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From South Korea to South Carolina, albeit eventually and out of necessity. After three years contested on Jeju Island at the southern tip of the Asian country, THE CJ CUP has been held in the United States since 2020 due to ongoing challenges related to the pandemic. This year’s host is Congaree Golf Club in The Palmetto State. RELATED: Play Pick ‘Em Live | The First Look If the stage for THE CJ CUP at South Carolina sounds familiar, it should. Keep reading beneath the projected contenders for a brief history of the worthy track, how it should test and more. POWER RANKINGS: THE CJ CUP Collin Morikawa, Hideki Matsuyama, Billy Horschel and Tyrrell Hatton will be among the notables reviewed in Draws and Fades. The PGA TOUR’s first (and only prior) stop at this week’s host course was for the Palmetto Championship at Congaree in June of 2021. Garrick Higgo prevailed, and after gaining entry via a commissioner exemption no less. To put the timing of that tournament into perspective, it was two seasons ago and it marked the first anniversary of the Return to Golf after the three-month shutdown due to COVID-19. The TOUR’s return to Congaree is for a much different competition. Whereas the Palmetto Championship hosted a full field of 156 with a 36-hole cut, THE CJ CUP at South Carolina reserves room for only 78, and there is no cut. Officially, eight spots are saved for golfers from South Korea – five KPGA members and three via the Official World Golf Ranking – but there are 14 natives or golfers with South Korean heritage committed thanks to the growing depth of talent among members. Of those who competed in the Palmetto Championship, 19 are back this week. Higgo did not qualify. Congaree Golf Club was designed by Tom Fazio. He and his team sought out to replicate the kind of layout that you’d find in Australia’s Sandbelt region in Melbourne. So, there isn’t a relevant sightline that isn’t consumed with sand and/or native area. Congaree is a par 71 with three par 5s and it tips at 7,655 yards. Rough essentially is a rumor on the property, but what little there is has been allowed to scale to four inches. Champion bermuda greens are average in size and prepped to run as far as 13 feet on the Stimpmeter. Hot and humid conditions dominated for the first three rounds here in 2021, but the elements this week will be considerably different, as you’d expect four months and change later in the year. Thursday’s daytime high won’t eclipse 70 degrees. It will warm gradually thereafter but the highest temperatures will settle in the mid-70s. Rain is not expected and winds will be light, so Congaree is poised to be pure. The host course averaged 71.743 for the 156-man field in 2021. That slotted it as the second-hardest of all non-majors in the super season of 2020-21 and about a half-shot higher than third-hardest Riviera Country Club, host of 120 golfers for The Genesis Invitational. Because of its length, Congaree will reward distance off the tee, but the fairways are generous, so it’s more of a second-shot exercise than it seems. Taut games on approach and with the shortest sticks will define the final leaderboard. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.com’s Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous perspectives. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers, Draws & Fades WEDNESDAY: Pick ‘Em Preview SUNDAY: Medical Extensions, Qualifiers, Reshuffle * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.
LA QUINTA, Calif. – Jon Rahm, the Desert Classic’s defending champion, overcame the flu and some uncharacteristic weather conditions to shoot 66 at La Quinta Countrty Club on Thursday. Those were two reasons he struggled with distance control on Thursday. The weather in the California desert is often so pristine that people refer to it as “dome golf.â€� Thursday started with a one-hour fog delay. Then players had to deal with rain during their round. “(I’m) still pretty weak, which is possibly why I wasn’t hitting it quite as far,â€� Rahm said. “(I’m) not fully recuperated, my body is not a hundred percent, so I could definitely feel when I hit a driver and I thought I hit it far enough it was definitely a 10 yard gap. Even today a couple of the shorter irons I could feel my body not being able to swing as hard. But I don’t have bad feelings in me, I just need to rest up a little and hopefully I get better every day.â€� Rahm made his only bogey of the day after his approach shot to the second hole came up short and he missed a 5-foot par putt. He made seven birdies over his next 16 holes. He is six shots behind Phil Mickelson, who shot 60 at La Quinta. Rahm missed just three greens despite saying that he struggled with his distance control. “The air density, it’s pretty heavy right now. So sometimes it’s hard to believe, especially when you get closer to the hole, how hard you had to hit the ball,â€� Rahm said. “And when you are hitting one or two clubs more than what we’re used to, it’s hard to be absolutely certain of doing it. But again, that only happened a few holes. For the most part I had a pretty good day, a pretty good ball striking day.â€� He is 69th in the FedExCup standings after starting his season with a T22 at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions and eighth-place finish at the Sentry Tournament of Champions. He also won the Hero World Challenge in December.
Former FedExCup champions Justin Rose and Jordan Spieth, as well as Brooks Koepka, winner of the inaugural Wyndham Rewards Top 10, highlight the field at the Wyndham Championship. J.T. Poston will be there to defend his title in the final event before the FedExCup Playoffs. FIELD NOTES: Koepka, who held the top spot in the FedExCup entering last year’s Playoffs, will look to build on the progress he showed at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational and PGA Championship. He was outside the top 125 in the standings before his runner-up in Memphis… Spieth and Patrick Reed, who had a thrilling playoff duel in 2013, are both back in the field… Former FedExCup champ Brandt Snedeker returns to a tournament he has won twice, including his first TOUR win and a victory two years ago that included a first-round 59…Four golfers in the top-10 of the FedExCup standings will tee it up at Sedgefield CC, including reigning Rookie of the Year Sungjae Im, past Wyndham winner Webb Simpson and his former junior-golf rival from nearby Raleigh, Brendon Todd… Teen-aged pro Akshay Bhatia and past Wyndham champion Arjun Atwal are among the sponsor exemptions… World No. 13 Tommy Fleetwood will make his fourth straight start in the Return to Golf. FEDEXCUP: Winner gets 500 FedExCup points. COURSE: Sedgefield Country Club (Ross), 7,127 yards, par 70. Opened in 1926, Sedgefield is the only Donald Ross original that serves as a regular PGA TOUR venue. The course features Ross’ signature small and undulating greens. STORYLINES: The Wyndham Championship marks the final week of the Wyndham Rewards Top 10 competition. No. 1 on the Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is Justin Thomas, who is not in the field in North Carolina, but entered the PGA Championship with a commanding 713-point lead in the standings. Webb Simpson sits at No. 2 as of the PGA Championship and will be playing… Im, Reed, and Todd are the other three inside the top-10 of the Wyndham Rewards Top 10 competition that are playing Sedgefield… As of the PGA Championship, Chase Seiffert sits at No. 125 in the FedExCup standings and holds the final spot in the FedExCup Playoffs… Nick Watney is just one FedExCup point back and sits at 126th while Bronson Burgoon is just one FedExCup point ahead at 124th… Two golfers jumped inside the top 125 at the 2019 Wyndham Championship (Andrew Landry and Patton Kizzire)… The last four winners of the Wyndham Championship have all shot 20-under or better. 72-HOLE RECORD: 258, Henrik Stenson (2017), JT Poston (2019) 18-HOLE RECORD: 59, Brandt Snedeker (1st round, 2018). LAST TIME: J.T. Poston, who grew up just 90 minutes from Greensboro, North Carolina, fired a sizzling 8-under-par 62 on Sunday at the Wyndham Championship a year ago to win his first PGA TOUR title. In the process, Poston became the first golfer on TOUR since Lee Trevino in 1974 to capture a 72-hole tournament without making any bogeys or worse. Poston also matched Henrik Stenson’s tournament record 22-under 258. Poston nipped fellow North Carolinian Webb Simpson by one shot. Simpson finished runner-up while Byeong Hun An (who matched Poston’s 8-under 62 as the round of the week in the first round), Viktor Hovland, and Si Woo Kim rounded out the top five. HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Friday, 2 p.m.-6 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Saturday, 1 p.m.-3 p.m. (Golf Channel), 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (CBS). Sunday, 12:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m. (Golf Channel), 2:30 p.m.-6 p.m. (CBS). PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday-Friday 7 a.m.-6 p.m. (Featured Groups). Saturday, 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m. (Featured Groups), 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (Featured Holes). Sunday, 8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. (Featured Groups), 2:30 p.m.-6 p.m. (Featured Holes). Radio: Thursday-Friday, 12 p.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday 1 p.m.-6 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio).
