Xander Schauffele leads Charles Schwab Challenge over host of stars

The Wells Fargo Championship returns to the PGA TOUR schedule after being cancelled last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Max Homa returns to defend his title against a field full of TOUR stars, including current FedExCup leader Bryson DeChambeau. FIELD NOTES: Two-time FedExCup champion Rory McIlroy returns to action for the first time since the Masters. McIlroy also is the Wells Fargo Championship’s only two-time winner. He set a course record in each win, shooting a final-round 62 in 2010 and a third-round 61 in 2015… The top two players in the FedExCup – DeChambeau and Justin Thomas – are teeing it up in North Carolina. Thomas won the 2017 PGA Championship contested at Quail Hollow… Phil Mickelson will tee it up at the Wells Fargo for the 17th time in 18 editions. He missed the cut in 2017 but owns 12 top-12 finishes at the event… Sponsors exemptions include 19-year-old Akshay Bhatia, a North Carolina native, and Wake Forest alum Will Zalatoris. Zalatoris hasn’t missed a cut in the 2021 calendar year but enjoyed two weeks off after finishing runner-up at the Masters and T42 at the RBC Heritage – buying his own place in Dallas and getting engaged. FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 500 FedExCup points. STORYLINES: No golfer has ever defended his title at the Wells Fargo. Homa, who won at The Genesis Invitational earlier this year, looks to buck that trend. He arrives in good form, sitting in third place halfway through the Valspar Championship… Overall, 13 of the top 20 golfers in the FedExCup (through the Zurich Classic of New Orleans) are teeing it up at Quail Hollow… Rory McIlroy loves the Wells Fargo Championship. He’s finished outside the top-10 just twice in nine starts and in 2019 he finished T8… Rickie Fowler is looking for a spark after recording just two top-10 finishes in 29 events across 2020-21. Fowler, who is now ranked outside the top 100 in the world, won his first TOUR title at the Wells Fargo in 2012 and finished T4 in 2019…This year’s Wells Fargo will give players one last look at Quail Hollow before the 2022 Presidents Cup. Next year’s Wells Fargo will be played at TPC Potomac as Quail Hollow prepares to host the intercontinental tussle between the U.S. and International teams. It will be the first Presidents Cup since 2019 in Royal Melbourne, when the International Team took the lead into Singles but was overcome by the United States in the final session. COURSE: Quail Hollow Club, par 71, 7,521 yards. The long-time PGA TOUR stop was originally laid out by George Cobb in the early 1960s. An upgrade was overseen by Tom Fazio as the course prepared for the PGA Championship in 2017. Annually rated as one of the toughest courses on TOUR, its ‘Green Mile’ closing stretch of holes flummoxes TOUR players year after year. Quail Hollow is set to host The Presidents Cup in 2022 and the PGA Championship again in 2025. 72-HOLE RECORD: 267, Rory McIlroy (2015). 18-HOLE RECORD: 61, Rory McIlroy (3rd round, 2015). LAST TIME: Cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the 2019 Wells Fargo Championship saw Max Homa capture his maiden PGA TOUR title. Homa, the former NCAA champ who endured a difficult slump early in his pro career, shot a 4-under 67 in Sunday’s final round to top Joel Dahmen by three shots. Homa, who started the final round as one of three co-leaders, trailed Dahmen through six holes. But after going 3 under in a five-hole stretch, he held a four-shot lead before a weather delay with just five holes to play. After the hour-long delay was completed, Homa nailed a 5-foot par saver and cruised to victory after that. Justin Rose finished third while Rickie Fowler, Paul Casey and Jason Dufner rounded out the top five. HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Friday, 2 p.m.-6 p.m. (Golf Channel). Saturday-Sunday, 1 p.m.-3 p.m. (Golf Channel), 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (CBS) PGA TOUR LIVE: Thursday-Friday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m. (Featured Groups), Saturday-Sunday, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. (Featured Groups), 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (Featured Holes) Radio: Thursday-Friday, 12 p.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 1 p.m.-6 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio). TOURCast: Get shot-by-shot info in real time with shot tracks and video with TOURCast. TOUR Pulse: Get the PGA TOUR app to utilize TOUR Pulse, which provides users the ability to experience a mix of content, such as video highlights, written hole summaries and stat graphics on every player after every hole they complete.

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In retrospect, maybe we should have anticipated Scottie Scheffler’s PGA TOUR Player of the Year season. After all, Scheffler backed up Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year honors in 2019 with the PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year award the following season. He played well enough in 2021 to get a captain’s pick on the U.S. Ryder Cup team that beat Europe in the fall, even before his first PGA TOUR victory. He was clearly on an upward trajectory, but his four-month flurry of highlights still came as a shock. Let’s look back at Scheffler’s rapid rise – and analyze what’s changed about his performances since the early summer. Scottie’s spring ascent On the morning of Super Bowl Sunday, 2022, Scheffler was inarguably the best player in the world without a PGA TOUR win yet to his credit. At 15th in the Official World Golf Ranking, his WM Phoenix Open playoff victory over Patrick Cantlay that day made him the highest-ranked American player in OWGR history at the time of his first PGA TOUR title (a record broken later in the season by Will Zalatoris, ranked 14th). That win marked the beginning of one of the most dominant runs seen on TOUR in recent years. Not even one month after he won in Phoenix, Scheffler captured the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, and three weeks after winning at Bay Hill, Scheffler rose to number one in the World Ranking with his victory at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play. The 42 days between Scheffler’s first win and his claim on the No. 1 ranking was by far the fastest ascent ever seen on the PGA TOUR or DP World Tour. The run hit its crescendo when he won the Masters Tournament two weeks later. Scheffler was excellent through the bag on the way to his first major win, ranking in the top 10 in the field in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, Approach, and Around the Green. He was in the top 10 in Strokes Gained: Putting, too, until his four-putt on the final green. Scheffler now had four wins on the season, the first winner of the green jacket to reach that number on the PGA TOUR since Arnold Palmer in 1960. What fueled his rise Scheffler had been well above average in the 2020-21 PGA TOUR season, ranking 32nd in scoring average and 33rd in Strokes Gained: Total. His red-hot spring of ’22 owed to a few dramatic improvements. Scheffler ranked 45th in greens in regulation and 83rd in Strokes Gained: Approach per round in 2020-21. Solid, but not spectacular. By the end of May, he had vaulted to 13th in SG: Approach and a lofty 3rd in rate of greens hit. His improved wedge play was a significant change, as well. In 2020-21, Scheffler ranked 157th on the PGA TOUR in average proximity to the hole from 50-125 yards away. On June 1, he was up exactly 100 spots in that statistic – to 57th. The differential meant he went from being one foot farther away than the average PGA TOUR player’s approach from that range – to one foot closer. As if these improvements weren’t enough, he got better on the greens, too. In each of his first two full seasons on TOUR, Scheffler had hovered right around the statistical baseline for Strokes Gained: Putting among qualified players. He was at -0.05 strokes per round in 2020, and +0.02, in 2021. But in his 10 starts from February through May, Scheffler gained more than half-a-stroke on the field, per round, on the greens. In his victory in Phoenix, Scheffler ranked 2nd in Strokes Gained: Putting, one of just three times in his entire PGA TOUR career where he ranked in the top 10 in a tournament field in that statistic. The story since then Scheffler hasn’t maintained the pace he enjoyed in the spring, but still has recorded four top-10 finishes in his last 10 starts. And he’s improved in one big marker. From February through May, he averaged 1.32 Strokes Gained: Ball Striking per round and hit 70.9% of his greens in regulation. Since then, he’s averaged 1.70 strokes per round striking it and hit a sterling 74.1% of greens in regulation. That’s the good news. You can probably deduce what the bad will be at this point: His putting numbers have dropped off significantly. Since June 1, Scheffler is losing more than one-third of a stroke to the field per round on the greens, a rate that ranks 143rd of 180 qualified players in that span. Specifically, it’s been the shorter putts that just aren’t falling like they were in the spring. From February through May, Scheffler made 61.2% of his putts from 5-10 feet. Since then, he’s fallen off to 45% – well beneath the TOUR average make rate of 56.3% from that range. Things are looking up, though. After some typical autumn tinkering with his gear, Scheffler put the Scotty Cameron putter he used for all four of his wins last season back in the bag over the weekend at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba. The result was the lowest final-round score of his PGA TOUR career (62) and his fewest putts per green in regulation for any single PGA TOUR event (1.60) in 17 months. At the Cadence Bank Houston Open last year Scheffler ranked 2nd in the field in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green in a runner-up finish. If he’s rediscovered his magic on the greens, it could be a very happy homecoming this week for the affable Texan.

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PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Justin Thomas was playing well enough to want to keep going, with six birdies in a seven-hole stretch before it was too dark to continue Friday at the Genesis Open. It also was raining. It was cold. And he already had been slogging through Riviera for nine hours. “It’s hard playing 30 holes, but it’s really hard when it’s raining and it’s soft,” Thomas said after making 14 birdies on a long day that sent him home tied for the lead with Adam Scott at 10-under par. “My legs are tired, so I just need to go home and rest and get some food and try to go to sleep early as I can.” Thomas, who opened with a 5-under 66 in the morning, was 5 under for his second round through 12 holes. He had an eight-hole stretch when he didn’t make a par (six birdies, two bogeys), ending with a two-putt par on No. 3. Scott was in the group right behind him and just as efficient, also opening with a 66 and reaching 5 under. His only blemish was a long three-putt for bogey on the par-5 17th on a course he loves. Scott won at Riviera in the rain 14 years ago, a tournament that was cut short to 36 holes and decided in a playoff. “I just got the momentum going and I kept it going,” Scott said. Tiger Woods had a few big moments that didn’t last long. He had four straight birdies around the turn in the morning, a streak that ended with a three-putt bogey at No. 12. He had four three-putts in the first round for a 70. His highlight in the afternoon, as the temperatures and rain became steady, was a 45-foot eagle putt on the par-5 first to start his back nine. It really was an Instagram moment, for a fan screamed out, “Make this! It’s going on Instagram!” Woods delivered, only to bogey the next two holes to end his day at even par for the second round, 1 under for the tournament. “I’m stiff right now,” Woods said after playing the most number of holes in one day since his return from a fourth back surgery. “It got pretty chilly toward the end. The ball wasn’t going very far.” No need telling that to Thomas. He was in the right rough after hitting driver 260 yards, leaving him 222 yards to a back pin on an elevated green. He pounded 5-wood to 10 feet and made his last birdie of the day. J.B. Holmes was another shot behind at the turn. Holmes was the 18-hole leader thanks to a hole-in-one on the par-3 sixth hole, followed by a birdie that led to an 8-under 63. At the time, he was one shot ahead of Jordan Spieth, who played all of six holes on Friday to complete his bogey-free 64 in calm conditions. Spieth figured it would be like that all day. He was wrong. Light rain fell as Woods, Thomas and Rory McIlroy (3 under through 12) were finishing the first round. It never really stopped the rest of the day. The start of the tournament was delayed seven hours Thursday, so just about everyone who makes the cut will face long days at some point. The second round resumes at 7 a.m., and the other half of the field starts their second round at 7:40 a.m. The cut figures to be made Saturday afternoon, leaving no more than about two hours of play the rest of the day. Those in or around the lead after 36 holes can expect to go 36 more on Sunday. Dustin Johnson played 36 holes on Sunday when he won the Genesis Open two years ago. Long before it was getting dark, Holmes could see just fine when he hit 8-iron to the back pin at No. 6, located just to the left of the bunker in the middle of the green. “Hit it exactly how I wanted it and it went in,” Holmes said. “It looked good the whole time.” Spieth took advantage of the restart on Thursday. His opening shot on the par-4 10th hit the cart path twice and went into shin-high grass so thick that it would have been hard work just to get it out. The round was scrapped and he returned for a routine par. He made the rest look easy except for the 13th hole, where he hooked his tee shot into a eucalyptus tree, played a slice on the outer side of the trees and got up-and-down for par. “It was probably better than any of the birdies,” he said. He holed two chips for birdie, one of them on the toughest hole at Riviera on No. 12, birdied all three of the par 5s and made a pair of birdie putts from about 10 feet when he returned Friday morning. He said those six holes were the best the putter has felt in some time. “I was able to kind of figure out a way to feel some freedom in the stroke and I was able to roll a couple of those in,” he said. Woods is the tournament host with his foundation running the event he first played in 1992 as a 16-year-old amateur. Next year, the tournament gets elevated status on par with the Memorial (Jack Nicklaus) and Arnold Palmer Invitational by offering a three-year exemption to the winners, getting a 120-man field and offering $9.3 million in prize money. But the course has never been kind to him. Riviera is where Woods has played the most times as a pro (9) without ever winning.

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