Tiger backs PGA Tour-PIF deal, but future ‘murky’

SAN DIEGO - Marc Leishman wasn’t one to spend time on the range as he was growing up - and who could blame him. In those days you had to pick up your own range balls at Warrnambool Golf Club. Instead, he would use the course proper as his practice facility, challenging his mates to contests on each hole. Warrnambool is a coastal town in Victoria, Australia, a little over three hours drive from Melbourne. The course was rarely full, which allowed a group of youngsters to spend a bunch of time on each hole without slowing pace of play. "It might take us three hours to play nine holes - not holding people up - but we forever came up with things to do," Leishman recalls. "We put ourselves behind trees, or in divots, or tough bunker lies – really in all sorts of spots where we had to use our imagination. We had a lot of fun." Imagination. It's a word used less and less in modern golf. The art of golf is - at times - being bludgeoned by the science. In the past, the likes of Seve Ballesteros would wow the masses with his creativity from all over the course. In more modern times, Bubba Watson has shaped the ball in ridiculous ways. But now the game is skewed towards the athletic prowess and strength of a player and brute force can get you to places never seen before. We have players like Bryson DeChambeau following the science of the swing and of the body and calculating all sorts of variables around every shot to chase perfection. We have technology and stats measuring everything. Gadgets and gizmos a plenty, whozits and whatsits galore. Science has indeed taken the sport to incredible new heights. But science isn't everyone's best subject. Leishman has always been an artist. The joy in his golf comes from shaping the ball both ways or hitting it high or low on demand. He craves hard and fast courses and thrives in the wind. He loves being able to hit the same club across a wide yardage range and gets juiced up when the opportunity to paint a picture surfaces in his game. "That’s when I play my best golf - when I have to use my imagination. Augusta requires a lot of it, the British Open requires a lot of it and it’s what makes golf fun for me," Leishman says. I would call myself an old school pro. The game is an artistic game for me, and I love when you have to control it on the ground and through the air and you really have to think. It is a style that has seen him win five times on the PGA TOUR including last year at the Farmers Insurance Open where he defends this week at Torrey Pines. In the final round a year ago, Leishman couldn't buy a fairway. He was 70th in the field for Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee losing -1.235 to the field. But he invented ways to get himself to the greens regardless of the inaccuracy and gained +4.778 strokes putting as he made 151 feet, four inches worth or putts. Not long after Leishman was runner up at the Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented by Mastercard, an event he won in 2017. Then he opened THE PLAYERS Championship with a 5-under 67, his career best first round at TPC Sawgrass where his scoring average is a not so impressive 72.25. At seventh in the FedExCup, he was rolling along nicely. Of course, we all know what happened to the world next. But Leishman had no clue the COVID-19 pandemic would derail his form so significantly. Not many players - if any - spiraled like he did after the extended pandemic break. In his six regular season starts upon return, Leishman missed three cuts and posted a T40 as his best result. His early season form kept him in the duration of the three FedExCup Playoffs but he was a virtual passenger. Leishman missed the cut at THE NORTHERN TRUST. He then shot 80-78-79-73 (+30) in the no-cut BMW Championship (another tournament he's won before) to be dead last, nine shots worse than second last and 34 shots behind winner Jon Rahm. In the TOUR Championship he was 29th of 30 players. His start to the 2020-21 season wasn't much better as the now 37-year-old missed the cut at the U.S. Open followed by a T52 and T70 at the limited field CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK and ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP @ SHERWOOD. It wasn't pretty. So, what happened? It was a bunch of factors but at its core - Leishman got bogged down studying science and got frustrated with his art not making it to a gallery. "Having a big rest over the pandemic break was good for me to be with family but for my golf game it wasn’t so good for me," Leishman explains to PGATOUR.COM. “Normally on weeks off I don’t play at all, so I virtually have never played golf with no crowds. It’s either in a tournament or in a practice round at a tournament so that was very new to me. Even when I play golf back home in Warrnambool there are people watching me so returning without fans was weird. I really struggled with energy." The energy he refers to is the competitive instinct of the artist who loves to entertain and who thrives on an internal underdog factor. Leishman long went unheralded by the American public who confused him with other golfers and even when his profile rose, and he was grouped with big name stars, Leishman's nationality usually meant he'd be fighting for the majority of support. It was fuel for him. "When you’re struggling with crowds around it can still be fun because if there are 50 people watching and you hit a shot from the trees you can kind of entertain or show off your skills a little bit," Leishman says. "It gets you engaged even if you’re going to miss the cut – you think these people might remember this if I pull it off. But I was in the trees a lot last year and you can’t even show off when no one is there. "As an artistic player, when you start drawing dodgy pictures with your shots, which I was doing, you start to think about it too much and I started getting technical. I started thinking science and that's never good for me. I was looking in the wrong places for solutions." Now, it's not like Leishman hadn't had some tough weeks in his career before. But in normal circumstances, time with coach Denis McDade would quickly fix any swing issues. Problem was McDade is based in Australia and the pandemic made travel to the U.S. very difficult indeed. Sure Leishman could have looked for a local coach but he's a fiercely loyal type of guy. He's had the same coach and same caddie since he burst on to the PGA TOUR and was Rookie of the Year in 2009. McDade is loyal also. Despite plenty of roadblocks he made his way to the U.S. in late October last year and hooked up with Leishman in Los Angeles during the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP. After watching the opening two rounds intently, he had the answer. "It was huge for him to come over and a massive commitment from him," Leishman says. "He has a family back home, but he was over here for six weeks and he got home and had to spend two weeks mandatory quarantine in a hotel room where you don’t get given a room key. He missed his birthday and his wedding anniversary during quarantine, so I am really appreciative and want to thank him. "In the end it wasn't really my swing at all. It was the way I was getting into the ball - I was standing too far away from it," Leishman reveals. "I was being technical on the tee; I was doing drills in the tournaments before every tee shot which I had never done before, and it was getting me too far away from the ball and my weight too far on the toes. When my weight is on the toes my balance is bad and I miss it right and left and it’s just a disaster – I was in a hiding to nothing. "So, it was something really simple and that's where it’s really good that I’ve been with Denis for 18 years. He knows my tendencies and he saw it straight away. If I had gone to someone else or jumped ship with him not being able to come over, a new coach may or may not be able to see that." The results were near instant. In his next start at The Masters, Leishman was T13, hitting the ball better than most of the field but only falling behind on the greens. Two weeks ago at the Sony Open in Hawaii, he finished T4, his first top 10 since the pandemic break. Now he gets another crack at Torrey Pines where he has a win, two runner ups and two further top 10s in his portfolio. Look out. The artist is back.

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Despite two majors, a World Golf Championship and a pair of beefed-up FedExCup Playoffs events scattered among the first 12 tournaments in Segment 4, the board illustrating the highest ownership percentages for the BMW Championship is covered in chalk. Only Patrick Cantlay at No. 9 starts the week outside the top 17 in the FedExCup standings. He’s 41st in points. (The top 21 in every edition of the Playoffs has advanced. The format since 2015 is the third iteration.) The dispersion qualifies as empirical data to characterize the depth on the PGA TOUR. While gamers are influenced by factors such as momentum, course history and course fit, there’s so much value to go around in a six-man format like PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf presented by SERVPRO that we’ve been able to sustain strength during the most challenging segment of the season. PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf presented by SERVPRO NOTE: Rob’s Rating refers to where our Fantasy Insider slotted a golfer in his Power Rankings (“PR”) and other preview material. Owned Rank  Player  Percentage  Rob’s Rating 1st  Justin Thomas  59.0%  PR1 2nd  Jon Rahm  49.5%  PR7 3rd  Paul Casey  42.6%  PR5 4th  Dustin Johnson (defending champion)  38.9%  PR3 5th  Jordan Spieth  34.9%  PR2 6th  Hideki Matsuyama  28.9%  PR4 7th  Justin Rose  25.8%  PR9 8th  Rickie Fowler  24.0%  PR6 9th  Patrick Cantlay  23.5%  PR14 10th  Brooks Koepka  22.9%  PR17 Golfers in the Power Rankings and outside the top 10 in most owned Power Ranking  Player  Owned Rank  Percentage 8  Patrick Reed  18th  12.8% 10  Henrik Stenson  16th  14.7% 11  Marc Leishman  11th  22.4% 12  Jason Day  13th  22.0% 13  Rory McIlroy  12th  22.3% 15  Matt Kuchar  14th  18.3% 16  Daniel Berger  21st  8.3% 18  Zach Johnson  26th  4.1% 19  Kevin Na  31st  2.0% 20  Bill Haas  47th  0.9% Wild Card  Louis Oosthuizen  19th  11.1% Other notables Owned Rank  Player  Percentage 15th  Sergio Garcia  17.2% 17th  Phil Mickelson  12.9% 22nd  Charley Hoffman  8.2% 24th  Jason Dufner  7.0% 25th  Keegan Bradley  4.4% 37th  Charl Schwartzel  1.2% PGA TOUR Fantasy One & Done presented by SERVPRO We gamers can be as disloyal as golf is fickle. In the results-based business of fantasy sports, the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately component varies more than any other, so our reaction to it is almost always directly proportional. This explains the support for Marc Leishman at No. 2 among One & Doners at the BMW Championship, he placed solo third at the Dell Technologies Championship. If you’ve submitted a pick for all of the first 38 events, latching onto a proven talent like that this late is akin to capturing a nugget when panning for gold. If you’re not convinced that his performance at TPC Boston persuaded probably all of his investors in its afterglow, consider that he missed the cut at THE NORTHERN TRUST and finished T39 in his only appearance at Conway Farms four years ago. Because the TOUR Championship concludes the season, next week’s final installment of ownership percentages will be the most compelling, but of the notables outside this week’s top 10 and projected to advance, only Justin Rose and Rickie Fowler spring off the screen as horses at East Lake. This is to say that, on average, gamers are playing aggressively for the now. Since the majority are in pursuit, that approach is spot on. Owned Rank  Player  Percentage 1st  Dustin Johnson (defending champion)  7.9% 2nd  Marc Leishman  7.7% 3rd  Justin Thomas  7.3% 4th  Jason Day  6.6% 5th  Paul Casey  5.8% 6th  Jordan Spieth  5.0% 7th  Jon Rahm  4.6% 8th  Patrick Cantlay  4.4% 9th  Henrik Stenson  4.3% 10th  Hideki Matsuyama  3.9% Other notables Owned Rank  Player  Percentage 13th  Justin Rose  2.6% 15th  Rickie Fowler  2.3% 16th  Brooks Koepka  2.2% 17th  Patrick Reed  2.1% 18th  Rory McIlroy  1.8% 19th  Charley Hoffman  1.6% 20th  Matt Kuchar  1.6% T21  Zach Johnson  1.3% 26th  Phil Mickelson  1.1%

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MCKINNEY, Texas — Something about the AT&T Byron Nelson brings out the best in K.H. Lee. He won it last year. He won it again Sunday. He beat a stout field with a final-round 63 that included two clutch putts in the last three holes and a two-putt birdie on the par-5 18th. Lee knew he would need it. In the group behind him, Jordan Spieth nipped at Lee’s lead throughout the back nine as other players faded. Lee figured Spieth would birdie the last hole — so he would need to, too. He coasted his 24-foot putt to 4 inches. Lee won by a shot at 26 under par. He joined Tom Watson, Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead as back-to-back winners of the AT&T Byron Nelson. He also moved up 88 spots on the FedExCup points list, from No. 116 to No. 28. Lee, who was born and educated in South Korea, said his second career victory modified his goals for the current season. He wants to make the cut in the PGA Championship, which he missed last year. He also said he intends to make the TOUR Championship, which he missed last season by one spot. “Hopefully this season will be better than last year,” he said. Lee proved to himself Sunday that he can achieve his goals. He wanted a solid front nine. He made five birdies. He wanted to keep his momentum on the back. He played it in 32 strokes, including an eagle on the par-5 12th. He had a tricky putt of 11 feet on the par-3 17th. He said a short prayer and buried it. He held off a number of tested players, most of them with more wins than he, on a day when low rounds were plentiful. The leaderboards around TPC Craig Ranch could barely register scores fast enough. Xander Schauffele and Hideki Matsuyama, who played early, ascended. Charl Schwartzel, Alex Noren (64), Matt Kuchar (64), Peter Malnati (66) and Christiaan Bezuidenhout (67) made charges as the blazing afternoon wore on. But those who started near the lead kept pace. Those players — Jordan Spieth, Sebastian Munoz, Justin Thomas and James Hahn — had their own opportunities. With the entire field clear through the front nine, 10 contestants had a realistic chance to win. Schauffele, who survived the cut on the number, shot a near-flawless 61 to lead briefly. Spieth tied Lee minutes later at the ninth with a birdie, his fourth in five holes, and when Spieth took three putts from 8 feet for a bogey on the next hole, Matsuyama birdied the 15th to replace him. The race was on. Then Lee eagled No. 12 to reach 24-under. Schauffele was done. Lee birdied the 13th. He was now the one to catch. No one could. “Last year I missed the cut at the PGA Championship,” Lee said. “So my first goal is next week play well, hopefully make the cut.” There are two other majors. Then the FedExCup Playoffs. “This helps,” Lee said. “This is really good.”

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