Torres shares four-way lead, Park misses cut

THE OVERVIEW By Ben Everill, PGATOUR.COM For a fair chunk of Sunday at The Open Championship, it appeared Matt Kuchar was going to join the list of major champions. But as history shows, a late turnaround and blitz from Jordan Spieth snatched that dream away from the man they call ‘Kuch.’ So now this season becomes a very interesting one for the seven-time PGA TOUR winner, whose resume includes a signature win at the 2012 PLAYERS Championship. Kuchar will turn 40 in June and is coming off a season with nine top-10s. He has made the TOUR Championship the last eight seasons, finishing inside the top 20 of the FedExCup every year since he was runner up in 2010. He’s 11 of 11 when it comes to making the FedExCup Playoffs. Will he continue to be a factor against the greater depth and youth on TOUR or will things start to get harder for the smiling assassin? Statistically he remains far above average. Inside the top 70 in all Strokes Gained categories last season, including 16th overall. While he continues to putt well and drive the ball accurately, any perceived loss in distance will be overcome. Consistency has always been a hallmark of Kuchar’s game. Now he needs to take it to another level in the big weeks. Not much has to change – his game was good enough last season to finish inside the top-16 of all four majors, inside the top 5 in two of them – but after getting so close at Royal Birkdale last year, perhaps Kuchar will now turn disappointment into major victory. Click here to follow Ben on Twitter BY THE NUMBERS FEDEXCUP Current 2017-18 position: 107th Playoff appearances: 11 TOUR Championship appearances: 8 Best result: 2nd (2010) INSIGHTS FROM OUR INSIDERS PGATOUR.COM’s Insiders offer their expert views on what to expect from Matt Kuchar in 2018. TOUR INSIDER by Cameron Morfit The remarkably consistent Kuchar shows no signs of slowing down even at 39. Last season he was again deadly accurate off the tee (66 percent, ranking him 31st on TOUR), putted better than average, and registered his career-best finish in a major with an unforgettable runner-up to Jordan Spieth at the Open Championship. Kuchar has made every U.S. Presidents and Ryder Cup team since 2010, and will most likely keep on doing so for the foreseeable future, but whether this seven-time TOUR winner will finally add a major title to his resume remains an open question. Click here to follow Cameron on Twitter FANTASY INSIDER by Rob Bolton Just when you think that Father Time is applying pressure, he hangs up another quality performance. You want reliability? You got it. He’s competed in eight consecutive TOUR Championships. You want durability? Sure. Since 2011, he’s averaged more than 24 starts per season and hasn’t withdrawn during any. Quite simply, he’s an easy late first-rounder because he knows who he is and we know what he delivers. It’s hard to believe that the big 4-0 lingers on June 21, 2018, but it had to arrive at some point, it’s just that it won’t matter. Click here to follow Rob on Twitter EQUIPMENT INSIDER by Jonathan Wall Kuchar has anywhere from six to seven different equipment brands in the bag. Scaled back the amount of forward press in his stroke, which required Bettinardi to make a new KM2 D.A.A.S. putter with new loft and offset specs (5 degrees of loft and 1 shaft worth of offset). Currently carries three different wedge brands (Bridgestone, Callaway and Cleveland). Began using a new Bridgestone Tour B XS golf ball at the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational. Click here to follow Jonathan on Twitter STYLE INSIDER by Greg Monteforte Kuchar is a case study in how simple style tweaks can make a big impact. During the past couple of years, he has ditched the pleats and the mismatched hats and moved to flat front trousers and exotic skin belts. As a result, his looks are cleaner and more modern. The last piece of the fashion puzzle for Kuch is slimmer fitting shirts. Click here to follow Greg on Twitter

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NASSAU, Bahamas — The warm sun in the Bahamas brought out plenty of mud on the rain-soaked fairways and created some wild shots for just about everyone but Viktor Hovland. He made 10 birdies Saturday to build a three-shot lead in the Hero World Challenge. Hovland ran off six birdies on the back nine at Albany and finished with a bogey from a mud-shot on the 18th for an 8-under 64, putting him in position to join tournament host Tiger Woods as the only back-to-back winners of this tournament. “I hit a lot of just good quality iron shots to give myself seven to 12 feet. It wasn’t like I hit one just incredible shot and stuff it or make it like I did the other days, but it was just kind of consistently giving myself looks,” Hovland said. He was at 13-under 203, and he made it look easy. It wasn’t that way for the rest of the 20-man field, even with some of the best scoring of the week. Scottie Scheffler, who can go to No. 1 in the world with a win, dropped only one shot and had an eagle on the par-5 15th for a 66 that put him in the final group with Hovland. It was a good day on his card. It was tough on the emotions seeing so much mud on his ball that he had no idea where it was going. “Who’s good at those? You pretty much have no idea what the golf ball’s going to do,” Scheffler said. “It’s not something that I would practice at home just because it’s not something that I believe should happen on the golf course.” The Masters champion’s best work was not so much his five birdies and his eagle, rather not letting the mud balls get in his head. Everyone had to deal with it, some worse than others. Justin Thomas figures the one guy who caught a break was PGA TOUR official Rick Wild, who records all the scores at the end of the day. Good thing it’s a small field. “Only 20 people coming in and complaining versus 120. I think that’s probably a little easier on him,” Thomas said. “It’s unfortunate. And you can get some really, really unlucky breaks and unfortunate situations. But like I said, everybody has to deal with it and the more you let it get to you, probably the worse off you are.” Thomas was bogey-free for a 66, tied for third with Cameron Young (68). Young, the PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year, handled his misfortune well. With a 31 on the front nine and his sixth birdie of the round on No. 10, he was leading by two and in the middle of the fairway on the par-5 11th. He went to lay up with a 4-iron and saw the ball shoot straight out to the right and into the bush, leading to a penalty shot before playing the next one and making bogey. He had another bogey on a par 5 and had to settle for a 68, leaving him five shots behind. “The one that really hurt me was on 11,” Young said. “I feel like I made a pretty good swing and it was into the weeds. It just takes a mediocre shot there to give yourself a pretty good look at birdie. So that definitely, definitely hurt. Yeah, there were a few.” Kevin Kisner had a hole-in-one on the 12th hole with a 6-iron, the lone bright spot on a day when he shot 77. “I was putting probably the worst of my career today so I decided just to make it from 189 yards,” Kisner said. “But it was a lot easier on par 3s because you got to hit a clean golf ball.” Because a majority of the course was in reasonable shape, the PGA TOUR decided to play the ball down. Officials were concerned about four or five fairways, but the mud made its presence felt from fairways that were deluged with rain on Wednesday. Hovland ran off three straight birdies early on the front nine, all from 15 feet or longer, and then he really took off on the back nine. He twice two-putted for birdie. He hit 6-iron to 12 feet on the par-3 12th, hit 9-iron to seven feet on the next hole and then got some separation with an 8-iron to 15 feet on the 16th and a 7-iron to eight feet on the par-3 17th. “He played so good I almost felt bad about my round,” Xander Schauffele said after a 69 left him six back. “It was clean. It was so good I didn’t even realize what he was doing until he got to the end.” Woods won the Hero World Challenge in 2006 and 2007 when it was at Sherwood Country Club in California. He is not playing this week because of plantar fasciitis in his right foot that caused him to withdraw on Monday.

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DETROIT – Given that he had delivered his opening tee shot in Wednesday’s pro-am at 7:20 a.m. – a tee time that had necessitated an arrival to Detroit Golf Club just after sunrise – and followed that up with a “Shot For Heroes� ceremony that introduced a vehicle by which more funds will be raised for a charity that is already up to $1 million, then put himself in front of a heartwarming presentation to 15-year-old Anthony Trudel at the request of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, by late afternoon Rickie Fowler could not be blamed if he were dragging. Instead, he talked with enthusiasm about two trails of rejuvenation – his golf game and with Dan Gilbert’s vision for Detroit. As for the former, Fowler shrugged off a second-round 77 at the recent U.S. Open that took him out of contention and chose to focus on success earlier in the season – a fifth career win at the Waste Management Phoenix Open that was celebrated with family and friends who had never seen him raise a PGA TOUR trophy, and four other top 10s. “So far, it’s been a fun year,� he said. But it’s the latter that motivates Fowler in a different fashion, a more personal way. True, he’s got a sponsorship deal with Quicken Loans and Rocket Mortgage that is profitable, but Fowler has come to admire Dan Gilbert (the 57-year-old founder of Quicken Loans) and the man’s dream to revitalize Detroit. Fowler said he saw first-hand the Motown life Monday night. “Got a solid five hours in downtown. It’s cool to hear the stories of how much it’s changed, not just over the last five to 10 years, but really in the last two,� said Fowler. “A lot of stuff going on.� And, be advised, that Fowler knows what it means to have “a lot of stuff going on.� Consider his dance card once his 18-hole pro-am, was concluded – more than five hours, by the way, that was spent inside the ropes with one Kid Rock. “Fun to be in his hometown,� laughed Fowler, who plays golf or has dinner with Kid Rock frequently in the Jupiter, Florida, area. “I’ve heard a lot about Detroit from him.� Fowler helped introduce the “Shot For Heroes� corner at Detroit GC where visitors can take two 60-yard wedge shots and donate to a cause that wants to end homelessness for military veterans. It was an appearance at the “Shot For Heroes� ceremony that was especially sweet, because Fowler has become involved with the Trudel story since he heard about it in the spring of 2018. He lives about an hour south of Fowler’s home in Jupiter and was diagnosed with a brain tumor during a visit to a hospital in Boca Raton. From there, Trudel was air-lifted to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami and through Make-A-Wish, Trudel forwarded the desire to meet Fowler, one of his heroes. As a special guest of the Rocket Mortgage officials this week, Trudel spent time with Fowler Wednesday at Detroit Golf Club. The youngster hit balls, was gifted a new set of Cobra golf clubs, and learned that he’d be an honorary observer of Fowler’s second-round. “I told him to make sure he brings me some good luck and we’ll have some fun out there,� said Fowler. All of the duties, Fowler acknowledged, came with being “part of a tournament and kind of, I guess, in a little bit of a ‘host’ role.� But now 30 and in his 10th PGA TOUR season, Fowler has learned to effectively juggle his golf, his business interests and his personal life and when it comes to the proceedings this week, “it’s something I want to succeed.� There’s no reason it can’t come in conjunction with a level of golf that highlighted the earlier months of 2019 when in an eight-tournament stretch Fowler had a win, three other top 10s, and a spot inside the top 10 in the Officials World Golf Ranking. The goal going forward, he said, is simple. “Put myself in a good position for the (FedExCup) Playoffs,� he said. “I put myself in a great position early in the year, but you want to finish just as well as you started.�

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