What comes next for Tiger Woods, nobody knows — not even his caddie

  Richard H. Lee was successful in a second consecutive Monday qualifier as he tries to work his way back to the PGA TOUR. Lee’s 64 was the low score in the Genesis Open’s qualifier at Industry Hills Golf Club’s Eisenhower Course. It came two weeks after he fired a 66 to play his way into the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Lee, 30, played the PGA TOUR from 2012-14, finishing a career-best 96th in the FedExCup in 2013. He had surgery on his left thumb in February 2015 and has been unable to regain PGA TOUR status since. Last year, Lee made just two starts apiece on the Web.com Tour and Mackenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada. This year’s Waste Management Phoenix Open, where he missed the cut with rounds of 74-70, was his first PGA TOUR start since the John Deere Classic in August 2016, the final event of his medical extension following surgery. He has six top-10s in 88 career TOUR starts, highlighted by T4 finishes at the 2016 Barbasol Championship and 2014 Puerto Rico Open. Zecheng Dou, Rob Oppenheim and Parker McLachlin were the other successful qualifiers for the PGA TOUR’s annual stop at Riviera Country Club. Dou shot 65 on Monday, while Oppenheim and McLachlin fired 66 before winning a 5-for-2 playoff. Conrad Shindler, club pro Michael Block and Hyun Woo Ryu, the world’s 130th-ranked player, also were in the playoff. Block is the winner of the 2014 PGA Professional National Championship and a four-time Southern California PGA Player of the Year (2013-16). Dou, 21, and Xinjun Zhang both graduated the Web.com Tour in 2017, becoming the first Chinese-born players to earn PGA TOUR cards. Dou was the first Chinese-born player to win on the Web.com Tour, as well. He is 201st in this season’s FedExCup standings. Dou won PGA TOUR China’s Order of Merit in 2016 after winning four times. Oppenheim, 38, is playing his second PGA TOUR season after regaining his card at last year’s Web.com Tour Finals. He finished 27th on the Web.com Tour’s Regular Season money list in 2017, missing his TOUR card by about $7,000, but had two top-5 finishes in the four Finals events. The Rollins College alum was 35 years old when he earned his first PGA TOUR card, but he finished 158th in the FedExCup standings and had to return to the Web.com Tour last year. He’s 138th in this season’s standings. McLachlin, winner of the 2008 Barracuda Championship, is an alumnus of nearby UCLA. This will be just his 16th PGA TOUR start since the end of the 2010 season. He has made the cut in just one of those events. McLachlin made seven of 18 cuts last year on the Web.com Tour to finish 157th on the money list. Julian Suri, the world’s 65th-ranked player, shot 67 on Monday to miss the playoff by a shot. Former Masters champion Mike Weir fired 68.

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SAN DIEGO – They say the appendix is a useless body part but Talor Gooch wondered if his mojo went with his into the medical waste bin after it was removed last season. But any sense of that notion is gone now as he backed up his fourth-place finish at the Desert Classic with an impressive tie for third at the Farmers Insurance Open. It has rocketed the 27-year-old to a career high 27th in the FedExCup and given him every opportunity to make his first FedExCup Playoffs. In his rookie PGA TOUR season in 2017-18 the Oklahoma native was by no means playing amazing but still found himself inside the top 125 on the FedExCup list heading into summer. While he had failed to post a top 10 he had started to grow in confidence, particularly after a T13 at the Wells Fargo Championship. And then the appendix had to come out. “Up to that point I was playing decent and I think I made one cut after that,â€� Gooch said. “That kind of threw me off a little bit.â€� He decided against taking a minor medical exemption and instead tried to fight his way through. But it was apparent he came back a little early and the results dropped. His poor finish meant he missed the FedExCup Playoffs but did manage to stay inside the top 150 to gain conditional status this season. Starts from this position are hard to come by. Gooch had to Monday qualify into the Sony Open in Hawaii where he missed the cut only because he hit the wrong ball and was penalized. Rather than dwell on a potentially very costly mistake he surged his way up the leaderboard at the Desert Classic and booked a ticket via his finish to Torrey Pines. Now he’s booked another start next week at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. “Last week was the first time I was in contention and I kind of came through the final round and that obviously gave me a lot of confidence,â€� he said. “Never having done it before, now kind of doing it … I know I can do it now. It feels good. “There’s no doubt that the physical parts have been there the last couple weeks and then it’s just a matter of getting out of your own way. I’ve figured out how to do that the last couple weeks and hopefully we can keep doing it.â€� The goals have certainly lifted now. Forget top-10s, he’s now thinking wins. He’s not a complete stranger to success having won the 2017 News Sentinel Open on the Web.com Tour. A win on the PGA TOUR would take away all the uncertainty of when starts are coming his way. “I think the results would indicate I’m closer to winning,â€� Gooch said. “It’s a funny game as far as winning. People kind of got numb to how hard it is to win out here because of Tiger over the last couple decades. “You have to have things go right, you have to be there in that position a lot as well … If I can get that first one out of the way, then hopefully they start tumbling after that.â€�

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