Latest news with #StrokesGained:TeetoGreen
USA Today
7 days ago
- Sport
- USA Today
Collin Morikawa is crazy like a fox at the Memorial, where he says he 'loves the place'
Collin Morikawa is crazy like a fox at the Memorial, where he says he 'loves the place' DUBLIN, Ohio – Collin Morikawa always has been crazy about Muirfield Village Golf Club. 'This is probably the only golf course where I've stepped foot on it before I actually played and said, like, I love this place, no matter how I play, and it's kind of rare to find that,' he said. Morikawa won here at the 2020 Workday Charity Open and has twice finished second at the Memorial, including last year. On Thursday, he birdied three holes in a four-hole stretch on the front nine and made six birdies in all en route to posting 5-under 67 in the first round, two off the pace set by Ben Griffin. 'I woke up today kind of not knowing how the swing was going to produce. I spent a couple hours on the range after the pro-am yesterday and was just trying to find something,' he explained. 'Yeah, kind of went to some old swing thoughts, and it's hard to filter through that, but did it on the range, and kind of was just able to go play golf. I got to trust myself that I'm playing good enough golf to go out there and win and that's what I did today.' Asked if it was the same swing thought as a week ago, Morikawa shook his head from side to side. 'No, it's more of a swing thought that I had around Bay Hill. Shocker that I didn't stick with it,' he said of the site of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where he finished second in March. 'Like I said yesterday, we're crazy. We think one thing's good, so then you just go away from that and try something new. But it's just, honestly it's just posture and making sure my posture's really good from the ground up and allowing my body to just go from there and swing it.' Whatever the case, it worked. Morikawa topped the field in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green and ranked second in SG: Approach. He birdied both par 5s on the front nine at Nos. 5 and 7 and laced a mid-iron at the downhill, 214-yard par-3 8th to inside 5 feet. On the backside, he drilled a 22-foot birdie putt at No. 10 and sandwiched birdies at Nos. 14 and 16 around his lone bogey of the day, taking three putts from 57 feet. Still, it was a crazy good start, his third-lowest score in 18 career rounds at Jack's Place. By Morikawa's own estimation, he's just flat out crazy, and it didn't take his new caddie, Joe Greiner, long to reach the same conclusion. 'He's already called me crazy a lot. And that's fine. Like, I think golfers are generally crazy. I know I am. I mean, you give me eight weeks off this off-season, you should hear about the amount of things I tried. Just, I mean I had seven different grips, different wraps on my grips, like I was going through it all,' Morikawa said. 'You just give me a little too much time and I just go down rabbit holes.' The 28-year-old Morikawa's game has been better than most. He is ranked fourth in the world but the six-time Tour winner is winless since October 2023. So, the search to get across the finish line continues. 'I'm in a weird spot right now. I feel like I'm really close, but yet sometimes you don't know what you're searching for. I know it's something small and that's the click that I need to just play free,' he said. 'But it's hard to find that.' Could Morikawa end his winless drought at the Memorial this week? Nothing crazy about that at all.
USA Today
07-03-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Wyndham Clark sets the bar with 67 on 'tricky' day at Arnold Palmer Invitational
Wyndham Clark sets the bar with 67 on 'tricky' day at Arnold Palmer Invitational ORLANDO, Fla. – Eric Cole grew up playing countless rounds at Bay Hill Lodge and Club, including alongside its owner, Arnold Palmer. Cole, 36, attended the Arnold Palmer Invitational as a fan, worked at the tournament as a caddie and for the last three years has been a contestant in the PGA Tour signature event. When he arrived at the practice range on Thursday morning and the wind was swirling, he knew what likely what was in store out there. 'It's a hard course in normal conditions. Today was brutal,' he said. Cole said he felt as if he had broken par, which is 72, even though he had to chip and put well to sign for 2-over 74. Still, that was seven shots more than leader Wyndham Clark, who birdied 18 for a brilliant 5-under 67. When a volunteer asked Cole about his day, he sighed and summed it up in two words: 'I survived.' It was a day of survival of the fittest but it helped to have a late tee time. 'It was still breezy, but not quite as tough as the guys got it this morning,' said Rory McIlroy, who took advantage and shot 70. Gusty winds greeted players when they arrived at the course. Crosswinds meant players had to aim for the rough or worse yet at the water, and hope the ball blew back to the fairway. That didn't work out for Cameron Young, who blew his opening tee shot out of bounds left and shot 10-over 82. He wasn't the only one to shoot in the 80s – Max Homa was just a stroke better at 81, Rafael Campos shot 80 and five early finishers posted 79. One week after Jake Knapp fired an opening-round 59 and the field scoring average was 68.82, Bay Hill decided to be a bear, playing to an average score of 74.624. Tough but fair has become the tournament identity, which Sam Saunders, the grandson of the tournament namesake, declared is exactly the way Palmer wanted it to be. 'The players all know when they show up here that the rough is going to be long, the greens are going to be incredibly fast and firm and it's going to be a test,' Saunders said. 'It's no shock to the players.' A few players avoided the carnage better than others. None did so better than Clark, who topped the field in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green and closed with birdies on two of the three final holes. Even Clark, who finished runner up last year, conceded that he hasn't always fancied Bay Hill. But he's changed his mindset and the world No. 7 got off to a fast start with a birdie at No. 2 and found his groove. He stuffed a pitching wedge from 146 yards to 2 feet at 18 to build a two-stroke lead. 'I don't know if I figured it out,' he said of the puzzle that is Bay Hill. 'I definitely feel a little more comfortable on it.' Keegan Bradley, the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup captain, made three birdies in a row starting at No. 8, including a chip in at the ninth, en route to shooting 3-under 69, the only player in the morning wave to shoot in the 60s. 'Anything under par any day around this place is good, but on a day like today it's one of the better rounds I've played all year,' Bradley said. 'I think that this is the hardest course we play all year. I used to think it was Torrey, I think it's here now.' Others who shot 69 in the opening round included Shane Lowry, Corey Conners and Christiaan Bezuidenhout. 'I turned on the TV and watched some golf this morning and it didn't look much fun out there,' Lowry said. 'I wasn't particularly looking forward to my round.' World No. 1 and defending tournament champion Scottie Scheffler and two-time major winner Collin Morikawa managed to break par with rounds of 1-under 71. Scheffler said that the chill in the air in the morning sent him back inside to grab a sweater and he was glad to be in red figures. 'You pick your poison out here. You can probably create a story with whatever it is. The greens are tough, the rough is high, and the wind is up,' he said. Scheffler noted that the fairways are soft due to rain on Wednesday, but the greens are hard as concrete. 'So it can be really challenging to get the ball close to the hole, especially if you're not coming from out of the fairway,' he explained. World's top three players are together once again For just the third time since the Tour Championship in August, the top three players in the world are in the same field. McIlroy, No. 2 in the world, missed his second putt this season from inside three feet but carded five birdies and signed for 70. Xander Schauffele, No. 3 in the world, returned from a rib injury that kept him on the sidelines since January. On Wednesday he noted that Bay Hill wasn't his 'dream place to come back to' and as he so elegantly put it, 'got my ass kicked.' Schauffele didn't make a birdie until 16 and posted 5-over 77. 'I'm a bit of a masochist, I guess. I knew I was going to come in on short notice to what is sort of like a major championship setup around the greens, and with the greens being crusty, I really felt it there more than anything else.' On Thursday, the fickle wind is what the field felt more than anything, an extra element for competitors to judge. Palmer must be smiling down from above. 'It suits his style,' Cole said. 'If you pull off a shot and hit it good here, you're going to be rewarded. If you don't, you're going to be penalized. It's very fitting that his name is on this tournament.'
USA Today
17-02-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Heading into the weekend, the leaderboard at the Genesis Invitational is loaded with stars
LA JOLLA, Calif. – The sun was out at the Genesis Invitational on Friday and the stars shined at Torrey Pines Golf Course. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and No. 3 Rory McIlroy both shot 5-under 67 to surge into contention. Those big names in the PGA Tour signature event are chasing 25-year-old Davis Thompson, who holed out twice from off the green and posted 6-under 66. His 36-hole total of 8-under 136 is good for a one-stroke lead over Scheffler. Thompson made eight birdies on the day, including three in a row starting at No. 11, where he chipped in and followed that up by pitching in at 12. His putter was getting rusty so he rolled in a birdie at 13 for good measure. But his back nine was a bit of a rollercoaster as he followed with back-to-back bogeys at Nos. 14 and 15. Momentum could have been lost but Thompson responded with birdies at 16 and 18. 'You're going to face adversity out here, it's a hard golf course, so you've just got to try to bounce back as best you can,' said Thompson, who won for the first time last season at the John Deere Classic. Thompson has made 12 birdies through 36 holes, three more than any other player in the field, and also tops the field in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green this week. Scheffler wasn't his sharpest, but he posted the only bogey-free round of the day. He had a case of the pulls off the tee early, which turned into a two-way miss and resulted in him hitting just five of 14 fairways on the day. It didn't cost him as he was a perfect five-for-five in scrambling and leads the field going 10 of 11 so far this week. The one time he found a greenside bunker, he holed out for eagle at the par-5 sixth. 'It was definitely good to have a day like today where I felt like I didn't play flawless golf but the scorecard was clean,' he said. When asked about his erratic driving, he cracked, 'probably going to have to go rebuild my swing on the range this afternoon.' Commentator Frank Nobilo, speaking on Golf Channel, called Scheffler's tee shots 'the only part of his game not up to his standard' following his layoff due to hand surgery. And Scheffler did hit the range to find a solution that might help him dial in a few more fairways over the weekend. It's easy to forget that Scheffler isn't just blessed with being a ballkstriking machine; he also has an uncanny ability to scrape it around with the best of them if need be. 'I'm trying to be pretty patient with myself coming off of surgery,' he said. 'That's part of kind of building back up from the stuff that I lost in the offseason and I feel like I'm getting better each day and hoping to continue to improve as I continue to play.' First-round leader Denny McCarthy is alone in third at 6 under, one better than McIlroy. He made four birdies on the front nine, including spinning it back to gimme range at the fifth. His wedge game was sharp, knocking it tight on No. 9 and 15 and he stuffed a short iron from the rough inside three feet at 17 to set up another easy birdie. 'It's something I've been working on,' he said of flighting his wedges lower and hitting more ¾ shots to take off the spin. Also lurking is Sweden's Ludvig Aberg (T-5), who holed a bunker shot at 18 for eagle and shot 66. Asked about his dinner plans for the night, he said, 'If it was up to me, we'd go to In-n-Out but since it's Valentine's Day I'm going to let my girlfriend pick.' This stacked leaderboard is just the Valentine the Tour needed. With a forecast for sunshine from here on out, Torrey Pines, which Aberg termed a "big-boy course," is setting up to be a true test of golf excellence. Said McIlroy: 'I don't see this course getting much easier as the week goes on.'
