Watch: 5-year-old Florida trick shot artist makes second ace — and now he's a TV star

New world No. 1 Jon Rahm calls it “busy.” Webb Simpson calls it “very strange.” Scott Van Pelt of ESPN, which will televise next week’s PGA Championship, calls it “a time of total disarray.” Call it the Crazy Eight. Starting with this week’s World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational in Memphis, the next eight weeks will determine the winner/s of a WGC, the FedExCup, and two majors. England’s Tommy Fleetwood is among the players who circled this stretch on their revised calendars, dropping in for last week’s 3M Open and committing to nine big weeks of golf through the U.S. Open at Winged Foot, Sept. 17-20. “I’m going to work hard and play hard and see how well we can do,” Fleetwood said. That’s a common sentiment on TOUR as players commence the biggest and most impactful stretch of golf this season, and maybe the biggest in years. FEDEX ST. JUDE INVITATIONAL: Featured Groups | Tee times | FedExCup standings Said Rahm from TPC Southwind: “It’s one of those situations where somebody could get hot and possibly run away with the World Golf Championship, majors, possibly the FedExCup. “… It will be a good time to start playing good golf,” he added. Rahm of course is already playing good golf, having won the recent Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide to take over world No. 1. He is eighth in the FedExCup, but volatility could be the rule for both metrics going forward. The winner at TPC Southwind this week will earn an elevated 550 FedEx points (up from the usual 500), while someone will bank 600 at the PGA Championship next week. The Official World Golf Ranking could feature shake-ups at the top, as well. According to Sports Betting News, FedExCup No. 1 Justin Thomas could return to world No. 1 with a win this week. So could reigning FedExCup champion Rory McIlroy, who lost the top spot to Rahm two weeks ago. “It’s extremely important,” Thomas said of the prospect of returning to world No. 1. “It’s never something that I won’t want to have and won’t be trying to get to if I’m not there. The thing about that is it’s not about getting there, it’s about how long can you stay there.” (Thomas, the 2017 FedExCup champion, was world No. 1 for four weeks in 2018.) How players handle this busy time will have a lot to say about that. Each of the eight weeks is of course important for its own sake, but it’s hard not to take in the bigger picture. Simpson spoke of how nice it will be to have “the best players in the world” at TPC Southwind since that will also be the case for the PGA at TPC Harding Park. (The 44 of the top 50 in the OWGR in Memphis this week is the most on TOUR since the 2019 WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational.) Thomas, who will be attempting to join McIlroy and Tiger Woods as the only two-time winners of the FedExCup, name-dropped East Lake and the season-ending TOUR Championship (Sept. 4-7) even as he geared up for a run at another WGC title at TPC Southwind, where he finished T12 last year. “I find this place very similar to East Lake,” Thomas said, “to where if you drive it well, if you hit the fairways, it’s not a very difficult golf course. You have a pretty good amount of short irons and some wedges to where you can control your distance into the greens. Because it’s so important to be putting from below the hole or on the correct side.” As for the Crazy Eight, which will also decide the Wyndham Rewards Top 10, no one knows how things will go. Will one player get hot and take a big stack of chips? Will a star emerge? “I feel like it’s breakthrough season at a time of total disarray,” said ESPN’s Van Pelt. Fatigue could be a factor. Although one wonders how that’s possible after the TOUR’s three-month hiatus, there’s so much to play for, so many big events all crammed together, it could test the stamina of even the current wave of 20-something superstars. “Nothing special,” Rahm said of how he’ll handle so much golf. “Probably keep doing what I’ve been doing right now. I would say I’m out of quarantine, I’m in really good shape, so I feel physically and mentally strong enough to do what I need to do the next few weeks.” As for looking ahead, so much could happen. Too much. Do we even dare prognosticate? Curtis Strange, who will be calling next week’s PGA for ESPN from home in Morehead City, N.C., didn’t take a stab at where we’ll be in eight weeks. Nor did his colleague, Andy North. Instead, they, along with Van Pelt, credited the PGA TOUR and Commissioner Jay Monahan for bringing golf (and to some extent sports) back. “I hope it all goes through,” Strange said. “I hope the players stay disciplined … I hope that’s the storyline.” Settle in. It should be a wild ride.

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PACIFIC PALISAIDES, Calif. – Tiger Woods has suffered from a late-round fade for the second day running at The Genesis Invitational, leaving his chase for a much wanted win at Riviera Country Club in a precarious spot. Woods produced three bogeys over his last seven holes to settle for a 2-over 73, pulling him back to even par for the tournament. He should still be set for weekend play though, as the cut was trending towards being one-over-par when the 44-year-old signed his scorecard. Woods is in the midst of a 13th attempt to win a tournament at the venue where he began his PGA TOUR career as a 16-year-old. He grew up some 40 miles away and now hosts the event which became an elevated Invitational status this season. Related: Leaderboard | TOUR pros: My first time with Tiger | JT admits Tiger carried him at Presidents Cup In Thursday’s opening round, he played his opening eight holes in four under before fading to two under. Friday, he opened on the par-4 10th with a birdie, but stumbled with a double-bogey on the 15th when he caught his approach shot fat and ended up in a bad bunker lie. However, the 82-time TOUR winner rebounded with birdies on the 17th and first holes to be within shouting distance of the leaders at the time. Unfortunately, the round unraveled from there. Woods was unable to get up and down from a bunker to save par on the third hole and missed a five-foot par putt on the next. A three-putt on the sixth hole was another dagger and contributed to losing over two strokes on average to the field in Strokes Gained: Putting. But Woods was more annoyed with his approach game as he aims to move out of a tie atop the all-time TOUR wins list with Sam Snead. “I made some pretty bad mistakes out there with balls in the fairway… one ball in the fairway with wedge in my hand and another one with a sand wedge in my hand and played those two holes in three over. Not very good,â€� Woods said. “You take those away and I’m near the top of the board. So it’s not that complicated, I just need to clean it up, but I’m now pretty far back and I have to make a lot of birdies this weekend. “I was not sharp today. I just could not get the ball close enough to the hole to give myself good putts. And then when I did, I was in the wrong spots, I was above the hole and had to putt pretty defensively.â€� It was the first over-par round of the season for Woods, including the four he played in his Hero World Challenge. After Thursday’s fade, Woods referenced a lack of preparation time as he juggled his dual roles as host and player. But with his early finish Friday, he hoped some rest would freshen his mind and game. “Hopefully I can get off to a quick start like I did last year, hot birdie run and maybe make an eagle in there like I did last year,â€� he said in reference to a third-round 65 that saw him move from 52nd to 10th in 2019. “I need a start like that tomorrow to get myself back in this thing. Everyone’s bunched. There’s so many guys that have a chance going into the weekend. The wind’s picked up. I don’t know if the guys will go quite as low this afternoon as they did this morning. I just can’t (drop any more shots), not where I’m at.â€�

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