They will join defending champion and World Number Two Rory McIlroy at the iconic Emirates Golf Club for the first Rolex Series event of the 2024 Race to Dubai, from January 18-21.

Reigning Open Champion Harman sealed his maiden Major title at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in July during a stellar season which saw him notch up six further top tens – including two runner-up finishes – on the PGA TOUR and make his Ryder Cup debut in Rome in September. 

The World Number Nine, who will make his Hero Dubai Desert Classic debut in January, said: “I’m excited to tee it up in Dubai for the first time. It looks like a stunning venue that has identified great champions. I’d love to add my name to that list.”

Six-time DP World Tour winner and Dubai resident Fleetwood is more familiar with the Majlis Course, with the World Number 14 returning for his 13th consecutive appearance at the event.

The 2017 Race to Dubai champion rounded out a memorable season – which included his second Ryder Cup win – with a runner-up finish in Dubai at the DP World Tour Championship, and he is aiming for further success in the United Arab Emirates, following his back-to-back victories in Abu Dhabi in 2017 and 2018.

Fleetwood said: “This an event that I love, I’ve played the Hero Dubai Desert Classic every year since I came out on Tour. I look forward to playing in front of friends and family again in January.”

Hatton, who enjoyed Ryder Cup success alongside European teammates Fleetwood and McIlroy in Rome, has four top ten finishes in his nine previous Hero Dubai Desert Classic appearances. He has also tasted past success in the region, with the last of his six DP World Tour titles coming at the 2021 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.

The World Number 12 will be seeking a record-equalling fifth Rolex Series win when he tees it up in Dubai once again.

Hatton said: “It’s always a great tournament and I’ve played well in the past. I’m looking forward to getting back to Emirates Golf Club and hopefully adding to my success in the region.” 

American Young will join compatriot Harman in making his Hero Dubai Desert Classic debut, and just his second regular DP World Tour event appearance following the 2022 Genesis Scottish Open.

The 26-year-old, who was named PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year for the 2021/22 season, enjoyed five top ten finishes this season, including runner-up at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play and T7 at the Masters, adding to his burgeoning Major credentials following top three finishes at the US PGA Championship and The Open in 2022.  

The World Number 21 said: “I’m looking forward to getting over to the Hero Dubai Desert Classic for the first time. I’ve heard many great things about both Dubai and the event. It’ll be a fun week of competition to help kickstart my year.”

Simon Corkill, Executive Tournament Director of Hero Dubai Desert Classic, said: “We’re thrilled to be welcoming Brian Harman and Cameron Young for the first time to the Hero Dubai Desert Classic 2024 while also seeing the return of Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrrell Hatton again.

“They have all achieved great success in their careers so far and their rankings speaks for itself of how competitive they are. By lining up for the tournament not only makes the field stronger but it also solidifies the Hero Dubai Desert Classic’s position as one of the best golf tournaments in the world and presents a fantastic opportunity for fans to watch the best stars in action.”

The Hero Dubai Desert Classic will be celebrating its 35th anniversary and its recent official certification as the first Geo-Certified event in the Middle East, and the first in the DP World Tour’s Rolex Series.

This year’s event combines world-class golf with a huge array of family-friendly entertainment.  Spectators can look forward to a wider variety of options off the course than ever before with something for fans of all ages to enjoy across the tournament. 

Free general admission tickets and limited hospitality packages for the Dallah Lounge are still available at dubaidesertclassic.com. 

Organisers are also encouraging fans to use the Metro service to travel to and from the tournament, with Al Khail station located directly outside the club’s main entrance.

Main image: David Cannon/Getty Images

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The nature of an important looming two-week stretch abroad means the 2023 John Deere Classic doesn’t boast the stoutest field on the PGA Tour’s schedule. But that doesn’t mean the action itself isn’t compelling. Coming into the final round, there are a few interesting storylines at stake. With the biggest names in golf resting up, Sunday may be the best opportunity for the rest to accomplish something truly career-changing.

Let’s break down what some of the contenders are playing for.

A validating victory

A win is a win, but for certain players at the top of the leaderboard, picking up the trophy on Sunday would bring with it a long-awaited sense of validation.

Cameron Young, the highest-ranked player in the field this week at World No. 19, is one of them. Young has finished inside the top 10 in three of his last six majors, including at the 2022 Open Championship, and notched a runner-up finish at the WGC Match Play earlier this year. But that first victory has eluded him. Fans are wondering: Why can’t this guy win one?

Young came into Saturday as the 36-hole leader, but some scrappy chips and putts led to bogeys on the sixth and seventh holes. Then, after birdies at 16 and 17, a series of duck hooks (one of which ended in the hazard) resulted in a double bogey on the 18th hole. His even-par 71 dropped him to 13 under and three back of the 54-hole lead. He’ll need to recover in a hurry if he hopes to shake his winless PGA Tour career.

Denny McCarthy and Adam Schenk come into Sunday T-2, one back of Brendon Todd’s 16-under lead. Like Young, they’ll each be hoping to notch their first overdue victory here. The former lost in a playoff to Viktor Hovland at the Memorial last month; the latter has finished runner-up twice already this season.

Michael Reaves

Ryder Cup points

Automatic spots on each respective Ryder Cup team are running out quickly — and with the final major of the year just two weeks away, there won’t be many more coming available. It means those with Rome ambitions are effectively playing for Captains’ Picks. Finish as high up the rankings as you can, and force the captain into picking you.

For Young (currently 10th in U.S. Ryder Cup rankings), McCarthy (14th), Schenk (24th) a win could do just that. Same for Sepp Straka on the European side (10th in Europe’s World Points ranking), who is four back heading into the final round.

Fifty-hour-hole leader Todd, whose third-round 66 leaves him with a one-stroke cushion at 16-under, is currently 42nd in the rankings. He has a lot of work left to do to convince Captain Zach Johnson he deserves a spot, but there is no better place to start making that argument than with a win on Sunday.

A slightly-random collection of 15 golf swings from 2022.

Each swing is fun and interesting in its own way. I learned a little something from every one.

?

— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) December 29, 2022

Future Status

And of course, wins and Ryder Cups aside, there’s the basic — and important — perk of status to play for. The Genesis Scottish Open will award a sponsor’s exemption to any player not already in the field. Todd, Peter Kuest and Jonas Blixt are some notables inside the top six who would qualify for that.

The case of Kuest is especially interesting. Kuest Monday Qualified for the Rocket Mortgage Classic last week. His top 10 finish there qualified him for the John Deere Classic this week, where he’s now two shots back of Todd heading into Sunday. Suddenly, full status on tour is within reach. It’s a hot run he’s cooked up. Sunday will show if he can turn up the heat even higher.

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With most of the golf world’s focus shifting abroad ahead of the two-week Scottish Open-Open Championship stretch, many of the game’s highest-ranked players are opting for a week of rest.

It’s probably the smart move, which makes it all the more interesting that Cameron Young decided to tee it up this week.

It may just work, too.

At World No. 19, Young is the highest-ranked player in the field this week, though the man who finished solo second at the 2022 Open Championship has struggled for form in 2023, with no top-10 finishes since a T-7 at the Masters.

Young’s U.S. Ryder Cup prospects have taken a hit accordingly (he’s down to 10th in the U.S. standings). But a six-under opening round 65 leaves him T-3 after his first round at the John Deere Classic, and a chance to create some momentum for a late-season surge.

More Power for Team Europe?

Christian Iooss

Speaking of Ryder Cup hopefuls looking to boost their chances of a ticket to Rome: Irishman Seamus Power with a five-under 66 opening round. Unlike Young, Power is trending in a direction where he will make the team (he’s currently 11th in the World Points standings), though a good stretch starting this week would secure those ambitions. It’d be welcome news for the European Team, too, which is lacking the same depth as its U.S. counterparts at the bottom of the order.

Rest and opportunity

All in all, the beauty of weeks like the John Deere Classic is that they’re an opportunity for anybody else with an itching sense of unfinished business. Patrick Rodgers (T-65), Young (T-3), Denny McCarthy (T-23) and Byeong Hun An (T-13) have each made more than $10 million on the PGA Tour, but are all winless. Zac Blair (T-23) is chasing full membership after a T-2 finish at the designated Travelers Championship and joins an army of others looking for a last-minute ticket to Royal Liverpool. It’s not often the big names take a break. The opportunity this week is to work hard while they rest.

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We’ve seen golf balls end up in all sorts of crazy places over the years. In trees and under cacti. On hospitality decks and on the backs of gators. Heck, Kramer once hit one into a whale’s blow hole, if you believe the stories. But none of those — not a single stinker of a Titleist, Bridgestone, Nitro or Kirkland — can compare to where this errant Cameron Young tee shot came to a rest at LA Country Club during the US Open. Let’s get nuts.

We know what you’re thinking because we’re thinking it too: No way. Just no way. Young’s tee shot flew 50 yards off line, through some trees, into the gallery and somehow, defying both odds and physics, plopped in the last place you would ever expect:

"Nobody will believe this."

Cameron Young's tee shot ended up in a spot made for a ball. #USOpen pic.twitter.com/rGVYnSTGVj

— U.S. Open (USGA) (@usopengolf) June 17, 2023

Exactly where it’s supposed to go.

“You know whose cart that is, boys?” asks NBC on-course reporter Ned Michaels, just as dumbfounded as the rest of us. “That’s my cart.” That’s right. Young’s ball didn’t just end up in the golf ball holder of any old cart. It landed in the cart of a guy with a headset and microphone whose job it is to tell us exactly where each shot winds up.

“You can’t make it up” he says with a shake of the head. That’s a tired cliche to be sure, but in this case we have to agree.

The post US Open 2023: You could watch golf every day for the next 100 years and not see another ball end up where Cameron Young’s did appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The PGA of America announced Friday that on his seventh hole of the day (the 16th), Young putted up close to the hole and marked his ball. With his marker in the line of play of both Tommy Fleetwood and Hideki Matsuyama, Young moved his marker one clubhead-length to the side. After Fleetwood and Matsuyama finished out their holes, Young followed suit, making a par.

Unfortunately for Young, he failed to return his marker back to the original position. As a result, when he replaced the ball and holed out, Young had played from a wrong place and incurred the General Penalty (two-strokes) for breaching Rule 15.3.

Following a rough opening round (74), Young had been making somewhat of a second-day comeback with three birdies in his first six holes. However, the double sent Young in the wrong direction. He would ultimate shoot a five-over 75 on Friday that left him at nine over for the tournament. Young, 26, finished T-3 at last year’s PGA Championship. He is No. 15 in the Official World Golf Ranking.

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Until a few days ago, the thickness of Cameron Young’s beard was in a dead heat with the rough at Oak Hill Country Club.

“Pretty close,” Young said with a grin.

If it was a contest, then you have to say that the New York native capitulated — but only at the suggestion of his wife Kelsey, taking a mower to his familiar facial cover over the weekend.

“Honestly, my wife just kind of said, why don’t you shave. It wasn’t like … I don’t think I looked terrible. I don’t know,” Young said on Tuesday at Oak Hill, where he is preparing for his second appearance in the PGA Championship. “Yeah, I haven’t been clean-shaven probably since our first son was born [last July].”

Young, who turned 26 earlier this month, certainly looks different. And maybe that’s the point. This guy knocks on the door more than an Amazon deliveryman, coming close to victory in more than a handful of events but still seeking that first win on the PGA Tour. Changing up the mojo couldn’t hurt, though he claims there was no golf-related purpose intended. “No real reason,” he said. “Just kind of a random occurrence.”

Dating to the start of 2021-22 season, Young has posted six runner-up finishes and a pair of thirds, one of which came in last year’s PGA Championship at Southern Hills in Tulsa, when he missed out on a playoff between Will Zalatoris and eventual winner Justin Thomas by one stroke. Disappointed at another near miss, Young left Southern Hills vowing to shoot five-under on the back nine at a future event and get over the hump.

Two months later he shot five-under 31 at the Old Course at St Andrews. He finished runner-up to Cam Smith.

“I’m just trying to keep giving myself those opportunities,” Young said. “I’ve said it a bunch of times; one of these times I’ll shoot five under on the back and it’ll be good enough, and I did it at the British Open and I still lost. But one of these times it will work out. Obviously, it would be nice for it to be this week … or any week on the PGA Tour is a good one for me.”

If Young looks unfamiliar clean-shaven, Oak Hill looks familiar to him, even though he has played the East Course just once, in the New York State Amateur at least a decade ago. He grew up at Sleepy Hollow Country Club in Briarcliff Manor, New York, where his father David was the head professional, and there’s just something about playing in his home state that has him stoked.

“It feels like home. Obviously, I didn’t live that close to here, but it’s the same style of golf,” he said. “I think even walking down the first hole today, there’s something familiar about just the grasses and kind of the weather that I feel like is unique to this part of the country.”

Come Sunday, it might not be surprising to see Young in contention yet again. It certainly won’t be surprising to see him with increasing amounts of facial hair. It tends to grow fast. And he isn’t inclined to break out the razor again.

“It probably won’t stay this way,” he said. “It’s too much work.”

Right. He’ll be busy enough with Oak Hill. And trying to end his streak of close shaves.

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But if you’re wondering how he’s able to carry the ball 320 yards, you’re looking in the wrong place.

We asked one of golf’s foremost biomechanists, JJ Rivet, to analyse the dynamic motion of Young’s driver swing and identify the true secret to his power. Rivet found it.

And guess what? It’s a move that you can copy!

Now here’s where we’ll do you a favour. We’ll tell you what really helps him (and possibly you) blister the ball. You can skip the science explanation and just head to the bottom of the article to watch it in action. Or you can continue reading if you want to know why. But fair warning, Rivet’s analysis might be a bit complex to understand.

Young’s left knee secret

“First, from a biomechanical point of view, his backswing is the perfect, athletic, coiling movement,” Rivet says. “To reach this level, he had to train on slippery or unstable surfaces or play field or ice hockey.” (Disclosure: Rivet didn’t know that Cam played junior ice hockey.)

Rivet says being able to create and store great energy comes from Cam’s ability to let his left knee dip inside of the target line without the left foot rolling and destabilising the rotation of his pelvis. It would be a mistake to let the left foot roll inward to create this massive coiling action, Rivet says.

“The energy storage in the backswing and the solid shearing forces applied to both feet are magnificent,” he says. “And note how he holds his spine angle while doing it.”

Taking the analysis a step further, Rivet says, “from an energetic standpoint, the MOI (moment of inertia) between the centre of gravity of the club and the central axis of rotation of the body play perfectly. He’s coiling in control, like a skater preparing to tighten the arms to turn faster and jump.”

Now here’s where the left knee really adds life to Young’s swing.

He lets it dramatically shift out toward the target before his pelvis rotates around it, Rivet says. This move might seem odd, as golfers are often told to straighten the left leg (or right leg for lefties) before the club reaches the ball. Not Young. He uses it as another lever or power accumulator, getting its lateral and rotational movement out ahead of his hip rotation, arm swing and clubhead release.

“The key is that his left leg resists being destablised,” Rivet says. “It’s a perfect weight shift and rotation around the left leg. The shift is so strong that the right foot slides toward the left. This swing makes me think about the fundamentals of a hockey swing adapted to golf. The left leg is the key. You need to work on core strength and glute exercises to adopt this move, for sure, but it’s not necessarily a complex move to copy.”

If you want to try it, here are some keys to remember:

1. Swing the club back wide, allowing your hips to rotate away from the target just like your shoulders do. To assist, let your left knee move inward (point behind the ball) as you reach the top.

2. Keep your feet firmly planted as you fully coil.

3. Start the downswing with an lateral and rotational shift of the left knee toward the target. When it moves out ahead of the ball, the pelvis should then rotate around it.

4. While maintaining a stable left leg, keep rotating your body and release the club into a full finish. Feel like the club isn’t moving its fastest until it passes through the hitting area (like the last-second release of a snapped towel).

Here’s a look at Cam’s “secret” move from two different perspectives.

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If you win in the shadows, you still win, and you can bet Sam Burns wasn’t bothered by the various narratives swirling around him as he took home the title in the final WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play with a 6-and-5 win over Cameron Young on a listless Sunday afternoon in the Texas capital. The glory, the $3.5 million prize money payout, the surprising shot of success in what has been a difficult year — all of it is sustenance transcending what everyone else might be thinking.

In other words, good for Burns. The highlight of his week came on Sunday morning, when the 26-year-old Louisiana native stared down his friend Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world and the undisputed alpha of this event, in their semi-final clash. Burns survived a blown lead and a five-foot putt from Scheffler that would have relegated Burns to the consolation match, winning on the third extra hole with a gutsy putt. That sealed a date with Young, who also went to extra holes to defeat a juggernaut (Rory McIlroy). It was little surprise that both looked — and played — exhausted as the mercury rose at Austin Country Club.

Even the crowd, in full throat during the morning matches, seemed subdued. By his own admission Burns got off to a slow start with a bogey on 2. He was still 1 down two holes later, but then Burns brought the heat. If you thought the nifty 27 on the front-nine that Young posted earlier in the week against poor Davis Thompson was impressive, what Burns unleashed was almost as devastating.

Starting with an iron to six feet on the par-3 fourth, Burns birdied eight of his next 10 holes in a display so dominant that Young, who tried his best to hold strong, was reduced to shouting expletives after an errant tee shot on 12, and pouring two balls into the water on 12 and 13 as the match came to an anticlimactic finish. There is a saying in recreational golf that if you’re going to play poorly, at least play poorly fast. You could perhaps extend that metaphor to this match itself — it may have not lived up to what came before, but it had the courtesy to end early.

As for those shadows cast over Burns, the longest on Sunday was perhaps the anticipation of a McIlroy-Scheffler dream final turned not-much-consolation third-place match. As late as the 17th and 18th holes on Sunday morning, this outcome still seemed not just possible, but likely. Then Burns and Young turned things around completely, the action peaked in the extra holes, and everything that came after felt, almost by necessity, like denouement.

“This week is as mentally exhausting as it is physically,” Burns said, who made an impressive 49 birdies over 119 holes. “I think after 10 holes this morning, my caddie, Travis [Perkins], kind of gave me a good kick in the butt and said: ‘Come on man, let’s go, you got this.’ And I really needed it at the time. I’m just so thankful that he was out there with me battling every step of the way and thankful that we were the last one standing.”

That 10th hole, when Burns trailed Scheffler by two holes after leading early, was the low moment of his day, the nadir before the peaks to come. Burns’ putting all week had been among the field’s best, but he took it to a new level in the final, pouring in putts of 20 feet, 11 feet, and 20 feet again in his stupendous birdie stretch. There is likely no opponent that could have stood up to him after Perkins lit the fire.

It’s worth noting, speaking of caddies, that this was Young’s first week with Paul Tesori, who formerly looped for Vijay Singh and Webb Simpson. Though Tesori is far more of a talker, Young said he enjoyed the dynamic, especially the fact that Tesori’s frequent questions, in an effort to know his new player, also triggered some thoughts for Young himself about how he plays the game — a surprise kind of self-discovery that obviously worked well in their maiden outing.

Young, 25 and still looking for his first PGA Tour win after now collecting a sixth runner-up finish, made no excuses and seemed to leave with no regrets. Still, he deserve some pity anyway — he was at the top of the strokes gained leaderboards all week, in every category, and didn’t play badly against Burns. It’s never fun to run into a buzzsaw, particularly when you’re the one that had been chopping everybody else into bits all week. The words Young chose to describe what he faced in that last match were succinct but accurate: “a huge bummer.”

“I think if it had been a stroke-play tournament, who knows,” Young said. “You never know. Because I could have played totally differently. Maybe I start with a 31 and not a 27. So it’s hard to say. I’m really happy with where my game’s at and I’m just excited for the next couple weeks coming up to Augusta and then Hilton Head.”

The odd dichotomy between these two players is that Young, despite being winless, has already had great early success in majors (two top-three finishes last year), while Burns, just a year older, has now won five times on tour but has yet to register anything better than a T-20 at majors. (When asked to explain his poor performance in the big four, Burns told the reporter how excited he was to go to Augusta, but declined to answer the question.)

As all thoughts turn now to Augusta, let’s spare one last backward glance for Austin and the Austin Country Club, which has hosted the WGC-Match Play since 2016. It’s unclear whether a match-play event is coming back to the PGA Tour at any point, but we can be sure it won’t be here. The club reportedly asked for more money from the tour at a point in the LIV crisis when the tour wasn’t in the mood to negotiate. To some extent, it gave this week an air of nostalgia, melancholy or something in between, and it was possible to feel that energy on Sunday as the Austin era came to a close.

Credit where its due, though. This tournament gave us an exciting farewell, even with his anticlimactic finish, and the ending was appropriate in its way. If what the broader world desired most was Scheffler and McIlroy dueling it out as the last players in the very last match of the WGC-Match Play, they got exactly what they wanted. It just so happened to be the third-place bout, finishing on the 17th hole long after the championship had been decided … a kind of cosmic wink from a format, and a sport, that will almost always resist the perfect mano-a-mano duel.

Match play on the PGA Tour is a finicky beast — always seemingly on the verge of collapse, frequently maligned, yet routinely delivering far more than you expect. As the sun set on Austin this final Sunday, you had to wonder — at least for a moment — if it also had a sense of humour.

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Webb Simpson announced on Monday that he and longtime looper Paul Tesori are parting ways. And if that wasn’t surprising enough, the seven-time PGA Tour winner also revealed Tesori will be working for Cameron Young, a fellow Wake Forest product.

“I am happy for the great opportunity Paul has in going to work with my fellow WF Demon Deacon and friend, Cameron Young,” Simpson said in a statement.

Tesori was on the bag for all seven of Simpson’s PGA Tour titles, including the 2012 US Open and the 2018 Players Championship.

Simpson, 37, is 12 years older than Young so they didn’t overlap at Wake Forest. What makes the timing even more interesting is that Simpson played in Sunday’s penultimate pairing at the Valspar Championship, shooting a final-round to finish T-7, his first top 10 in 16 months.

“After over twelve years of working together, Paul Tesori and I have made the hard decision to change directions,” Simpson’s statement, which he tweeted, starts. Read the full statement below:

pic.twitter.com/ueJztrt6vj

— Webb Simpson (@webbsimpson1) March 20, 2023

Young, 25, is still searching for his maiden PGA Tour title. But the tour’s reigning Rookie of the Year is coming off a season in which he had five second-place finishes, including at the Open Championship. He also finished second at the PIF Saudi International behind LIV Golf’s Abraham Ancer. Young is currently No. 17 in the Official World Golf Ranking, while Simpson is 133rd.

Tesori is expected to be on Young’s bag at this week’s WGC-Dell Match Play, where he’ll start in a round-robin group with Sepp Straka, Corey Conners and Davis Thompson. Simpson didn’t qualify for the event.

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The Mexican picked up his first bogey of the week on the par-4 17th, but was still content with a 66 to go with his first-round  63 and an 11-under total, allowing him to hold the edge over American Cam Young, following his second consecutive 65 over the par-70 course at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club.

Thailand’s Sadom Kaewkanjana and Aussie Marc Leishman are a further stroke back in joint-third, with a host of big names in the hunt, including last week’s Dubai Desert Classic runner-up Patrick Reed, England’s Paul Casey, fit-again Sergio Garcia and defending champion Harold Varner III.

“Having that bogey on 17 from a very scoreable spot kind of burns a little bit and dropping the first shot of the tournament,” said Ancer. But I’m extremely happy with my play and the way my body feels.

Overnight leader @Abraham_Ancer maintained his one-shot lead after carding a second-round 66. ?https://t.co/QQChqRrghk @SaudiIntlGolf #PIF_SaudiIntlGolf #whereitsAT pic.twitter.com/KKHnvjcaWp

— Asian Tour (@asiantourgolf) February 3, 2023

“Now I will go sleep as much as I can, maybe wake up around 6 or 7am, do some work then come out here two hours before, do another little warm-up, stretching, and chip and putt, hit some balls and get after it.”

Young added: “I think it’s been a lot of fun in the wind. We have to hit a bunch of shots, and I’ve played really nicely.

“If the wind stays kind of like this, I think 20 would have a really nice chance. It obviously could pick up and staying at 10-under could be an achievement, too. So we’ll see.”

Brooks Koepka hit the shot of the day on 18, blasting a wonderful bunker shot around 230 yards to around four feet.

Ladies and gentlemen, here’s your @aramco Shot of the Day – courtesy of @BKoepka ?@SaudiIntlGolf #PIF_SaudiIntlGolf #whereitsAT pic.twitter.com/dBxwU9Fgkq

— Asian Tour (@asiantourgolf) February 3, 2023

“I think we were about 228, so it was a good 7-iron, just hit it right in there,” he said after his 67 took him to four-under. “Obviously it’s downwind, so anything short of that green is going to bounce up, and from there you’re just trying to put it on the green.

“I’m hitting better shots. I felt more rust come off today. That’s a goal of mine this week, get rid of that stuff and just be more consistent.”

It wasn’t such a good day for world No. 4 Cameron Smith and fellow major winners Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson and Bryson DeChambeau, who all missed the cut.

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