TOUR Championship reseed points

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Brooks Koepka is turning a public golf course into his private playground in the PGA Championship. Staked to a seven-shot lead, Koepka never let anyone get closer than five shots Saturday as he powered his way to an ideal start and overcame a few sloppy mistakes for an even-par 70. For the first time this week, he didn’t touch any scoring records. That wasn’t the objective. Koepka kept his seven-shot lead going into a final round that feels more like a victory lap as he tries to join Tiger Woods as the only players to win back-to-back in stroke play at the PGA Championship. “I think we’re all playing for second,” Luke List said after bogeys on his last two holes knocked him out of the final group. History would agree with him. No one has ever lost a seven-shot lead in 159 years of the majors. No one has lost more than a six-shot lead in any PGA TOUR event. Dustin Johnson tried to make a run with six birdies, only to stall with five bogeys in his round of 69. No bogey was more damaging than the 18th. A drive into the fairway would have given him a reasonable shot at birdie. Instead, he sent it right into the bunker, came up well short into the native grass, left the next one in the bunker and had to scramble to limit the damage. That kept Johnson from joining his close friend in the final group. Koepka, who was at 12-under 198, will play the final round with Harold Varner III, whose week began with plans to play a practice round with Tiger Woods on the eve of the PGA Championship until Woods called in sick. Varner birdied the 18th to cap off a bogey-free 67 and lead the group at 5-under 205 that includes Jazz Janewattananond (67) and List, who holed two shots from off the green for a 69. Jordan Spieth did not put any pressure on Koepka at all. Playing in the final group on the weekend for the first time since the Open Championship last summer, Spieth didn’t have a realistic birdie chance until the sixth hole, and he missed that one from 8 feet. He shot 72 and was nine shots behind. There was simply no stopping Koepka, who is one round away from a fourth major in his last eight tries. Koepka also would become the first player to hold back-to-back major titles at the same time. He won his second straight U.S. Open last year 60 miles down the road on Long Island at Shinnecock Hills.

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THE OVERVIEW By Cameron Morfit, PGATOUR.COM To say that last season was “a transitional yearâ€� for the former No. 1 would be cutting it a bit short. The four-time major winner McIlroy, 28, switched out his equipment in the wake of Nike’s decision to get out of the hard-goods business (more on that shortly); married former PGA of America employee Erica Stoll; changed caddies, parting with J.P. Fitzgerald in order to preserve their friendship; and bought Ernie Els’s old house at the Bear’s Club.  TOP 30 PLAYERS TO WATCH IN 2018: We’ll countdown our list with one new player each day in December. Click here for the published players. MORE: Top 30 explanation and schedule Otherwise, it was pretty much business as usual. Oh, and McIlroy was injured, a lingering back/rib ailment that came and went all season. More than anything else, that explains how, just one year after winning the FedExCup, McIlroy had six top-10 finishes but failed to add to his total of 13 career PGA TOUR victories. The trouble started early. McIlroy’s back was taped and he was running on anti-inflammatories as he lost a playoff to Graeme Storm at the BMW South Africa Open in January. A scan showed a stress-fracture in one of his ribs, which apparently was the result of testing out too much new equipment in the off-season, and he withdrew from the Abu Dhabi Championship. Another near-miss at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard, where a three-putt bogey on 18 left him with a T4 finish, seemed to suggest he was back to his old self, but that was misleading. Although he had two more T4s, including at The Open at Royal Birkdale, McIlroy wasn’t 100 percent all season, finishing 58th in the FedExCup after making just 14 starts.  Now 10th in the world, he will try to get off to a fast start in 2018 with a robust early-season schedule. He’ll start his TOUR season at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and at one point play five out of six weeks. He’s got some catching up to do. BY THE NUMBERS How Rory McIlroy ranked in Strokes Gained statistics during his last full season on the PGA TOUR. FEDEXCUP Current 2017-18 position: N/A Playoff appearances: 7 TOUR Championship appearances: 4 Best result: Won (2016) INSIGHTS FROM THE INSIDERS PGATOUR.COM’s Insiders offer their expert views on what to expect from Rory McIlroy in 2018. TOUR INSIDER by Ben Everill One of the most fascinating storylines of the season shapes to be how Rory responds from a so-so 2017. The last time he was winless on the PGA TOUR in 2013, he responded with a three-win season, including two majors. Injury was a legitimate excuse for much of the year, but if he’s healthy again, then the pressure will be on to push Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth and Co. and prove he’s far from a spent force. Pencil in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am for his TOUR season debut after his customary Middle East swing. Click here to follow Ben on Twitter FANTASY INSIDER by Rob Bolton One of the salary bargains ($2.43 million) of the season will have rested and recovered from lingering soreness from a rib injury for over three months before returning to competition in January. Looking ahead, gamers love that conviction because we can grow tired of one of our charges grinding to one forgettable finish after another with persistent discomfort. He doesn’t need any more motivation than to polish off the career grand slam at the Masters, but you know he’ll be hungry to contend early and often in 2018. It’s also a Ryder Cup year, which has proven to bring out his best as he finished inside the top three in the FedExCup in each of the last three even-numbered years. Click here to follow Rob on Twitter EQUIPMENT INSIDER by Jonathan Wall McIlroy made a surprise move to TaylorMade during the middle of the season at THE PLAYERS Championship. Complete bag overhaul saw him add TaylorMade M2 woods, including the more compact Tour 3- and 5-wood. Was the first staffer to use the P730 “Rors Proto” blade. Depending on the course setup and conditions, McIlroy will use a Tour Preferred UDI 1-iron he carries 280-plus. Rotated putters before settling on a TP Collection Juno. The No. 22 stamped on his TaylorMade TP5x golf ball is the day (4/22) he got married.  Click here to follow Jonathan on Twitter STYLE INSIDER by Greg Monteforte Rory is one of the fittest players on TOUR, making him a perfect fit for Nike’s golfers-are-athletes approach to golf fashion. He’ll continue to be outfitted in the latest and greatest from Nike in the New Year. In October, he laced up the new Nike Lunar Control Vapor 2 shoe, which will be his go-to shoe in 2018. Look for him to receive custom colorways and personal editions of the shoe for the majors. Click here to follow Greg on Twitter

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PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Tom Hoge enjoys being at Pebble Beach even in a frigid wind and relentless rain. He loved it even more Thursday in brilliant sunshine, especially with nine birdies on his card. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Peter Jacobsen’s Pebble Beach farewell Hoge began his day along the Pacific Ocean with a 30-foot birdie putt on No. 10 at Pebble Beach. He made the last of six straight birdies with a 40-foot putt on the daunting eighth hole. It added to a 9-under 63, by four shots his best score at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. “It’s hard to be in a bad mood out here,” Hoge said. “I mean, Pebble Beach and perfect weather is about as good as it gets.” He had a one-shot lead over Seamus Power of Ireland, whose round was equally stout. Power birdied his last four holes at Spyglass Hill, traditionally the toughest of the three courses in benign conditions. It was the only course that played over par Thursday. Jonas Blixt had a 7-under 64 on the Shore Course at Monterey Peninsula. Patrick Cantlay, the reigning FedExCup champion, birdied his last three holes for a 65 on the Shore. Hoge has played just over 200 times on the PGA TOUR without winning, though he’s getting closer. He finished runner-up by two shots in Palm Desert two weeks ago. Whether he gets another shot, that’s still a long way off, with two more courses to get through before Hoge gets back to Pebble Beach. The coastline along the peninsula and the desert tucked amid the Santa Rosa Mountains are nothing alike, although Hoge managed to make one comparison. Scoring is on the low side. Along with very little wind, the area has gone more than a month without rain and the courses are firm, without the greens being too fast because of amateurs in the field. To have greens running firm and fast, they might never finish. “I was in the situation a couple weeks ago in Palm Springs — scores were a little bit better there — but you keep switching golf courses and you fee like you’ve got to keep making birdies the whole way because there’s a lot of great players out here,” he said. “Conditions look pretty good for the weekend, so I know that I’ve got to keep moving forward.” There was no need to check the forecast and hope for the best — and this tournament, that means getting Pebble Beach and Monterey Peninsula on the calmest day and Spyglass in the wind. But it’s supposed to stay gorgeous all week. Cantlay nearly had his round ruined around the turn when he squandered a good start with a pair of bogeys and began the back nine at the Shore by failing to birdie the par 5s. He made up for it with three straight birdies to finish his round, one of them on the 17th when his tee shot was about 6 feet from going into a small creek, and he hit a towering wedge over a pine to 12 feet for birdie. Jordan Spieth, still trying to recover from an intestinal infection, had a 68 at Monterey Peninsula. He had hoped to be at full strength, but probably wasn’t quite there. Otherwise, it was as perfect a day as the Pebble Beach Pro-Am can offer. About one-third of the field broke 70, and no one was terribly grumpy. Power won an opposite-field event last year for his first PGA TOUR victory. He tied for third in the Sony Open in Hawaii and now sits at No. 50 in the world, needing to hold that position for two months to earn an invitation to the Masters. He played in an all-Irish pairing with John Murphy, who went to Louisville and made his PGA TOUR debut, along with Irish amateurs Dermott Desmond and Gerry McManus. That added to a day that felt like more fun than work. “I’m playing in a shirt. Normally I have a sweater and other stuff on,” Power said. “So it was nice, wind was minimal. It was a perfect day for scoring.” His best moment was scrambling for par at the par-3 fifth hole, the last that runs along the Pacific on Spyglass Hill. He went from a fairway bunker on the uphill sixth to 25 feet and made that, and then finished with three more birdies. “It’s always funny with the three courses,” Power said. “It’s great to have a good start but you’re on to a completely different challenge. Tomorrow I’m playing Pebble and it’s going to be a completely different course to today. So kind of makes it easier to reset, and hopefully we can kind of keep doing the same thing tomorrow.”

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