That’s not the vibe this week at TPC Scottsdale.

“It feels just like another week, to be completely honest,” said Xander Schauffele, who shot an opening-round 67. “I’m assuming most of the guys aren’t really thinking about the payout when they’re playing golf, but I can’t speak for everybody.”

When you have as much of it as these guys do, it’s not a few extra million (OK even if that means they’re playing for a $20 million purse) that gets the juices flowing any more than usual. Yet that doesn’t mean players aren’t operating in the comfort zone this week. The WM Phoenix Open brings with it its own unique set of challenges: Larger and louder crowds. Stadium seating. And on Thursday, some strong gusts.

“I’ve seen a lot of wind conditions, but this was one of the toughest stretches I’ve played out here,” said Nick Taylor, who led the morning wave with an opening-round 66.

“It was hard,” said Rory McIlroy, who shot two-over 73. “So it really felt like my ball was getting lost in those left-to-right winds pretty hard and just never really got a handle on it.”

Wind in many ways is golf’s great equaliser. It disproportionately punished golfers with more skill, because those golfers hit the golf ball higher, and often with more spin. It means they need to work harder to keep their ball under the wind by altering their technique, and when they don’t, it sends the ball veering wildly away.

Add the massive, raucous, heckling crowd and it may not have tension of a major championship week, but it did present a certain chaos befitting its newly-minted “designated-event” status.

As for how players deal with it?

“It can go one of two ways,” McIlroy explained. “You can embrace it and try and enjoy it or try to shut yourself away.”

The “embrace it” mantra was common among pros, and in practice, it means pros would actively try to engage with the crowd. Players are interacting with them lightly between shots, and not fretting about trying to hush them into silence like they may during other weeks. Accept the unique challenge for what it is, and lean on your pre-shot routine when the time comes to hit the shot.

“It almost becomes white noise,” Schauffele said. “I’d say 16 would almost feel creepy if it was completely quiet, which is impossible anyway. You’ve just got to enjoy the experience.”

In many ways, it gives this event an identity. It may not have the prestige and carry the same pressure of a major championship, but in its own way, it’s just as unique.

The post More chaos, more cash: Players are embracing the madness of WM Phoenix Open appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
There was a time when Paige Spiranac took everything said to her on social media very personally. Every hate-filled comment, every off-color joke about her physical appearance, every jab at her golfing ability during her playing days stung a little harder than the last.

This caused her to become a staunch advocate against cyberbullying, a worthy cause. Looking back, though, Spiranac believes she could have handled some of the more fair criticisms differently. Now she can be seen regularly jabbing fellow tour pros on Instagram and Twitter, where she’s amassed a combined following of just over 3.7 million. A hypocritical heel turn? No, Spiranac explained as our guest on this week’s episode of “Be Right.” Just part of her social-media evolution.

“It was really hard, because when people would come at me, it was about my golf game,” she said. “As we all know, your ego is so tied in to how you play, and publicly for people to be like ‘You suck, you need to quit,’ that was really hard for me and I took it very personally.

“My early interviews I talked a lot about cyberbullying, and I was kind of dealing with other things behind the scenes, so I was a big advocate for that. Things have progressed where I’ve stopped playing professionally and now social media has become my career. It was hard because now I want to have a ‘hot take,’ but sometimes it comes at the expense of someone else, and not in a way that’s bullying. Now I’m tweeting stuff about players, and it’s funny, but I would get so upset about that before [if it were me], but it’s not really bullying. I was just soft. I was a huge baby. You do have to have a good sense of humor, you have to be able to laugh things off.” 

Spiranac has become much better at laughing things off, like when she sarcastically tweeted over the weekend “I can’t believe [Harry] Higgs would oversexualize himself for attention,” referring to Higgs pulling his shirt up over his eyes and revealing his dad bod on the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale. “I would NEVER.” More than a few folks who didn’t get the joke instantly flooded her mentions with some variation of an “isn’t that what you do?!?” response.  

“Welcome to Twitter,” Spiranac said. 

In addition to being a social media influencer, Spiranac is now an ambassador for the PointsBet Sportsbook, which will debut a weekly free-to-play pick ’em contest in partnership with the PGA Tour for this week’s Genesis Invitational. Spiranac gave us her picks for this week at Riviera, as did we, and we discussed much more, including all the chaos at the WMPO. Please, have a listen to the full episode below:

The post LISTEN: Paige Spiranac on her social-media evolution, and why the Phoenix Open is good for golf appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

For the second straight day, the crowd surrounding the Stadium hole was given the chance to go berserk as Ortiz’s 9-iron tee shot hit the green, rolled toward the cup and dropped in on the left side for a hole-in-one from 178 yards.

Cue the madness:

Raining in the desert again. ? pic.twitter.com/7uz5hKRQtj

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 13, 2022

Recall on Saturday, Sam Ryder made the first ace on the hole in the tournament since Francesco Molinari did it in 2015. With Ortiz making it two in two days, it was the first time that there have been two aces made on the hole in one week since 1997 when Tiger Woods did it in the third round and Steve Stricker followed up in the final round.

Ortiz is the 11th player to make a hole-in-one at 16 since the tournament started to be played at TPC Scottsdale in 1987.

According to PGA Tour Communications, there have been 2,863 tee shots between Molinari’s ace and Ryder’s. There were just 33 between Ryder’s and Ortiz’s.

Ortiz started on 10th tee for his final round, and after his fireworks on the 16th hole, he was four under on the round. Two swings later he was six under through eight holes after hitting the green off the tee on the drivable par 4, and then rolling in a nearly 13-footer for a second straight eagle. In the process, Ortiz became the first player to make back-to-back eagles during the 2021-22 PGA Tour season.

The post Another day, another ace, another insane celebration at TPC Scottsdale’s 16th appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Dan Rapaport
SCOTTSDALE — Sahith Theegala’s eyes bulged as he trailed his ball screaming through the thin desert air. He’d escaped the cauldron of adrenaline and beer-throwing at TPC Scottsdale’s madhouse 16th hole with a dry shirt and a par, his focus now solely on winning a truly hectic golf tournament.

The drivable par-4 17th has a habit of deciding the WM Phoenix Open—Brooks Koepka’s chip-in eagle last year catapulted him to the title—and Theegala thought he’d struck the decisive blow. His flushed hybrid was peeling left-to-right toward the slim runway up the centre of the green. A perfect line. It would run up the centre, he’d two-putt for birdie, par the last, win his first PGA Tour event in front of his parents, five uncles, six aunts and four cousins.

“I thought I hit a great shot,” he said. “It was cutting.”

Until, that is, that damn ball did the one thing it couldn’t do: It kicked left. Hard left, and trickled into the water hazard lurking left of the green. A cruel reminder that golf is played on imperfect surfaces.

“I still have no idea what that bounce was,” his caddie, Carl Smith, said with a shell-shocked expression on his face.

Theegala, a distinctly un-jaded 24-year-old rookie with an easy smile and a hall-of-fame strut, failed to get up and down and failed to get himself into a playoff with Scottie Scheffler and Patrick Cantlay. He succeeded, however, in capturing the adoration of the 800,000-ish fans who made their way to party this week and the millions more watching on television. (At least until the playoff bled into the Super Bowl.) He slept on the lead three nights in a row and refused to cede his place on a star-studded leader board, even holding a three-shot lead for a brief period on the front nine.

Tracy Wilcox
Theegala couldn’t pull out the victory on Sunday but endeared himself to the fans at TPC Scottsdale—and those watching at home.

His failure to find fairways down the stretch put stress on his short game but he handled it beautifully, getting up-and-down from the left bunker on the par-5 15th to regain a share of the lead. He had every chance to win this tournament until the golf gods forsook him. After his last-chance birdie chip at 18 tumbled past the hole fans serenaded him with THEE-GA-LA, and he raised his putter to show that the love was mutual. He fought back tears after the round, tears not of sadness but of pure emotion; this might be the most draining non-major in golf, and he played a starring role throughout its entirety.

“I loved it,” he said of the chaos. “It was awesome. I think from here on out, it makes everything else feel a little bit easier to focus and concentrate. I’ll miss some of the loud cheers for sure. I’ll definitely miss that. But yeah, if we could focus this week, I think the rest of the weeks are going to feel a little bit easier … definitely proud of the way I played this week.

“It’s awesome that they feel like I’m somebody they can root for. Yeah, it means a lot to me, and hopefully I can keep being someone that they can root for.”

Theegala does not hide his emotions; he plays with the joyfulness of a child who genuinely wants to make his fans proud. He still lives with his parents in Orange County, and he’s been driving to and from events on the West Coast in his not-so-new Volkswagen. The big boys will head to Los Angeles for the Genesis Invitational in private jets; he’ll be driving 5½ hours. The charming relatability won’t last; his golf game won’t let it. It’s too good, it’s always been too good—he won Junior Worlds at age 6 and swept the national player-of-the-year awards in his COVID-shortened fifth-year senior season at Pepperdine. He has many millions, a new car, a new house in his future. But for now, it’s downright endearing and hugely refreshing in an age when so many conversations, at least surrounding the top level of the men’s game, are about money. A star was born this week, even if he didn’t leave with the trophy.

Scottie Scheffler earned that privilege. Coming into the day, Scheffler held the unofficial title of Best Player Without a PGA Tour victory—the 25-year-old had four runner-ups, four major top-10s, a 59 and a Ryder Cup singles beatdown of Jon Rahm under his belt, but no victories. You sensed the drought would continue after he played his first 12 holes in even par to fall well off the pace, but he rallied with a four-birdies-in-five-holes stretch and, after Cantlay missed a 10-footer for birdie in the group ahead, the Texas grad found himself with a five-footer on the 72nd hole for the W. It never had a chance.

Mike Mulholland
Scheffler made birdies on four of his last six holes to get into a playoff, then made a 26-footer for birdie on the third extra hole for the victory.

“I didn’t hit a bad putt,” he insisted. “It didn’t feel great coming off the face, but I think I just hit it through the break. I think there was a little bit of excitement, whatever it was.

“If you would have told me on 13 tee I was going to be in a playoff, I would have been pleased. I felt a little bit out of it at that point, so to finish with four birdies coming in to get in a playoff was pretty nice.”

After a quick hug from his wife and an all-business chat with new caddie Ted Scott, who looped for Bubba Watson for both his Masters victories, Scheffler headed back to the 18th tee to take on the reigning FedEx Cup champion.

Both split the fairway and both hit disappointing wedges on the first playoff hole. Pars. Both missed the fairway and hit excellent chips for up-and-down par saves on the second playoff hole. Cantlay held the advantage on the third playoff hole after his approach nestled a good 10 feet closer than his opponent’s. Scheffler then struck the putt of his life, a 26-footer that came dangerously close to running out of energy but managed to crawl over the front edge. Cantlay, who did not make a bogey in 21 holes on Sunday, could not answer.

“I’ve had a few putts on this green now,” Scheffler said. “I started to have it figured out pretty good. Teddy and I had a good read on this one. There’s a little flat spot there that does something weird to the putts; it kind of keeps them to the right. Patrick missed both his putts right there to the right in the playoff, and that’s where I missed mine to win in regulation.

“It’s amazing. There’s so many people I need to thank right now. I’m not going to thank anyone besides my family and [coach] Randy [Smith] because I’m going to forget half the people. I’m just really thankful.”

The same for Theegala, even if the storybook ending is still to come.

The post The WM Phoenix Open produces one champ, but two winners appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

During a Tuesday practice round, the seven-time European Tour winner holed a 6-iron on the par-3 12th hole at TPC Scottsdale. But the Brit didn’t seem remotely excited about it—because it happened in a Tuesday practice round.

So there were no roars. No beer showers. And no raising-the-roof moves like Tiger Woods 25 years ago. Instead, have a listen as Fitzpatrick solemnly narrates his walk up to retrieve his ball after his “wasted” effort:

Hole in one, wasted!! pic.twitter.com/Btcrc4fpRx

— Matt Fitzpatrick (@MattFitz94) February 8, 2022

On one hand, we get it. You’d obviously like to save that for when the tournament starts and you’re a world-class golfer who probably has a more than a few career aces up your sleeve. On the other, you just made a freaking hole-in-one, Matt! Be a little happy! You know, for some of us who have still never made one!

Or, maybe, Matt was just dreading the bar tab he’s going to get hit with later—especially since there’s still another couple days until the tournament starts. Hmm. He probably should have kept this to himself.

The post No one has ever been less excited to make a hole-in-one than Matt Fitzpatrick appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Brian Wacker
Rickie Fowler is one of the nicest guys in golf—just ask his peers. So when he says that his slump has been difficult on everything from his relationship with longtime caddie Joe Skovron, to his time at home with his wife Allison, it’s telling.

Fowler, whose last victory came at the 2019 Waste Management Phoenix Open, has missed the cut in 10 of his last 23 starts, dating back to last year’s Farmers Insurance Open, and he has just one top-10 during that span.

“It’s very frustrating,” the 32-year-old five-time PGA Tour winner said Tuesday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. “It’s made it at times tough between Joe and I on the course. We have a great relationship, we have known each other for a long time, but when I’m out there and I’m not hitting shots that I’m visualizing and seeing, it’s hard. It’s tough for all of us that are involved, from my caddie, to my wife—she’s having to deal with me at home.”

With the Masters just over a month away, things aren’t getting any easier. Ranked 65th in the Official World Golf Ranking, Fowler is currently on the outside of the top 50 who will be invited to Augusta National.

The last time Fowler didn’t qualify for the Masters was in 2010. He also didn’t reach the U.S. Open that year, but has played in every major championship since, a streak of 41 straight.

The good news for Fowler, one of the game’s most popular players, is that he still has time to earn a spot in the field in Augusta by winning a tournament between now and the Masters or climbing back into the top 50 in the OWGR by the week prior to the major. The bad news is that in his five starts in 2021, he has missed the cut twice with his best result a T-20 at the Genesis Invitational two weeks ago.

The reasons for his struggles are myriad.

Statistically, Fowler ranks worse in every major category than he did a season ago, with the exception of strokes gained/off-the-tee and SG/around-the-green. Notably, his iron play has been abysmal (166th in approach) and his putting, once a pillar of his game, just as awful (167th).

After parting ways with coaches Butch and Claude Harmon and hiring John Tillery in the fall of 2019, a dip would be understandable given a swing overhaul, even one that’s trying to return Fowler to the roots of his swing and revive his artistic skillset. But the changes also have been admittedly difficult for Fowler to implement in tournament play on a consistent basis, especially in the midst of a season that seemingly never ends.

Other commitments, such as upwards of 25 to 30 corporate days a year for his sponsors, don’t make things any easier.

For Fowler’s part, his lack of results haven’t been due to a lack of effort, though. “It’s pretty much been all golf,” he said. “A lot of people have asked, have you been able to fish much at home? Not really. The days that I have off I just take completely off, and it’s been workout, therapy and golf.”

Ben Jared
Rickie Fowler says his frustrations have boiled over into his relationship with his longtime caddie, Joe Skovron.

But there’s also been a mental toll.

For all the criticism there has been of Fowler not having won enough in his career—he was once voted the tour’s most overrated player in a magazine poll before winning the Players Championship in 2015—he rarely has faced any real adversity on the course. From 2012 through 2019, he won five times, had 10 runner-up finishes, a half-dozen third-place finishes and 36 other top-10s.

While he didn’t win enough in the eyes of many, particularly relative to the amount of attention he got, he still played, for the most part, well. And sometimes even better than that—in 2014, he finished in the top-five of all four majors in the same year, something that has been achieved by only Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Jordan Spieth.

But those days are, at the moment, both a distant memory and ones he’s hopeful of recapturing.

“Everyone that’s played really at all, especially at some sort of a high level, completely understands that golf is up-and-down,” Fowler said. “You take advantage of the times where you’re playing well and ride those out, because you know that it’s not always going to be that way, there are times where it’s going to go down and you’re going to have to fight through it. Unfortunately, this one’s been a little longer than I would like it to have been, but, yeah, we’re grinding through it.

“A lot of it I would say is more just on the mental side now, just getting back and playing as much as possible to just get the reps in. It’s a matter of time. We’ll just keep kicking the darn door and she’ll fall.”

There have been at least some moments of positivity, however rare or fleeting, for the usually glass-half-full Fowler.

At Riviera, he closed with a 67 after failing to break 70 each of the first three days. But he’ll need a lot more days like that to earn an invite to this year’s Masters—the T-20 finish moved him up just one spot in the OWGR.

“That’s the short-term goal,” he said of moving into the top 50. “I knew I wasn’t inside the top 50—I didn’t know exactly where I was, [but] it wasn’t necessarily something where I was calculating or saying, I need to do this to get back to here. It’s play golf. Finished off with a nice round Sunday in L.A., which could have been a lot better, but things are starting to head the right way.”

The sooner, the better.

The post With Masters invite in peril, Rickie Fowler’s frustration grows amid his current slump appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Brian Wacker
When Brooks Koepka won the Waste Management Phoenix Open two weeks ago, the victory snapped a winless drought that stretched back to July of 2019 and the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. It also brought to an end a long period of frustration for the four-time major champion.

How frustrated had Koepka become?

He says he snapped two sets of irons over his knee at home in his living room, first after missing the cut at the Mayakoba Golf Classic in Mexico in December and then again after another weekend off at the Farmers Insurance Open. In between, he also missed the cut at The American Express.

“I don’t really do that,” Koepka said Wednesday from the Genesis Invitational in Los Angeles. “So there was quite a bit of frustration, but at the same time you’ve just got to stick it out.

“I felt like my patience is always there, it’s just sometimes results take a little bit longer. You’re doing the whole process, you’re doing it exactly how you want it, but the results might not be there, and I think that sometimes you can get result-oriented and I think that’s kind of where I was.”

That wasn’t all.

Koepka, who was sidelined the first two months of the 2020-21 season with knee and hip injuries that also prevented him from playing in the U.S. Open at Winged Foot in September, added that after missing the cut at the Farmers, he didn’t come out of his room at the house he rented nearby for “about 30 hours.”

“I was so mad at myself,” Koepka said. “Didn’t want to talk to anybody. I was really agitated, really pissed off. Sometimes you need that. Sometimes you just need to not reset but really think about, ‘all right, hey, this is what I’ve got to do,’ and I did it.”

Not surprisingly, the win in Phoenix and the patience he showed in rallying from five strokes back on the final day has him feeling better about his game heading into this week at Riviera, despite a T-43 there last year and missed cut in 2017 in his only two appearances.

“It’s pretty close,” he said. “I feel very confident. I like where I’m at. My game feels exactly where it’s been in the past.”

Which is probably a good thing for any other golf clubs laying around Koepka’s house.

The post Brooks Koepka snapped clubs and sulked for ’30 hours’ before his turnaround win in Phoenix Open appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
For those of us who have followed his professional career, Jordan Spieth’s Saturday 61 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open felt like old times, old times being 2015-2017. For Will Zalatoris, Spieth’s third-round highwire act felt like really old times.

Zalatoris, 24, is three years Spieth’s junior, but he was good enough at a young age that the two did cross paths a few times in junior golf. As he recalled on Tuesday at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Spieth was untouchable in those days.

“Anytime he played it was kind of like, All right, here we go, what’s he going to win by,” Zalatoris said.

The former Wake Forest standout then told the quintessential Spieth story, one that reminded us of the countless Spieth rounds that have kept us on the edge of our seat in recent years. Spieth, who was 14 at the time, played with an 11-year-old Zalatoris at his home course, and he lit the place on fire. We’ll let Will take it from there.

“We weren’t even old enough to drive carts yet,” Zalatoris said. “And he, I remember playing at my home course at Bent Tree and he flared one way out right off the tee, hits a second shot in the bunker, makes like a 30-footer for par and then he birdies 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9 to shoot 29 on the front and shot 63 and shot the course record that had been there for 15 years.

“That’s stuff like that when I think I was probably, I guess I was 11, I’m thinking, good night! I mean, that’s just so … I couldn’t even fathom shooting a score like that at 14.”

Wayward first drive, Houdini act par save, six birdies in his next eight holes. Yep, sounds about right.

The post This story about 14-year-old Jordan Spieth shooting the course record at Will Zalatoris’ home course is too good appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

It was a line easily as applicable to the events that had preceded the Big Game some 2,100 miles away from Tampa.

Everybody loves a good comeback story and going into the final round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open, Jordan Spieth stood on the precipice of finally completing one.

It had been more than three years since Spieth had hoisted a trophy—the claret jug at the 2017 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale—and more than two years since he had played in the final group on a Sunday. The boy wonder who’d won 10 times between 2015 and 2017, including three majors, but had fallen on hard times and plummeted nearly out of the top 100 in the World Ranking, was on the verge.

Yet the Sunday comeback that played out at TPC Scottsdale, turned out not to be his, but rather one from a different multiple-major winner.

In the end, Brooks Koepka rallied from five strokes back with a sensational final-round 65 that was highlighted by an eagle chip-in on the 17th hole to win by one over K.H. Lee and Xander Schauffele at TPC Scottsdale. The title was Koepka’s first since the 2019 WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational and, more importantly, comes after an injury-plagued 2020.

“I was in some dark places mentally,” Koepka said. “I didn’t know if I was ever going to be the same again.”

That Koepka won in front of the largest crowds of any tournament since the COVID-19 restart last June might not have been a coincidence after he admitted to struggling to play at fanless tournaments in 2020. Christian Petersen

MORE: Brooks Koepka seizes the day while Schauffele, Hahn see title hopes slip away

Hyperbolic perhaps for the 30-year-old four-time major champ, but Koepka is known for finding motivation wherever he can. Be it in a slight (perceived or real) or in this case in the face of knee and hip injuries that, among other things, knocked him out of the first two months of the 2020-21 season and prevented him from playing in the U.S. Open at Winged Foot last September.

But there was also some validity to his words. Koepka, once a dominant and imposing figure on the tour who won a half-dozen times including back-to-back U.S. Opens and PGA Championships between 2017 and 2019, physically wasn’t able to hit the same kind of shots that catapulted him to the top of the game. If he had an uphill shot, he couldn’t get onto his left side and would end up hanging back, flipping the club. Being in bunkers was “horrific” because when his knee was flexed every movement pulled on it. Even bending over to put his ball down on the green he said was painful.

The lowest point came at last year’s Memorial, where he shot a final-round 80 to finish T-62. “I was in excruciating pain,” he said. “I was being told that my knee was still the same. The frustration of just trying to play and knowing I’m not myself, knowing I’m not even close to what I’m capable of doing, I can’t compete. I’m trying to compete, but I just can’t. I can’t swing the golf club like I want to.”

Though he was fully healthy at the start of 2021, Koepka continued to struggle, missing three straight cuts for the first time in his career.

MORE: Justin Thomas plays final round of Waste Management Phoenix Open after learning of his grandfather’s death

Then came a wild Sunday afternoon at the WMPO, where he’d picked up his first career title on the PGA Tour in 2015. This one would prove special, too.

With 10 players tied for or within one of the lead with just a few holes to play in the tournament, Koepka hit a fairway wood just short and left of the green on the 334-yard 17th. Then he holed his chip from 97 feet for eagle to break from the pack.

There were only 5,000 fans a day permitted at TPC Scottsdale this week because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but a roar rumbled across the desert course with the fury of a sandstorm.

“I like feeling like you got to show off in front of people,” Koepka said. “I struggle with just getting my head wrapped around everything. There is just no energy [with fanless tournaments]. I’ve struggled with that a little bit, so I need to figure it out. Who knows how long we’ll be playing like this. It was nice to have fans back.

“I do feel like I’m back. I felt like I’ve been back.”

As for Spieth’s comeback, another tour win will have to wait.

A day after matching his career-low with a 61, he didn’t seem to know which way the ball was going, nor could he make his putter cooperate. The only consistency was that there was none. He shot a one-over 72—just two strokes off matching the worst score of the entire day—and finished two shots back in a tie for fourth.

Spieth found himself playing out of the desert a bit too often on Sunday. Christian Petersen

Yet despite his struggles, Spieth still had a shot, just one stroke off the lead with five holes to play. Then he drove it into the water on the par-5 15th, missed a 10-footer for birdie on the par-3 16th and found water again on the 17th when his ball rolled through the green, his words powerless to stop it.

MORE: Diary of a Jordan Spieth fan—So much hope, too much reality on Sunday at TPC Scottsdale

Still, there were positives to take away from the week. It was his best result since his T-3 at the 2019 PGA Championship, though he was never in contention there. It was also a reminder that climbing out of the abyss takes time and happens in pieces. He was disappointed with the outcome, yes, but buoyant about where his game is taking him.

Sunday was his best chance at victory since the 2018 Masters, where he finished in third, two strokes back after a final-round 64.

“I think I believe in what I’m doing,” Spieth said. “A result like this just helps confirm what I was already feeling, and that just moves the needle the right direction.”

The same can be said for Koepka. His comeback is complete. Brooks is here. Jordan will be, too. One day.

The post A major champ completed a comeback at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Just not the one we expected appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
For a guy who shot a six-under 65 to roar back from five strokes off the pace and win his first PGA Tour event in 17 months, Brooks Koepka had a surprisingly tough time on the greens Sunday at TPC Scottsdale. En route to his eighth career tour win, Koepka managed to lose 1.045 strokes with his putter. How exactly is that possible when you shoot a 65?

For, arguably, the turning point of his victory, however, Koepka didn’t have to worry about his putter at all. After hitting a 3-wood off the tee on the short par-4 17th, Koepka’s ball landed short right of the green, leaving him 97 feet from the hole. Koepka took out a wedge and proceeded to chip and run his second shot, the ball looking like it was bound for the hole the instance it hit the putting green.

Sure enough, it went dark …

Rising to the occasion. ? pic.twitter.com/Zi61PBPPmU

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 7, 2021

Here’s a look from another angle:

?️ FOR THE LEAD.@BKoepka chips in for eagle on 17 to take a two-shot lead. ?#AonRiskReward pic.twitter.com/tWYQx8kQsv

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 7, 2021

The eagle 2, his second eagle of the round, jumped Koepka from a tie for the lead at 17 under to two strokes out from at 19 under. It was the cushion he’d need as Xander Schauffele and K.H. Lee would both get to 18 under, falling one shot short of catching Koepka.

The post Watch Brooks Koepka’s 97-foot eagle chip-in on the 17th that propelled him to victory at TPC Scottsdale appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.