The First Look: The Genesis Invitational

ORLANDO – What happened to Graeme McDowell? This is a question that McDowell, 39, has gone to great lengths to try to answer, and is still trying to answer in real time. Mr. Everything in 2010, when he won the U.S. Open, the decisive point for Europe in the Ryder Cup, and two events on the European Tour, he has accrued just one top-10 finish in his last 47 PGA TOUR starts. His T10 at the 2017 Shriners Hospitals for Children seems like a long time ago, and a highlight unworthy of his talent. “I think people would look at me the last four or five years and say that I’ve got caught up in other things and lost my focus on what I’m doing,â€� McDowell told the PGA TOUR recently. “Is that true or false? Did I get married and have children? Yeah. Did that take my focus off what I was doing? Maybe.â€� And yet here is McDowell again, trying to dig himself out, as he put it after carding a 4-under 68 in the first round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. He was T3 after the first round, his best start since the 2015 World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational (now WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational), when he shot 66 and went on to finish T17. McDowell is scheduled to tee off Friday at 1:19 p.m. ET. It’s been a busy week so far. D.A. Points and Francesco Molinari each aced the par-3 seventh hole. There were 94 balls hit in the water in round one, the most of any round at Bay Hill since 2003. Phil Mickelson tried to hit a right-handed shot through a mesh fence, and failed. Still, the longest accounting of this Arnold Palmer Invitational was McDowell’s two-plus-page transcript after the first round. The recipient of the 2014 ASAP Sports/Jim Murray Award for accommodating the media, he’s always been one of the game’s great talkers. “Interesting to see a lot of Europeans playing well here,â€� he said, presciently. He was talking about Spain’s Rafa Cabrera Bello, who fired an opening 65, but, in a way, also predicting the second-round surge of England’s Tommy Fleetwood (66, 9-under total), who shot into the lead. “It’s a real fairway-and-green golf course,â€� McDowell added. “The rough’s very penal this week, and the greens are very firm.â€� Every course has seemed penal for McDowell of late, and true to form, he has owned up to it, for he is not only verbose, he is candid. (Somewhere there’s a television career out there with his name on it.) Thursday brought more gems from G-Mac, who has lived at nearby Lake Nona since shortly after his runner-up at the 2005 API. He laughed about a complication of sleeping in your own bed during a tournament: trying to get the kids to go to sleep. “It’s literally just life,â€� he said of his slow fade over last five years or so. “Life. Life just got in the way. Mostly the family stuff, and I don’t think I ever sat back and rested on my laurels and thought I was — I just, my practice changed. The time that I was giving to the game changed and I was less effective in what I was doing. It snuck up on me. “It sort of happened before I realize it had happened,â€� he added. How many golfers are that self-reflective? How many athletes? How many people? Still, there are all sorts of reasons to be excited if you’re McDowell, who is playing out of the 125-150 category from last season’s FedExCup. He’s twice finished runner-up at Bay Hill, including 2012, when he shot a 9-under 63 in the second round and earned a final-round pairing with Tiger Woods. (McDowell finished second to Woods, five back.) And he’s playing better than his results indicate at 117th in the FedExCup and 259th in the world. Also, the U.S. Open will return to Pebble Beach, site of his 2010 victory. (He’s already in the field thanks to his 10-year exemption.) And The Open Championship will be held near his boyhood home at Royal Portrush, Northern Ireland. He’s not in that field, but could earn a spot as the API is now part of the Open Qualifying Series; the top three finishers in the top 10 not otherwise qualified will earn spots in the field. McDowell only found this out Tuesday. He doesn’t want to obsess, so he’s trying not to think about it. “It’s hard to do because I want it really badly,â€� he said. “I want to be back up there competing with these guys and I do feel like I have some good stuff in me. But I’ve had to ask myself some pretty hard questions the last couple years. Thankfully, I’ve came to the conclusion that if it was all gone, I would miss it. So, you know what, let’s try and enjoy it while it’s here. “It’s an opportunity,â€� he added. “It’s not an opportunity to beat my head against the wall, it’s an opportunity to try and dig myself out of a hole and look at that challenge as something to be enjoyed, and it’s going to be very rewarding when I do get out of it.â€�

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2022 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Round 1 Scoring Conditions: SH: +0.23 strokes per round MP: -1.48 PB: -1.23 Current cutline (top 60 and ties): 73 players at -2 or better (T51) Top 3 projected cutline probabilities: 1. 5 under par: 24.7% 2. 4 under par: 23.0% 3. 6 under par: 17.8% Top 10 win probabilities: 1. Seamus Power (2, -8, 22.4%) 2. Patrick Cantlay (T5, -6, 22.1%) 3. Tom Hoge (1, -9, 13.1%) 4. Andrew Putnam (T5, -6, 2.6%) 5. Austin Smotherman (T3, -7, 2.5%) 6. Denny McCarthy (T15, -4, 2.0%) 7. Jason Day (T15, -4, 2.0%) 8. Troy Merritt (T15, -4, 1.9%) 9. Scott Stallings (T7, -5, 1.8%) 10. Jordan Spieth (T33, -3, 1.5%) NOTE: These reports are based off of the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cut”, “Top 20”, “Top 5”, and “Win” probabilities every 5 minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 20K simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page.

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TULSA, Okla. – While major equipment switches the week of a major are rare, one is paying off for Webb Simpson at the PGA Championship. Simpson shot 1-under 69 at Southern Hills on Thursday. It was one of the top rounds in a breezy and blustery afternoon at the Oklahoma course. He used a new set of irons, the Titleist T100s, after committing to the new clubs earlier in the week. “Today felt like the golf that I know how to play. It didn’t feel abnormal. I wasn’t surprised. But I’m very thankful to get off to a good start in a really tough condition day,” said Simpson, whose seven PGA TOUR wins include the 2012 U.S. Open and 2018 PLAYERS. It has been a difficult season for Simpson, who entered the week ranked 141st in the FedExCup. He has just two top-25s this season, and none since the calendar turned to 2022. He’s struggled with his iron game, which is traditionally one of his hallmarks. He ranks 84th in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green after sitting inside the top 25 for six consecutive seasons from 2015-20. Simpson finally relented and made the switch to the cavity-back Titleist T100 irons this week after playing forged, muscle-back blades for almost the entirety of his career. The T100s are forged and have the look of a blade at address while utilizing a cavity-back to increase forgiveness. “I’ve had a couple of short stints with non-blades in my career but not many,” said Simpson, who had been using Titleist’s 620 MB irons. “I haven’t been hitting my irons great. Approach to the green is typically a strength for me; this year it’s been a weakness, and I’ve struggled out of the rough. I keep getting told that these the irons I’m playing are better out of the rough, better with distance control, better with mis-hits, and so I guess I was being stubborn but finally listened and I really like them. “They’re not a whole lot different than mine the way they look, but we’ve had good results with them so far.” Simpson’s caddie, Paul Tesori, recommended a potential switch after Simpson missed the cut at the Wells Fargo Championship. They experimented with the new clubs at Simpson’s home club, Quail Hollow in Charlotte, last week. That was after Simpson discovered them in his garage after fearing he may have given them away. “I don’t know if Titleist will like this or not, but if I don’t use a set I give it to a friend,” Simpson said Thursday. “I’m trying to spread the word for Titleist, you know. So I might have given to a friend, but I see them in there, we bring them out, and all the numbers we tested were way better. “So I still wasn’t certain that I was going to put them in this week so I have both. The biggest thing for me is when I look down I want to make sure it looks good, and then after that all I care about is the numbers and how it’s going to perform out of the rough. So far they’ve passed the test.”

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