Tiger, Phil talk rivalry, friendship after practice

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — The wind finally relented Friday in the PGA Championship. Will Zalatoris never did. From the fairway or the rough, Zalatoris kept hitting the golf ball on the button at Southern Hills and took advantage of gentler conditions late in the afternoon for a 4-under 66, giving him a one-shot lead over Mito Pereira of Chile. The weekend will include Tiger Woods in his second straight major, a remarkable achievement in its own right. Playing on a battered right leg from his car crash 15 months ago, Woods was outside the cut line after a double bogey on the par-3 11th hole. He played the final seven holes with two birdies and a pair of 15-foot par saves for a 69 to make it with one shot to spare. But he’s 12 shots away from Zalatoris, the 25-year-old from Dallas who is built like a 1-iron and could probably hit one flush with his eyes closed. No doubt, Zalatoris and his entire side of the draw was helped when wind that gusted over 30 mph Friday morning laid down over the final two hours. Bubba Watson had a shot at the first 62 in PGA Championship history. He missed from just inside 25 feet on the 18th hole and had to settle for the 18th round of 63 in this major, and the third at Southern Hills. He joined Woods (2007) and Raymond Floyd (1982). Pereira also had a chance at 63, missing from 7 feet on the ninth hole to close his round. “I lucked out with the draw, for sure. We played 11 on without any wind,” Zalatoris said. “When I got out of position, I got the most out of it.” He opened with a shot from the rough that tumbled across the length of the green to 2 feet. He hit another through a gap in the trees to 7 feet. Not only did he have a bogey-free card, all five of his birdies were inside 8 feet. Zalatoris was at 9-under 131. And all Justin Thomas could do was watch from the couch of his rental home in Tulsa. Thomas did the heavy lifting in the morning, when the wind was raging and limbs were swaying. He dropped only one shot on his way to another 67 that set a daunting target for Rory McIlroy and everyone else in the afternoon. And now Thomas is three shots behind, with Watson right behind him. Of some two dozen players under par, only five came from the wave that played Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, the two windiest windows of the week. McIlroy got the good side of the draw and failed to seize on the moment. He didn’t make a birdie until the 13th hole. That was his only one in a round of 71 that left him five shots behind. Jordan Spieth, playing alongside McIlroy and Woods, finally got back to even par for the tournament until driving into the water on the 18th for a bogey and a 69. He was 10 shots behind in his bid to get the major keeping him from the career Grand Slam. The weekend will not include Masters champion Scottie Scheffler, who stumbled badly down the stretch and finished with a double bogey for a 75 to miss the cut — 4-over par — by two. Jon Rahm thought he might have worked his way back into the mix with a 69 to get to 2-over 142, and he was skeptical about the forecast of wind abating. “They said the wind was going to go down this afternoon. No, it’s not. It’s Oklahoma,” Rahm said. “It’s going to stay just as windy as we had.” If only. Watson had never scored better than 68 in his previous 49 rounds in the PGA Championship. And then he dropped nine birdies and goes into the weekend with a chance. Zalatoris and Pereira, who led the Korn Ferry Tour a year ago, will be in the final group Saturday, two players still searching for their first PGA TOUR title. Zalatoris has plenty of experience in the majors. He was runner-up in the Masters to Hideki Matsuyama in his debut in 2021. This is his eighth major, and he already has four top 10s. “When I took the sole lead on 12, I told my caddie, ‘Let’s enjoy this,’” Zalatoris said. “In my first Masters, I was runner-up and I wanted to enjoy it. I’ll take that same attitude.” Woods looked to be headed home after his double bogey on the par-3 11th, where he went from the high grass framing a stream to the bunker on the other side of the green. And then he saved par from a bunker on No. 12, hit wedge to 4 feet for birdie on the par-5 13th, saved par with another 15-footer on the next hole and hit his best shot on the 16th to 4 feet. “I had to go grind and go to work, and I did,” Woods said. “Hopefully, I can get a hot weekend and you never know.” Hot is a popular term in these parts, particularly with memories of 100-plus degrees in August when the PGA was last at Southern Hills in 2007 and Woods won by two. For Saturday, the temperatures were forecast for the low 60s.

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PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Argentina’s Martin Contini never had played in a PGA TOUR event before this week’s Honda Classic at PGA National. What better way to introduce himself to thousands of fans than to climb into the middle of the bleachers next to the 18th green at the Champion Course after hitting his second shot up there? Contini sat down, said hello, even waved to an NBC camera, the well-served fans loving every moment. He did so with a smile on his face, and why not? Having survived a longshot Monday qualifier – 130 players, four spots – just to get here, the 27-year-old is playing on house money. He shot 2-under 68 on Saturday, and finds himself tied for seventh heading into Sunday. Contini is one of a handful of dreamers and new faces who have made the most of a great opportunity this week at The Honda Classic, a $8 million PGA TOUR stop in its 50th year. Three of the four players who made it through qualifying at West Palm’s Banyon Cay are still playing, including left-hander Rick Lamb, who survived a 16-for-1 spot playoff early Tuesday morning. Lamb is 31, a pro for nearly a decade, and has played a season on the PGA TOUR, so he is not as caught up in the bright lights as some others. He has Korn Ferry Tour membership as a past champion (2016 LECOM Health Challenge, where he also was a Monday qualifier), but he is not expecting to get any starts from that. So he’ll chase the PGA TOUR and try to get into events via the Monday route. It may be easier hitting all the numbers in Saturday’s PowerBall. Lamb, who shot 70 and is in the middle of the pack (T-35) at 2-over 212, had to summon some heroics not once, but twice this week. First came the 16-for-1 playoff at Banyon Cay that spilled into Tuesday. The playoff began on a reachable par 5, and Lamb knew somebody was going to do something special. He wanted to make sure it was him. He hit driver and 4-iron to 40 feet and rolled in the eagle putt. Nobody matched it. On Friday, Lamb stood in the ninth fairway (his 36th hole) at PGA National’s Champion on the wrong side of the cut line. He needed birdie, hit an approach to 10 feet, and ran in the putt to finish at 2-over 142 and earn a weekend time. In golf, there is nothing given. “Pretty much every other professional athlete has a guaranteed contract, they know what they’re making (salary-wise),” Lamb said Saturday. “They just go out and try to perform their best. For us, there’s another layer of pressure that, if you don’t make the cut, you’re not making any money that week.” Andrew Kozan is a young local professional playing the Korn Ferry Tour who grew up playing PGA National (he was a member from age 7 to 15), attending The Honda with his parents each year. He, too, had planned to participate in Monday qualifying, but a phone call on Sunday night from tournament co-chair Gary Nicklaus would alter those plans. Kozan was given the tournament’s final sponsor exemption. Shortly after sun broke Saturday morning, Kozan, 23, stood on the 18th fairway, the only player on the golf course. Facing 258 yards into the green at the par-5 18th hole, he was given the option not to finish his second round in darkness Friday evening, so chose to return first thing Saturday morning. (The other two players in the group, who were missing the cut, decided to finish and depart). Kozan made a safe par to complete his second-round 75, making the cut on the number, then went off alone as the first player out in the third round, shooting 68. There would be only 13 scores all day in the 60s. He had his feet up before lunch, which is one effective way to climb the leaderboard at Honda. The Champion Course took its pound of flesh on Saturday, the field averaging more than two shots over par. The Bear Trap alone (holes 15-17) accounted for 13 double bogeys and five “others.” By day’s end, Kozan was inside the top 20, and with a good round on Sunday, he can collect his largest paycheck as a professional. (Previously, it was the $30,000 he earned at Korn Ferry Q-School. How long has Kozan pictured himself inside the ropes, playing the Honda? “Every day since I was probably 7,” he said. “Honda’s in what, February, March? They started putting the stands up in December. You always want to go out and play as close to the event as you can, putt with the stands up, just to feel like you’re playing the event. I mean … it’s a dream come true this week.” Same for Contini. He likely has the best shot from the Dreamer Division to potentially make something big happen on Sunday. “The cut was great, but I didn’t want it to stop there, so I’m going to try to reach the top 5 tomorrow,” he said. Such a finish (any top 10) would get Contini into the PGA TOUR’s Puerto Rico Open next week. Walking along with him on Saturday he had his brother and his uncle, who hopped on a plane once Contini surprised them with a phone call telling them he had earned his way into the event. Contini treated his relatives to a wild finish at 18. He drove it into the left rough, 250 yards from the flagstick. With water short and right, he tried to get his second shot somewhere in or around the left greenside bunker. But the ball jumped on him, flying midway into the stands like a home run ball the Florida Marlins would envy. He went into the stands to fetch it, his ball resting under a spectator’s feet in the middle of the crowd. What to do? He took a seat next to the fan. It was pure fun up there. “I should go find him and give him the ball,” Contini said after he had signed his scorecard. “I’m going to do that.” So much at stake in the final round. At Honda, it will be about more than the man who will leave with the trophy on Sunday. Contini was asked what a high finish would mean to him. After all, with the Korn Ferry Tour on a three-week hiatus, he expected to be off this week, and getting some rest. He smiled. “It would mean the world,” he said.

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NICHOLASVILLE, Kentucky – He likes the name, even though he wasn’t the one who came up with it. And Troy Merritt sure likes the Mollie putter made by Yes! he put back in his bag last week – particularly after making eight birdies and an eagle in shooting 62 on Thursday at the Barbasol Championship. “I did not name the putter, but she is called Mollie,” Merritt said with a grin. “You should treat her with respect. … It’s a very appropriate name. It was my grandparents’ first dog when I was a kid, so Mollie is a good name for it.” The round of 10 under, which was one shy of his career low, gave Merritt a three-stroke lead over Andres Romero, Billy Horschel and Joel Dahmen. He hit 16 of 18 greens, had just 24 putts thanks to Mollie and ended the day ranked first in Strokes Gained: Total. Merritt said he’d been using his Mollie for the better part of the last three years. But he accidently left it at home when he went to the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am earlier this year, and the back-up produced a tie for eighth. “So I kept that putter in the bag until last week,” Merritt said. When putts don’t fall, though, it’s time for a change – and that’s what had been happening this summer. As the season winds down, the pressure mounts, too. Merritt ranks 131st in the FedExCup with only the top 125 locking up FedExCup Playoff spots and their playing privileges for 2018-19. “I was kind of losing my comfort with it,” Merritt said. “So I just went back to Old Trusty. It took maybe five, ten minutes to get the hang of looking at it on the ground again, and I rolled it well last week I rolled it well today.” Merritt pulled away from the pack with a torrid stretch as he closed out the front nine, his second of the day. He made a 34-footer for eagle at the sixth hole that gave him the lead, then followed with birdie putts of 10 and 3 feet on the next two holes. “It was kind of fun to see that (eagle) go in,” Merritt said. With a weather forecast that calls for rain each of the next three days, Merritt acknowledged it was important to get a good round under his belt. Plus, the FedExCup points are looming large with just five weeks left before the FedExCup Playoffs begin. “You have to take advantage of this one,” Merritt said. “We play for fewer points this week. Guys are really battling to keep their cards. It’s hard to make a move up the points list this week. You’ve got to do your best to get a Top 5, Top 10 finish just to try to advance up on that pints list. “To do that, you have to play well. You have to set that mindset: I’ve got to go out there and contend to win this thing, and hopefully the shots and the putts fall.” NOTABLES Eleven years ago, Andres Romero nearly won The Open Championship at Carnoustie. He fired a final-round 67 that included a phenomenal 10 birdies on a golf course generally regarded as the most difficult in The Open rota and held a two-shot lead when he teed off on the 17th hole. But Romero’s hopes were dashed when his second shot careened off the wall of the Barry Burn and landed out of bounds on the way to a double bogey. After a bogey on the 18th hole, the young Argentine finished one shot out of the playoff that Padraig Harrington won. But that was then, and this is now. While The Open returns to Carnoustie, Romero is playing at the Barbasol Championship, hoping to get his TOUR card back. And he’s off to a great start with a 65 that left him three shots off the lead held by Troy Merritt. “I’m really happy to be here and to have a good round here,â€� Romero said through an interpreter. “Of course I’m thinking about The Open, and especially because it’s in Carnoustie. Eleven years ago was such an incredible time for me. It was a tournament that pushed me over to the PGA TOUR, so it’s really huge for me. But happy to be here and enjoying it.â€� Brittany Lincicome said she was actually calmer than she thought she would be — particularly after that first drive found the fairway on Thursday. The sixth woman to ever play on the PGA TOUR went on to shoot a 78 that would have been better had it not been for miscues on a pair of par 3s. One shot found the water and led to a double bogey while another settled into an impossible lie over the green en route to a triple. The eight-time LPGA champ played her other 16 holes in 1 over, though, and pronounced herself “pretty happy with my game overall.â€� As for having fun? Well, the woman with the ever-present smile said she “nailed that part pretty well.â€� The gallery was clearly supportive, as were her playing partners, Conrad Shindler and Sam Ryder, who “really made me feel at home,â€� Lincicome said. While her hopes of becoming the first woman to make the cut in a TOUR event since Babe Didrickson Zaharias at the 1945 Phoenix Open are likely out the window, Lincicome is looking forward to Friday’s second round. “I heard there is some rain coming through which is a little bit of a depressing thing,â€� she said. “I’ll probably still be nervous. Obviously nowhere near making the cut, but still just being inside the ropes with the guys is a cool feeling, a different feeling. I’m sure I’ll be super nervous as well.â€� Jay Don Blake was flying back to St. George, Utah, on Monday after playing in the Constellation SENIOR PLAYERS Championship when he got a phone call from PGA TOUR headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Turns out, he had made the field for the Barbasol Championship, which would be his first TOUR event since the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion – and more importantly, the 499th of his career. So he and his wife, Marcie, who has caddied for the 59-year-old for the past decade, had to decide whether to go to Kentucky or try to qualify for the Senior British Open. “I said, you know what? I’m trying to get 500 PGA TOUR starts,â€� Blake said. “So we decided to come here and have some fun and give it a try.â€� Although he admitted he didn’t know a lot of the players in the field, Blake, who shot a solid 70, got to play with someone from his home town, Zac Blair, on Thursday. He also saw Aaron Baddeley on the range and went over to hit balls next to him earlier in the week. “I remember him from when he just kind of started coming out, and he was a young superstar kid and I really liked him. … It’s nice to come out here and see the guys again.â€� Billy Horschel was heading to the first tee on Thursday when he saw John Peterson talking with several reporters. “How’s retirement?â€� Horschel yelled. Peterson just grinned. He had thought his season was over until the Web.com Tour Finals after falling .586 of a point shy of satisfying his medical exemption at A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier to earn conditional status for the rest of the season. And he said if he didn’t get his card at the Finals he was giving up the game. But Peterson got into the Barbasol Championship as an alternate and opened with a 67 that left him tied for 13th. It was an abrupt change of plans for Peterson who was on Figure Eight Island outside of Wilmington, North Carolina, on a family vacation when he found out he had made the field. “I brought my swimsuit and my sunscreen and a couple of cases of beer,â€� Peterson said. He didn’t have his golf clothes or his clubs, though. So Peterson’s mother got his bag and flew from Fort Worth to Kentucky. So far, it’s been worth the trip. “For some reason I play good when I have to and I’ve done that throughout my life.â€� And win on Sunday would give Peterson his TOUR card back and a two-year exemption and a top-10 would get him in the RBC Canadian Open to continue the quest. QUOTABLES She was just a great sport out there. She had a smile on her face all day. I know she’s a little disappointed. She had a couple big numbers, but if she rolled a couple putts in she could have been right around par or couple under.Age is a number obviously. I keep thinking I’m going to be 60 here in a couple of months and that number seems a little old but then I don’t feel old. I don’t feel it. And the golf ball doesn’t know how old I am.It’s building. It can go higher, that’s for sure. But it feels pretty good. I’ve felt like since April I’ve played some pretty good golf. SUPERLATIVES Lowest Round: Troy Merritt shot a 10-under 62. Longest Drive: Tom Lovelady hit a drive of 373 yards on the 13th hole. Hardest hole: The par 3 seventh hole played to an average of 3.083 with 10 birdies, 89 pars, 28 bogeys, 2 double bogeys and 3 “others.â€� Easiest hole: The par-5 second hole played to an average of 4.364 with 6 eagles, 78 birdies, 43 pars, 4 bogeys and 1 double  bogey. SHOT OF THE DAY

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