Upset city in Austin (again)

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Experience is supposed to count at TPC Sawgrass but someone forgot to tell the Spanish duo of Rafa Cabrera Bello and Jon Rahm. Cabrera Bello has just one previous appearance (where he missed the cut) and Rahm is on debut at THE PLAYERS Championship. Yet the two have given themselves a great shot at joining Sergio Garcia as Spanish champions of the PGA TOUR’s signature event. With help from three birdies in his final four holes Cabrera Bello shot a 2-under 70 to grab a share of the morning wave clubhouse lead at 5-under while Rahm’s 72 has him just a shot back at 4-under. The 22-year-old Rahm, a winner at the Farmers Insurance Open, and a runner up at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play comes off a fourth place finish at the Wells Fargo Championship. At fourth in the FedExCup standings, the 22-year-old Rahm’s confidence is sky high. He remained positive after notching four birdies to counter four bogeys on Friday. “I’m not a perfectionist, but I expect a lot of myself,” Rahm said. “… I try to have full confidence in my abilities and that’s probably partly why maybe when I haven’t been playing my best golf I’ve still been able to score because I have full confidence in I myself and try not to doubt it.” Cabrera Bello is looking to be just the third player to make his first PGA TOUR title come at THE PLAYERS – joining Craig Perks (2002) and Tim Clark (2010). ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT WORKS WONDERS A more open-minded approach paid dividends for Webb Simpson during the second round of THE PLAYERS Championship. As a result, the former U.S. Open champion finds himself firmly in the mix after making some changes in his putting earlier in the week. First, though, he needed a bit of an attitude adjustment. “I’ve been more open minded to changing, to tweaking,” Simpson said. “I’ve always been open minded with the full swing so I thought, why do I get so closed minded with the putting, why not try a few different things, kind of a ‘who cares’ mentality. “We tweaked a few things with setup, with the grip, with the routine even and found something that’s been good.” Simpson entered the week ranked 186th in strokes gained putting. He ranked 26th among the field that now numbers 144 after the first round, though, and was in the top 10 when he finished the second. Four birdies in a five-hole stretch as he made the turn vaulted Simpson up the leaderboard. He chipped in at the seventh hole, then made putts of 25, 10 and 14 feet at Nos. 9-11 to get to 5 under. The real key, though, and perhaps the most satisfying part of the round for Simpson, were the putts he made on Nos. 13-18. He saved par with putts of 11, 12, 6, 8 and 10 and made a 10-footer for bogey at No. 14. “It proved to me that the 6-, 8-footers are huge, because if I miss a couple of them in the middle of the round, I lose momentum,” Simpson said. “But I made them and I kept going.” Simpson, who lost in a playoff earlier this year at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, has never had a top-10 finish at THE PLAYERS in seven previous starts. In fact, Friday’s 69 was just the fourth time he’s broken 70 in 22 rounds on Pete Dye’s diabolical layout. DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN For the second straight week, world No. 1 Dustin Johnson finds himself near the cut line at even par after rounds of 71-73. Johnson can only hope to have the same kind of success as he did last weekend at the Wells Fargo Championship. After consecutive rounds of 67 at Eagle Point, he was waiting in the clubhouse for a potential playoff that could have given him a fourth win in as many starts. Then Brian Harman drained a dramatic 30-footer on the 72nd hole to leave the man who ranks first in the FedExCup one stroke shy and in a tie for second. Johnson said Friday that he felt that if THE PLAYERS lead stayed around 6 or 7 under he’d have a chance this weekend. “I’m going to have to play two really good rounds on the weekend,” he said. “But tomorrow I’ll probably be teeing off pretty early and (I can) go out and post a good number and get myself back in the golf tournament.” HEARN BACK IN CONTENTION David Hearn is no stranger to the leaderboard at THE PLAYERS Championship and 2017 is no exception. A 69 on Friday left the Canadian veteran tied for the early lead with Rafa Cabrera Bella. Hearn has never missed the cut in five starts at TPC Sawgrass and posted his best finish, a tie for sixth, in 2014. A year later Hearn was tied for the lead after the first round and trailed by two after the second and third. A final-round 78 sent him tumbling down the leaderboard but did nothing to temper his enthusiasm for the course. “I think that I enjoy playing this golf course because I think it’s a mental test from beginning to end,” said Hearn, whose caddy lives in nearby St. Augustine. “There’s no real gimme holes on this golf course. … “I think a lot of guys think this golf course can play really, really hard but I enjoy that challenge. So it’s been a good two days for me and I’ve had some good success here in the past so I’m looking forward to another good weekend.” ODDS AND ENDS Chez Reavie looked to have thrown away his decent start to the tournament with three bogeys in his first six holes Friday but he fought back late with three birdies in his final four holes to grind out a 72 and stay at 4-under… Sergio Garcia aced the island green 17th on Thursday but on Friday he needed a little bit of luck to stay dry. His club selection of pitching wedge nearly cost him as his ball barely reached the green, bouncing hard off the railroad pillars and ricocheting to the putting surface… When Anirban Lahiri came to the 18th tee he sat just five shots off the lead at even par. Sadly the Indian star then hit three balls in the water on his way to a 10, just one short of Andre Stolz’s record 11 from 2005.

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Sungjae Im plays a lot of golf, which meant he played a ton of tournaments in 2020-21 without a PGA TOUR title. He played in 35 events, to be exact, tied for the most on TOUR with Brian Stuard. Im only had to wait until his second tournament this season to get his first victory of the year and second of his career. At the Shriners Children’s Open, a final-round 62 got him to 24-under, four shots clear of back-to-back runner-up Matthew Wolff. Im’s score of 260 was the best at TPC at Summerlin since Webb Simpson’s winning 260 in 2013. 1. Sungjae Im storms back for second PGA TOUR title Sungjae Im opened with rounds of 63 and 65 to co-lead with Chad Ramey at 14-under on Friday, but a third-round 70 left Im three shots back of Adam Schenk. Playing in the third-to-last-group on Sunday, Im opened with four birdies on his first seven holes. He proceeded to launch himself into the lead with five straight birdies on Nos. 9-13. As others near the top of the leaderboard stumbled, Im stretched his advantage to as many as five strokes. At 9-under through 13 holes, Im was on legitimate 59 watch, but with the tournament well within his grasp, he made pars on his final five holes. His 62 was still the low score of the day. “The big difference between yesterday and today was today, there was no wind compared to Round 3 and that made it easier,” Im says. “Tee-to-green, driver, irons, putting game, it worked as I wanted to and it gave me a good result.” Im committed four bogeys on Saturday, but no bogeys in his other three rounds. At 24-under, he beat runner-up Matthew Wolff by four shots. Schenk, Marc Leishman and Rory Sabbatini all finished five shots back. Leishman shot a final-round 63 and Sabbatini a final-round 64. Sabbatini’s day included birdies on his first four holes and a 28 on the front nine, but an even-par 36 on his back nine kept the Olympic silver medalist out of serious contention. Im’s second career win came in his 100th career PGA TOUR start. His first victory came at The Honda Classic in 2020, a one-shot win over Mackenzie Hughes. Im won that tournament at 6-under in much different scoring conditions at PGA National than at TPC at Summerlin. Im also now has 79 made cuts and 20 top-10 finishes in his 100 career starts. 2. Matthew Wolff repeats as runner-up A year ago, Matthew Wolff arrived at TPC at Summerlin three weeks after earning runner-up honors at the U.S. Open behind Bryson DeChambeau. Wolff fired a third-round 61 and qualified for a three-man playoff with Martin Laird and Austin Cook. Laird won the playoff, but Wolff lifted his world ranking to a career-best No. 12. In the year since, Wolff finished no better than T15 in any tournament. His world ranking dropped to as low as No. 49. He spent two months away from the PGA TOUR last spring, focusing on his mental health. He has since been open about this time, noting there were moments he did not even want to get out of bed in the morning. Back at the Shriners Children’s Open this week, Wolff buried the ghosts of last season. He posted four rounds of 68 or better, finishing at 20-under, good for a runner-up finish once again, this time by himself. Wolff opened Sunday in the final group with Schenk, one shot behind the leader, and after going 3-under on the front, he was within striking distance of Im. However, bogeys on No. 10 and No. 13 ultimately took Wolff out of contention. Birdies on Nos. 15 and 16 got him back into second place. “If I keep on putting myself in these positions I know that eventually it’s going to be in my favor and I’m going to win,” Wolff says. “But I really like the way my game’s trending, especially from the beginning — or the end of last year. If you would have told me I would be in this position right now, I would be really happy.” When Wolff finished as the Shriners Children’s Open runner-up in 2020, it felt like he left something on the table. This time around, it felt like he proved to people he can be the player they thought he could be. You know that guy, the one who won in his fourth event on the PGA TOUR and claimed top-5s in his first two major starts. This new version of Matthew Wolff has those old skills, but also, a new mindset. “Obviously, I know I had the game, I think just, maturity-wise and mentally, I’m just a much stronger and more all-around, just a more complete person,” Wolff says. “I’m able to put things in perspective more when stuff isn’t going my way, I’m able to bounce back.” Wolff will continue to be a threat to win at the Shriners Children’s Open in the future. He now has 12 rounds in the 60s in 12 rounds at the event. But in the year between starts at TPC at Summerlin, it appears he will be a force on the PGA TOUR once again. 3. Sam Burns cools down Everything was going right for Sam Burns. He won last week’s Sanderson Farms Championship, earning his second career PGA TOUR title. He opened at the Shriners Children’s Open with rounds of 66 and 63. After a birdie on his 47th hole of the tournament, he reached 17-under and held a 2-shot lead. But the wheels fell off on the back nine Saturday, as Burns missed a 6-foot birdie putt on 13 and a 9-foot birdie try on 15. Burns had just 171 yards in for his second shot on the par-5 16th, but put that shot in the water, bogeying the hole. The struggles continued Sunday, as Burns bogeyed two holes on the front nine and committed a double-bogey on 18, dropping him to T14, out of the top 10. Burns’ final-round 72 ended a run of nine straight PGA TOUR rounds in the 60s. Despite all this, Burns’ result moved him into sole possession of the top spot in the current FedExCup Standings. He will get an immediate chance to put the weekend behind him this coming week when he tees it back up in Las Vegas at THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT. 4. Adam Schenk trending upward In his first 110 starts on the PGA TOUR, Adam Schenk landed four top-10 finishes. In his last nine events, he’s added three more top 10s. In fact, all three of those tops 10s are also top-5s. After a birdie on 18 on Saturday, Schenk held the overnight lead at TPC at Summerlin by himself. He opened with a birdie on No. 1 on Sunday, but the momentum slowed, as he went 3-over on his next nine holes. Three back-nine birdies got Schenk’s round to 1-under and a total of 19-under for the tournament, five back of Im. Schenk’s T3 finish at the Shriners Children’s Open is his best finish ever on TOUR, edging his T4 at the John Deere Classic and 4th place at the Barracuda Championship last season. “Everyone’s good enough to win out here, you just have to believe in yourself and not beat yourself, in a sense,” Schenk said after his 66 on Saturday. “I started to believe a lot more in the last couple months.” Make fun of Schenk’s last name all you want. He is flushing the ball right now and is going to have more chances to win in 2021-22. 5. Hayden Buckley is a rookie to watch After missing the cut at the Fortinet Championship, Hayden Buckley notched his first career PGA TOUR top 10 at the Sanderson Farms Championship, finishing T4 after a final-round 66. The 25-year-old followed that up by starting his Shriners Children’s Open with a first-round hole-in-one at the par 3 17th. He finished his tournament with an 8-under 63, tied for the second-best score on Sunday, to finish 17-under in T8. Buckley, a first-team All-SEC selection and four-time collegiate winner at Missouri, won on the Korn Ferry Tour last season at the LECOM Suncoast Classic. He finished 10th in the 2021 Korn Ferry Tour Finals thanks to a T7 at the Boise Open and a T4 at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship. Three events into his PGA TOUR career, Buckley is at No. 10 in the FedExCup Standings. COMCAST BUSINESS TOUR TOP 10 The Comcast Business TOUR TOP 10 highlights and rewards the extraordinary level of play required to earn a spot in the TOP 10 at the conclusion of the FedExCup Regular Season as determined by the FedExCup standings. The competition recognizes and awards the most elite in golf.

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