Tyrrell Hatton putter change pays off at Dell Technologies Championship

HOUSTON — Jason Day was back in contention after two eventful days alongside Phil Mickelson. RELATED: Final leaderboard | Mickelson misses cut Winless in 2 1/2 years and fighting lingering back and neck problems, Day shot a 2-under 68 on Friday in the Vivint Houston Open to pull within two strokes of second-round leader Sam Burns at difficult Memorial Park. The Australian watched the 50-year-old Michelson hit into the water twice en route to an 8 on the par-3 ninth, then hole out from 193 yards for eagle on the par-4 18th. Lefty missed the cut, following an opening 76 with a 73. "He kind of left himself in some pretty tough positions and you're just struggling the whole day," Day said. "It's one of those courses where you've just got to be patient and try to get your birdies when you can." Day had three birdies and a bogey. "It's one of those courses where you can walk off kind of shaking your head even though you play some good golf," Day said. "I was chatting to Phil about that on the second hole today because he went out there and hit a nice 9-iron, pulled up short, rolled away off the green and you've got a 60-footer putting back up that hill. It's one of those golf courses where it can be a little bit frustrating at times, so just got to kind of be smart about it." Day was in contention three weeks ago in Las Vegas in THE CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK when the neck problem forced him to withdraw early in the final round. The 12-time PGA TOUR winner returned the next week at Sherwood to tie for 60th, and took last week off. "It's been very inconsistent, obviously, because I'm trying to change my swing a little bit just to try and help the back out," Day said. "I guess I'm stuck in between patterns right now, what I want to feel, my body just won't handle it and sometimes it just compensates elsewhere. That's why it happened to my neck at CJ." Burns birdied all three par-5 holes in a bogey-free 65 to reach 7 under. “It takes a lot of discipline around here," Burns said. "You get out of position, you just try to get it back to where you can get it up-and-down or get it in a section of the green where you can lag putt it. Fortunately, early we got some good looks and I was able to convert, so solid." Winless on the PGA TOUR, the 24-year-old Burns also took a two-shot lead into the weekend in the season-opening Safeway Open in September. He ended up tying for seventh that week at Silverado. "I think slowing down a little bit, really talking through the shot with Travis (caddie Perkins) and making sure we have a clear picture of what we're trying to do," Burns said. "I think that was really helpful to learn that." Carlos Ortiz of Mexico had a 68 to match Day at 5 under. First-round leader Brandt Snedeker followed his opening 65 with a 71 to drop into a tie for fourth at 4 under with Dawie van der Walt (66), Corey Conners (67), Aaron Wise (66) and Patton Kizzire (67). "Didn't drive it as good today as I did yesterday and that's going to put you behind the 8-ball here," Snedeker said. Top-ranked Dustin Johnson followed an opening 72 with a 66 to get to 2 under in his return after a positive coronavirus test knocked him out of THE CJ CUP and ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP. "It was very solid today," Johnson said. " I felt like I played pretty well yesterday, just a little rusty. … I swung it pretty well, just hit a couple bad iron shots. But I think that was more just from not trusting what I was doing, just from not being out there. But today did a lot better, hit a lot of really nice iron shots and felt like I managed my game very well, drove it well, hit a lot of quality shots." The tournament — at public Memorial Park for the first time since 1963 — is the first domestic PGA TOUR event to have fans since March. Tickets are capped at 2,000 a day. Brooks Koepka was 2 over after a 70 on the course where he served as a consultant on architect Tom Doak's renovation. Koepka’s playing for the second time since a two-month layoff to heal injuries. Jordan Spieth, playing alongside Koepka, missed the cut with rounds of 73 and 71.

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How it works: Each week, our experts from PGATOUR.COM will make their selections in PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf. Each lineup consists of four starters and two bench players that can be rotated after each round. Adding to the challenge is that every golfer can be used only three times per each of four Segments. The first fantasy golf game to utilize live ShotLink data, PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf allows you to see scores update live during competition. Aside from the experts below, Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton breaks down the field at this year’s U.S. Open in this week’s edition of the Power Rankings. For more fantasy, check out Rookie Watch, Qualifiers and Reshuffle. THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN OUR EXPERTS? The PGA TOUR Experts league is once again open to the public. You can play our free fantasy game and see how you measure up against our experts below. Joining the league is simple. Just click here to sign up or log in. Once you create your team, click the “Leagues” tab and search for “PGA TOUR Experts.” After that? Pick your players and start talking smack. Want to represent the fans against our experts? SEASON SEGMENT

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Russell Henley knows better than to quit his day job. Even so, he has enjoyed occasionally getting up on stage and playing his guitar with the likes of Keith Urban, Darius Rucker and the alternative rock band, O.A.R. over the years. “I was nervous,” the three-time PGA TOUR champion admits. “But I was excited to play – I probably had some false confidence.” Henley’s first jam session came courtesy of a bet made with Rucker during the pro-am of what is now known as the RSM Classic in 2014. When the TOUR pro won, he soon found himself on stage after the tournament, playing the Hootie & The Blowfish classic “Wagon Wheel.” “I just said, hey, do you want to play a match today, and he said, sure,” Henley recalls. “And by like the 12th hole, he said, you win. And so, I just asked him if I could play a song with him, and he nicely enough said yes.” Then at The Genesis Invitational in 2015, Henley played three songs with O.A.R. during a free concert on the range at historic Riviera Country Club. And Peter Jacobsen, who once had his own band on TOUR called Jake Trout and the Flounders, set up a date with Urban at the CVS Charity Classic later that year. These days, though, Henley’s spare time is spent with his two kids, 3-year-old Robert and Ruth, who’s 2. Besides, he says the real talent in the family belongs to his wife, Teil Duncan, an accomplished artist whose impressionistic paintings and prints are sold all over the world. “I think it’s amazing that she’s brought her business to where it is,” he says. “To where it’s just something that everybody can appreciate, whether you’re an artist or just somebody like me who doesn’t know much about art and can just say, I like the way that looks on that wall.” Henley, who is self-taught, has played guitar since he was 8 years old. His best friend and brother-in-law – they actually married sisters — always seemed to be in a band, and Henley loved music, too, particularly newer country music and anything from the ‘90s. “There was a time in my life, early to mid-twenties where I traveled with my guitar and played a lot,” Henley recalls, adding that his caddie did the same. Just don’t ask him to sing, though. “I’m terrible at singing,” Henley says. Duncan, who studied art at Auburn, wasn’t in the audience for Henley’s performances with Urban, Rucker or O.A.R. But she does remember her husband playing for her when they started dating after meeting at the wedding of her sister and his best friend. “Probably the first time we hung out, he would pull his guitar out,” she says. “So, he would just sing, like there was not a shy bone in his body. I was kind of laughing to myself because I was like, I can’t believe this. The guy’s just singing in front of me. “He just doesn’t even care, but it really put me at ease because I just knew that he didn’t care. He wasn’t nervous. So, it made me not nervous.” Just as Henley shared his music with her, Duncan made art a part of their relationship, too. She would do a sketch of her husband on the front of his birthday card every year. “And then I was like thinking to myself, I’m going to do this as a tradition every year,” Duncan recalls. “But then you know, kids happen. And so maybe one day we’ll pick that back up again.” Although she says she was “flying by the seat of her pants,” Duncan already had her business up and running when she met Henley. Rather than hanging her paintings in a gallery with limited exposure, she had utilized Facebook and Instagram to build a much broader audience. She paints – usually acrylics, watercolors and some oils – in a backyard studio at their home in Columbus, Georgia. Duncan’s style is distinctive, a delightful and colorful mix of reality and the abstract. “I’ll work on one collection at a time and produce about 15 paintings,” she explains. “And about every other month, I’ll say this beach collection is available July 6th at 11 a.m. They all become available on my website and people buy in from all over the country.” Her past collections include animals, pool scenes, flowing dresses and portraits. She has done coffee table books, stationary, notecards and wrapping paper, as well as collaborations with nationally known retailers like Crate and Barrel, One Kings Lance and Anthropologie. The couple’s two children often make “appearances” in her paintings of beach scenes or settings by the pool. One day, she plans to do their portraits. For now, her favorite painting at their home is the large abstract figure hanging in the “manly” room where Henley’s golf memorabilia are displayed. “This job is just so ridiculously wonderful,” Duncan says. “I feel like I get to go play in my backyard and have this amazing hobby, but I also get to make a living out of it. And it doesn’t demand a ton of time out of me. It’s okay if I take time away. “And then if I do, like during the pandemic, Russ for the first time ever could say, oh, I don’t have to practice. There’s literally nothing coming up. So, he watched the kids a ton. I got to paint a ton and it’s just, it’s always there. I can go back to it when it when I can and I can step away from it whenever. And it’s fine.” Henley enjoys seeing how others react to Duncan’s paintings. He says sometimes he’s too close to it to fully appreciate the artwork she creates. “I know it’s impressive,” Henley says. “And I should probably just look at it the same way she thinks about my job. They’re both very difficult. They’re very cool, interesting jobs, but they both require time and to practice it and figure out how to do it. “People seem to always love it and want to check it out. We have a studio we built for her in our backyard in Columbus and they’ll come over and just want to walk around it and look at it and see how, how does this happen? What’s going on here? “She always has some work she’s been working on, on the wall and it’s just paint everywhere. It’s all over the floor. It’s everywhere. And it’s a cool spot to come check out and people always love seeing it.” Duncan estimates that several dozen TOUR players or their wives have purchased her artwork. So, does she ever get the urge to paint golfers or golf courses? “People ask me that all the time,” she says. “And I never really have only because I’m kind of more drawn to an unmanicured landscape, but I’m not totally closed minded to it. “I really am surprised it hasn’t happened to be honest.” Not to worry. Golf is Henley’s job.

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