Valero Texas Open, Round 4: Leaderboard, tee times, TV times

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – This week marks the 50th RBC Heritage; Arnold Palmer won the first one in 1969. Luke Donald finished second. Actually, no. That’s not true, but it’s only a small exaggeration. Donald, 40, is a five-time runner-up at Harbour Town, having finished second to Bryan (Wesley, 2017) and Brian (Gay, 2009); Branden (Grace, 2016) and Brandt (Snedeker, 2011). Oh, and he had his heart ripped out by Matt Kuchar in 2014. “The one that probably hurt the most,� Donald said Wednesday. “Kooch holing the bunker shot and shooting 63 or 64 and coming from a lot behind.� You have to dig hard to find a golf oddity that compares to Donald’s close-but-no-cigar record at Harbour Town, where every anniversary is plaid. He has played 32 of his last 35 rounds here at even par or better. He has five seconds, two thirds and a T15 (but no victories) since 2009. Over the last 75 years, only two players have had more runner-up finishes in a single event: Jack Nicklaus at the RBC Canadian Open (seven), and Phil Mickelson at the U.S. Open (six). Indeed, the plaid jacket is to Donald what the Emmy was to Susan Lucci, but on the flip side there could be no better place than this cozy Pete Dye masterpiece for him to begin a career comeback. (He’s 189th in the FedExCup and 196th in the Official World Golf Ranking.) We’ve seen Phil Mickelson get back into the winner’s circle this season, plus Paul Casey, Ian Poulter and Gary Woodland. Why not Donald? And why not here? “It’s been a good run around here, for sure,� he said. “I’ve done everything but win. I guess the simple answer is I think it suits the way I play. Obviously very small greens; it’s tough to hit a lot of greens. You have to be very good around the greens, which is a strong part of my game. “It’s a fiddly course,� he added. “You’re not going to always have straightforward shots to the greens. I think it takes some imagination, some creativity around this course. Again, that’s something I’ve always been known for.� Donald reached the top of the Official World Golf Ranking in the spring of 2011 and stayed there, on and off, for 56 weeks through the middle of 2012. He played on four European Ryder Cup teams, and racked up five PGA TOUR victories. That all seems like a long time ago. Niggling injuries have been part of the problem, and Donald was hospitalized with chest pains prior to teeing off at The RSM Classic in St. Simons Island, Georgia, last November. He withdrew from the tournament and underwent extensive testing, which showed he was not having a heart attack. “I think it was some kind of remnants of a stomach flu that my kids had,� he said. The other setback: his decision to part ways with his longtime coach, Pat Goss. (They’ve since reunited.) It was Goss, then the men’s golf coach at Northwestern, who recruited Donald to go to college in America, and their partnership continued after Donald turned pro. But in 2013, Donald began working with Chuck Cook. A little over a year later, he went back to Goss. “The impetus there was to search to try and hit my driver a little bit straighter and gain a little bit of distance,� Donald said. “I thought that would give me a better chance to win majors. Certainly, Chuck’s method was very different to what I had been doing, and after 13 months, what he was trying to get me to do, I couldn’t do. “But in trying to do it,� Donald added, “I got into some bad habits that took a long time to get out. I’m certainly not blaming Chuck. He’s a wonderful teacher; it just wasn’t the right fit for me.� Donald’s swoon has coincided with career highs by some of his old teammates like Poulter and Henrik Stenson, and he derives hope from their comebacks. If they can do it, he tells himself, then so can he. And, as Donald pointed out in one of his recent tweets, there’s nothing wrong with struggling, which is relative, after all. To be blunt, we should all struggle like him. His social media feed has featured photos of himself playing Cypress Point; a golf-and-basketball date with Keegan Bradley, Tom Brady and Michael Jordan; and a fierce Moana-themed Halloween costume lineup consisting of Donald, his wife, Dianne, and their three children. Was he tempted to reassess his priorities when he turned 40? Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to step away to tend to his wine label fulltime, or start brewing his own kombucha. “Those things always cross your mind,� Donald said. “You could sort of disappear into the shadows and not really play again and live off what I’ve made on the golf course over the last few years. “But that’s not really my style,� he added. “I’m still very competitive. I want to be out here. I want to compete. I’ve seen lots of my peers go through struggles and tough times and slip down the rankings and come back. And those kinds of players and experiences give me heart that I can do the same.�

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Early within the lineup of tentpole stops from March through July is a subset of something for everyone. It starts pre-Florida Swing with a World Golf Championship/additional event doubleheader, continues with another a month later – except the WGC is a Match Play – and lingers all the way to last week’s team event in New Orleans. It’s a harrowing stretch of competition, er, opportunity. The Valspar Championship represents the other side of it, but it’s not for the weary. Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club’s Copperhead Course perennially ranks among the most challenging courses every season. Scroll past the projected contenders for more on the brief history of the tournament, what’s new this year – other than its position on the schedule – and mre. RELATED: The First Look | How the field qualified POWER RANKINGS: VALSPAR CHAMPIONSHIP Sungjae Im, Joaquin Niemann, Abraham Ancer and Henrik Stenson will be among the notables reviewed in Tuesday’s Fantasy Insider. As a nascent event from 2000-2006, the Valspar Championship was contested later in the calendar year. It then transitioned into a fixture of the Florida Swing when the FedExCup was introduced in 2007. Like many other tournaments, it was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic and repositioned this season by more than a month later than when it was accustomed. Thanks to extended daylight hours at this time of year, the 2021 edition will host 156 golfers for just the third time in its history (2002, 2013). It’s the first of a dozen tournaments extending through the Wyndham Championship in which reservations are made for the maximum. The only individual event staged on one course with as many golfers earlier in the season was the Safeway Open in early September of 2020. As it concerns the test itself, Copperhead is unchanged. It’s a par 36-35—71 that tips at 7,340 yards. It has the full complement of four par 5s, and they’re challenging, but it has five par 3s, which are just as daunting. However, what’s primarily different this year is that there’s no overseed on the Celebration bermudagrass fairways. Overseed still exists elsewhere, including on the TifEagle bermuda greens. Where it’s transitional won’t be an issue. Because the greens average just over 5,800 square feet, golfers who are stronger tee to green than they are wielding the flat stick have the inside lane. Two-time defending champion Paul Casey proved this in 2019. He led the field in total driving and Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, but he finished a pedestrian 43rd in Strokes Gained: Putting. Sharpen the focus and you’ll find a winner who performed like any in a shootout, which this tournament most definitely is not. Casey ranked T5 in greens hit and second in converting those chances into par breakers. He also paced the field in par-5 scoring. All of that compensated for finishing T55 in par-4 scoring en route to his one-stroke title at 8-under 276. Leave it to the grizzled Englishman with the million-dollar smile to make it look easy. Copperhead averaged 71.981 in 2019, highest among all par 71s in non-majors that season. It was the third time in four season that it claimed that distinction. Moderate winds will contribute to the high scores again this week. They’ll start from a southerly direction early in the tournament before pushing in from the north on the weekend. A threat of inclement weather mid-tournament could cool the air, but daytime highs will reach the low- to mid-80s. The primary rough exceeds three inches and the putting surfaces can race to 12-and-a-half feet on the Stimpmeter. If you’re new to the tournament, you’ll be learning how unrelenting The Snake Pit can be. It consists of the closing par 4-3-4. In 2019, Nos. 16, 17 and 18 ranked a respective first, eighth and third in terms of difficulty on the course. Collectively, they averaged 0.611 strokes over par for the week. Casey scored 1-over on the trio during both victories. His only birdie on the stretch in 2019 occurred on the par-4 16th in the opening round. 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: Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers; Fantasy Insider SUNDAY: Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Medical Extensions, Rookie Watch * – 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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