

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