The First Look: Farmers Insurance Open

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HONOLULU — Russell Henley made a series of key putts late in his round Saturday and salvaged a 3-under 67 that gave him a two-shot lead over Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama in the Sony Open in Hawaii. RELATED: Full leaderboard | The clubs Keita Nakajima is using at the Sony Open in Hawaii Matsuyama made up plenty of ground with a 63, taking only 25 putts even if he had no idea how some of them went in. He caught up with Henley briefly by closing with a 15-foot birdie putt. Henley regained the lead with a 12-foot birdie putt on the 15th hole. He kept it by avoiding a long three-putt on the 16th, making a comebacker from 8 feet. He made a 15-footer on the 17th to create a cushion. Starting out with a three-shot lead and posting a 67 was not the worst of days for Henley, even if he would have expected more in another day of limited wind. He was a 18-under 192 and will be paired with Matsuyama, as popular in Honolulu as any stop on the PGA TOUR outside Japan. Matsuyama will be going for his second win his season — he won the ZOZO Championship outside Tokyo last fall — and the eighth of his career, which would tie him with K.J. Choi of South Korea for most wins by an Asian-born player. This is hardly a two-man race at Waialae, a course with a history of players coming out of the pack with something in the low 60s, and such a score is certainly possible in these conditions. Seamus Power of Ireland birdied his last two holes for a 65, leaving him four shots behind, along with Matt Kuchar (67) and Adam Svensson of Canada (65) and Haotong Li of China, who was in the mix until a tough finish. Li was one shot behind with four holes to play. But then Henley birdied the 15th, and Li made a mess of the 16th hole, which bends to the left round houses and out toward the Pacific, the big “W” of palm trees behind the green. Li went way left off the tee. He went way right with his shot, some 20 yards beyond the 17th tee. He hacked out short and chipped long and took two putts for a double bogey. That left him four shots behind, but he didn’t lose his sense of humor. With his tee shot on a decent line off the tee at the par-3 17th, Li said loud enough for the gallery to hear, “Hole-in-one, please.” No such luck. He missed a birdie putt from just inside 15 feet, finishing with a long two-putt birdie and still had hope. Lucas Glover (64) and Kevin Kisner (65) were five shots behind. So much depends on Henley, who dropped two shots and made enough birdies to keep his distance as he goes for his second win at the Sony Open. He won at Waialae in the first tournament of his rookie season in 2013. “Russell seems to be the guy when he gets out in front and is playing well and confident, he seems to rise to the occasion,” Kisner said. “I think he’s going to be a tough competitor to try to beat.” Matsuyama looked up to the task, especially late in his round. He knocked in a 40-foot birdie putt on the 13th, and then holed a 15-footer for par on the next hole. He laid well back off the 15th tee with a 4-iron, a smart move because he was in the right side of the fairway with a large tree blocking his way to the pin on the right of the green. He had an 8-iron and enough room to sent it over the tree to 15 feet for another birdie. “Putting was a strong point today. Even my missed putts found the hole,” Matsuyama said through an interpreter. “I was lucky today.”

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Chesson Hadley needed golf’s version of a Hail Mary to keep his PGA TOUR card last season. He hopes he won’t need it this time around. “Last season was not a great ball-striking year, unfortunately,” said Hadley, 34, who will make his second start of the new season at the Sanderson Farms Championship in Jackson, Mississippi. While he probably won’t start in earnest until after Thanksgiving, the 2014 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year is embarking on some changes to shore up those tee-to-green deficiencies. He began working with a new swing coach, Raleigh-based Chase Duncan, 37, in early August. “I like to try to keep it as simple as possible,” Duncan said. “Initially I’ll help him understand his current pattern, and we’ll work on the takeaway, getting a good feel for the clubface coming back. Not big changes. I’ve been impressed how much he likes to eat for such a skinny guy.” Indeed, Hadley’s feast-or-famine 2021 suggests he’s not far away. Although he ranked 169th in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green last season, he was 11th in SG: Putting and very nearly won. At the Palmetto Championship at Congaree in June, he was the 54-hole leader by four but bogeyed the last three holes to lose to young South African Garrick Higgo by a shot. “I can only imagine what it looked like on TV because it looked freakin’ awful from my view,” he said afterward. “I mean, I could barely keep it on the planet. That 8 iron from the fairway on that last hole is inexcusable. I just didn’t have it today.” He redeemed himself with a T15 at the Wyndham Championship in August. Having begun the tournament languishing at 132nd in the FedExCup, and tied for 51st place going into Sunday, he looked destined to miss the Playoffs and lose his TOUR card. The rest is flying-giraffe history: Hadley got off to a hot start, made his first-ever hole-in-one – leaping into the air with the grace of “a flying baby giraffe,” he said later – birdied his last hole, and shot a final-round 62. Would it be enough? All he could do now was wait. He was at a Bojangles drive-through (very on-brand) with his father, Russell, on their way back to Raleigh when the TOUR’s Tom Alter gave him the news. With Justin Rose’s three-putt bogey on 18, Hadley had slipped into the 125th spot to keep his card and get into the Playoffs lid-lifter, THE NORTHERN TRUST, by one FedExCup point. “I’ll remember everything about that day,” Hadley said. “I had my food in my lap and was waiting to eat until I had the full run-down. There was some screaming, some crying. It was great to have something to celebrate with my family because it didn’t feel like there was a lot to celebrate the last 18 months or so. We just opened a bottle of wine. “We have a couple that we’re really close with,” he continued, “and we had them over for a small celebration because I had to get on a plane for New York the next day.” He missed THE NORTHERN TRUST cut, ending his season, but he had spared himself a trip to Boise for the start of the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. He felt relief for himself, but also for his wife, Amanda. “And she was certainly emotional because she feels like she’s been all by herself while I’ve been trying to do all this,” he said. “I did not want to go to Boise for lots of reasons. That’s a long way away from home. My family wasn’t going to be able to come. My kids are starting school. “So Sunday was huge professionally,” he continued, “but it was also really big personally just because I could be with my family more. It was just such a relief.” Given some time to reflect, Hadley believes Congaree, in South Carolina, and Sedgefield, in North Carolina, were connected by more than a common state border. “I think one of the reasons why I did so well the Sunday at Wyndham is because of the Sunday at Congaree,” he said. “It had been a while since I had been in that position, and I didn’t handle Congaree the way I wanted to, but I learned a lot.” Specifically, Hadley was able to find a way to close even as he felt his command wobbling at the Wyndham. He was in the fifth fairway at Sedgefield when he told his caddie, David Cooke, that he was starting to see some squirrely shots and they needed to make a quick fix. “I was kind of hitting it a little bit loose,” Hadley said. “I told him, ‘I feel like we need to make an adjustment.’ Which is something I didn’t do at Congaree when it was getting crooked. So I just kind of did that, I put a little more left lean, a little more weight left, so that I wouldn’t fall back on it. It was the right adjustment because I hit some really good shots coming in.” Like the ace at the 160-yard, par-3 16th hole, with a 9-iron. Amazingly, it wasn’t just his first hole-in-one on TOUR, it was his first anywhere despite being an 11th-year pro. The trails of his previous few years were apparent during Hadley’s tearful post-round interview with CBS’s Amanda Balionis. “I’m not just out here for fun,” he said. “This is my job and I love it and I care very deeply about it.” Then he made fun of himself for crying, and his giraffe jump. This week he returns to one of his favorite places on TOUR, the Country Club of Jackson, where he finished second behind Ryan Armour in 2017. That result that was sandwiched between a T3 at the Fortinet Championship and a T4 at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas. When he’s on top of his game, Hadley is very, very good. He’s working on it.

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