Win probabilities: RBC Heritage

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POTOMAC, Md. — Tiger Woods ran off four straight birdies and finished the front nine with seven consecutive one-putt greens. Unlike Francesco Molinari and Abraham Ancer, he couldn’t keep it going Saturday in the Quicken Loans National. Ancer and Molinari each handled the scorching heat on the TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm and shared the lead going into the final round. Ancer birdied two of his last three holes for the lowest score of his career, an 8-under 62, giving the 27-year-old Mexican his best shot at a first PGA TOUR victory. Ancer has never been in the top 10 going into the final round in 22 previous starts. Molinari also is going for his first official PGA TOUR victory, though that comes with an asterisk. He won a World Golf Championship in Shanghai in 2010, though the PGA TOUR did not recognize the HSBC Champions as an official win until a year later. They were at 13-under 197, two shots clear of Ryan Armour (68) and Zac Blair (66). Woods was six shots behind, the seventh straight tournament he has been at least five shots behind going into the final round. It sure didn’t sound that way, and for most of the round, it didn’t look that way. With his fifth birdie of the front nine, Woods was one shot out of the lead. And then he opened the back nine with a pair of birdie chances just inside 10 feet and missed the both. He never really regained his momentum, finished with another bogey and shot 68. Considering the scoring average was 69.6 in the third round, he wound up losing two shots to the lead. “It was frustrating because I played better than what my score indicates,” Woods said. “I thought that 10 under would have been a good score for me to end up at for the day, and I could have easily gotten that today on the back nine.” He didn’t, and now has more ground to make up. The nine players ahead of him have combined for just five (official) PGA TOUR victories. Molinaro has five European Tour victories, has played on two Ryder Cup teams and is No. 17 in the world. The Italian is playing at the National and plans to be at the John Deere Classic in two weeks, even though the European Tour is in the meat of its summer schedule with national opens in France, Ireland and Scotland leading up to the British Open. Molinari is currently among qualifiers for the Ryder Cup team, but his FedExCup standing is at No. 123. He’s making the most of his first trip to the TPC Potomac. Even though he missed a few short putts on the front nine, he closed with a 30-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th and hit wedge into 5 feet for birdie at the 18th. “It’s where I want to be,” Molinari said, referring more to his position on the leaderboard than in heat approaching 100 degrees. “I would have been happy with even 11 or 12 under. The main thing today was to stay close to the leader, so I’ve done a very good job of that. Tomorrow I just need to go out and do my best, hit as many good shots as possible and see if that would be enough.” Ancer was tied for the lead after the opening round at the Memorial, which is the only other time he has been atop the leaderboard after any round on the PGA TOUR. Conditions have been changing since the opening round with so much sun, no rain and fairways that are getting faster. That was more bothersome to Ancer than the heat. “I grew up in Mexico, in the north part of Mexico where it’s very hot,” he said. “Didn’t bother me. I would rather play in this than cold weather.” The course certainly has everyone’s attention. Woods found that out the hard way with three shots from the rough that sailed some 30 yards over the green, leading to bogeys. “You have to hit it good. There’s no way around it,” Ancer said. Armour shared the 36-hole lead with Beau Hossler and Brian Gay, who both failed to break par. Hossler shot a 71 and was five shots behind, while Gay had a 72. Rickie Fowler, the only player from the top 10 in the world at the TPC Potomac, had a 69 and was eight shots behind.

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Odysseus and Telemachus; Marlin and Nemo; Jellybean and Kobe Bryant. History, real and imagined, is so thick with fathers and sons that the temptation is to get carried away at the PNC Championship, where Tiger and Charlie Woods will be the headliners for the third straight year at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando. The swings! The mannerisms! The outfits! Hang on, though. Slow down. Tiger is just a man, and a hobbled one, at that. Charlie is just 13. “I want him to enjoy whatever he’s doing,” Woods said in their first joint interview at the Notah Begay III Junior Golf National Championship in Kinder, Louisiana. And there it is, the through line to which all else must adhere. Joy. “Hey, Charlie, you gotta practice this,” Lee Trevino said last year while giving Team Woods an impromptu clinic on the PNC’s driving range. Trevino and Woods disagreed on who was the best-ever ball-striker, each citing the other, and at one point Woods doubled over laughing. Tiger thinks a lot about fatherhood these days. Much of his induction speech into the World Golf Hall of Fame in March recalled how he snuck onto courses with his dad Earl to skirt the age-limit restrictions, and how Earl and Kultida took out a second mortgage so Tiger could travel the country to play American Junior Golf Association events. His hopes this week? To feel well enough to play. That Charlie does well. It’s different for Charlie. He wants to beat his friend Justin Thomas, who will play with his dad, Mike, who coaches Charlie and with whom Justin won the PNC Championship in 2020. Oh, and Tiger and Charlie also wouldn’t mind winning. Last year Team Woods made 11 straight birdies in the final round, finishing second to John Daly and John II. It was enjoyable for all. “The competitive juices, they are never going to go away,” Tiger said then. “This is my environment. This is what I’ve done my entire life. I’m just so thankful to be able to have this opportunity to do it again.” They’ll do it again this weekend with the scramble format Saturday and Sunday. And we’ll watch. Old and Young Tom Morris. Jack and Gary Nicklaus. Craig and Kevin Stadler. Dave Stockton and Dave Stockton, Jr. Johnny and Andy Miller. Al and Brent Geiberger. Bill and Jay Haas. We warm to these stories, the perks (top instruction, optimized gear), challenges (unfair expectations, incessant scrutiny), and debate (nature versus nurture, DNA versus drive) always the same but not. Has any player ever labored under a shadow like the one cast by Tiger Woods? The PNC is where we gather for all of it. Charlie may have to carry Team Woods, what with Tiger battling plantar fasciitis in his right foot. He was rusty in The Match last week as he and FedExCup champ Rory McIlroy fell to the super-duo of Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas. “Play hard, partner,” Woods said. The 12-hole exhibition under the lights came a month after Charlie shot 72-69-71 for a 1-under total of 212 as he finished 11th in Louisiana. Tiger caddied. “Get the misses tighter,” Charlie said of his golf goals. “Practice more. Just have fun.” And would Tiger be a first-ballot Hall of Famer as a caddie? “He forgot my putter a few times,” Charlie said. “That’s about it.” Tiger didn’t miss much when enjoyment meant world domination. At his Hall of Fame speech, the winner of 82 PGA TOUR titles, 15 majors, said he remains conflicted about the famous Presidents Cup tie as darkness fell on South Africa … nearly two decades ago. But he’s softened as a dad even while indulging in the gamesmanship that his father visited upon him: the well-timed jangling of coins, ripping of Velcro, and/or clearing of throat. “If I can get into his head,” Tiger said of Charlie, “that means someone else can get into his head. It’s going to get to a point where I can’t get into his head, and then no one else can.” As a father, Tiger’s life is complicated by his celebrity. As a player it’s more complicated still. Intending to play in the recent Hero World Challenge, the tournament he hosts in the Bahamas, he took barefoot walks on sand, but it backfired, and he withdrew before the Hero even began. Officially, Woods played just three times in 2022, making the cut at the Masters, making the cut but withdrawing with leg pain at the PGA Championship, and missing the cut by nine at The Open Championship. It was at St. Andrews, he said, that his leg basically stopped working. He turned his attention to Charlie. During the Presidents Cup in September, when Woods could have been in the back room for U.S. Captain Davis Love III, he was carrying Charlie’s clubs as the kid posted a career-low 68 in a qualifier for the Begay III tournament. That, along with managing the delicate titration of rest and rehab, is Tiger Woods on the verge of his 47th birthday on Dec. 30. Out: Just Win, Baby. In: Dad life. No shame in that. At the PNC, where Team Daly will defend, Team Trevino will lead the field in Strokes Gained: Merriment, and Team Woods will no doubt dazzle in their Sunday red, it’s the entire point.

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