Unforgettable moments from 2018-19 PGA TOUR season

At the same time that the PGA TOUR matches the record for shortest road trip between consecutive tournaments, it presents what has been a familiar event since the Bicentennial. Just like last week’s Workday Charity Open, the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide has been contested on only one course throughout its history. And while it was fun to fill the recent hiatus with an all-time Power Rankings at Muirfield Village Golf Club, nothing beats real-time competition, especially given the fact that the No. 1 is back in action. As of midday Monday, 89 who teed it up at the Workday hung around for the nightcap of this “Dublin-header” in central Ohio. For a review of how Muirfield Village played last week in comparison to last year’s Memorial, what this week’s field should expect and more, scroll past the projected contenders. RELATED: Featured Groups | The First Look | Inside the Field POWER RANKINGS: THE MEMORIAL Notables reviewed in Tuesday’s Fantasy Insider will include 2010 champion Justin Rose, Brooks Koepka, Jason Day, Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth. Despite the spillover of talent from the Workday to the Memorial, the construction of each field is different. The Workday was a 157-man open, while the grouping for the 132-deep Memorial is an invitational, albeit 12 stronger than originally scheduled (to accommodate for playing time lost due to the pandemic). So, it probably doesn’t surprise keen-eyed golf fans that the field for the Workday hit fewer than 10 percent of the welcoming fairways on average than last year’s Memorial field (of 120), even with rain limiting rollout on landing areas. As it concerned saving par, last week’s scrambling percentage of 52.32 was the lowest of any course this season. That’s not a full three points lower than the 2019 Memorial field (that ranked seventh-lowest in all of 2018-19), but it’s an indication of overall comfort and familiarity, or lack thereof, on the 5,000-square foot targets. Still, the Workday field checked in with a scoring average of 71.853 for the week. Last year’s Memorial field landed at 72.081. Muirfield Village is a stock par 72 on which par is a decent score when the wind blows, which it did for a good portion of the 2019 Memorial. However, whoever claims this week’s title, the three-year PGA TOUR membership exemption and the three-year exemption into THE PLAYERS Championship, will have begun the tournament eyeing double digits under par. Each of the last seven champions have completed 72 holes no worse than 12-under 276. Inclement weather cannot be ruled out during any round, which means that rain will fall, and wind won’t be an issue, so scoring will remain low. It’s probably a stretch to consider 19-under 269 repeating itself. That was the aggregate posted by Workday champion Collin Morikawa and playoff victim Justin Thomas. They played the 7,456-yard track with modifications made for the substitute event. Traditional tees and hole locations will bookend the experience on what should play as a longer test overall for the Memorial, at least in degrees. The bentgrass greens for the Workday were prepped to run 11-11.5 feet on the Stimpmeter, but the undulations seemed to contribute to what normally would be a slow pace by TOUR standards. Weather-dependent, as always, this week’s speed could eclipse 13 feet, longest of any event that releases the measurement. 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: Rookie Ranking, Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Medical Extensions, Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers, Fantasy Insider * – 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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AUGUSTA, Ga. — Everything you need to know from the third round of the Masters, where Hideki Matsuyama shot a bogey-free 65 to take a four-shot lead. It was the first bogey-free round this week. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Custom gear for the 2021 Masters THE LEADER On the 10-year anniversary of his Masters debut, Hideki Matsuyama will take a solo lead into the final round at Augusta National. He first came here in 2011 after winning the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship, shooting a third-round 68 to take low amateur honors. Like Jordan Spieth last week, Matsuyama is trying to end a winless streak that started in 2017. Matsuyama’s last win came in the World Golf Championship at Firestone, where he shot a final-round 61 to win by five. The following week, he was one shot back entering the final round of the PGA Championship before bogeying two of his final three holes to finish three back of Justin Thomas. On Saturday, Matsuyama played his final eight holes in 6 under to grab the lead. STORYLINES TRAFFIC JAM: Matsuyama may have a four-shot lead, but four players are tied at 7 under: Xander Schauffele, Marc Leishman, Justin Rose and Will Zalatoris. Schauffele, who played with Matsuyama on Saturday, will join him in Sunday’s final group after shooting 68 on Saturday. Schauffele, whose mother is part Japanese, conversed with Matsuyama in Japanese during Saturday’s round. Four of the top five on the leaderboard are looking to end victory droughts that have lasted more than a year, while Zalatoris is seeking his first PGA TOUR win. Leishman last won at the 2020 Farmers Insurance Open, while Rose’s last win was at that event in 2019. Schauffele’s most recent win was at the 2019 Sentry Tournament of Champions. ACES WILD: Corey Conners used a hole-in-one on the sixth hole to get in contention. His 8-iron tee shot went in the hole en route to a 4-under 68. He is alone at 6 under par, five off the lead. Conners is seeking a second consecutive top-10 at Augusta National. He finished T10 here in November. “I’m notoriously a great sleeper, so I don’t think that will be a problem,” Conners said. “Just stick with the same routine that I’ve been doing the last few day. Just try and get ready to have some fun tomorrow.” SPIETH STILL IN THE HUNT: Jordan Spieth will start the final round six shots back. He chipped in on the 10th hole to reach 5 under and birdied the 15th but bogeyed the next hole before parring in. He has hit 44 of 54 greens this week, four more than anyone else in the field. Spieth shot 72 despite a double-bogey on the seventh hole Saturday. He also had a triple-bogey in the first round. THOMAS’ TRIPLE: Justin Thomas had just birdied the 12th hole to reach 4 under par heading into the back nine’s par-5s. It seemed he was set to make a move into contention. Disaster struck instead. Thomas tripled the 13th after hitting his third shot into the creek short of the green. He hit his fifth well past the hole before three-putting. “It was two rounds. I was playing great before the delay, and then I didn’t afterwards. I mean, it’s just a shame. I was really playing well,” he said. “I just chunked it.” NOTABLES JON RAHM (72—216): The new father shot a third consecutive 72. PHIL MICKELSON (69-216): The former Masters champion made the cut on the number, but a 69 on Saturday moved him up to 21st place. BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU (75-218): A day after a 67 that put him in red figures, he shot 75 despite making four birdies.. WORTH WATCHNG SUPERLATIVES Driving Distance: 326.1 yards Driving Accuracy: Henrik Stenson/Matt Fitzpatrick, 37 of 4 Greens in Regulation: Jordan Spieth, 44 of 54 Fewest Putts: Jose Maria Olazabal, 78 Eagles: Hideki Matsuyama, 3 Birdies: Robert MacIntyre, 16

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Max Homa was unflappable on Sunday at the Wells Fargo Championship. He continually holed important putts to stay atop a leaderboard that featured some of the game’s biggest names. He never made a mistake while conquering a course of major-championship caliber.  His steady play under Sunday pressure makes his performance two years ago that much more unfathomable. Homa is a PGA TOUR champion less than two years after he couldn’t find a fairway or make a cut. The former NCAA champion, a collegiate contemporary of Justin Thomas, was embarrassed to go into locker rooms. He wanted to spare his peers from playing practice rounds with him.  Now he’s a winner at Quail Hollow Club, where the list of champions includes Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Jason Day. Homa started Sunday with a share of the lead, then went out and shot the low round of the day. RELATED: Final leaderboard | Winner’s bag | Updated FedExCup standings That’s not what you usually see from players pursuing their first PGA TOUR title. Especially when their last season went the way Homa’s did. He missed 15 of 17 cuts and made less than $20,000. He won’t have to worry about money anymore. He earned his first winner’s check by shooting 67 to finish at 15-under 269 (69-63-70-67). Joel Dahmen, who also was seeking his first PGA TOUR win, finished alone in second. The victory moved Homa to 35th in the FedExCup standings and earned him a two-year exemption. Homa finished 163rd and 244th in the FedExCup in his first two PGA TOUR seasons. “The only goal I had this year was to make it to the TOUR Championship, so that’s obviously a big boost there,â€� Homa said. “Moving up that FedExCup’s sweet. The job security’s probably a little sweeter. I know it’s been tough on my family.â€� The reigning FedExCup champion, Justin Rose, finished four back. Sergio Garcia, Rickie Fowler, Paul Casey and Jason Dufner all tied for fourth. Rory McIlroy was two shots back at the start of the day, but faded to eighth place with a 73 on Sunday. “I told (caddie Joe Greiner) on one of the holes that I felt like I was going to throw up, but my hands felt unbelievable on the club,â€� Homa said. He couldn’t say the same in 2017, when he shot a cumulative 61-over-par in 17 starts on the PGA TOUR. But ‘resilient’ is a word that multiple people used to describe Homa. He has a similar word, ‘RELENTLESS’ tattooed on his wrist. “I refuse to give in and I believe that hard work will pay off,â€� he said. He’s just the fourth player in the last 25 years to win on the PGA TOUR after enduring a season in which they made less than $20,000 in 15-plus events. His toughness showed in Sunday’s performance. He made two birdies and no bogeys on the front nine to take a one-shot lead at the turn. He pulled away by holing putts of 14 and 13 feet to birdie 10 and 11. On Sunday, he missed just one of his five attempts from 10-15 feet. He also went 4 for 5 on putts from 5-7 feet. He led the field with 4.1 strokes gained on the greens Sunday. After pulling ahead with those two birdies to start the back nine, he holed three consecutive 5-footers for par on Nos. 12-14. The last one came after a rain delay of more than an hour. A bogey at 14 would have been especially costly. He laid up on the drivable par-4, then pulled a wedge that bounced into the rough left of the green. His chip shot skidded past the hole just before a heavy downpour hit the course. After marking the ball, Homa took one last look at the line before getting into a van. When the rain subsided, he practiced a similar putt on the practice green. “I knew in the back of my mind that if I make that putt, I win this golf tournament,â€� Homa said. Making that putt gave him a three-shot lead as he walked to the tee of the reachable 15th hole. A two-putt birdie there gave him a four-shot lead with only the infamous Green Mile remaining. He made his only bogey of the day at 16, but followed with an 11-footer for par on 17. With a three-shot lead, he was able to emulate his idol, Tiger Woods, and twirl his club after his tee shot on 18 found the fairway. Homa’s struggles started when he fell for the lie that he had to improve exponentially after turning pro. He won both the Pac-12 and NCAA titles in 2013 as a senior at Cal, winning the conference championship with a course-record 61 at Los Angeles Country Club, a future U.S. Open venue.  “He has this calm resiliency,â€� said fellow PGA TOUR player Brandon Hagy, who played with Homa at Cal. “You just see it time and time again in big tournaments. Winning the Pac-12s, winning NCAAs. In the bigger events he would step up at the right moments.â€� Homa was Walker Cup teammates with Justin Thomas, and they both made their pro debut on the PGA TOUR at the 2013 Safeway Open. Thomas finished 72nd. Homa was ninth. They both graduated to the PGA TOUR in 2014 after one season on the Web.com Tour. But while Thomas thrived, Homa’s game went into a nosedive. “He got too far in his own head,â€� said Homa’s swing coach, Les Johnson. “He’s so darn smart, so when he gets in his head he can get going in too many directions.â€� Homa returned to Johnson in 2017, seeking to become the player who left college as a can’t miss prospect. “When he came back to me, he was low,â€� Johnson said. “The first thing I told him is that you just have to get your game back in order. Once you do that, you can work back toward being the Max Homa that we know that you are.â€� Homa’s road to the winner’s circle started with another performance that proved the resiliency that his friends describe. At the WinCo Foods Portland Open, the final event of the Web.com Tour’s regular season, Homa birdied his final four holes Friday to make the cut on the number. If he had not made the cut, he would have fallen $96 short of the Web.com Tour Finals and would have needed to go to Q-School. He could have even been without Web.com Tour status this year. He doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. “It was embarrassing at times,â€� he said. “But it ain’t embarrassing anymore. It’s a cool story now.â€�

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