Tiger’s BMW play nets automatic U.S. Open berth

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — You can never relax at TPC Sawgrass. The ultimate risk-reward course can give up low numbers, but if you let your guard down, it can bite you on the backside very quickly. Jason Day won THE PLAYERS Championship in 2016. He just won last week at the Wells Fargo Championship. But the Australian knows he cannot afford to rest on his laurels this week. He holds a piece of the course record with his opening round 9-under 63 from 2016. But he also has shot 80 and 81 on occasions during his seven starts at THE PLAYERS. “You can get on the wrong side of it easily and rack up a really big number,â€� Day said. “If you are playing well and driving it well you can give yourself a lot of opportunities but if you are not mentally sharp and spray it … the greens are so firm, there are a lot of shaved areas and the grain makes chipping very difficult, so it can certainly go south.â€� Like it did for Jon Rahm when he made his TPC Sawgrass debut last year. The Spanish star opened with a 68 and followed with a solid 72 to enter the weekend inside the top 10. Come Saturday, he shot 82 to miss the secondary cut. “It’s a test, and that’s something that I had to learn last year when on Saturday, I went a little more aggressive than maybe I should have and ended up making more bogeys than I really wanted to,â€� Rahm said. “(I learned) a lot of patience, stick to the strategy, and sometimes just to know that having a longer iron out of the fairway might be better than having a wedge out of the rough.â€� Patience does appear to be key. So much so that Jordan Spieth has finally convinced himself he needs more of it. He finished T4 in his PLAYERS debut in 2014, and was bogey-free for his first 58 holes that week, setting a standard in his mind he now sees as unreasonable with the benefit of hindsight … along with the fact that he’s missed the cut in his ensuing three starts. “This is not a place to go out and try and force birdies, and I think that’s kind of where I’ve gone the last few years that’s got me in trouble,â€� Spieth admitted. “The first year I played here, I almost won it, and so I just kind of assumed that it would come easy to me.â€� This year Spieth declared he will stick to a game plan just to get himself to the weekend and have a chance. Reigning FedExCup champion and current points leader Justin Thomas has shot 65 twice at TPC Sawgrass. He also has shot 75 twice and bombed out last year with a Saturday 79. Thomas says the beauty of the course and the tournament is that the best player of the week wins. You might think that is true every week – but often big-name guys can win without their best stuff. TPC Sawgrass, however, doesn’t allow this. The windows players must find with their shots are small. “It’s a shot-maker’s course,â€� Thomas said. “I think you look at the list of winners here, and it’s all over the place. You have some guys, some of the best players in the world, you have some guys that maybe haven’t had the same amount of success as the top players, but it truly is whoever is playing the best. “You have to be in total control of your ball. You have to be working it one way off the tee, working it another way into the green, have your distances down to where you’re putting from the right spots. You can’t short-side yourself. You have to be good around the greens and around the par-5s in two. It really is a total package golf course.â€� Someone is going to go low this week. Someone is going to do the opposite. Finding out who is the fun part.

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The Charles Schwab Challenge is where it all restarted. Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, possesses one of the richest histories of all golf courses, but it’s most valuable moment in time may have been as the backdrop for the Return to Golf following a three-month shutdown due to the pandemic last year. To steal the line from “Field of Dreams,” Colonial reminded us all that once was good could be again. The experience has come full circle, and in more ways than one. As Daniel Berger is poised to defend his title on the 75th anniversary of the tournament – all staged at Colonial – we are further reminded that he prevailed in a playoff over Collin Morikawa sans fans in attendance. How far have we come since? Well, you know you won’t forget where you were and how you felt as 50-year-young Phil Mickelson was striding toward victory among the throng of spectators at Kiawah Island on Sunday. That was good, indeed. As unpredictable as it was for Mickelson to capture a sixth victory in a major and his second at the PGA Championship, we shift to one of the most consistent profiles for success anywhere on the PGA TOUR. For more on that, how Colonial sets up and other intel, scroll past the ranking of projected contenders. Capsules open with ages and total appearances for the fifth consecutive edition of the Power Rankings dedicated to this tournament. RELATED: The First Look | How the field qualified POWER RANKINGS: CHARLES SCHWAB CHALLENGE Tony Finau, Gary Woodland, Charley Hoffman and former champions Kevin Na, Kevin Kisner and Sergio Garcia will be among the notables reviewed in Tuesday’s Fantasy Insider. Although there’s no such thing as normal, only average, etched onto the Wall of Champions at Colonial Country Club is a smattering of profiles that are, let’s say, customary of most winners of the Charles Schwab Challenge. For starters, there hasn’t been a breakthrough champion in 20 years. If you’re a regular reader of this space, you may have quizzed others on this fact because it’s populated every Power Rankings in recent memory. Sergio Garcia not only is the most recent first-time winner (in 2001), he also prevailed in his first appearance, something no other winner since can claim. Meanwhile, Garcia’s makeup as a consistently strong ball-striker very much is woven into the DNA of the winners crowned at Colonial, except most have been of a certain age – 36. That’s exactly the average age of the 19 champions since 2002. The outliers are Jordan Spieth, who was 22 in 2016, and three guys who were at least 44 years old at the time of victory. Fifteen have been at least 33. The construct of the field at Colonial all but rigs the competition for a talent in his prime to be added to the Wall of Champions at Ben Hogan’s Alley. The Charles Schwab Challenge is an invitational reserved for only 120 golfers, many of whom have experienced victory on the PGA TOUR (thus reducing the possibility of a coronation). The top 80 in the previous season’s FedExCup standings and a smattering off the current season’s ranking fill the field, so golfers who recently have been in form at this level essentially define the field. This year’s field is at 121 as of Monday. Keith Clearwater is an add-on as a winner (1987) prior to 2000. It’s a legacy exemption, so he is not in place of an automatic qualifier among more active members. It also means that if he withdraws prior to his opening round, he will not be replaced and the field will drop to its floor of 120. Comparing the 2020 Schwab in detail to what we should expect this week would be irresponsible. Last year’s contest was different. It got golf around the world going again. The field was expanded to 144 (plus four legacy exemptions) and the strength-of-field rating as determined by the Official World Golf Ranking was 651, seventh-highest of all tournaments on the planet in 2020. This week’s value should fall somewhere nearer that of the 2019 edition, which was 347. Until now, it was the only staging that immediately followed the PGA Championship since it shifted to May that season. Also as of Monday, 64 in this week’s field competed in the PGA Championship last week, including Mickelson. Of them, only Sebastián Muñoz (MC), Lee Westwood (T71) and Will Zalatoris (MC) are debutants at Colonial this week. Other than the fact that a first-time participant hasn’t won in 20 years, the average number of starts for each of the last 19 winners prior to the first win at Colonial is six. Experience matters. Colonial Country Club itself is as transparent as its litany of conquerors. It’s a stock par 70 stretching 7,209 yards for the sixth consecutive year. Small bentgrass greens are prepped to touch 12-and-a-half feet on the Stimpmeter, while bermudagrass rough is clipped to two-and-a-half inches. The historic freeze that blanketed Texas in February negatively affected turf around the greens, but fairways and greens were all but unscathed. It wouldn’t be a golf tournament in Texas without wind and the threat of inclement weather. Wind forecasts should be checked daily but gusts north of 20 mph already are expected for Thursday’s opening round. The chance for rain and boomers enters that night and lingers into Friday, and again into Saturday. Sunday’s finale should go off without a hitch. Daytime temperatures will climb easily into the 80s. ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.COM’s Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous angles. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers; Fantasy Insider SUNDAY: Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Medical Extensions, Rookie Watch * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.

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On paper, the odds are stacked against the underdog International side at the 14th Presidents Cup. With an average age of 28.8, it’s the youngest group to compete in the history of the event. The average Official World Golf Ranking for the roster is 48.9, the highest number in the event’s history. Their opposition has 10 players ranked better currently than the International side’s leading man, Hideki Matsuyama. But three years ago at Royal Melbourne, facing similar pre-event numbers, the International side nearly pulled off one of the biggest upsets in team golf history. A record eight rookies will help fuel captain Trevor Immelman’s efforts to finish the job this week in Charlotte, and pick up the second win all-time for the International Team. Tom Kim As the third-youngest player ever to compete at the Presidents Cup, Tom Kim is inarguably one of the most exciting talents to watch this week in Charlotte. With his win at last month’s Wyndham Championship, the 20-year-old became the youngest PGA TOUR winner from outside the United States since Harry Cooper in 1923. Kim is literally trying to lead the International side to something he’s never seen in his lifetime: the only time they have won the Presidents Cup was in 1998, four years before Kim was born. Kim put on a ball-striking show this summer: from July 1 through the TOUR Championship, Kim ranked No. 2 among all qualified TOUR players in Strokes Gained: Approach per round (+1.15). In that same span, he ranks 10th in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and 14th in scoring average. Kim would have ranked in the top-20 on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Total per round (+1.09) if he had enough rounds to officially qualify. Taylor Pendrith One of the only players on TOUR ahead of Kim in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking since the beginning of July is fellow International Team rookie Taylor Pendrith. The long-hitting Canadian ranked No. 4 overall on TOUR in that statistic from July through the TOUR Championship, the best of any player competing this week at Quail Hollow. Pendrith finished the 2022 season ranked inside the top-10 in both driving distance and greens in regulation. Former world No. 1 Jon Rahm is the only other player with that distinction last season. Mito Pereira The lofty ceiling of Mito Pereira’s immense talent was on full display earlier this year at the PGA Championship, when he got within one hole of becoming a major champion. Though the finish to that championship wasn’t what he wanted, the 27-year-old Chilean vaulted himself into the conversation as one of the potential future pillars of the International Team. His full 2022 statistical profile reveals a player with elite iron play: No. 9 on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Approach, 14th in greens in regulation and sixth in average proximity from the rough. Pereira finished the 2022 season ranked 19th on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Total, the fifth-best position for any player without a win. Corey Conners As one of the most known commodities on the International roster, it’s easy to forget this is Corey Conners’ first Presidents Cup appearance. Since the beginning of 2019, Conners has been statistically among the best players in the game tee-to-green. In that span, he ranks fourth in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking, sixth in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and ninth in Strokes Gained: Approach. Conners is the only player on the PGA TOUR since 2019 to average at least +0.60 Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and +0.60 Strokes Gained: Approach per round. Sebastián Muñoz There are only six players in PGA TOUR history to record multiple rounds of 60 or lower in their entire careers. In 2021-22, Sebastián Muñoz became the first player to record two such rounds in the same season, carding 60s at both The RSM Classic and AT&T Byron Nelson. Muñoz, who has qualified for the FedExCup Playoffs in each of the last four seasons, has been consistently solid for months now, making 15 of his last 17 cuts. In terms of sheer number of birdies made, Muñoz is one of the most prolific on TOUR in recent seasons. Over the last three years, only two players have recorded more birdies than Muñoz (1,070) – world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and teammate Sungjae Im. K.H. Lee Another player with a propensity for red numbers is K.H. Lee – who ranks 11th in total birdies made since the 2020 season. Earlier this year, Lee won the AT&T Byron Nelson at 26 under, one year after winning it with a score of 25 under. With the victory, Lee became the first player in TOUR history to win the same event in back-to-back years with a score of 25 under or better. At the 2021 Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow, Lee recorded four hole-outs from off the green, most of any player in the field. Can he rediscover that magic this week? Cam Davis Statistically, the defining line of when Cam Davis’ 2022 season turned around was Sunday at the RBC Heritage, when he shot a closing 63 to vault into a tie for third place. Heading to Harbour Town, Davis was ranked 178th on TOUR in scoring average and was outside the top 125 in both Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and Strokes Gained: Total. He’s been a different player since then, though – from the RBC Heritage through the end of the PGA TOUR season, Davis had one missed cut and seven top-20s in 12 starts. In that span, he ranked top-30 on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking, Tee-to-Green and Total. Christiaan Bezuidenhout Coming off a season with 10 top-25s and just four missed cuts in 24 starts, Christiaan Bezuidenhout might be the best putter competing this week at Quail Hollow. He ranked sixth on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting per round for the 2022 season, the highest mark of any player on either team this week. When isolating the numbers just since the beginning of July, it’s even more impressive: from July 1 through the TOUR Championship, Bezuidenhout averaged 1.59 Strokes Gained: Putting per round, by far the best of any qualified player.

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