Tiger Woods ‘very happy with most of the team’ at Hero World Challenge

In the final round of the 2017 CIMB Classic, self-described “late-bloomerâ€� Pat Perez, 41, shoots a 3-under-par 69 for a four-shot victory over Keegan Bradley (67) at TPC Kuala Lumpur. Meanwhile, newly minted Rookie of the Year Xander Schauffele (72) runs out of gas but still ties Sung Kang for third, suggesting last season was no fluke.   Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Perez, coming off his first-ever appearance in the TOUR Championship, kept rolling with his second victory in just over 12 months, and his third overall. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Perez won’t go changing. The winner cited his team, and their hard work, as a key to victory. He said the greens at TPC Kuala Lumpur reminded him of the greens when he won the OHL Classic at Mayakoba last November, and emphasized how much fun he’s having. Working out and eating right? Nah. Although he was pretty sure he lost a few pounds in the sweltering heat some 200 miles from the equator. Perez also punched his ticket to the Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, Maui. As a late-bloomer Perez has benefited from hard-won maturity, but he is still young enough to enjoy the perks of the job. One of his favorites from CIMB week, he said, is the air-conditioned, fast-moving police escort through thick city traffic between the hotel and the golf course. “It’s actually cool because I’ve probably been to this course 50 times and I’ve never gone the same direction ever to get there or back,â€� Perez said. “So, I get to see kind of the whole city every time we go there or back, so it seems pretty cool. I haven’t really ventured outside, but it’s just fun to come here. It’s a nice change to come here.â€� 2. Keegan Bradley is rejoining the party. Bradley, 31, and his wife, Jillian, are expecting their first child, Nov. 18. Meanwhile, it seems like only a matter of time before they’re celebrating Keegan’s career rebirth with a win, even if Perez prevented that from happening with his stellar play at TPC Kuala Lumpur. “For the last two days, every time I made a birdie, he did, too,â€� Bradley said after finishing second at 20 under. “I played really well this weekend.â€� His second-place finish was his best result since a runner-up at the 2014 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard. Bradley made three straight trips to the TOUR Championship from 2011-2013, barely missed out the next year (33rd in the FedExCup), then started sliding. He was 60th in 2015, 103rd in 2016. Last season things finally started looking up again as Bradley came to the BMW Championship with a chance to play his way to East Lake and the TOUR Championship for the first time since 2013. He didn’t quite get there, finishing the season 47th in the FedExCup, but he’s on the verge. “I’m really proud of this week,â€� he said. 3. The heat took a toll. Two-time defending champion Justin Thomas admitted he was already “a little bit tiredâ€� when he got to hot Malaysia for his eighth tournament in a span of 10 weeks. Perhaps predictably, Thomas never got much going until shooting a 5-under 66 in the last round to finish T17 at 11 under par. In his first start since becoming the first rookie to win the TOUR Championship, Xander Schauffele went the opposite direction, starting well but finishing poorly. After shooting an even-par 72, Schauffele said, “Maybe next year I can try some other things to stay fresh.â€� It was only 90 degrees at its hottest for the final round, but the humidity wrapped everyone up a stifling blanket. “I was just hoping to kind of stay alive,â€� Perez said. Did he feel cooler once he’d won? “No,â€� he said. “I’m still fighting for my life.â€� 4. Schauffele is here to stay. Aside from Boise State beating his favored alma mater, San Diego State, in a Mountain West football game over the weekend, the newly minted Rookie of the Year didn’t have much to complain about. Even with an even-par72 in the final round, he tied for third in his first CIMB. What’s more, he had gotten to experience a new culture. “I like the food, personally,â€� he said. “I know some guys don’t, but I do.â€� Schauffele was born in La Jolla, California, but his father is half French, half German, and his mother is Taiwanese but grew up in Japan. It was somewhat surprising, then, to hear Xander admit he hadn’t traveled much and was looking forward to the PGA TOUR’s three-week Asian swing, which continues this week with THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES in Seoul, South Korea. “I’m definitely looking forward to coming back,â€� Schauffele said of the CIMB and Malaysia. 5. Lahiri’s top-10 more bitter than sweet. Anirban Lahiri had an outside chance at the CIMB, but shot only a 1-under 71 in the final round. He tied for 10th, but made no pretense of being satisfied with the result. “You make it sound so much nicer than it feels,â€� he said, when he was asked if it was something he could be proud of. “No, I’m very disappointed with the way I played today. There were a couple technical things I was working out. I think I went out on the golf course carrying that. I think my mindset wasn’t where it needed to be, so that’s another lesson learned the hard way.â€� Last year, Lahiri entered the final round of the CIMB with a four-shot lead. Justin Thomas won. This year, Lahiri was trying to tame a suddenly wayward driver. “This has been one of my worst driving weeks all year,â€� he said. “I really had no control with the driver.â€� Lahiri hit 71.43 percent of the fairways, which was T25 in the field. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Greens in regulation continues to be one of the most telling stats in golf. Perez’s 86.11 percent GIR number was tied for first in the field with Hideki Matsuyama (T5). Perez also ranked T13 in driving accuracy and T9 in putts. 2. A week after winning the Safeway Open, Brendan Steele finished T13 at the CIMB and leads the FedExCup standings. 3. Paul Casey, who shot a final-round 65 to tie for seventh, his best result in four starts at the CIMB, opened with a 77 before roaring back with a second-round 63. Grayson Murray (82-74-64-73) saw an even more extreme fluctuation of 18 shots between his first and third rounds. 4. Whee Kim aced the 208-yard, par-3 15th hole in the third round to win a BMW 740 Le xDrive Hybrid. It marked the fourth straight year in which a player has made an ace at the CIMB. 5. Justin Thomas, who last season became the first since Jimmy Walker in 2014 to rank inside the top 10 in the FedExCup standings every week of a single season, picked up 48 FedExCup points for his T17 at the CIMB. He is tied for 33rd in this season’s race for the FedExCup. TOP 3 VIDEOS 1. Kim aces and poses 2. JT’s brilliant eagle 3. Defiant Perez not changing

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Jason Day, Jordan Spieth, Matt Jones, Jonas Blixt, Cameron Smith – these were the PGA TOUR winners young Australian Cameron Davis upstaged with a blistering final round at the Australian Open. Davis, who played his rookie season on the MacKenzie Tour – PGA TOUR Canada this year but failed to fire a shot, proved his big game acumen with a 7-under 64 in high winds at The Australian Golf Club. His 11-under total was enough to join the likes of Gene Sarazen, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tom Watson, Greg Norman, Rory McIlroy and Spieth as winners of the Stonehaven Cup. While he sat on cloud nine after winning the fifth oldest national championship in the history of golf, Davis immediately started to shift his focus to final stage of Web.Com Tour Q-School set for a week’s time. He hopes to get status there but also has higher aspirations. The 6-foot, 4-inch Davis played in the OHL Classic at Mayakoba last season and was T15 in his only PGA TOUR event but was unable to keep up the form in Canada, finishing 76th on the order of merit. He’s hopeful this win might encourage a few tournament directors to extend invitations to TOUR events. “I always felt like if I play my very best golf I’d be able to compete (on the PGA TOUR),� the 22-year-old Davis said. “I’m going to try my best to come down from the excitement I’ve obviously got after winning this and then it’s another big week that we’ve got to get on top of. “I feel like I’m playing well obviously at the moment, so I’m feeling pretty good going into final stage, but it’s a whole different week, whole different golf course. “We’ve got to go back to work, start mapping the golf courses, get there early, just treat it like another week and you’ve got to start from scratch again.� For Day, it was a gut-wrenching finish to a tough year. Holding the 54-hole lead the 10-time PGA TOUR winner was the prohibitive favorite but shot a dismal 73 to drop to fifth. It’s the first time since 2012 he’s failed to have a win anywhere in the world and sends him into 2018 trying to find his feet once more. “It’s obviously a little bit disappointing to come out and not finish it, but I’ve just got to kind of look back on it and see what I need to do for next time, because you can’t be perfect all the time and I played three terrific rounds and I just didn’t put it together on Sunday,� Day said. “When you hold the lead and when everyone is expecting you to win, there’s a bit of added pressure. I was on the wrong side of momentum and if I could just get on the right side of momentum it may have been a different outcome.� Jones bogeyed four of his first six holes Sunday before storming back with seven birdies. Sadly he needed eight. Blixt had a 12-footer on the last to force a playoff only to leave it short. Their consolation was a berth in the 2018 Open Championship at Carnoustie along with Davis. Smith bogeyed the 13th and 15th holes down the stretch to surrender his chances. And the defending champion Spieth actually played nicely for a 67, moving him into eighth place and feeling better as he heads to the Hero World Challenge. Spieth failed to make many putts of importance throughout the week despite some impressive ball-striking. But with coach Cam McCormick as acting caddie while Michael Greller spends time with his new child the Texan is hopeful the learning curve from Sydney will be easier at Albany. “I’m playing beautifully, the putter felt great today, I found a nice trigger and I was getting through my putts a lot better than I was at the beginning of the week, and had that happened the whole week, I would definitely have been in contention,� Spieth said. “The game feels good, so I’ll get in there and having Cam see pretty much all the swings that I hit on the range and on the golf course, and all the putts, I have that kind of extra confidence that I know where things are throughout the swing and, so it should be easy, I shouldn’t have too many questions next week, which will be nice.�

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