What the pros are playing: THE CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK

ATLANTA – Justin Thomas stands on the precipice of history at the TOUR Championship. Tiger Woods, the only two-time winner of the FedExCup, never won it back-to-back. And nine of 11 FedExCup champions haven’t even come close, failing to advance to the season-ending TOUR Championship at East Lake one year after hoisting the FedExCup trophy. “Yeah, I’m excited to have an opportunity to do something that no one has ever done, which is pretty cool,â€� said Thomas, who is nursing what he calls a minor wrist injury and wasn’t feeling his best Tuesday, when he curtailed his range work in the stifling heat. “I’m not sure if it was true or not, but I heard that no one had been in the top 5 (entering the TOUR Championship) after winning the FedExCup, so I take a lot of pride and a lot of honor in that.â€� It is true. Of the two FedExCup champions who made it back to the TOUR Championship the next year, Brandt Snedeker (won in ’12) finished 12th in the FedExCup in ’13, and Jordan Spieth (won in ’15) got back to Atlanta in ’16, finishing 9th in the FedExCup. Two for 11 is not very good, and while that statistic is partly the result of Woods’ injuries, not even Snedeker or Spieth came to the TOUR Championship looking as good as Thomas. At No. 5 in the FedExCup, he controls his own destiny — the top 5 automatically win the FedExCup with a win at the TOUR Championship — and is in the best shape of any FedExCup winner to repeat. “I don’t have as many wins and I didn’t win a major,â€� Thomas said of this season, “but statistically I think I’ve improved in about every category, which is huge.â€� Indeed, he’s gone from five wins to three, most recently at the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, but Thomas has improved in almost all statistical categories. He’s gone from 6th to 3rd in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green; 45th to 38th in Strokes Gained: Putting; and 5th to 3rd in Strokes Gained: Total. He has held the top spot in the FedExCup for eight weeks, and apart from the first week of the season, he’s never dropped below ninth. Now he’s got to finish it off at the TOUR Championship a year after he finished second to Xander Schauffele by a shot. Thomas has said more than once that the tournament loss still rankles him, and when asked if he could have any shot back from that week, he doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah, my tee shot on 18, for sure,â€� he said. “I thought I hit the fairway there. I’m probably not going to make worse than birdie (if I hit the fairway).â€� Five back going into the final round, Thomas nearly came all the way back, his 25-foot birdie try on 18 curling across the front edge of the hole and barely staying out. He signed for a 66. Schauffele, playing well behind him, nearly reached the 18th green in two and birdied the hole when his three-foot birdie putt barely caught the edge of the cup and tumbled in. “Yeah, it still bothers me—18 is not a very hard par-5,â€� Thomas said. “And I hit such a great putt on 18 that I still don’t know how it didn’t go in. The par-5s are something that I’m able to use my strength and my advantage with my length, and to not birdie a par-5 to close a tournament when I had a chance to win was and still is upsetting. “But yeah, at the end of the day, winning the FedExCup is a huge deal and a life-changer,â€� he added, “but to have six wins in a season would have been pretty sweet.â€� Adding to the intrigue this week, Thomas did his pre-tournament press conference with his right wrist wrapped in medical tape. He said he injured it while hitting a shot on the 13th hole of the final round of the BMW Championship at Aronimink, where he finished T12. “I’d never had an injury before,â€� he said. “… I took last week off, didn’t hit a ball. I chipped and putted a lot, so my short game feels pretty good.â€� Never had an injury? Well, OK. Thomas is making history already. As for making FedExCup history, time will tell.

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A year ago, Bubba Watson was languishing at 115th in the FedExCup standings when he teed it up at A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier at The Old White TPC in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Mired in a two-year win drought and fighting an undisclosed illness that saw him lose more than 20 pounds, he was at the lowest point in his career. Today, Bubba Golf is back. Watson is third in the FedExCup, the only three-time winner on the PGA TOUR this season, and one of the most dramatic turnaround stories of this season. “It’s been good,â€� Watson said in his press conference from the Greenbrier on Tuesday. “Looking back, I’m a golfer, so there’s always things I wish was better. It was a slow start to the year, missed a couple cuts. But I knew I was headed in the right direction.â€� Players are almost always trending in one direction or the other, up or down, with the exception of FedExCup No. 1 Dustin Johnson, who was also No. 1 a year ago at this time. With the start of the Playoffs seven weeks out, a snapshot of the current Top 30, who would get into the season-ending TOUR Championship if it started today, shows several dramatic upward trajectories. “If you make it to Atlanta, no matter how you play throughout the year, you’ve done something right,â€� said big mover Webb Simpson, who is 10th in the FedExCup (up from 33rd a year ago) after his big win at THE PLAYERS Championship, and is looking good for East Lake. Chesson Hadley, 19th in the FedExCup, has made the biggest leap; he was 224th a year ago. Ryan Armour, who is in the Greenbrier field and 30th in the FedExCup, has made the second biggest jump, from 185th. “I’m a different player over the last year,â€� Armour, 42, said recently, and as if to offer further proof, he finished second to runaway winner Francesco Molinari at the Quicken Loans National last week. Bryson DeChambeau, who will defend a TOUR title for the first time at next week’s John Deere Classic, is the third biggest mover over the last 12 months, having shot up from 128th position a year ago to 6th today. Whether you measure it with a calculator or a compass, that’s a huge improvement. Their transformations have been stark, as have those of TOUR winners Aaron Wise (FedExCup No. 23) and Austin Cook (No. 28), both of whom are playing the Greenbrier. They’re battling for Rookie of the Year honors, which begs the question: When you talk meteoric rises, do Cook and Wise get the nod over even Hadley? How do you measure the upward trajectory of a guy who wasn’t even on TOUR last year? Phil Mickelson, who is making his first start since a disappointing U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, has gone from 40th in the FedExCup a year ago to eighth today. Patton Kizzire, who also is playing the Greenbrier this week, has gone from 89th to ninth. No player, though, is enjoying as thrilling a run as Tony Finau. At No. 11 in the FedExCup, the soft-spoken, long-hitting Utahan is up 20 spots from a year ago. He has six top-10 finishes, including two at the season’s first two majors, and has proven just as adept at figuring out less brawny courses, like The Old White TPC (7,286 yards, par 70), as he is taming longer ones. “It’s been a great season for me,â€� said Finau, who is coming off a fifth-place U.S. Open finish in which he had a chance to win late Sunday. “Really solid season, and my best season thus far. I’ve played some really nice golf and I’ve learned a lot about myself both mentally and physically. I’ve been working really hard on my game, and I think it’s starting to show this year.â€� Finau is used to making big moves. After switching back to a conventional putting grip before the 2017 BMW Championship, he shot a final-round 64 at Conway Farms to tie for seventh and play his way into the TOUR Championship at East Lake, where he also finished T7 to finish 19th in the season-long race for the FedExCup. He’s kept that good run going in 2018. “I like the position I’m in,â€� Finau said. Being well inside the Top 30, he added, beats being on the outside looking in, as he was last year. But he’s loathe to take his eye off the ball at the Greenbrier and beyond. The same goes for Watson, Mickelson, Kizzire and Simpson. Late-bloomer Armour, in the 30th position, can’t afford much of a letdown if he wants to get to Atlanta for the first time. The biggest movers of 2018 have worked hard to get where they are, but plenty of work remains.

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When your confidence takes a hit on the greens, sometimes all it takes is a new putter to shake things up. It’s no secret that five-time PGA TOUR winner Rickie Fowler has struggled on the greens in recent years after using that club to his advantage during some of his most successful seasons. He led the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting in 2017 and gained strokes on the greens in all but one of his first 11 seasons on TOUR. His performance in that metric has dropped precipitously, however. He ranked 126th last year – losing strokes for the first time since 2012 — and has dropped to 205th (out of 216 players) this season. As he told GolfWRX on Tuesday ahead of the 2022 Honda Classic, though, he’s trying to “switch up the mojo a bit.” Fowler has switched between different Scotty Cameron and Cobra putters recently, but at last week’s The Genesis Invitational, Fowler used a TaylorMade putter for the first time in competition. The 2015 PLAYERS Champion opted for a blacked-out TaylorMade Spider GT with a single white sightline on the crown and a short slant hosel. The new, recently released Spider GT putter design from TaylorMade is noteworthy for its winged-shape, multi-material construction and perimeter weighting, which is meant to boost forgiveness and improve consistency. Although some may believe that every equipment decision on the PGA TOUR is ultra-calculated, Fowler’s change last week was less complicated. Ahead of the The Genesis Invitational, he simply approached a TaylorMade staff bag full of new putter options on the practice green at The Riviera Country Club and started checking them out. “I was hitting putts on one of the greens and they have the bags set up, and I looked at a few different things because I was just not hitting some great putts,” Fowler told GolfWRX. “I looked at a few of the different necks and different sight lines. … The longer line that’s on there right now seemed to be the one, and the small neck just sat clean. It looked nice and was really easy to line up.” Fowler was searching for a different look to freshen things up and get that old feeling back, but it seems he knows not to place too much emphasis on the putter itself. It’s really more of an internal battle. “Really, from what I’ve seen, whatever I’ve hit – any putter – if you make a good stroke, it’s going to go in,” Fowler said. “I just needed to switch up the mojo a little bit and have a different look. I hit a couple putts on the practice putting green last week, and (the Spider GT) was just kind of lining up easy and starting on line. “I’ve always been a good putter, it’s something I’ve always just, not necessarily been able to just rely on, but take advantage when I’ve hit it close or help save rounds by making putts. But, unfortunately over the last couple years, it’s not necessarily been there. So, everyone makes great stuff. It’s been fun working with Cobra on the new putter line there, and yeah, I just wanted a different look and try and switch up the mojo a bit.” Right now, coming off a T55 at The Genesis Invitational, Fowler is happy with his stroke in a vacuum, but he’s working on matching up his reads with confident strokes on the course. “The stroke’s fine,” said Fowler, who ranks 75th in the FedExCup. “It’s more about the confidence and then trusting that I either have the right read, or getting the right read. Sometimes I feel I’ve been a little off on reads and so it doesn’t matter what you do there, you’re not going to make it. And then, sometimes I do have the right read and not trusting it…you throw me on a flat surface with no hole there and I’m just hitting putts, I’m going to make great strokes and I’m going to start the balls on line. But obviously things change when you start to throw in outside elements. If I’m not reading the green properly, it doesn’t matter how good the stroke is.” Heading into the Florida swing, Fowler is confident in his abilities on Bermudagrass putting greens, like those at PGA National. “It’ll be good to be back on Bermuda greens that I’ve putted a lot more on over the last 10-15 years,” said Fowler, who lives in South Florida and won The Honda Classic in 2017.

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