Tom Watson’s wife, Hilary Watson, dies of pancreatic cancer

Tiger Woods returns for the first time in five years. Rickie Fowler and Rory McIlroy will sit out at least one week. Jordan Spieth has work to do. Here’s a full rundown.

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NORTON, Mass. - They needed no introductions, of course. But if we were hoping for Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy to re-introduce their impressive talents to us, we'll have to wait because Saturday's third round of THE NORTHERN TRUST didn't show them at their best. Having each grinded Friday afternoon to make the cut at 3 under at TPC Boston, Woods and McIlroy drew the third starting time on a warm and quiet morning. It was the third straight tournament in which Woods has had a tee time with McIlroy - Rounds 1 and 2 at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, Rounds 1 and 2 at the PGA Championship - and the 24th time since it first happened in 2012. RELATED: Full leaderboard | DJ settles for 60 in Round 2 after historic start | Projected FedExCup standings OK, so the film cannister stamped "Tiger & Rory, August 22, 2020, Round 3 TNT" will not be filed into the classic vault alongside something like the 1954 Masters playoff between Sam Snead and Ben Hogan or even the 2012 BMW Championship when Woods (65-67) and McIlroy (64-68) went toe-to-toe in the same group to sit T-2 through 36 holes. But, hey, owed to their stature in the game and immense personalities, it's no surprise that Woods and McIlroy provided action worth talking about Saturday - even if for the unexpected scratchy play from lads who are ranked Nos. 3 (McIlroy) and 16 (Woods) in the world order and are the only two-time winners of the FedExCup. The hiccups just came in different manners. For Woods, who shot 2-over 73, his usually stellar iron game was not there, because in hitting 12 of 14 fairways, he only managed to find 11 greens in regulation. For McIlroy, who shot 74, his on-course focus continues to be his Achilles. Consider the 3-8-2 start - translation: birdie, triple-bogey, birdie - that pretty much told the story of his day and his stretch of golf since returning from the pandemic-enforced break. Brilliant in so many flashes, McIlroy continues to hurt himself with big numbers. After burying a 7-foot birdie roll at the first, McIlroy from 222 yards came up short of the green at the par-5 second. Playing out of a marshy hazard, his recovery hit a rock and bounced backward, this time into the water. He compounded matters by three-putting from 40 feet for a triple. Later, McIlroy was left of the fairway at the par-4 sixth, then from 151 yards he went left of the green and in gnarly native grass. There were two whacks with a wedge to get it out of the native grass, then a third to find the green, from where he two-putted from 12 feet. Two triples in six holes is hardly the start McIlroy envisioned and it meant that the two icons were a combined 5 over, but they proceeded onward with improved golf, even if the scoring touch was not present. McIlroy, after the choppy sixth, played his final 12 holes in 1 under, birdies at the par-4 10th and par-5 18th against a lone bogey at the par-4 14th at least giving him a positive close to savor. Woods birdied the par-4 ninth to make the turn in level-par 36, but bogeyed Nos. 11, 12 and 14 before negotiating a deft two-putt birdie from 60 feet, up a steep swale left of the green, then down a slippery slope. Contrasting, the way in which they achieved their scores, because whereas Woods drove it nicely, McIlroy found his way into just six of 14 fairways. And whereas Woods kept losing his way to the green, McIlroy did manage to hit 13 of them. There was, however, a common denominator - misery on the greens. After two positive days in the Strokes Gained: Putting category for Woods, he lost a whopping 3.503 strokes, the lowlight being the par-4 12th when he three-putted from 28 feet. McIlroy, meanwhile, required 32 putts and was minus 1.941 in the SGP category. He only one-putted twice over his final 13 holes. The matching birdies, at least, put a pretty bow on a rather blah day, but if you're keeping score at home, it means that in the 23 times they've been paired in a stroke-play tournament, Woods has had the lower score 11 times, McIlroy on nine occasions, and three times they've been tied. (The other pairing was the 2019 World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play, which Woods won.) It would have been a best-ball 5-under 66, pretty good for the championship flight of the late-summer member-guest. Just not what you'd expect for world championship titans. Not that you can't put it all into context; it was, after all, the third round of a tournament that each player knew he didn't have a chance to win, with it having little effect on their status for next week's BMW Championship. (Each is going to qualify.) So that made it easier to doff their white caps, exchange smiles, then share a picnic table for lunch and friendly conversation. You can bet that nothing about their rounds factored into the discussion.

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HOUSTON (AP) — Martin Trainer was in rare territory Friday. Not only did he play well enough to stick around for the weekend, he found himself leading the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Houston Open. RELATED: Leaderboard | Scottie Scheffler gets mad, sets course record in Houston Trainer holed a pair of long birdie putts and three short ones in a bogey-free round at Memorial Park for a 5-under 65 and a one-shot lead over Kevin Tway. The second round would not be completed until Saturday morning as the tournament tried to catch up from a long weather delay at the start of the tournament. While the cut would not be made until then, it was virtually certain four-time major champion Brooks Koepka who would miss for the second straight week. That’s a part of golf Trainer knows all too well. He won the Puerto Rico Open in 2019 as a rookie, and then it was all downhill after that. Trainer has made only nine cuts in 70 starts on the PGA TOUR since then, and one of those was the winners-only Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua that had no cut. He had missed seven in a row dating to the 3M Open in July. And then the 30-year-old Trainer showed up at Houston and made the game look simpler than it has for the last two years. “Last week I hit the ball really well for the first time in a long time and I just didn’t putt very well,” Trainer said. “So I figured if I could somehow do both those at the same time — to be fair, every single player says that every single week. But for me, it had been such a long time coming. It really was a grind for a long time. “So now to finally be able to put it together … you have to hope that this is the week.” No need telling that to Tway, who won at the start of the 2018 season and has only one other top 10 over his next 72 events on the PGA TOUR. Tway had a pair of eagles in his round of 64, holing a 60-foot chip on the par-5 third hole and then holing out from 107 yards in the fairway on the par-4 13th. He was tied for the lead until missing a 5-foot par putt on the 17th hole. Jason Kokrak was 8 under with seven holes left. Adam Long was another stroke back after a 67. The low round of the day belonged to Scottie Scheffler, who had a 62 and was in the group four shots behind that included fellow Texas Longhorn Kramer Hickok. To see Trainer’s name atop the leaderboard was a surprise considering how many cuts he has missed and how discouraging it can get. Sure, there were times he pondered his future in the game. His exemption from winning in Puerto Rico runs out after this season. But he always had hope, and he knew that while it’s hard to win on the PGA TOUR, he had done it before. “It is demoralizing when you keep missing cuts over and over again,” Trainer said. “It’s been tough at times for me the last couple years not playing well, but now that I figured out a little bit of ball-striking, dropped some putts, it really can turn around that quickly. “So I’m just grateful that that’s happening to me this week and hopefully I’ll keep it going.”

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