Tiger is getting closer and closer to a win

The field for next week’s PGA Championship was announced Monday, and the list featured both Tiger Woods and the defending champion, Phil Mickelson. Woods and Mickelson are among the 17 PGA champions in the field for the year’s second major, which will be played May 19-22 at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The final spot in the PGA Championship is being held for the winner of the AT&T Byron Nelson, which begins Thursday. Woods, who made his return to competitive golf at last month’s Masters, played a practice round at Southern Hills on April 28. He walked 18 holes with the club’s head pro, Cary Cozby, on the bag. Cozby described the trip as “all business” and predicted that Woods would play the PGA, telling Golf Oklahoma, “Everything is so smooth with him now. His rhythm is great, he hit it straight and plenty far, he pitched and putted it great. I know guys can hit it past him now, but watching him work was amazing. He’s so meticulous, detailed and immersed in what he’s doing. He was very inquisitive on lines and the best angles.” Woods is coming off a 47th-place finish at the Masters, where he impressed with an opening 71 in his first competitive round since the February 2021 car accident that nearly resulted in the amputation of his right leg. Woods grew visibly fatigued as the week wore on, however, and only committed to The Open in July as he left Augusta National. Southern Hills was the site of Woods’ win in the 2007 PGA, the 13th of his 15 major triumphs. “I don’t quite have the endurance that I would like to have had, but as of a few weeks ago, didn’t even know if I was going to play in this event,” he said after his final round at Augusta National. “To go from that to here, we’re excited about the prospects of the future, about training, about getting into that gym and doing some other stuff to get my leg stronger, which we haven’t been able to do because it needed more time to heal. I think it needs a couple more days to heal after this, but we’ll get back after it, and we’ll get into it.” Mickelson is the PGA’s defending champion but has not appeared in a tournament since February.

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Will Zalatoris didn’t just win his first PGA TOUR title Sunday at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. He also proved that sticking to a simple blueprint can breed success. Committing to the same practice routine for three years turned Zalatoris’ putting from a liability to an asset, as proven by the series of clutch putts he holed on the final holes of his victory at TPC Southwind. The most important may have been the 10-footer for par on the 72nd hole, the one that led him to exclaim, “What are they going to say now!?” and that was ultimately necessary for him to get in a playoff with Sepp Straka. Zalatoris, a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and a big Warriors fan, said his Stephen Curry-inspired retort was directed at all who have criticized his putting over the years. Zalatoris has been working with Josh Gregory, a Dallas-based performance and short-game coach, for a little more than three years. Gregory, the head coach at Augusta State when it won back-to-back NCAA men’s golf titles, develops drills and games that help his PGA TOUR clients improve around the greens. It was Gregory who devised the routine that helped Zalatoris turn his putting around. “He was in a bad place with his putting,” Gregory said, recalling their early days together. “He was lost. But all he needed was simplicity in what he was working on, and a blueprint of how to get better.” Gregory gave Zalatoris that blueprint, and together they’ve been following it ever since. The practice sessions aren’t complicated, Gregory said, and they only take between 20 minutes and one hour. Although short in duration, the sessions are efficient, focused, and maybe most importantly, consistent. They begin with short, straight putts, using a putting mirror and string line to work on his setup and to ensure his putts are starting on the proper line. They look to identify any issues with his grip, foot pressure, alignment, and shoulder line. Then they play an 18-hole putting round on the green, selecting putts of different distances and slopes, scoring the game using a Strokes Gained system. This helps to engage Zalatoris’ competitive side, while also working on crucial aspects of putting, such as speed control and green reading. “That’s why he’s persevered through all the criticism and the bad times; he does the same thing all the time,” Gregory said of Zalatoris. “We do the same drills every day. Regardless of whether he shoots 75 or 65, we’re doing the same thing.” During one of these practice sessions at the PGA Championship, Zalatoris and Gregory developed a grip trick, or checkpoint, to ensure he addresses his putts properly. Zalatoris’ putter is built specifically to fit his unique putting style and grip. He uses a 42.5-inch Scotty Cameron Circle T Phantom X T-11 proto putter, which is equipped with a long SuperStroke Traxion Tour grip. Coincidentally, the “e” in the SuperStroke logo on the grip provides the perfect reference point for Zalatoris. “(He adjusted) where his hand placement is at the PGA Championship at Southern Hills,” Gregory said. “We had done a ton of work before that and identified some areas with his setup and his tilt; we’re always trying to get him (leaning) more left because he tends to tilt back with his grip on the SuperStroke. “When he’s putting really well, you can’t see any of the ‘e’ in ‘SuperStroke.’ He covers it up with his hand. So I want his bottom finger a quarter of an inch below the ‘e.’ When he gets in trouble, his right hand gets too high on the putter, so you can see the bottom of the ‘e.” Then when his hand gets too high, he can’t control the putter face as well, and he gets too inside. The lower he gets to the ground, he can feel the weight of the putter better and feel like he’s taking it straighter back. It’s just a checkpoint we go through every day.” The PGA Championship is also where he made big strides because of the confidence-inspiring putts he made on the final two holes of regulation to get into a playoff with Justin Thomas. Zalatoris holed 8-footers on those final two holes, and even though Thomas won the playoff, those clutch makes were huge for Zalatoris. “It’s like Southern Hills was the turning point,” Gregory said. “After he made those putts on 17 and 18, he called me that night, and he goes, ‘I finally believe I’m one of the best players in the world.’ Those two putts have probably changed his putting stroke more than anything that we do.” Despite finally breaking through last week in Memphis, Zalatoris and Gregory were on the practice green Tuesday at the BMW Championship in Delaware, with a putting mirror and a string line setup at his practice station. “He’s going to do the same thing every day,” Gregory said. “Even after winning, we did the exact same drills today. We’ll do the exact same drills tomorrow. Our putting routine before and after the rounds is almost down to a ball count. It’s that exact. He’s wired like I am. I’m a super structured guy when it comes to practice. He’s the same way, that’s why we hit it off.” To be fair, the Tuesday practice session may have taken a few extra minutes than normal. Usually, Zalatoris doesn’t have fellow PGA TOUR players and caddies approaching him every few minutes for celebratory high fives and hugs after a victory. They were welcome interruptions, which Zalatoris embraced with smiles, appreciation, and a wry jab here and there to keep it light. Yet, they were interruptions nonetheless to a blueprint that Gregory and Zalatoris developed years ago.

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CROMWELL, Conn. – Paul Casey woke up Sunday morning with a four-shot lead and a stiff neck. Eventually, both would evaporate during a disappointing final round at the Travelers Championship. Casey, seeking his second PGA TOUR win of the season, carded a 2-over 72 that dropped him into a four-way tie for second behind winner Bubba Watson, who rallied from six back with a 63 to claim his third career Travelers title. Casey’s score tied for the worst score among the top 41 players on the leaderboard. Casey, who also lost to Watson in a playoff at TPC River Highlands in 2015, spent the entire round Sunday fighting his swing. With a chance to still win a tournament late in the day, the swing issues were clearly evident when he pulled an 8-iron at the par-3 16th to set up a crippling bogey, then found the water on the right with his tee shot at the 17th for another bogey. “Just about summed up how I felt about my golf swing,� Casey said. “All credit to Bubba – 63 is a great round of golf, in what I felt were very tricky conditions. “Just frustrating I didn’t have more. Didn’t have a comfortable swing to go out there and do something with.� Casey said his neck was tight after a poor night’s sleep and that it was a “struggle warming up.� But he noted that it didn’t bother him the entire round, eventually loosening up a little. It was evident, though, that his swing on Sunday was not the same as the first three days when he rolled out to a four-shot advantage, tying the tournament record for biggest 54-hole lead. The day before, Casey shot a third-round 62 in which he hit all 18 greens in regulation. But from the very first tee shot Sunday, Casey could tell that he was off. He ultimately birdied the hole, but it was his only birdie of the final round. He hit just 10 of 18 greens Sunday. “It was awful,� Casey said. “First few holes were not good. You know, just wiping across it. Either pulling it or flaring it right. That’s difficult to play with on benign conditions – and extremely difficult to play with when it’s slightly windy like it was today. … “I fought as hard as I could, which I’m proud of. Not many times you put me on a golf course and I only make one birdie.� Casey was asked if the sting of not sealing the deal Sunday was tempered by his win earlier in the season at the Valspar Championship. That victory ended a nine-year drought on the PGA TOUR after his first TOUR win in 2009 at the Houston Open. He said getting into position to win again has only increased his appetite. He has a heavy schedule the rest of the PGA TOUR season, and then hopes to follow that with an appearance at the Ryder Cup. “This is only going to be more fuel,� he said. “It’s annoying and I’m frustrated by it. But I feel very good about it … injury-free and excited for the rest of the season. “Ask me again in November, and if I don’t have another victory, then I will be disappointed. This is merely kind of posturing for what could be a very good climax.�

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