The shots that led to major championships in 2019

Click here to read the full article…

MAMARONECK, N.Y. - The kid will live to fight another day. Matthew Wolff, the 54-hole leader by two, just didn't have it for the final round of the 120th U.S. Open at Winged Foot on Sunday. He shot a final-round 75 to finish even par and in solo second, six behind Bryson DeChambeau (67), who shot the low round of the day by three. "I played really tough all week," Wolff said. "I battled hard. Things just didn’t go my way. But first U.S. Open, second place is something to be proud of and hold your head up high for." Wolff blinked first when he hit a wild hook and bogeyed the third hole. DeChambeau caught him with a birdie at the fourth hole, and took a lead he would never relinquish with a par at the fifth. Both eagled the par-5 ninth to remain separated by just one shot, but it was no contest from there as DeChambeau kept the pedal down while Wolff shot a 39 coming in. "My advice?" said Zach Johnson (74, T8) "Leave this parking lot with the positives because, my guess, there’s a slew of them. Whatever he’s doing right now is not ineffective. "... He’s going to slice and dice today," Johnson added, "and he needs to really focus in on some of the things that he did the previous three days, I think more so than today." The two main combatants have a history of butting heads. When Wolff won the 3M Open last year, DeChambeau tied for second. When DeChambeau won the Rocket Mortgage Classic in July, Wolff was second. Both tied for fourth at the PGA Championship last month. DeChambeau said he expects to run into Wolff again in the future, and it seems likely. Wolff is too good to just go away, and he's also irrepressible, approaching golf as a game, not science. While DeChambeau had ear buds in prior to the final round, Wolff was on the phone cracking up laughing. Although he said he would play his usual "rip dog" game, he was just a little off. "I really didn’t feel that nervous out there," he said. "Maybe at the start I did, but at the start I played pretty well. I don’t think it was nerves that were holding me back. I just think it wasn’t meant to be." A few breaks here and there, he said, and he might have made it closer. The final pairing further accelerated a youth movement that was already in gear. Wolff (21) and DeChambeau (27) combined to make up the second youngest final pairing in the last 50 majors, behind only Jordan Spieth (22) and Smylie Kaufman (24) at the 2016 Masters Tournament. Wolff's youthful exuberance will almost certainly come away from Winged Foot unscathed. "He's just a kid," said fellow Oklahoma State product Rickie Fowler (79, 17 over). "Some of the things he'll say, you sometimes forget that you're around someone who's - you look at him as one of our peers, someone you play against and compete against, but he'll say something and you're like, yeah, he's still a kid. He's 10 years behind us. "There's really no course that doesn't suit him," Fowler added, "just because he's able to work the ball both ways easily. He's a great ball-striker. His extra length, with the way the rough is, it helps on a lot of holes out here because you're going to miss fairways, and to potentially have between two and four clubs less out of the rough, that makes a big difference." That's the case on any course, and Wolff will almost certainly be a force on many of them.

Click here to read the full article…

HONOLULU, Hawaii – Blayne Barber’s caddy Cory Gilmer is in an intensive care unit at a local Hawaiian hospital after collapsing and hitting his head in Waikiki last night. Gilmer was out some fellow caddies in downtown Waikiki after finishing dinner with Barber when he is said to have collapsed while sitting on a high-top chair, hitting his head hard on the ground in the process. He was rushed to hospital with swelling around the brain and has been unresponsive for the night and most of the morning. Barber rushed to Gilmer’s side as soon as he heard the news. “By the time I got there, he was unconscious, and the paramedics were there. Then I went to the hospital with him last night. And he’s pretty much just been unresponsive since then,â€� he explained. “He’s in the neurological ICU, a lot of bleeding and swelling in his brain. So, I went by this morning, and that was kind of the last update I had. He’s in pretty critical condition. His parents are flying in tomorrow.â€� To make matters worse Barber was caught up in the false alarm regarding a missile strike in Hawaii when he returned to the hospital in the morning, forcing him to head to lower ground. He returned to Waialae Country Club to play the third round with his brother Shayne on the bag, hoping the golf would take his mind off things. But the emotions got the better of him as he shot a 2-over 72 – dropping him to T68. Barber had considered withdrawing from the event but ultimately decided to play on given there was little he could do. “I’ve been gone from my kids and my wife for ten days, and between that happening to Cory and then just the emotions of facing your own mortality in that moment, it’s just been a heavy day for sure,â€� he said emotionally. “It certainly wiped me out. I was kind of out of it all day, just trying to push through and have something to concentrate on, but it was hard to focus on any of that. “I slept about three hours. That was about the hardest day of golf I’ve ever played.â€� Doctors were trying to contain the swelling medicinally overnight and had not yet taken a surgical route in his recovery. Barber said there was nothing he was aware of in Gilmer’s medical history that would be prone to him collapsing. “Seizures was mentioned (by some in attendance to the collapse), but as far as I know, he collapsed, and the head trauma is the issue,â€� Barber said. “We don’t know why he collapsed. I mean, he could have been dehydrated or any number of things. I don’t think there’s any necessarily clear answers at the moment.â€�

Click here to read the full article…