Tiger Woods cards solid opening round at The Honda Classic

More than two dozen PGA TOUR pros reside in the Golden Isles area of Georgia, the site of this week’s The RSM Classic. Included in that group is tournament host Davis Love III, who was instrumental in helping bring a PGA TOUR event to his community. The tournament, which will be played on two courses – Seaside and Plantation — at Sea Island Golf Club, is the last event of the fall portion of the 2017-18 TOUR schedule. After a six-week break, the next official TOUR event will be the Sentry Tournament of Champions in the first week of January. Here’s a look at the featured groups in the first two rounds (current FedExCup ranking in parentheses). All times ET. Patton Kizzire (1), Kevin Kisner (N/A), Mac Hughes (N/A) – Kizzire, one of the players who lives in the area, comes off his first TOUR win at last week’s OHL Classic at Mayakoba. He’s playing with two guys who know how to win at Sea Island – 2015 winner Kisner and defending champ Hughes, who last year became the 13th Canadian to win a PGA TOUR event.  Tee times: Round 1 – 11 a.m. off No. 1 tee (Seaside); Round 2 – 9:50 a.m. off No. 10 tee (Plantation). Matt Kuchar (T-139), Luke Donald (147), Brandt Snedeker (N/A) – Snedeker has been sidelined since June with a rib injury, so he may be a bit rusty. Kuchar – a Sea Island resident – and Donald have each made one start this season, with Kuchar finishing T-31 at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions, and Donald finishing T-32 at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open.  Tee times: Round 1 – 11:10 a.m. off No. 1 tee (Seaside); Round 2 – 10 a.m. off No. 10 tee (Plantation). Brian Harman (30), Hudson Swafford (110), Bubba Watson (T-169) – If you’re a fan of the University of Georgia, you’ll like this group. All three players are former Bulldogs stars. Harman – another Sea Island resident — has two top-10 finishes this season and seems to be building on his breakthrough 2016-17 campaign. Swafford also won last season. Watson is making his first start in this event.  Tee times: Round 1 – 10 a.m. off No. 10 tee (Plantation); Round 2 – 11 a.m. off No. 1 tee (Seaside). Zach Johnson (60), Webb Simpson (77), Davis Love III (T-136) – Plenty of star power in this group. Combine their four major wins, and it’s a Grand Slam group (Johnson with the Masters and Open Championship, Simpson with the U.S. Open, and Love with the PGA).  But in 19 cumulative starts in this event, none of the three have won at Sea Island. Simpson came closest as the runner-up in 2011. Love tied for fourth in 2012 but has missed the cut three times in seven starts. Johnson’s best finish in his seven starts was a T-12 in 2010.  Tee times: Round 1 – 10:10 a.m. off No. 10 tee (Plantation); Round 2 – 11:10 a.m. off No. 1 tee (Seaside).

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Alex Noren (+17500) ... The last time THE PLAYERS Championship was contested, he was inside the top 30 of the Official World Golf Ranking. He also was on his way to finishing outside the top 125 of the FedExCup. That was in 2019. Today, and in a rare alignment of measurements, he's 94th in both the OWGR and the FedExCup standings. This season, the 38-year-old has rallied for a quartet of top 20s but no better than a T12 at Riviera three weeks ago. Still much better closest to the hole, the Swede has defied the customary formula for success with two top 20s in three trips to TPC Sawgrass, first with a solo 10th in his debut in 2017, and then with a T17 the following year. Emiliano Grillo (+12500) ... After he was positioned No. 1 in my Power Rankings for the Puerto Rico Open, he finished T11. He then placed T21 at Bay Hill on the strength of one of his best performances with his putter in some time, and that's not an insignificant reversal of form with that club. The 28-year-old from Argentina remains one of the PGA TOUR's best tee to green - he's sixth in greens hit and 10th in ball-striking - and he's 3-for-3 at TPC Sawgrass since 2017 with a solo 11th-place finish to ignite that burst, so the converging trends are three-fold as it concerns form, fit and course history. Brian Harman (+15000) ... Just one top 10 among three top 25s in 13 starts this season, but he's T3 on TOUR with 34 red numbers (in 50 rounds) and 28th in adjusted scoring. It's evidence for how he's missed only one cut, but what's unexplainable is how his only short week was at home at Sea Island! That aside, he arrived for his ninth start at TPC Sawgrass with the kind of form that he doesn't need to find on the unyielding track. The lefty also has recorded a pair of T8s here since 2015. Brendan Steele (+22500) ... Continues to overcome a putter that otherwise would thwart better intentions, but that he's 6-for-6 in 2021 with three top 25s on efficient tee-to-green work supports why he could linger this week. Currently T8 in total driving, T45 in greens in regulation, 20th in ball-striking and 33rd in proximity for the season. He also placed T6 at TPC Sawgrass in 2017 and he's making his 10th start, so the 37-year-old checks all the right boxes. Harold Varner III (+20000) ... He's scattered four top 25s in 2020-21, the latest a T21 at Bay Hill where he ranked T20 in total driving, T9 in greens hit and 17th in Strokes Gained: Putting. It's a fair cross section of his talent as he doesn't wow in any part of his game, but he's on the positive side in all Strokes Gained metrics and slots T27 in SG: Tee-to-Green this season. When he finished T7 at TPC Sawgrass in 2018, he led the field in converting half of his scoring opportunities. This is his fifth consecutive appearance. NOTE: Sleeper is a relative term, so Rob uses unofficial criteria to determine who qualifies. Each of the following usually is determined to be ineligible for this weekly staple: Winners of the tournament on the current host course; winners in the same season; recent major champions; top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking; recent participants of team competitions. Odds were sourced on Tuesday, March 9 at 5 a.m. ET. For live odds visit betmgm. Visit BetMGM.com for Terms and Conditions. 21+ years of age or older to wager. CO, IA, IN,MI, NJ, NV,PA, TN, VA or WV only. Excludes Michigan Disassociated Persons. Please Gamble Responsibly. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-522-4700 (CO, NV, VA), 1-800-270-7117 for confidential help (MI), 1-800-GAMBLER (NJ, PA & WV), 1-800-BETS OFF (IA), Call or Text the Tennessee REDLINE: 800-889-9789 (TN), or call 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN).

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If the national amateur golf stage never fazed Jim Wiechers, the reason was simple. Just to fare well locally in the San Francisco area in the 1960s, Wiechers had to compete against the likes of a rising teenage star named Johnny Miller, future PGA TOUR winners such as Ron Cerrudo, Bob Lunn and Dick Lotz, and a legendary veteran named E. Harvie Ward. That accomplished, Wiechers knew he could more than hold his own in the deep end of the pool. Which he did with distinction. Wiechers won the 1962 U.S. Junior Amateur, the 1964 Western Junior, the 1966 Western Amateur, and finished second, one shot behind Marty Fleckman, at the 1965 NCAA Div. 1 Championship. That Wiechers, who died Monday night at the age of 74, failed to carry that winning touch over to a 12-year PGA TOUR career that featured 32 top 10s, none of them victories, surprised Cerrudo, but never seemed to unsettle his friend. “If it did bother him, he never showed it,” said Cerrudo. “He was just a good person. He’s the only person I know who never had a disparaging word spoken against him.â€� Susan Wiechers confirmed that her husband died at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa, California, after a four-month illness. Born in Atherton, California, on August 7, 1944, Wiechers was a young teenager when he got swept into the rabid amateur golf circle that engulfed the Bay Area. “We got to know each other when were 15,â€� said Cerrudo, “and we were always together.â€� Wiechers, Cerrudo and two other Bay Area players who later became PGA TOUR members – Bob E. Smith and Ross Randall – traveled the country playing the biggest amateur tournaments when they were 20 and 21. “One summer, every passenger in our car won a big tournament,â€� said Cerrudo. As had been Bay Area icons such as Ward, Ken Venturi and Tony Lema years earlier, Wiechers, Cerrudo, Smith and Randall were backed by the famed Eddie Lowery. “We were so blessed to have competition like that,â€� said Cerrudo, now the director of instruction at the Daniel Island Club in Charleston, South Carolina. “We heard so much about guys in the Northeast, when we finally saw them, we said, ‘Hey, we have 25 guys back in the Bay Area who are better than these guys.â€� Wiechers didn’t have to take a back seat to any of them, said Cerrudo. “He was one of the world’s greatest putters inside of 5 feet. We always said if he could put his putting with my driving, he’d have won a bunch.â€� As it was, Wiechers’ playoff loss to Bob Goalby in the 1969 Robinson Open Golf Classic was his best PGA TOUR finish in 277 tournaments. Later in ’69, Wiechers did win the West End Classic in the Bahamas, but that was an unofficial event. He played in the 1976 Masters, four U.S. Opens, three PGA Championships, and three PLAYERS Championships. His best season was 1973 when he earned $74,807 for 33rd place, his highest finish on the money list. But to Cerrudo, whose own PGA TOUR career included two wins while running virtually concurrently (1967-1978) to his friend’s, Wiechers “was a very steady player who just quietly got the job done.â€� Having followed Cerrudo to live at the Silverado Resort & Spa in Napa in the late 1960s, Wiechers loved the area and got into the wine business upon leaving the PGA TOUR. But eventually he returned to golf as an instructor, then as coach of the men’s and women’s teams at Napa Valley College. “He was very talented . . . an amazing player,â€� Miller told Marty James of the Napa News. Another onetime resident of Silverado, PGA TOUR Champions standout Scott McCarron, considered Wiechers a mentor. “I used to practice with him. He and Ron Cerrudo would be over at my parents’ house on Friday evenings for dinner and tell us stories about the TOUR,â€� he told James. “Jimmy Wiechers was really the guy that got me thinking, ‘Hey, I could someday play on the PGA TOUR as well.’â€� Wiechers, who was a member of the Santa Clara University Hall of Fame, is also survived by a daughter, Erica; son-in-law Jason Kuykendall; grandson Evan Kuykendall; a brother; and two sisters.  

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