Tiger Woods cards 2-under 69 in Round 1 at The Genesis Invitational

SANDWICH, England – While red numbers weren’t rare during the opening to The 149th Open, Royal St. George’s still claimed some big names with U.S. Open champion Jon Rahm and big-hitting Bryson DeChambeau among those to struggle. RELATED: Leaderboard | Jon Rahm leads the list of links specialists | Club foot reason for Jon Rahm’s TOUR-winning short swing Rahm and DeChambeau battled away to 1-over 71s on Thursday morning, a distant seven shots adrift of early pace-setter Louis Oosthuizen. Spaniard Rahm was the pre-tournament favorite after his impressive victory at Torrey Pines last month, but he lost his way on the ninth hole when he failed to escape from a fairway bunker on the first attempt and made a double bogey. Playing with Oosthuizen, Rahm felt like his wheels were spinning despite making plenty of grinding pars, until a final hole birdie gave him something to smile about. DeChambeau couldn’t get his radar adjusted off the tee. He managed four birdies on the round but hit the same number of fairways in regulation meaning he was hamstrung by five bogeys. “The driver sucks. It’s not a good face for me and we’re still trying to figure out how to make it good on the miss-hits. I’m living on the razor’s edge,” DeChambeau bemoaned post round. “It’s quite finicky for me because it’s a golf course that’s pretty short, and so when I hit driver and it doesn’t go in the fairway, it’s first cut or it’s in the hay, it’s tough for me to get it out on to the green and control that… I couldn’t control my wedges.” They weren’t alone when it came to tough starts. PGA Championship winner Phil Mickelson found himself quickly behind the eight-ball at three-over through six holes while Jason Day shot a 5-over 40 on the front nine. Lee Westwood, a sentimental favorite for many in his home country, also shot 71 as did defending Open champion Shane Lowry.

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BROOKLINE, Mass. — Will Zalatoris and Matt Fitzpatrick avoided the carnage and calamity that took down golf’s best Saturday at a U.S. Open that set the tone for a final day of survival. Zalatoris, who lost in a three-hole playoff at the PGA Championship last month, made only one bogey — a staggering feat on a beast of a Brookline course — for a 3-under 67. “Felt like I shot a 61,” Zalatoris said. “Whenever I made a mistake I was able to get away with it or pull off something miraculous.” Fitzpatrick, already a champion at The Country Club with his U.S. Amateur title in 2013, was equally steady and ran off three birdies over his last five holes for a 68. He will be in the final group of a major for the second straight time. Most telling was they didn’t make any double bogeys. That’s what knocked defending champion Jon Rahm out of the lead on the final hole. The Spaniard thought he had seen it all — including a shot he played back-handed from the base of a tree on the eighth hole — when he took three swipes from sand in two bunkers. Rahm’s first shot from a fairway bunker hit the lip and nearly rolled into his footprint. His next shot found a plugged lie in a greenside bunker, and two putts later he had a 71 and went from one ahead to one behind. Rahm wasn’t upset with his swing on the final hole. If anything, he said it was getting dark and he didn’t notice his ball sitting down in the sand. Rahm was looking ahead instead of what he left behind. “I have 18 holes, and I’m only one shot back,” he said. “That’s the important thing.” Zalatoris and Fitzpatrick were at 4-under 206, the same score of the 54-hole lead when the U.S. Open was last at The Country Club in 1988. It’s not like Rahm had full rights to the lead. This Saturday at Brookline was so wild that Rahm was among eight players who had at least a share of the lead at some point. Three of them didn’t even finish among the top 10, including two-time major champion Collin Morikawa. Morikawa, who shared the 36-hole lead with Joel Dahmen, had double bogeys on the seventh and 13th holes, and might have had a third after a chunked wedge on No. 4 except that he made a 25-foot putt for bogey. He finished with a 77. Masters champion Scottie Scheffler was not immune. The world’s No. 1 player looked to be pulling away when he holed a wedge from some 80 yards for eagle on the par-5 eighth. He was at 6 under and cruising until his wedge to a back pin on the 141-yard 11th hole bounced hard over the green and into deep rough. He took two to the green and two puts later was no longer leading. And it only got worse as three straight bogeys followed and he shot 71. Seven of the top 12 players going into Saturday made at least one double bogey in strong wind and cool temperatures that made this sweater weather in June. Rory McIlroy was not on that list. His was more of a slow bleed, mostly from a putter that wasn’t behaving. He made one birdie in his round of 73. All that, and this U.S. Open was far from settled. “It was one of the toughest days on a golf course I’ve had in a long time,” McIlroy said. “I just needed to grind it out, and I did on the back nine. To play that back nine at even par today was a really good effort, I thought. Just kept myself in the tournament. That’s all I was trying to do. Just keep hanging around.” Twenty-three players were under par going into the third round. Only nine remain with 18 holes remaining, all of them separated by three shots. That includes a local star — maybe not the Francis Ouimet variety, but Keegan Bradley is big enough in Beantown that he heard his name chanted loudly and proudly as he marched up toward the 18th green. A former PGA Championship winner, he called it “probably the highlight of my whole entire life.” He gave them reason to cheer. Three over through seven holes, Bradley answered with passion and birdies, five of them over his last 11 holes for a 69. He was two shots behind with Adam Hadwin (70) and Scheffler). McIlroy was three back along with Sam Burns (71) and Dahmen, who didn’t make a birdie in his round of 74 but stayed in the game because he didn’t have any big blunders. The average score was 73.5 and only seven players broke par. Denny McCarthy made the cut on the number at 3-over par. He finished his 68 before the leaders even arrived at the course. By the end of the day, he was tied for 11th, five shots behind. The U.S. Open played every bit like one. “I knew it was going to be hard,” Dahmen said. “I didn’t know it was going to be that hard.”

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Daniel Berger used to think he didn’t really love golf… he just happened to be really good at it. But the two-time PGA TOUR winner has upgraded his love of the game over the last 18 months after a persistent injury took him away from the little white-dimpled ball he took for granted. Berger falls into the classic category of “You don’t know how much you love something till it’s gone.� Coming off a sixth-place finish at the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock, where he was part of the 54-hole lead, Berger was hitting a shot at the Travelers Championship when he felt some discomfort in the index finger on his right hand. It lingered. Berger battled through the pain and suited up for six more events that season and even forged top-15 finishes in the PGA Championship and THE NORTHERN TRUST. But the discomfort was stopping him doing his usual preparations and forced him to pull out of the BMW Championship before it began, ending his FedExCup run. The pain was now giving him issues down to the wrist. Inflammation meant only one thing could be done. Rest. RELATED:  What you need to know for The American Express | Power Rankings “I just couldn’t practice. I’d get to a golf tournament and hit just 50 golf balls the whole week and I just didn’t feel like I could do the preparation to where I would feel ready to go,� Berger explained. “At home I couldn’t go hit 500 balls if I wanted to. I never was able to do the things that in the past I was able to do.� Initially, a rest didn’t sound so bad to a young man who had been around elite athletes his whole life and had been working his tail off to become one himself since before he can remember. Berger’s father Jay played top-level tennis, winning three ATP singles titles and getting as high as seventh in the world. He played in the Davis Cup for the United States and then moved to coaching, working with the U.S. Davis Cup and Olympic tennis teams and also was a director of tennis for the USTA. Amongst this environment, young Daniel Berger thrived. “I knew since I was a young boy I would be a professional athlete. I just didn’t know what sport yet,� Berger said. His father, and Berger himself, are believers in the 10,000-hour rule. That being you need to get to 10,000 hours of dedicated practice in something to master it. So Berger’s life has been about putting in the work, and then doing more. So the idea of a break was something of a novelty. Maybe he could enjoy some down time and a more “normal� life for a while. The 2015 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year was excited about getting in the water on his boat and doing other recreational activities that wouldn’t hamper his injury. And he did have fun … until he started to miss his previous way of life. “In the beginning I thought it was amazing. I got to do other things,� Berger said. “But the reality is my whole life all I’ve ever known is hit balls, go to a golf tournament, compete … and suddenly you are unable to do those things you are so passionate about and it sucks. “I have always been a firm believer of the harder you work the better you perform and prior to that I had never had a time in my career where I wasn’t able to do the things I felt like I needed to do. That was the most frustrating part. You know what you need to accomplish but physically you are unable to do that and it just eats you up.� The frustration and annoyance got the better of the 26-year-old. And he came back to competition in 2019 despite things not being 100%. A runner-up finish at the Puerto Rico Open in late February gave him a bit of false confidence that he could battle through things a little. But the entire season he couldn’t quite trust things and his practice time remained well down on his usual standards. He fell to 131st in the FedExCup without a top-10 after Puerto Rico and missed the FedExCup Playoffs. Now though, Berger says he is 100%. The last few months he has returned his practice to the hours he is accustomed to. And in his five starts this season Berger has three top-25 finishes to be currently 79th in the FedExCup. The results might not yet show significant improvement, but Berger knows his ball-striking is returning toward its best. At the Sony Open last week, he was 10th in the field in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and 11th in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green. And he had his first positive mark of the season in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green. “I have put a lot of work in that I wasn’t able to do before. And that has already been the big difference in the five events I have played this season. I just need to continue to put the work in,� he said prior to The American Express this week in California. “It’s been a blessing to come back and do what I love. I used to always say I never really liked golf; I was just good at it. But when you take some time off, I realized I really like golf a lot. My main goal now is to put myself in contention to win. It is tough out here, so you’ve got to continue to get better. I feel like this offseason I did a lot of good things and I am hitting the ball way better than I have in a long time.� Berger is trying to get those feelings from the 2015, 2016 and 2017 seasons where he was Rookie of the Year and won back-to-back FedEx St. Jude Classics. He’s even reverted to the old TaylorMade irons he used coming through the ranks and says it helps him “just feel more like me.� As one of the famed Class of 2011, Berger has also drawn motivation from what Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth have already achieved in the game, knowing he’s always been able to compete on their level. It makes the idea of winning a FedExCup and major championships even more attainable. And watching the recent Presidents Cup on television – two years after he secured the clinching point for the U.S. Team at Liberty National – also put a fire in his belly. “I watched every single shot … and I never watch golf. But I love team sports and I love rooting for anything that’s American,� Berger said. “It is disappointing not to be there but obviously I didn’t deserve to be. To see those guys go out there and play the way they did was impressive and it is certainly motivating. “There are a lot of young guys making a name for themselves and I think you will see 10 or 15 guys playing on the teams for the next 10 or 15 years just like you saw with the Phil’s and Tiger’s. I want to be part of that.� Now that he’s back fit and healthy, there’s a good chance he will be.

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