Winner’s Bag: Sam Burns, Sanderson Farms Championship

Brooks Koepka, making his 2019-20 PGA TOUR season debut, joins early-season winners Joaquin Niemann and Sebastián Muñoz in Las Vegas for the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. Koepka, a three-time winner last season, looks to get off to a quick start this fall as he builds toward the Presidents Cup in December, where he will be a vital cog in the Americans’ hopes against the International Team.  One of Koepka’s teammates, Bryson DeChambeau, is the defending champion at TPC Summerling, having beaten another U.S. Team member, Patrick Cantlay, by a single stroke. Cantlay won in Vegas the previous year. FIELD NOTES: Koepka, who played the Shriners from 2014-17, is making his return to Las Vegas. He’s notched a runner-up, a tie for fourth, and missed the cut twice. … Phil Mickelson will tee it up in Las Vegas for the first time since 2005 after playing the Safeway Open. … Adam Scott, who played for the UNLV golf team in the late 1990s, will be returning to Las Vegas. … Koepka’s brother, Chase, along with 17-year-old Akshay Bhatia, are in the field on sponsor exemptions. … Sebastián Muñoz, the early FedExCup leader, will be in the field after winning the Sanderson Farms Championship. He has two top-10’s on the season so far. … 2016 winner Smylie Kaufman will be playing his first PGA TOUR event since the John Deere Classic in July. FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 500 points. COURSE: TPC Summerlin, 7,255 yards, par 71. The club, just west of Las Vegas, has hosted the Shriners since 1992. STORYLINES: Last time we saw Koepka, he tied for third at the TOUR Championship, five strokes behind FedExCup champion Rory McIlroy. Since 2012, Koepka has five worldwide wins after Labor Day. … Rickie Fowler is in the field, marking his 2019-20 TOUR debut. He finished T4 last year after shooting 6 under on his back nine. It was his first of six top-10s en route to finishing 19th on the FedExCup. … Former winners Kevin Na and Ryan Moore both are long-time Las Vegas residents and are back in the field alongside many other TOUR pros with ties to the desert. … Jim Furyk has won three times (1995, 1998, 1999), the only player to do so in this event, and the former FedExCup champ is back in action this week. Furyk, who turns 50 in 2020, played this week at the Safeway Open. … After his win last year, Bryson DeChambeau became a strong advocate for the Shriners Hospitals for Children. He invited patient ambassadors to his first Bryson DeChambeau Foundation Charity Day event. 72-HOLE RECORD: 260, Ryan Moore (2012), Webb Simpson (2013). 18-HOLE RECORD: 59, Chip Beck (3rd round, 1991 at Sunrise GC). TPC Summerlin record: 60, J.J. Henry (1st round, 2013), Rod Pampling (1st round, 2016). LAST TIME: Bryson DeChambeau won for the fourth time in 12 months after nailing an eagle from nearly 60 feet on the 16th hole Sunday. His 5-under 66 nipped defending champion Patrick Cantlay by one shot. Four players had a share of the lead on the back nine including Cantlay, who was looking to become the fist golfer in 20 years (Jim Furyk 1998-1999) to defend his title in Las Vegas. Cantlay made a bogey on the par-3 17th which was his eventual undoing. Sam Ryder finished third – his best result of the season – after shooting a 9-under 62, the round of the day Sunday. Rickie Fowler, Abraham Ancer, and Robert Streb finished T4 to round out the top-5. HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Friday, 4 p.m.-8 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Saturday-Sunday, 5 p.m.-8 p.m. ET (Golf Channel) PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday-Friday, 9:45 a.m.-8 p.m. ET (Featured Groups) Radio: Thursday-Friday, 2 p.m.-8 p.m. ET. Saturday-Sunday, 3 p.m.-8 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio).

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The remaining PGA Tour events on the 2019-20 season will be contested without specators.

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PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico – Collin Morikawa is getting old. He said it himself, with a big smile, and it might have been the reason why his body hasn’t been moving the way he would have liked through the 2022 calendar year. A lot of traveling. A lot of work. A lot of effort to try to become the best in the world. But he’s got a plan in place to end this year with a bang at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba, and hopefully get a bit of the sour taste of a winless 2021-22 campaign out of his mouth before the holiday season. “This year’s been fairly stressful, a little frustrating at the same time. I think some guys are definitely taking it easy and I’ve kind of ramped it up just trying to kind of figure things out,” said Morikawa. “I want to finish this fall on the best of foot forward as possible. That’s why I come to these tournaments… to come out here and play well and hopefully win.” Morikawa notched two runner-up results last season – THE CJ CUP and The Genesis Invitational – and had eight top-10 finishes. His ball-striking remained elite, finishing third on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Approach The Green. The momentum hasn’t been there through the fall portion of the 2022-23 season, however, as he finished tied for 45th at the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP and then tied for 29th at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina. The two-time major champion admitted he did “a lot of searching” after starting his year in Dubai on the DP World Tour with a few lackluster results. Things “just never felt good,” he said. “Just kind of was searching for that game, searching for just kind of a normal,” he said. “The problem is when I search is like, I search for perfection, right?” As he looks back on the year that was, he said he knows what he needs to do. And he’s already started to tighten the screws. “Man, like I drank way more in college than I ever do now, but apparently when you get older, your body just moves differently,” said Morikawa with a laugh. “I still feel great, like everything feels great, everything moves great, but it’s just not as clean as it was. And the maintenance I have to do now is just a little bit more. “It doesn’t mean I need to do anything crazy. I’m not changing anything really. It’s just getting my body to where I need it to be.” This week’s setting may help with that. Although this marks Morikawa’s Mayakoba debut, he said he fondly recalled playing golf in Cabo San Lucas as an amateur and compares golf in Mexico to teeing it up in Hawaii. After a stretch of travel that included Japan, South Carolina, and now Mexico, the easy-going vibe at the World Wide Technology Championship may be just what the doctor ordered. “You do a lot of business when you’re out on the golf course but you’re able to really separate yourself and enjoy the time away,” he said. “I think what’s so great about when players come to a resort like this… they’re able to stay near the beach and kind of do other activities that force them to get away from the golf course. I think all great players have to do that.” Morikawa is certainly one of those great players. And despite not feeling 100 percent about his results from 2022, there’s hope for good things to come yet. “It’s a grind, but that’s what’s great,” said Morikawa. “Even though we are kind of heading towards this offseason, this fall area, I’m putting a lot of pieces together and putting a lot of work in to make sure this next (2023) is going to be as best as ever.”

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