Wie in 4-way tie for lead as Park stumbles at LPGA finale

Six days before the start of the 86th Masters, defending champion Hideki Matsuyama was forced to withdraw from the second round of the Valero Texas Open because of a neck injury on Friday.

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The World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play is back. Wednesday’s opening round is the first of three days of group play. After Friday, the player with the best record in each of the 16 four-man pools will advance to knockout play (ties will be broken via sudden-death playoff). Two rounds apiece will be played Saturday and Sunday to crown a champion. This is the only PGA TOUR event where players go mano-a-mano, and Austin Country Club is a perfect site for this format thanks to its offering of risk-reward holes. Can stars like Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth return to their winning ways? How will Bryson DeChambeau fare in his return to competition? Those are among the storylines we’ll be tracking this week. There will be 32 matches in each of the next three days, and this file will be updated live at the conclusion of each match to keep you apprised of the action from the TOUR’s only match-play event. Return here often to learn about the latest upsets, comebacks and nail-biting finishes. WEDNESDAY RECAPS (Click here for live scores) GROUP 10 COREY CONNERS (36) def. PAUL CASEY (19), concession Casey won the first hole against Conners, then conceded the match on the second hole, citing back spasms. This is big news as Casey has long been a stalwart in this event, collecting a 28-16-3 record in 15 previous appearances. Casey, however, made it clear that he has not withdrawn from his matches the next two days. He is scheduled to play Alex Noren on Thursday, then Louis Oosthuizen on Friday. GROUP 14 MAVERICK MCNEALY (64) def. JOAQUIN NIEMANN (14), 8 and 6 McNealy was the last man in the field, getting the nod earlier this week when Sam Burns withdrew after winning the Valspar Championship. He took no time pouncing on Niemann, winning five of the first seven holes before taking a 6-up lead at the turn. NcNealy won the 11th hole with par to move 7 up with seven holes remaining, then won the 12th with birdie to end Niemann’s misery. This is the eighth 18-hole match in tournament history with a margin of victory of 8 and 6 or larger.

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Conditions were difficult during the first round of THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, where the 78 players in the field averaged a score of 1.3 strokes over par. Interestingly, 3 of the 4 par-5s played over par, a rare occurrence at PGA TOUR stops.  Our pre-tournament probabilities indicated that Justin Thomas was the class of this field by a wide margin. We estimated Thomas to be about two strokes better per round than the average PGA TOUR professional, while Brooks Koepka was the second-highest rated golfer at +1.6 strokes relative to an average professional. This may be surprising to readers, given that Koepka is fresh off being voted the PGA TOUR Player of the Year. Here is a closer look at Thomas’ and Koepka’s performances since 2014 (Thomas above; Koepka below): Indicated on these graphs are a player’s average adjusted (for field strength) strokes-gained at each event (their “True SG�). Thomas has shown incredible consistency over the past year and a half, which is why the model favors him over Koepka. The top of the leaderboard after Thursday’s first round is mostly comprised of golfers in the middle or bottom of the skill distribution in this field. As a consequence, no single player is capturing a significant share of the win probability. Here are our current top 10 win probabilities: It’s not common for three of the top four win probabilities after Round 1 to belong to players outside of the top 10 of the leaderboard. None of the top golfers played particularly well on Thursday, but our model expects them to make up the ground they’ve ceded over the next three rounds. NOTE: These reports are based off the live predictive model run by @DataGolf. The model provides live “Make Cut,� “Top 20,� “Top 5,� and “Win� probabilities every five minutes from the opening tee shot to the final putt of every PGA TOUR event. Briefly, the model takes account of the current form of each golfer as well as the difficulty of their remaining holes, and probabilities are calculated from 10,000 simulations. To follow live finish probabilities throughout the remainder of THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, or to see how each golfer’s probabilities have evolved from the start of the event to the current time, click here for the model’s home page. Follow on Twitter

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