The moments before and after everything changed for Tiger Woods

The TOUR leaves Kiawah Island, and so does Phil Mickelson with his sixth major title. The TOUR travels from the historic 2021 PGA Championship to the storied Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, for the Charles Schwab Challenge. The course will play as a par 70, measuring 7,209 and will be putt on bentgrass greens. There are 121 players in the field, and the standard top 65 and ties make the cut. The Charles Schwab Challenge was the first tournament back after the COVID-19 shut down last season. Daniel Berger (+1800, $10,000) is your defending champion. STRATEGY The field moves back to its usual field size of 121 golfers after seeing its most robust group of 156 golfers in 2020, with every player on TOUR looking to get back to action post-COVID-19 shut down. The slimmer field will host some of the best golfers in the world like Justin Thomas (+1000, $11,000), Jordan Spieth (+850, $11,200), Tony Finau (+1600, $9,600), Justin Rose (+3300, $8,900), Collin Morikawa (+1400, $10,500), Abraham Ancer (+1400, $9700) and Patrick Reed (+1800, $10,300). With close to 54% or more of players potentially making the weekend, this week should result in one of the highest percentages of lineups having all six golfers make the cut. Colonial Country Club has been one of the longest-tenured courses on the PGA TOUR, with this being its 76th season hosting a tournament. Colonial isn’t known for playing difficult like the Ocean Course, but it’s been ranked inside the top-10 in difficulty scoring relative to par over the past few years. Like last week, the winds can cause havoc at Colonial. The tournaments held in 2012, 2014 and 2019 all recorded either higher than average or severe wind conditions, with the winning score averaging around 12-under. We’ve seen close to 20% of rounds over the previous four years register very windy conditions. The fairways are tight and tree-lined, making any wayward tee shots challenging to recover from if the golfers find trouble. The greens are below average in size, measuring 5,000 square feet, but the average greens in regulation (GIR) hit here is close to the TOUR average. Initially, we would think that smaller greens result in a smaller percentage of GIR, but it doesn’t. Over the previous five years, the highest distribution of approach shots has come from 125 to 175 yards, which are relatively easy scoring opportunities for these guys. Similar to other traditional layouts on TOUR, like Pete Dye’s Harbour Town Golf Links and TPC Sawgrass, Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green will be the predominant statistic that will lead to success. DraftKings scoring will need to come from a massive amount of birdies, with one of the lowest eagle rates on TOUR. Also, with nine par 4s measuring under 450 yards, rostering golfers who rank high in shorter par 4s should take precedent over golfers who aren’t succeeding on these holes. This classical course layout lends itself to all types of golfers. Kevin Na (+6600; $8,400) can win with an impeccable short game, while Rose can do it with tremendous ball-striking, shooting 20-under, gaining 10.2 strokes with his irons, and four strokes Off-the-Tee. GOLFERS TO CONSIDER Joaquin Niemann (+2500 to Win, $9,300 on DraftKings) When we’re back on bentgrass, we should be backing the Chilean sensation, who ranks 20th in approach over the previous 24 rounds. Niemann has only lost strokes with his irons in one tournament out of his past 11 and has played well on shorter courses like Colonial, finishing fifth at the RBC Heritage in 2020 and second at this year’s Sony Open at Waialae CC. Chris Kirk (+6600 to Win, $7,600 on DraftKings) Kirk is just 10 spots behind Niemann at 30th in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green over the same timeframe but ranks the highest out of anyone in the field in Par 4 efficiency from 400 to 450 yards over the previous 24 rounds. On courses at or below 7,200 yards, Kirk ranks 27th in putting and eighth in birdies gained over his last two dozen rounds. Like Niemann, Kirk has been great on these shorter, classical courses, finishing seventh at the RBC Heritage and second at the Sony Open this year. Refer a friend and get $20 DK Dollars! Head to the DraftKings Playbook Promo page for more details! Set your DraftKings fantasy golf lineups here: PGA TOUR $750K Flop Shot [$200K to 1st] Put your knowledge to the test. Sign up for DraftKings and experience the game inside the game. All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests. 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JACKSON, Miss. — Sam Burns ran off four birdies in a six-hole stretch to start the back nine and pulled away for a 5-under 67 to win the Sanderson Farms Championship on Sunday for his second PGA TOUR victory this year. RELATED: Leaderboard | Winner’s Bag: Sam Burns, Sanderson Farms Championship Against a list of contenders looking for their first win, Burns showed what it takes at the Country Club of Jackson by playing flawlessly on the back nine until it didn’t matter. He seized control with a 15-foot birdie putt on the par-3 13th, a 5-iron to 15 feet that set up a two-putt birdie on the next hole and then a perfect pitch from behind the green on the reachable par-4 15th for a tap-in birdie. Staked to a two-shot lead going down the 18th, he took a safe bogey from the greenside bunker to secure a one-shot win over resurgent Nick Watney and PGA TOUR rookie Cameron Young. Watney, coming off his worst season in more than a decade, closed with a 65 and had his best finish in more than three years. Young’s hopes began to fade on the 14th with a clunker out of the rough into a fairway bunker that led to him having to make a 4-footer for bogey. Still, he made a slick up-and-down from off the 18th green for par that gave him a 68 and a share of second, which sets him up well for the season. That starts with playing next week in Las Vegas instead of having to go through Monday qualifying. “I love being in contention, I love feeling the nerves, so it was fun today. I enjoyed it, even though it might not have looked like it,” Young said. “I knew Sam was ahead of me and I had to make a couple and just didn’t, but I will another time.” Sahith Theegala, the California rookie who began the final round with a one-shot lead, had control of the final round until he reached the back nine. He failed to get up-and-down from a greenside bunker on the par-3 10th, missing a 7-foot putt. With a 7-iron in his hand for his second to the par-5 11th, he leaked the shot to the right and into the water, and missed a 4-foot putt to take bogey. Two holes later, he three-putted from 18 feet for bogey. From there, it was about limiting the damage. He played the final five holes in 1 under for a 71. Theegala tied for eighth, which gets him into the field next week in Las Vegas. For Burns, the 25-year-old from Louisiana is just starting to cash in. He won the Valspar Championship at Innisbrook in the spring and has had more chances than that throughout the year, losing a playoff in Memphis in August and coming up one shot away from a playoff at Riviera in February. Burns did well enough to earn some serious consideration from Steve Stricker as a captain’s pick for the U.S. Ryder Cup team. And now with his second win of the year — in his first start of the new season — Burns moves into the top 20 in the world ranking for the first time. He ended a trend in which six of the last seven winners of the Sanderson Farms Championship captured their first PGA TOUR title. Burns was among the few who had winning experience. Six players in contention at the start of the final round had recently earned PGA TOUR cards through the Korn Ferry Tour. Among the exceptions was Watney, first slowed by a lower back injury and then by a loss in confidence. He went back to working with Butch Harmon in the summer, and then put together a superb week with his putter, leading the field in the key putting statistic. “There was definitely some lean times, especially last year, but I’m not trying to think about that any more,” Watney said. “I’m trying to continue to get better and this was a great step this week. I’m ready.”

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Lydia Ko shot a 7-under 65 to take a one-stroke lead into the final round of the Lotte Championship.

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