By Joel Beall
Welcome to the Dew Sweeper, your one-stop shop to catch up on the weekend action from the golf world. From the professional tours, trending news, social media headlines and upcoming events, here’s every golf-related thing you need to know for the morning of May 7.

Day wins Wells Fargo with a fiery finish

The Green Mile is supposed to be one of the toughest stretches on tour. Jason Day made it look as difficult as your local putt-putt.

Tied with rookie Aaron Wise with just three holes remaining, Day birdied the 16th and 17th at Quail Hollow before making a conservative par at the last to win the Wells Fargo Championship by two shots. A clutch performance highlighted by a near ace at the par-3 17th, a hole that surrendered just three birdies on the round:

Not your typical 7-iron from 230 yards …

It hits the flag! Miraculous.@JDayGolf now leads by 2. #LiveUnderPar pic.twitter.com/s4C5snlJZP

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) May 6, 2018

It was far from a flawless effort, as the Aussie hit just six fairways on the afternoon and made four bogeys, including an ugly snap hook at the 14th into the water. Still, when a push from the 21-year-old Wise made it interesting, Day answered with moxie.

Day already bounced back from his nightmarish 2017 with a victory at Torrey Pines and a runner-up finish at Pebble Beach, and to claim he’s angling to reclaim the No. 1 world ranking is an affront Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm and the like. Conversely, with the Players on the docket and the U.S. and British Opens looming, the 2015 PGA Champ has recaptured his formidable form, a notion that should send head-shakes throughout the sport.

Sam Greenwood

Tiger stumbles in Sawgrass warm-up

There were signs of promise. His driving, poor in his previous six starts, was strong, finishing 16th in strokes gained/off-the-tee. His approach game was similarly solid. But Tiger Woods had his worst finish since the missing the cut at Riviera, shooting a final-round three-over 74 to finish T-55 at the Wells Fargo Championship.

“I didn’t putt well again,” said Woods, who needed 31 strokes on the greens Sunday. “I felt like I drove it pretty decent today, but I made nothing. The chances I did have, I missed them all. It was just a bad week, and the good news is wiped your hands clean and go on to the next one.”

Short-game woes were a recurring theme for Woods at Quail Hollow. The 42-year-old finished the week last in sg/putting for those that made the cut. He also failed to record a red number on Sunday, just the sixth non-major round in his career without a birdie.

“I got shutout,” Woods said.

Not the ideal reps before travelling to TPC Sawgrass, which ranked as the second-hardest track on tour last season. Of course, Si Woo Kim missed four of his previous five cuts before his Players triumph last spring, so perhaps Woods is right where he needs to be. Speaking of which…

Andrew Redington

Golf’s biggest stars paired for Players

Knock the “fifth major” motif all you want, but the Players Championship certainly knows how to set the stage when it comes to marquee pairings.

The event announced its two featured groups on Sunday, with Woods and Phil Mickelson serving as headliners. The two Hall of Famers famously played a practice round together at this year’s Masters, although have not been paired together in tournament play since the 2014 PGA Championship. Both have won at TPC Sawgrass in their storied careers and will be joined by Rickie Fowler, the 2015 Players Champ.

They’re not the only group flaunting firepower. Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Rory McIlroy, the past three FedEx Cup champions, will also be teeing it up together on Thursday and Friday. Two more featured groups will be announced early this week, but good luck topping these trios for attention.

Darren Carroll/Getty Images

A peculiar rules snafu

Stop if you’ve heard this sentence before: there was a run-in with the rules of golf this weekend. Denmark’s Nicole Broch Larsen was its latest victim.

On Saturday at the Volunteers of America LPGA Texas Classic, Broch Larsen called over an official because she thought she saw her ball move. However, the official ruled that Broch Larsen hadn’t caused its relocation, saved from a possible penalty.

Except for another official, assigned to watch the broadcast, contacted the on-site Rules Committee with “added information” from seeing video footage. The Rules Committee, upon further review, assessed Broch Larsen a one-stroke penalty under Rule 18-2.

If you’re wondering, “Hey, I thought this review nonsense was over with,” GD’s Ryan Herrington explains: “Video was permitted to help overturn the original ruling in this instance despite last year’s decision, “The Lexi Rule,” which says that a player’s reasonable judgment will be accepted even if video shows it to be inaccurate. That was because “The Lexi Rule” was meant to apply when the issue involved in determining a point of relief or the replacement of a lifted ball, or in instances where it reveals things that could not reasonably be seen with the naked eye.”

Though the penalty dropped her from the lead at the time of the penalty, the stroke ultimately did not decide the fate of the tournament, as Broch Larsen finished six shots behind Sung-Hyun Park. Nevertheless, the recurrence of such matters—specifically, the perceived lack of common sense in which they’re handled in—is getting old. It would be refreshing if those who monitor golf start applying that “game of integrity” maxim to themselves.

Bill Murray, still the man

For the record, gender parties are narcissistic and highly unnecessary. No one cares that you’re having a baby, let alone if it’s a boy or girl. But, if you’re going to ruin everyone’s weekend with this stupid party, might as well bring Bill Murray along for the ride.

Playing in the Murray Bros. Caddyshack Golf Tournament, Michael Davis (no, not that Mike Davis) and his wife wanted to do their reveal a la Dustin Johnson via an exploding golf ball. However, the couple ran into the owner of the Chive, who was able to get Murray to do the honours instead:

Jacquie and Mike Davis asked our co-founder John Resig to do their gender reveal today in St. Augustine. John had a little surprise in store for them, Bill Murray showed up to tee off instead. It’s a boy! @WMurrayGolf pic.twitter.com/DcnfoOiF7I

— theCHIVE (@theCHIVE) April 27, 2018

Props to Murray for playing along, and our apologies to all expecting parents. Because after this video, the old “Alright, let’s take a bite of our cupcakes and see what colour’s inside!” stunt ain’t going to cut it.

The post Weekend recap: Day prevails, Tiger and Phil together at Players, Bill Murray doing Bill Murray things and another rules snafu appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Justin Thomas, a kid from Kentucky, the littlest big man out there, won the 99th PGA Championship Sunday by staring down doom. It’s always there, doom. The golf gods, ever ready to deal in black humor, make sure of that.

Here they’ve even given doom a proper name. It’s The Green Mile. It’s the last three holes at Quail Hollow Club. The name is borrowed from Stephen King’s book, “The Green Mile,” in which pretty much everybody dies, most of them electrically toasted by “Old Sparky.”

So when Thomas stood on the 17th tee with a one-shot lead over a bunch of guys who, like him, were eager to win their first major championship, he had good reason to wonder where this story was going. King’s Death Row characters walk their last mile on a tile floor painted lime green. Quail Hollow’s green is more vivid, though no less dreaded.

It begins with the 16th, a par 4, 519 yards. The 17th is a par 3, 221 yards. The 18th is 500 yards, another par 4. There’s water involved on each hole. The water doesn’t hurt as much as electricity, unless you figure, as most of these guys do, that flying one into the water kills you just as dead.

“Adrenaline was flowing,” Thomas said. Not that he needs much. He’s 5-foot-10, 175 pounds, and he hits it a ton. The way he does that is the way we used to wind up the rubber band on a little wooden airplane’s propeller, then let it go, and the thing flies. Justin Thomas just winds himself up until he snaps back at the ball. Out of a fairway bunker into a greenside bunker and out to six feet, he had made a par-saving putt at 16 and moved his lead to two shots. Or maybe one. As Thomas said later, “It was a crazy day.”

This crazy: With an hour and a half to play and everyone on the back nine, seven players were separated by only two shots. Thirty minutes later, five were tied for the lead at seven under par: Thomas, Kevin Kisner, Chris Stroud, Hideki Matsuyama and Francesco Molinari.

Anyway, Thomas stood at the 17th tee …

“I had 193 front, 214 to the hole, to a pin that’s really brutal …”

But good things had already happened for him. At the 10th, his drive went into a tree and he said to the ball, “Get lucky,” and he said to the tree, “Spit it out for me,” and the ball bounced sideways into the fairway, and Thomas told his caddie, “That’s why you ask.”

Ross Kinnaird

Then, when his short birdie at the 10th, teetered on the razor’s edge of the cup, “I threw a little child tantrum,” and, as he took five steps away, damned if the ball didn’t fall into the cup. Three holes later, he chipped one in for a birdie. “The most berserk I’ve ever gone on the golf course,” he said. This story was turning strange.

“I needed to land it about 200 … I hit a stock 6-iron at home 200 yards, and I never even thought about anything but a 7. I’m like, aim it just inside the right edge of the green, put it back in the stance and just swing at a 7, because it’s not a position to try to finesse something. You’re pumped up, you’re feeling it, and you’re kind of not full bore, but you want to swing at something.”

He dropped it 15 feet from the pin.

“That shot, I’ll never forget that vision in my head.”

As Thomas moved to putt, I started a note: “Make it and he … “ The next word would have been “… wins.”

Before I could scribble it, Thomas did it. A birdie. A two-shot lead going to 18.

One by one on The Green Mile, the other guys died.

Louis Oosthuizen three-putted from the next county at the 16th.

Patrick Reed, needing birdies, was thrilled to make pars at 16 and 17 before sending his drive on 18 into a bunker from which reasonable escape was impossible.

Kevin Kisner called that stretch of holes “just brutal.” For the day those three holes produced 53 bogeys, 14 doubles and 11 birdies. They called for work seldom needed by these guys. To reach the 16th, Kisner hit driver and 5-iron. The 17th, a 5-iron. The 18th, again driver and 5-iron. His last, desperate hope at the 18th—he needed to hole it from the fairway to catch Thomas—failed when his second turned left halfway to the hole and into a stream. He blamed mud on the side of the ball.

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

That odd turn was, in fact, the sort of inexplicable stuff that Stephen King imagines, the Stephen King who created his own Green Mile and caused an old prison guard to say, “But, oh God, sometimes The Green Mile seems so long.”

Thomas said, “I played 16, 17, 18 well all week.” He was one over par there. “Obviously, I’m nervous. I want to win. But I was a lot more comfortable and calm than I thought I would be.”

He’s only 24 years old. But he had won three PGA Tour events this year. He had shot as 59. He had shot a 63 in the U.S. Open. He had been in the heat a million times. However long The Green Mile might be, it was for Justin Thomas a walk in the park.

The post Justin Thomas’ path to history includes a tiptoe through the Green Mile appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington

D.A. Points was one stroke off Kevin Kisner’s lead with three holes to play during Friday’s second round of the PGA Championship, a position nobody would have predicted to be the case just two days earlier. Including D.A. Points. And then golf intervened on “The Green Mile”.

An errant tee shot on the 16th hole and a poor decision with his second shot resulted in a double-bogey 6. Between clubs on the par-3 17th, Points choice a soft 7-iron, only to pull it into the water and card another double. A par on 18 stopped the skid, but didn’t make things any easier as he had to sign for a two-over 73 that left him at one-over total and eventually seven back of Kisner

Instead of fuming, however, the 40-year-old three-time PGA Tour winner took it in stride. “I’m not happy about it, but it doesn’t do me any good to get mad about it now,” Points said.

He speaks the wisdom of a man who knows from true rock bottom in the game. For the last three seasons, Points hasn’t cracked the top 165 on the PGA Tour money list, his swing an unsolvable mystery.

His 2017 season will go down as a success thanks to his victory at the Puerto Rico Classic in March, but it’s also been a bit befuddling as he has had just one other T-20 finished (T-12 at Wells Fargo). In the last five starts, he’s missed four cuts and finished T-65 at the Quicken Loans.

“My golf swing isn’t right where I want it to be,” Points said. “I’ve kind of manufactured a lot of shots to get it where it needs to be. But I’ve chipped and putted really well. I haven’t been playing bad the last couple months. It’s not like I’m shooting 80 every day. I’m shooting even, one over or one under, and out here that doesn’t get you very far.”

But Points came to Quail Hollow with good memories. In 2012, he had what he his best ball-striking week he had for 72 holes in his entire career before missing a par putt on the last hole to win, then playing against Rickie Fowler and Rory McIlroy in a playoff eventually won by Fowler.

“Most people forget I was in it, too,” Points joked.

Having not played in a major since the 2015 U.S. Open, Points was determined to take a good attitude into the week, and it translated into an opening-round 68, his best score in his last 22 rounds.

If Points could have a mulligan on his Friday closing stumble, it would be his choice of clubs on the second shot on the 16th. With his ball settled down in the Bermuda rough, Points got overly aggressive with a hybrid when a wedge out was probably the right call. He didn’t catch the ball fully, and it wound up in the right right, 80 yards short of the green with no angle to the flag. Compounding this was a three-putt after being overly aggressive with a 25-footer to try to save par.

For as dark as the finish was, Points insisted on finding the bright side.

“I’m in the top 20 going into the weekend of my only major this year, and the only one in the last few years,” Points said.

“It’s so far from the end of the deal,” Points said. “There’s a chance three or four under could still win this thing. I don’t think it will, but there’s a chance. Like I said, I’m in the Top 20 probably going into the weekend of my only major I’ve played year and the last few years, I’m happy with where I am.”

The post PGA Championship 2017: D.A. Points could be the happiest guy to finish double-double-par you’ve ever met appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.