Tournament host Tiger Woods shot a 73 on Friday that left him well back of the leaders through 36 holes of the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club.
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Tiger Woods got off to a bad start Friday and is closer to the cut line than the leaders at the Farmers Insurance Open. Can he make a rally?
BLAINE, Minn. – Cameron Champ isn’t scared of the bright lights of final-round contention on the PGA TOUR. The Texas A&M alum has won three times on TOUR, most recently at the 2021 3M Open, a title he’s set to defend this week at TPC Twin Cities. Champ, 27, has other matters at hand as he readies to compete in Minnesota. He stands No. 157 on the FedExCup standings with three events remaining in the regular season, currently on the outside looking in regarding a spot in the FedExCup Playoffs. The top-125 upon the conclusion of the regular season-ending Wyndham Championship will earn Playoffs berths. Champ suffered a wrist injury last fall and has struggled to find contention upon returning to competition in January. He recorded back-to-back top-10 finishes this spring at the Masters Tournament and Mexico Open at Vidanta, but he commences his 3M Open title defense on a string of five consecutive missed cuts. The California native, well regarded as one of the game’s longest hitters, leads the TOUR this season in driving distance and is No. 9 in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee. He ranks No. 181 for the season in Strokes Gained: Putting, as well as No. 115 in greens in regulation, but he believes he is turning a corner, while admitting he would understand those who meet this belief with skepticism. “If you want to look at my stats and how I’ve been playing, you would think I’m crazy,” Champ said. “I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life mixed in with me breaking my wrist in the fall. That was a whole unknown for quite a while, if it was going to be serious or if it was not serious. Luckily, it wasn’t too serious.” Champ spoke of the challenges of finding the proper work-life balance, investing adequate time in both his relationships and his craft. Feeling good about his personal life allows him to find the proper head space, he said, which in turn allows him to excel on the course. “When things are going good back home, it just calms you down, it makes you not have to stress about things,” Champ said. “You can just enjoy yourself, and out here it just gives me that extra drive and force to just want to continue to get better. The last 10 months were pretty rough for me personally, honestly. I had to get over a lot of things and get through some things, but like I said, now we’re on the up and up and we’re just going to get after it.” He’ll aim to channel that perspective into a late-season push for the Playoffs. Here’s a look at five players outside the top-125 on the FedExCup standings with three events remaining in the Regular Season – after the 3M Open, the TOUR proceeds to next week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit before the Wyndham Championship. Stephan Jaeger currently holds the all-important No. 125 spot with 318 points. Rickie Fowler (No. 129) Starts: 18 Cuts made: 11 Top-25 finishes: 3 Best finish: T3, THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT FedExCup points: 309 Fowler currently trails the No. 125 position by nine points, the equivalent of a solo 49th place-finish or better. Regardless of whether he qualifies for the Playoffs, the five-time TOUR winner is fully exempt through 2023 via the tournament winner category. He’ll aim to make amends, though, for a streak of 11 consecutive FedExCup Playoffs appearances, which ended last season after finishing No. 134 on the season-long standings. The Oklahoma State alum enters the 3M Open having made five cuts in his last six starts, including a T23 at the PGA Championship. Fowler was seen in a jovial mood early-week, chatting with Wesley Bryan as he practiced bunker shots on a windy Tuesday, and he’ll aim to carry those vibes into competition days at TPC Twin Cities. Martin Trainer (No. 139) Starts: 28 Cuts made: 10 Top-25 finishes: 3 Best finish: T5, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open FedExCup points: 267 Trainer currently trails the No. 125 position by 51 points, the equivalent of a solo 17th-place finish or better. His three top-25 finishes this season are all T11 or better, demonstrating a propensity for taking advantage of his hot weeks, and he’ll aim to produce that type of week down the final stretch of the regular season. The University of South California alum won the 2019 Puerto Rico Open as a rookie to earn a two-year TOUR exemption, which was extended a year due to COVID-19. Finishing outside the top-125 would require a return to the Korn Ferry Tour Finals (he would maintain some TOUR status regardless as a past champion), and he admitted at the Mexico Open at Vidanta (T11) that the top-125 bubble was very much on his mind as the season progressed. “It’s always on my mind, unfortunately,” Trainer said at the time. “It’s pretty unhealthy, actually. You think about it, but ultimately you do your best and just see what happens.” Harry Higgs (No. 142) Starts: 27 Cuts made: 12 Top-25 finishes: 3 Best finish: T9, THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT FedExCup points: 257 Higgs trails the No. 125 position by 61 points, the equivalent of a two-way T12 or better. The affable Kansas City native is coming off a T11 finish at the Barracuda Championship, his best finish of the 2022 calendar year. He also finished T14 at the Masters. Higgs, 30, won the 2019 Price Cutter Charity Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour to cement his first TOUR card, and he found a quick knack for the TOUR level of competition, finishing top-70 on the FedExCup in each of his first two TOUR seasons. He doesn’t shy away from the knowledge that he’s fighting for his job over the closing stretch of the regular season, and he looks forward to putting his game to the test under the circumstances. “There comes a time when talk is cheap, and now you’re going to have to show it,” Higgs said at the Barracuda Championship. “More so to myself; I don’t really care to show it to anybody else. I feel like I’m way better than the position that I’m in, but that’s also the beauty of the game.” Cameron Champ (No. 157) Starts: 16 Cuts made: 6 Top-25 finishes: 2 Best finish: T6, Masters Tournament FedExCup points: 200 Champ trails the No. 125 position by 118 points, the equivalent of a two-way T4 or better. If he fails to gain Playoffs entry, though, he will remain fully exempt on the 2022-23 PGA TOUR due to his two-year tournament winner exemption. He’s confident he can make a push toward the Playoffs this week. “This is just one of those places where it doesn’t matter if I play good or bad, I’m just very comfortable with it,” Champ said of TPC Twin Cities. Scott Gutschewski (No. 179) Starts: 20 Cuts made: 7 Top-25 finishes: 2 Best finish: 5th, Barracuda Championship FedExCup points: 136 Gutschewski trails the No. 125 position by 182 points, the equivalent of a two-way T3 or better. The 45-year-old is trending upward, though, having jumped from No. 204 to No. 179 in the standings after a career-best, solo fifth place finish at last week’s Barracuda Championship. The Barracuda finish assured Gutschewski, a father of four, a top-200 position on the FedExCup, which ensures a spot in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals at minimum (another opportunity to regain TOUR status). Across the next three weeks, he’ll set his sights higher, on either a top-125 spot – to gain a FedExCup Playoffs berth and fully exempt 2022-23 TOUR status – or a top-150 position to ensure conditional TOUR status next season.
In recent months, Bubba Watson, Tony Finau and Louis Oosthuizen have popularized Ping “Blueprint Forged� prototype irons, which are made with compact profiles, thin toplines and thin soles. Oosthuizen, for his part, won the 2018 South Africa Open using the new forged irons. Many thought the TOUR prototype irons were hollow-bodied due to a screw in the toe, however, PGATOUR.COM since learned that the screw is simply to add additional weight. The Blueprint Forged irons, as of now, are a TOUR-only offering, meaning they are not available at retail. While Ping still has not confirmed that the irons coming to retail, a new iron spotted at the 2019 Honda Classic on Monday could suggest they may be available to the public sometime in the future. Seamus Power, who most recently was using a set of Ping iBlades, showed up on Monday of the Honda Classic with Ping Blueprint Forged irons that have a red dot on the back cavities. These differ from the dot-less irons that Watson, Oosthuizen and Finau have used in PGA TOUR competition. A Ping representative confirmed they are different heads than the previously seen prototypes. The red dots on Power’s irons suggest these iron heads are being made under the dot system, which uses different color dots to identify different lie angles on retail products. Power confirmed his irons are 1-degree flat.
