By day’s end on Sunday, Clark had claimed it, making it look easy with a four-shot triumph, even though Schuaffele had actually taken the lead by a shot after six holes. Starting on the eighth hole, Clark birdied five of his next seven holes to grab back the advantage and making sure no one could catch him. A closing 68 for a 19-under 265 total gave Clark his first victory of any kind since the 2016 Pac-12 Championship at Oregon.

Clark was 0-for-1 in converting 54-hole leads in his tour career (at the 2019 Honda Classic he shot a two-over 72 to finish T-7 after leading by one), but there were reasons to believe that this would be his week. In his fifth year on tour, Clark was having his best season to date: five top-10s in 18 starts and just two missed cuts, ranking 36th in the FedEx Cup points race. After Sunday’s play, he now holds the lead for the most rounds in the 60s this season on the tour (35).

With the victory, Clark becomes the sixth player since 2008 to make Quail Hollow his first PGA Tour win, joining Anthony Kim (2008), Rory McIlroy (2010), Rickie Fowler (2012), Derek Ernst (2013) and Max Homa (2019).

As the seventh designated event on the PGA Tour’s 2023 schedule, Quail Hollow offered up a $20 million purse with the winner, as previously mentioned, getting a rather oversize first-place cheque. How oversize? Well consider that Clark’s biggest previous payday on the PGA Tour was when he finished T-10 at the 2023 WM Phoenix Open, good for $485,000.

Here’s the prize money payouts for every golfer who made the cut this week.

Win: Wyndham Clark, -19, $3,600,000
2: Xander Schauffele, -15, $2,180,000
T-3: Harris English, -12. $1,180,000
T-3: Tyrrell Hatton, -12. $1,180,000
T-5: Tommy Fleetwood, -11, $772,500
T-5: Adam Scott, -11, $772,500
7: Micahel Kim, -10, $675,000
T-8: Denny McCarthy, -9, $525,000
T-8: KH Lee, -9, $525,000
T-8: Max Homa, -9, $525,000
T-8: Corey Conners, -9, $525,000
T-8: Sungjae Im, -9, $525,000
T-8: Brendon Todd, -9, $525,000
T-14: Jimmy Walker, -8, $355,000
T-14: Rickie Fowler, -8, $355,000
T-14: Justin Thomas, -8, $355,000
T-14: Gary Woodland, -8, $355,000
T-18: Kevin Streelman, -7, $285,000
T-18: Seamus Power, -7, $285,000
T-18: Alex Smalley, -7, $285,000
T-21: Patrick Cantlay, -6, $235,000
T-21: Dylan Wu, -6,m $235,000
T-23: Tony Finau, -5, $185,000
T-23: Emiliano Grillo, -5, $185,000
T-23: Tom Kim, -5, $185,000
T-23: Matt Kuchar, -5, $185,000
T-27: Stephan Jaeger, -4, $134,125
T-27: Taylor Moore,, -4, $134,125
T-27: Trace Crowe, -4, $134,125
T-27: Mark Hubbard, -4, $134,125
T-27: JJ Spaun, -4, $134,125
T-27: Doug Ghim, -4, $134,125
T-27: Nate Lashley, -4, $134,125
T-27: Adam Svensson, -4, $134,125
T-35: Matt Fitzpatrick, -3, $101,750
T-35: Chad Ramey, -3, $101,750
T-35: Keegan Bradley, -3, $101,750
T-35: Ryan Palmer, -3, $101,750
T-35: Matthew NeSmith, -3, $101,750
T-40: Kramer Hickok, -2, $83,000
T-40: Joseph Bramlett, -2, $83,000
T-40: Francesco Molinari, -2, $83,000
T-43: Hayden Buckley, -1, $69,000
T-43: Si Woo Kim, -1, $69,000
T-43: Akshay Bhatia, -1, $69,000
T-43: Viktor Hovland, -1, $69,000
T-47: Henrik Norlander, E, $51,222.22
T-47: Zac Blair, E, $51,222.22
T-47: David Lingmerth, E, $51,222.22
T-47: Alejandro Tosti, E, $51,222.22
T-47: Rory McIlroy, E, $51,222.22
T-47: Sam Stevens, E, $51,222.22
T-47: Trey Mullinax, E, $51,222.22
T-47: M.J. Daffue, E, $51,222.22
T-47: Beau Hossler, E, $51,222.22
T-56: Ryan Armour, +1, $46,200
T-56: Chris Kirk, +1, $46,200
T-56: Sahith Theegala, +1, $46,200
T-59: Justin Suh, +2, $44,600
T-59: Cam Davis, +2, $44,600
T-59: Cameron Young, +2, $44,600
T-59: Keith Mitchell, +2, $44,600
T-59: Harrison Endycott, +2, $44,600
T-64: Webb Simpson, +3, $43,000
T-64: Austin Eckroat, +3, $43,000
T-64: Callum Tarren, +3, $43,000
67: Stewart Cink, +5, $42,200
68: Nick Hardy, +8, $41,800

The post Here’s the prize money payout for each golfer at the 2023 Wells Fargo Championship appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

It wasn’t all that long ago when Rickie Fowler reached the lowest point of his career in the Official World Golf Ranking. Last September, he entered the Fortinet Championship ranked No. 185 in the world, a point he hadn’t reached since early as a professional. He shot a pair of 69s that weekend, tied for sixth place, moved up to 148th in the world and has been on an upward climb since.

Fowler, 34, finally has vaulted back into a spot where he resided for a large portion of his pro career. He shot 71-68-68-69 at the Wells Fargo Championship to tie for 14th place at Quail Hollow, where he won his first tour event 11 years ago. According to World Ranking guru Nosferatu, Fowler’s performance was good enough to move him to No. 50 in the world for the first time since January 2021.

?BREAKING@RickieFowler fans, fasten your seatbelts!

He's back in the Top 50 in the world after a very long and painful wait (2 years and 5 months)… ??#OWGR

— Nosferatu (@VC606) May 7, 2023

Those in the top 60 two weeks before the US Open will be eligible to play at Los Angeles Country Club. The top 50 in the world in three weeks will be eligible for the Open Championship in July at Royal Liverpool. The final field for the PGA Championship will be released May 10 and Fowler will become eligible via his ranking in PGA Championship points over the past year, which is based mostly on official money earned in a specific time frame determined by the PGA of America.

Here are a few World Ranking numbers about the five-time PGA Tour winner.

The highest he’s ever been ranked was fourth in early 2016. In January 2021, Fowler was ranked 41st, but moved to 56th the next week and hasn’t been back inside the top 50 until now. His last victory came in 2019 at the WM Phoenix Open.

Fowler’s ascent has been slow but steady this year, but it actually started last fall with a second-place tie at the Zozo Championship where he and Andrew Putnam finished one shot behind Keegan Bradley. That result moved him up to 106th in the world.

Fowler has made the cut in all 10 appearances on the PGA Tour in 2013, in addition to recording eight top-20 finishes. He tied for 11th place at the Farmers Insurance Open, tied for 10th at the WM Phoenix Open and tied for 10th at the Valero Texas Open. A week prior to the Texas Open, Fowler barely missed out on qualifying for the Round of 16 at the WGC-Dell Match Play, where winning one more match there would’ve moved him from 59th to somewhere much closer to 50th, which would’ve earned him an invitation into the Masters at the time.

A tie for 15th place at the RBC Heritage, nudged Fowler closer to 50th and he entered the Wells Fargo Championship at No. 53.

The post Look who is back inside the top 50 in the world for the first time in more than 2 years appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

“The Energy Bus” is a best-selling self-help book by Jon Gordon which purports to teach you “10 rules to fuel your life, work, and team with positive energy”. It also happens to be the most important of the books Wyndham Clark has been reading this year in an attempt to rescue what has been, by his own admission, a disastrous on-course mindset.

“It sounds kind of lame,” Clark said, repeating the title for curious reporters, “but actually it’s a really good book.”

We can say this for certain: There was nothing lame about Clark’s Saturday at the Wells Fargo Championship, where he shot a bogey-free 63 — and nearly went 18-for-18 in greens in regulation — to vault from the second-to-last group into a commanding lead at 16-under. His was the best round of the day, and the second-best belonged to Xander Schauffele, his playing partner, who nearly went toe-to-toe with Clark in shooting a 64, leaving him two shots off the lead. The red-hot pairing, shooting a theoretical best-ball 60, leapfrogged Tyrrell Hatton and Nate Lashley in the last group to put those two and the rest of the field in the rear-view mirror, with Hatton and Adam Scott closest at 11-under. On Kentucky Derby day, Clark and Schauffele may have turned the Wells Fargo into a two-horse race.

When trying to pinpoint what Clark did well on Saturday, you’re forced into a glib answer: everything. He poured in birdie putts of 22, 9, and 11 feet to finish fourth in strokes gained/putting for his round, stayed all over the pin with his irons to finish third in strokes gained/approach, and was also third in strokes gained/off the tee. When he did make an error with his driver, it was to hit the ball almost too well:

Going the distance ?@Wyndham_Clark drove it PAST the green on the drivable par-4 8th @WellsFargoGolf. pic.twitter.com/a5D5WVe6wo

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) May 6, 2023

For Clark, his torrid play of late can be attributed to a sorely needed attitude adjustment.

“I’d say I wasn’t as good of a player as I am now,” Clark said of his past chances to win on tour. “I also think mentally, I was a lot more impatient and fragile out there. I’m excited to see how I handle the pressure tomorrow. It’s going to be a fun challenge. Obviously it’s going to be tough. I’ve got one of the best players in the world right behind me and a bunch of other good players.”

As Clark explained, the energy bus is about how to frame events in your life in a positive way while flooding yourself and those around you with positive energy, which is essentially the opposite of his previous approach. Even when he was playing well, he’d let frustration overcome him, to the point that those around him, including his caddie John Ellis insisted that he make a serious effort to change.

“This time I kind of went all in,” he explained. “I was very frustrated with playing good golf but not getting the results. I said, all right, this is kind of the last straw for me.”

He’s already notched three top 10s in 2023, and on Sunday he’ll have an opportunity to finish out the best tournament of his life.

Standing in his way, for the second straight day, is Schauffele, who shot the day’s second-best round and needed every bit of it to stay within hollering distance of Clark.

“Monkey see, monkey do is definitely a thing that happens out here,” he said with a smile after his round. “It’s just one of those things out here, I feel like I’ve said it before in interviews, you just see someone doing it. Fortunately, it was the guy next to me that I played all day.”

Schauffele went out in 32, but after a bogey on 12 he had started to fade in the presence of Clark’s supernova. At that point, he caught fire himself, hitting an approach to tap-in distance on 14, burying a 12-footer on 16, and pouring in this eagle on 15:

Making moves ?@XSchauffele is solo second and three shots off the lead after an eagle on No. 15 @WellsFargoGolf. pic.twitter.com/naTEFYwqaj

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) May 6, 2023

Only a missed 11-footer for birdie on 18 kept him from creeping to within a shot of Clark, and with that closing stretch, he at least made his opponent pay attention.

“I birdied 13 and I was kind of steady Eddie,” Clark said, “I think that kind of got him to where he’s like, all right, I’m now three, four back, I’ve got to put the pedal down. I think that’s kind of what happened, I think he got maybe a little more aggressive. I thought Xander was going to birdie in.”

Beyond their group, it was a low-key, almost sleepy affair at Quail Hollow, with plenty of scores in the 60s on a very approachable day. Beyond Scott and Hatton, three players lurk at 10-under, six shots behind Clark, including Harris English, Tommy Fleetwood and Sungjae Im. Brendon Todd, in the midst of his latest career surge, turned in the third-best round on Saturday, shooting 65 to play himself into contention at nine under, while a large group that includes Max Homa and Lashley are a further shot behind. Lashley, one of the 36-hole co-leaders, will walk away with the most regret after an even-par 71 that simply wasn’t good enough on a true moving day.

It’s a formidable chase pack, but Clark and Schauffele have distanced themselves sufficiently that even a solid round should keep them far away from their pursuers. And as life-changing as a win would be for Clark, it would also put Schauffele back in the conversation when it comes to the game’s elite golfers; a conversation that has somewhat excluded the World No. 5 in a year dominated by Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler.

“I hope we do the same thing tomorrow,” Clark said, surely speaking for both, “because it was a lot of fun. “

As long as they stay on the energy bus, the next stop is a big trophy and an even bigger pay cheque.

The post Two-horse race on Kentucky Derby Day: Wyndham Clark and Xander Schauffele ride the ‘energy bus,’ put up scorching rounds at Wells Fargo appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Tyrrell Hatton doesn’t know why he plays well at hard golf courses. Yet after a second-round 65 to post eight-under and grab a share of the 36-hole lead at the Wells Fargo Championship, Hatton is once again in contention at Quail Hollow, one of the toughest courses on the PGA Tour.

The fiery Englishman’s lone tour win in the US came in early 2020 at Bay Hill, a stout test made even tougher that week with gusty winds. One player broke par in Saturday’s third round that week. Hatton, a six-time winner on the DP World Tour, finished runner-up at the Players Championship in March, closing with seven-under 65 at TPC Sawgrass, just one week after another top-five finish at Bay Hill. The premise, then, is confirmed: Hatton plays well at tough courses, perhaps more than at more pedestrian tour stops. But why?

“I have no idea,” the co-leader said after capping his second round with a birdie on the ninth, part of a four-under stretch over his final four holes. “I mean, I guess with my mental approach from the outside looking in, you’d suggest that they wouldn’t be great for me, but I always try my best and yeah, this week and a tough golf course is no different.”

That Hatton’s mental approach suggests he wouldn’t play well at tough courses is as understated as it is introspective. Over the last few years, the World No. 18 has doubled as a professional content creator on Golf Twitter with his outbursts and not-so-kind words for some of golf’s most famous courses. To briefly summarise, he has called the home of the Masters, Augusta National, “unfair at times”. He has likened the 10th hole at Riviera Country Club to, well, a four-letter synonym of excrement. He said he “would love for a bomb to drop” on the 18th hole at Yas Links. And he blasted the set-up at last year’s PGA Championship at Southern Hills.

What gives? How does Hatton maintain such a disdain for some of the toughest setups while simultaneously playing some of his best golf on them? The answer might be in his own words. After his round on Friday, the 31-year-old was asked if there’s anything he’ll look to improve on over the next two days or if he’ll try to keep doing what he’s doing.

“To be honest, I won’t really think about it until we start hitting balls 40 minutes before our tee time tomorrow,” Hatton said. “Tomorrow’s a new day. You have new feels; try and get comfortable again and go out there and try our best.”

Whereas a tougher course might tempt some players to overanalyse, Hatton’s approach is refreshingly simple. Don’t think about it. Paired with this present mindset is Hatton’s admission that each day brings new feels, and you can’t force yourself into replicating the same things that had worked a day before. You don’t need to be a mental guru to know that’s a world-class approach.

So don’t be fooled by Hatton’s on-course antics should he lash out at Quail Hollow over the weekend and expect “The Angry Golfer” to stay near the top of the board in the tour’s seventh designated event of the season. He’ll start the third round tied with Nate Lashley and Wyndham Clark, one better than a host of stars at seven under.

Here are three other takeaways from Day 2 at Quail Hollow:

Justin Thomas’ diet dividends and putting tweak

Head to any gym in January, and you’ll be swarmed by the flocks of people clinging to their New Year’s resolutions of clean eating, cardio and weightlifting. Come back in March and you’ve got the place to yourself, as the healthy hopefuls abandoned their resolutions because they weren’t seeing results.

Over the last few months, Justin Thomas might be battling a similar dilemma as he’s adopted a strict gluten-free, dairy-free diet to address the lack of energy he had last year. But with just two top 10s in 2023 and yet to be in serious contention on a Sunday, Thomas hasn’t seen the diet dividends so far, at least in his on-course play. We’re not suggesting Thomas, a world-class athlete, might succumb to the same lack of discipline that plagues the common folk, but sticking with such a strict diet when it’s not clear it’s helping win tournaments is not easy.

Yet Thomas might be starting to see some results this week in Charlotte, where he opened with rounds of 68 and 67 to sit seven under and tied for fourth place. The solid first two days bucks a trend of average starts for Thomas since his win at the 2022 PGA Championship. Since then, Thomas had been inside the top five after two rounds just once. It’s now twice with his nice start at Quail Hollow.

Part of the reason for his uncharacteristic year so far is his struggles on the greens. Entering the week, he sits 152nd on tour in strokes gained/putting. To address the weakness, Thomas has started to use AimPoint Express, the increasingly popular method of reading greens. Last week, Thomas spent time working with his putting coach, John Graham, and learning the method from its inventor, Mark Sweeney.

“Yeah, I learned it last week, or I guess had a lesson with it,” Thomas said. “I felt like it was something that maybe it’s the missing piece, maybe it’s not. Like I said, I feel like I’ve been putting significantly better than the putting results have shown and a lot of it, at least I’ve noticed these last two days is it just takes a lot of the guessing out and simplifies it.”

Thomas has been solid on the greens so far this week, he’s 21st in strokes gained/putting, which for an elite ball-striker like Thomas, is more than enough to keep him in contention.

“It’s really just, it’s actually sped everything up for me. It’s sped my process up and simplified it. I’ve really liked it the last two days,” Thomas said of the new method. “At the end of the day whether it’s AimPoint, whether it’s reading the greens, it’s a guess. It’s just your best guess and I need to have more faith that my guess is really good.”

Rory, Jordan, Day all struggle

Rory McIlroy didn’t have his best stuff Friday and made the cut right on the number. Mike Ehrmann

Though many top players sit near the lead heading into the weekend, several notable names struggled on Friday in North Carolina. A day after his 34th birthday when he looked sharp in opening with 68, Rory McIlroy struggled with all parts of his game as he limped to the clubhouse for a 73, making the cut on the number at one-under. He showed signs of rust, particularly off the tee and with the wedges in just his second round since missing the cut at the Masters nearly a month ago.

The Quail Hollow savant who has won three times around the Charlotte track started Friday with a birdie at the third before three straight bogeys on Nos. 5, 6 and 7. McIlroy dropped shots on two of the three par 5s, both due in large part to wayward drives — well right into the penalty area on seven and left into the trees on the 10th. Coming up the last hole needing a par to avoid a second straight missed cut, McIlroy pulled his tee shot toward the edge of the creek, leaving an awkward approach. After finding the green, some 70-plus feet away, McIlroy made a five-foot tester for par to make the weekend on the number.

Playing alongside McIlroy, Jason Day was not so fortunate with his finish. Working on a bogey-free round of three-under to sit one inside the cutline, Day overdrew his tee shot on the difficult par-3 17th. Despite landing on the green, the slope and draw spin fed the ball into the water, leading to a double-bogey to knock the Australian back to even par, one outside the cut line. After failing to make birdie up the last, Day missed his first cut since November at the RSM Classic. The cut snaps a streak of solid play for the resurgent Day, who came to Charlotte with four top 10s in his last six starts.

Jordan Spieth was out early on Friday and struggled with his ball striking all day en route to a six-over 77 and a missed cut. Coming off a top five at the Masters and a playoff loss at Harbour Town a couple weeks ago, Spieth looked lost with the longer clubs, losing over three shots to the field with his approach play and finishing near the bottom of the field in strokes gained/off-the-tee in the second round. The disappointing round came after Spieth closed his first round with a triple-bogey at the par-4 18th on Thursday. The 13-time tour winner came to his 18th hole of the week in nice position at two-under but finished with a 36-hole total of seven-over.

Why Xander Schauffele is trying to ‘do less’

Logic figures that if you want to be the best golfer in the world, you want to be the best at each individual part of the game. But if you hadn’t heard, golf is an illogical game and sometimes trying to max out each part of the game can have negative effects.

Sitting at seven-under, just one shot back of the lead entering the weekend, Xander Schauffele is well positioned to win his eighth career tour title and first since going back-to-back at the Travelers and Genesis Scottish Open last summer. The strong start continues a stretch of great play for the 29-year-old, who is coming off consecutive top-five finishes and four-straight top 10s. Yet Schauffele says the great play is the result of what he’s not doing.

“For a little bit I was trying to sort of learn how to be optimal in every category of your game, it’s a little bit different,” Schauffele said. “Like the best bunker players, the best chippers, the best wedge players, mid-iron players, long-iron players, drivers, it’s just a slightly different delivery to all those things.

“Just as of late, I’ve been trying to just not tinker too much with everything. As weird as that sounds, just trying to do less and getting more out of it. I like to fiddle a little bit too much, which I get criticism for from my own team, and just a little bit less of that has been helpful.”

Given that each part of the game requires a subtly different technique, rather than tinker with each part of his game to optimise it, Schauffele is finding more success sticking to what he’s got. Turns out, what he’s got is a game that’s top 10 in strokes gained/tee-to-green and top 25 in strokes gained/putting.

When asked what he needs to focus on this weekend to stay in contention, Schauffele said, “Yeah, just upstairs. You know the deal.”

The post Hatton has ‘no idea’ why he plays well on hard courses, JT turns to AimPoint, McIlroy makes cut on the number appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Dan Rapaport
These are the days Max Homa used to dread. The combination of a saturated golf course, juicy rough, swirling winds and layer-up temperatures expose any player not in full command of his swing and his emotions. And while it might feel like another lifetime, it wasn’t so long ago that Homa had little control of either.

His rebirth as a golfer started well before Sunday’s final round of the Wells Fargo Championship—he’d already won three times—but never has it been more evident than during every single second of his two-under 68 on Mother’s Day, good for a two-shot victory and his second title of the season.

The player he is today, one challenging for a spot on U.S. national teams, is hardly recognizable from the man who missed 15 of 17 cuts in 2016-17 and lost his card. He is, however, wholly unchanged as a person, never taking himself too seriously. Exhibit 1A: In his interview with CBS’ Amanda Renner on the 18th green, he was asked the significance on his victory, given the recent announcement that his wife, Lacey, will give birth to the couple’s first child in November.

He responded with a Golf Twitter joke: “Perspective was running rampant today.”

So was chaos. Homa began the day two shots behind Keegan Bradley, and the two see-sawed all afternoon, matching scores on just five holes throughout the round. Homa made his intentions clear with a three-perfect-shots birdie at the difficult opening hole and held the solo advantage after Bradley double bogeyed the par-5 second and bogeyed the fourth.

“I was in Alabama last week with my coach, Mark Blackburn,” Homa said. “We put in a lot of good work. Game’s been good and we were just talking most about mental, just being confident. He said, ‘When are you going to start to believe in yourself? I said, ‘Well, I guess maybe today.’ So I’ve just been trying to walk around and fake it a little bit. Honestly, it’s funny how that ‘fake it till you make it’ thing, I started to believe it and I showed up on that first tee very confident today.”

But Bradley battled gamely, birdieing three of his next four to keep pace with his playing partner. A two-shot swing on 15—those were a theme all day—gave Homa a three-shot lead with three to play.

“That might be one of the best birdies I’ve ever made in my life,” Homa said. “Hit a great drive. … I was saying before, when you’re trailing, it’s a little easier, you feel free. When you’re ahead, you start to get a little defensive just with your lines. I felt like I kept squeezing my lines too far right or left instead of just hitting a shot. I had a club that I love, a little two-yard draw 9-iron and I’m, like, ‘let’s just take this one on and hit the shot and be me,’ and I did and I poured in the putt.”

But another two-shot swing at 16 closed the deficit to one, which was Homa’s advantage as he stepped to the 18th tee and hit what might’ve been his best drive of the week. Bradley’s tee ball found a bunker, and he topped his second to remove any mystery from who’d be holding the trophy.

Keegan Bradley reacts during the final round of the Wells Fargo Championship. Tim Nwachukwu

A bogey at the last saw Bradley drop into a three-way tie for second with Cameron Young, in pole position to win rookie of the year, and Matt Fitzpatrick, who is agonizingly close to a first PGA Tour win to go with his seven in Europe.

A small consolation for Bradley, who has not won in nearly four years: His T-2 finish will bring him from No. 64 in the World Ranking to No. 44, well within the top 60 that will get an exemption into the U.S. Open on May 23. Bradley, who did not qualify for the Masters but is in the PGA Championship as a past winner, wants desperately to get a tee time at The Country Club outside Boston, a short drive from his native Vermont.

“I didn’t play my best golf today,” Bradley said. “It was choppy and then I had a couple good stretches, but I had a chance there at the end, so I’m proud of that aspect of it. But I’m pretty bummed, I felt pretty good about this one.

Homa joins Rory McIlroy as the only players to win the Wells Fargo Championship twice; Homa’s first PGA Tour victory came at this event three years ago, albeit at its normal spot, Quail Hollow, which ceded duties to TPC Potomac this year as it prepares to host the Presidents Cup in September. Which Homa fully intends to be a part of.

“I care about nothing more than making that Presidents Cup team,” he said. “So I’m really hoping Captain Davis Love III was watching today or at least somebody messaged him about it, but that’s all I’ve really cared about. I’m not a big goal setter, but Tour Championship and Presidents Cup, that’s about all my focus has been ever since I missed that Ryder Cup last year and the Tour Championship.”

As is often the case, a spring week in the D.C. metro area was dominated by rain. A steady downpour on Friday and Saturday—the grounds crew deserve a Nobel for avoiding even a single rain delay—added heft to an already-beefy golf course, and Homa’s gritty round on Sunday had major championship undertones. He poured in a nine-footer for par at 11, a seven-footer for par at 12 and a 13-footer for a final birdie at 15, and each never looked destined for anywhere but the dead-centre of the hole. Recent work on his stroke with putting guru Phil Kenyon paid off massively down the stretch, and Homa picked up over 2.5 shots on the field putting on Sunday alone and over 7.5 shots (fifth in the field) for the week.

McIlroy, who needed to make a nervy seven-footer for par on Friday just to make the cut, flirted with contention in his first start since that electrifying final-round 64 and solo-second finish at the Masters. His charge was harpooned by a missed birdie effort at 15 and a sloppy bogey at the last saw him shoot a closing 68 and take solo fifth. He said after the round that he has no complaints with the state of his game. Then, as is his habit, he spoke candidly about one of his peers.

“He’s way too good a player to lose his card,” McIlroy said of the champ. “He’s a really good player. Yeah, honestly, when you look at him play, you think he should have done better than he has. I think that’s sort of how he looks, how he swings it, his whole demeanour. Sometimes it just takes guys a little bit longer to sort of figure their games out and I guess live up to their potential, but he definitely seems to have come into his own over the last couple years.”

It hasn’t happened by accident. Homa saw the deepest of depths in this game, had weeks when he turned up to the golf course knowing he didn’t have a chance. That bled into his off-course life, and he has since made a concerted effort to put up a thick wall between Max the Golfer and Max the Player. Both have flourished after their separation, but Homa wears the scars of those thin times with pride.

“It would be cool if I was Rory McIlroy and didn’t do that, but yeah, for me it’s something I carry with me that I think is such a—it’s powerful. I feel like other guys don’t have that and that’s good for them, I’m glad they don’t. But I saw $18,000 in a year out here. I saw feeling very, very small, having literally no hope as to getting a top-10 let alone making a cut that season. I carry that because I’ve seen it and I don’t—you come out in the lead and I’m three strokes up and I’m one stroke up, I mean, it just doesn’t phase me as much as I feel like it could because I know what bad is, and my bad today was going to be making a boatload of money and moving along to the PGA Championship in two weeks with a good chance to win if I keep playing like this.”

On Sunday, Homa swaggered around TPC Potomac like a man who knows his best will hold up against anyone, anywhere. That belief is a pre-requisite if you hope to compete at the level that Homa has reached in this game. Every player’s path toward that headspace, however, is different. Some begin dominating as juniors and never stop. Others, wounded by past confidence crises, build that belief slowly, aided by constant reminders from those close to them that they already are who they dream of being.

“As I started to establish myself on this tour when I won this event in 2019, I definitely knew I was capable of being a regular PGA Tour player, but all of a sudden last year I get in the top-50 in the world and you start looking around and it’s a new crop of people and you start thinking to myself, Am I as good as these guys? And then I want to be top-10 in the world, play Presidents Cup, play Ryder Cups. Am I good enough to do that? So I’ve always struggled with it, but I have great people around me who bash me over the head telling me that I am that guy.”

He’s only now starting to believe them.

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The post Max Homa’s 180-degree transformation on full display in gritty Wells Fargo win appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

“To be honest — it’s funny,” the 23-year-old said after a five-under 65 at TPC Potomac on Thursday that had him tied for the lead. “But I’m not here to win a golf tournament, I’m here to have a good time.”

Call it the anti-Tiger mindset. Just as no one swing fits all, no one mindset caters to the myriad personalities that comprise the 200-plus players on the PGA Tour. Woods and Wolff, the first two letters of their last names aside, are polar opposites. Woods is quiet between the ropes, singularly focused on eviscerating his competition. Wolff is a chatterbox, constantly reminding himself of how good his life is no matter what he shoots.

You likely know this by now: Wolff took an extended break from the game after the 2021 Masters to address issues of mental health. His play was defining his happiness. He simply wasn’t enjoying the life he’d always dreamed of living. Two years earlier, he’d shot to stardom with a unique swing, an infectious smile and a win in his third start as a professional just three months after his 20th birthday. He, Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa comprised the vaunted Class of 2019, adding three young superstars to the PGA Tour landscape. And while those players’ climb has remained linear, Wolff’s has hit a couple snags.

“I think coming out with Viktor and Collin, they’re really good friends of mine and I think all the success they’ve had is great and I’m very happy for them, but I think just like getting put in that group and everyone talking about everything that I could do with the golf ball or all my skills — I just felt like there was so much pressure and so much expectation around me that it was just really hard to live up to,” Wolff said.

So Wolff stepped away for a few months before returning at the US Open with an unfettered attitude and a new outlook on life. But mental health is a journey, not a destination, and good play in the fall of 2021 masked continued internal struggles. Wolff came to realise that his sulking and brooding didn’t just impact his own play, it rubbed off on his playing partners. And that, to him, was unacceptable.

“Just looking back on it, I think it’s happened a couple times and I wish I could go back and reverse it and I feel terrible,” he said. “Like I said, I never want to affect anyone else, and I was obviously affecting myself a lot. But just the fact that I knew that kind of with my shoulders down or anything that I was struggling with, it was — it’s hard to play good when you’re playing with someone who’s like that. Like I said, I wish I could go back and redo what I did, but the only thing I can do now is from here on forward is just try to do my best to not have that attitude. If I let it affect myself, that’s one thing, but if I let it affect someone else, then that’s unacceptable.”

That sobering realisation prompted some harsh self-evaluation. Change was necessary if he was to shake his reputation and become the man he wants to be.

“It’s been a lot of different stuff,” Wolff said. “I don’t really like to read, so audiobooks a little bit more than reading. Just talking with the people that have been closest to me, the ones that have supported me the most. Kind of knowing and understanding that when people tell me, you know, about how good I am or something like that — not how good I am, but just like just the support that I have, I kind of turn the support into maybe more pressure, or I don’t need to turn it into more pressure because they just want to see me happy at the end of the day … I’m on the PGA Tour, I’m 23 years old. And I know I’ve struggled, but I know everyone in the world would probably trade places with me, so I need to start learning to enjoy myself and realise how good I have it.”

The California native/Florida resident has removed all expectations from his process — which is good, because the results he’s had this year wouldn’t satisfy even the most generous ones.

His six starts on the PGA Tour in 2022 have produced three missed cuts, a 64th, a T-61 and a T-60. Just last week, he played a round at his home course and “lost every ball in his bag”.

His trip around the back nine on Thursday at TPC Potomac, which he made in four-under 31, was the first time he’d ever played those nine holes. Again, this isn’t exactly textbook preparation, but everything about Wolff buffs convention. And while he says he’s not here to win, should he continue accomplishing his other goal — simply having a good time — a different victory could also happen by accident.

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The post PGA Tour: Matthew Wolff says he’s not here to win Wells Fargo Championship, but it just might happen by accident appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Jay Coffin
It’s already been quite a week for Gregory Odom Jr, and the real action is still to come.

The senior from Howard University has a team and individual victory under his belt, and in less than 24 hours after his last putt dropped at the PGA Works Collegiate Championship, he’ll be playing alongside the best players in the world on a sponsor’s exemption at the PGA Tour’s Wells Fargo Championship.

Odom shot a four-under 68 on Wednesday to win the Division I portion of the PGA Works event by four shots over teammate Everett Whiten Jr. Odom, also the winner here last year, shot 69-71-68 over the three days at both Union League Liberty Hill and the Union League Golf Club in Philadelphia.

The PGA Works Collegiate Championship is in its 35th year and features teams and individuals representing Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-serving institutions and other minority-serving institutions from across the United States.

In the individual race, Odom was cruising during the final round making four birdies in the first nine holes but a double-bogey on the par-4 11th hole set him back. He was able to rebound with birdies on Nos. 13 and 14 and ultimately cruised to the victory.

Whiten, also a senior, had even more of a topsy-turvy final round and made only four pars. He started with four consecutive birdies, made nine total on the day, but five bogeys prevented him from putting more pressure on Odom late.

Odom celebrated the win with his team and was immediately off to Maryland where he is grouped with Bo Hoag and Michael Gligic for Round 1 of the Wells Fargo Championship at TPC Potomac.

Howard, in only in its second year of existence as a golf programme, was three shots out of the team lead after the first 36 holes. But Arkansas-Pine Bluff stumbled mightily, Howard shot one-under as a team and took home the sweep of team and individual honours. Chicago State was second, only one shot behind Howard.

“I was just trying to keep hitting golf shots,” Odom said. “Coming into today three shots back, I knew my guys would stay strong. Today we overcame obstacles. This is huge for the Howard golf team.”

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The post Gregory Odom repeats as PGA Works champ, quickly shifts focus to playing in Wells Fargo appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The guy’s so long he voluntarily took driver out of the bag. The holes simply wouldn’t allow for it. It’s part of the deal when your ‘fairway finder’ flies 330 yards.

Brandon Matthews, who’s in the field at this week’s Wells Fargo Championship on a sponsor’s invite, doesn’t yet play full-time on the PGA Tour. But he might just be the longest player in professional golf.

The name might ring a bell, too, for something other than being a bomber. The 27-year-old went viral in 2019 for the way he handled an unfortunate situation — he was in a playoff in a PGA Tour Latinoamerica event when a man with Down’s syndrome made a distracting noise in his backswing. Matthews missed the putt, lost the tournament and gained thousands of fans for the grace he showed, signing a glove for the fan and refusing to blame anyone but himself for the loss.

The gesture caught the eye of the Arnold Palmer family, who extended him an invite to play in the Arnold Palmer Invitational. He missed the cut in his lone previous PGA Tour start and returned to the anonymity of mini-tour life, grinding away until winning the PGA Tour Latinoamerica’s Order of Merit and securing full status for the 2022 Korn Ferry Tour season. He finished T-2 in his third KFT event in February then won his fourth to all but lock up a PGA Tour card for next season.

That’s the pertinent background info. Now, time for the fun part: his obscene length. Golf Digest editorial director Max Adler actually played alongside Matthews in the 2013 US Amateur, and while Alder isn’t setting any speed records, he’d never been outdriven by 100-plus yards like he was that week. Repeatedly. And that was when Matthews was a teenager, before added some grown-adult strength. (And a fiancée, who’s on-site this week).

Matthews’ dad taught him the game and did so in a distinctly modern manner. Whereas many teachers previously prioritised accuracy, the growing consensus among modern instructors is to teach speed first. It’s a byproduct of the strokes-gained era, which has underscored how vital distance is in the professional game. By and large, the best players in the world crush the ball. So: Hit it far, then learn how to hit it straight. Matthews’ dad was ahead of his time.

“From a very young age I was just trying to hit it as hard as I can, so I developed power before I developed technique,” Matthews says. “So I think that was one of the main reasons why I hit it so far, because I just learned it at an early age, hit it as hard as you can.”

As he attempts to flash the guns at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farms, Matthews comes into the week off three straight missed cuts on the Korn Ferry Tour. He also ranks ‘only’ 34th on that circuit in driving distance at 307 yards. That stat can be misleading even on the PGA Tour — only certain holes are measured, and 305 yards on firm turf in Texas is not the same as 305 yards on spongy kikuyu in Southern California. It’s the same story on the Korn Ferry Tour; driving distance simply isn’t a reliable stat for telling you who the longest players are. That’s especially true for Matthews, who has been like Aquaman without his trident in recent weeks.

“Two out of the last three weeks I took driver out of the bag,” Matthews said. “And it’s just so painful to do because for me, I’ve been hitting my driver so well for the past few years. We just looked at golf courses, my caddie and I, Colton [Heisey], the last few weeks and it just doesn’t fit anywhere. There’s not a hole that we can hit it. You know, when I do have driver in the bag, obviously there’s a big advantage there, especially if I’m hitting it well and consistent and I feel good with it. So I do feel good with it this week and it is nice to have that thing back in the bag.”

Per his longtime coach, Dale Gray, Matthews’ clubhead speed with driver is around 135 miles per hour. His 5-iron flies 231 and can carry the d-stick up to 340 when he goes at one.

“Super long arms, wide arc, it’s unlike I’ve seen,” Gray says, his face glowing like a man who knows how lucky he is to be working with that kind of speed.

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The post The longest player in pro golf is in the Wells Fargo field, but it’s not who you think appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
CHARLOTTE — In the four weeks since his unceremonious Friday afternoon departure from Augusta National, Rory McIlroy pounded ball after ball on the driving range. Sometimes at Jack Nicklaus’ Bears Club, sometimes at Michael Jordan’s Grove XXIII, but always on flat ground with a perfect lie. When you’re trying to groove swing tweaks, that’s what you do.

So, of course, the shot that sealed a slump-busting win was the type you never, ever, ever practice.

McIlroy had one hand on the trophy when he made his worst swing of the day, a pull-hooked 3-wood off the 18th tee at Quail Hollow. His TaylorMade “RORS 22” ball somehow came to rest just above the stream that guards the left side of the hole, inside the hazard line but playable. At least in theory. After examining his options for a solid two minutes—chip it back into the fairway? Play left, onto the hillside?—he settled, with some coaxing from caddie Harry Diamond, on the un-sexy option: taking the drop he was entitled to.

He could stomach the one-shot penalty because he had a two-shot lead over Abraham Ancer, but now he needed to get that damn ball in the hole in three shots or less to avoid a playoff. From 199 yards, navigating a downhill-sidehill lie, water guarding a back-left pin and 72nd-hole pressure coursing through his veins.

This wasn’t a shot he learned from longtime coach Michael Bannon, or new coach Pete Cowen, or one that could be dissected by any launch monitor. This was Rory tapping into his generational talent and counting on his preternatural ability to find the center of the clubface.

He did exactly that, launching a mid-iron that sat politely on the right half of the green. From there, two putts for a clinching bogey and a one-over 72, his third victory at Quail Hollow, his first win in 18-plus months and his 19th on the PGA Tour.

And, on Mother’s Day, his first “W” as Dad—with his smiling wife and a crying baby on-hand to witness it.

“For it to be Erica’s first Mother’s Day and for her to be here with Poppy, really, really cool,” he said. “It was hard for me not to think of that coming down the last few holes and how cool that would be to see them at the back of the 18th green, but I had more pressing issues at the time, so it was pretty easy to get it out of my head.

Maddie Meyer
Rory McIlroy celebrates with his wife Erica and daughter Poppy after winning during the final round of the 2021 Wells Fargo Championship.

”Really cool for them to be here and be able to celebrate today.”

Team McIlroy hadn’t been doing much celebrating recently. Slump is a relative term—but when you’ve accomplished as much McIlroy has, you don’t get the benefit of struggling in anonymity. Rory came into this week with three top-10s in his nine starts this calendar year—but he’d missed his last three cuts, including at the Players and the Masters, and so all of a sudden we labelled him with the S-word.

To be fair, he didn’t exactly exude confidence coming into this week. McIlroy said Saturday that his goal coming was simply to be in Charlotte on Saturday—which looked dicey. Twice. The first signs of doubt came on Wednesday when his neck suddenly locked up during a practice session. If he had a morning tee time on Thursday, he probably wouldn’t have been able to go. But he didn’t have a morning time, and treatment and that magical athletic tape proved the elixir.

McIlroy’s first-round one-over 72 seemed to follow the same script we saw at Sawgrass and Augusta: loose misses with the driver and uninspired iron play. He ranked 120th in strokes gained/tee-to-green in that opening round, looking much more like a work-in-progress than a winner-in-waiting.

But the great ones can flip the switch with little warning, and McIlroy revived himself with a 66 on Friday despite a meh putting round. He vowed to commit to a cut with the driver—banishing the sweeping draw that made an all-time great to the bench—and he led the field in strokes gained/approach. Should he stumble upon a hot putter … well, stranger things have happened.

Narrator: he stumbled upon a hot putter.

Don’t you love when things work out? McIlroy holed 107 feet of putts for a Friday 68 that got him into the final group. On Sunday, he made a 24-footer for birdie on 7 to take the lead, then massive par-savers on 11 and 13 to keep it. Playing partner Keith Mitchell hung tough, admirably so, before a clunky short-game display doomed his chances.

McIlroy got up and down for a final birdie at the par-5 15th then trusted the fade on the 16th tee, unleashing a 357-yard bomb that set up a comfortable par. He summoned the shot of the day on the ultra-dangerous par-3 17th, turning a baby-draw 7-iron into a left-to-right wind. That one caught Mitchell’s eye.

“He flushed it right where he was looking,” said Mitchell, who finished in a tie for third at eight under. “And that was pretty important. I thought that was the one that might seal the deal, and it looks like it was the one that sealed the deal.”

By the time the final twosome trudged up the hill to the 18th tee, it would be McIlroy, or it would be Ancer, who had polished off a 66 a half-hour earlier. Then came the left miss, and you know what happened just left of that stream.

Still, McIlroy needed to two-putt from 43 feet, far from a sure-thing given the atmosphere surrounding the 18th green—and the amount of time it had been since win No. 18.

“I think when you haven’t been in contention for a while, it never feels normal,” McIlroy said. “I certainly felt it there on the back nine. There were some tee shots and some shots I just had to stand up and really commit to what I was doing. That’s sort of been my mantra, is try to just hit good golf shots until I run out of holes, and that’s basically what I tried to do the entire day. Just take good shot after good shot until you get to the end. But it felt —I’m certainly glad that the crowds were back and I’m glad that I was able to get the job done in an atmosphere like that today.”

And so Rory McIlroy is back, and the next time we see him, in less than two weeks, will be the PGA Championship at Kiawah—where, nine years ago, he won the PGA Championship by eight.

“It’s certainly great timing,” he said. “This is obviously a huge confidence boost going in there knowing that my game is closer than it has been. I’ll be able to poke holes in everything that I did today. It’s certainly far from perfect, but this one is validation that I’m on the right track.”

Did you say something about a slump?

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The post He’s back! Rory McIlroy busts out of ‘slump’ with his third Wells Fargo victory appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
It’s no secret that Rory McIlroy can be honest to a fault, something we saw from him a number of times since the PGA Tour’s restart. He wasn’t making excuses, he was just truthfully offering reasons as to why he wasn’t playing to his standards. The lack of fans and energy, chasing speed/Bryson DeChambeau, just straight up playing bad, etc. etc. There seemed to always be something.

But what McIlroy reminded us this week at Quail Hollow is that, no matter what—swing changes, lack of energy, whatever—his best, elite self is always lurking underneath the surface. The strut, that McIlroy bouncy strut is always a couple birdies away. Those couple of birdies came on his front nine Friday, at the 14th and 15th holes, and the Northern Irishman never looked back, bouncing his way to a one-stroke victory over Abraham Ancer, his third at the Wells Fargo Championship and his first since the 2019 WGC-HSBC Champions.

“It’s never easy, it’s never easy to win out here,” said McIlroy, who now has 19 PGA Tour victories. “It’s felt like a long time since Shanghai, the world is in a completely different place, I’m in a different place. The pandemic, me becoming a dad. Thinking of Erica (McIlroy’s wife), thinking of my mom back home. This is one of my favorite places in the world, so to win here was awesome.”

RELATED: He’s back! Rory McIlroy busts out of ‘slump’ with his third Wells Fargo victory

The fans, of course, were key, as McIlroy was quick to point out in his post-round interview.

“When we first came back, I thought I’d enjoy the peace and quiet out here. But I quickly realized to bring out the best in myself I needed this, I feed off the energy so much, maybe here more so than anywhere else.”

McIlroy’s timing couldn’t be more impeccable, with Kiawah Island, site of his 2012 PGA Championship win, hosting the 2021 PGA in two weeks time. The U.S. Open at Torrey pines lurks too, as does the Ryder Cup, where McIlroy thrives off the energy from both the home fans and the away fans. Safe to say, McIlroy is very much back, and he’s right on time.

Here are three other takeaways from Sunday’s final round at Quail Hollow.

Maddie Meyer

That was a hell of an effort from Abraham Ancer
On the “Be Right” podcast earlier this week (shameless plug), Abraham Ancer preached patience, knowing his time is going to eventually come as long as he keeps knocking on the door. It’s going to be tough to keep that mindset after Sunday, when Ancer did just about everything required to win a PGA Tour event on a Sunday. He shot a bogey-free 66, which included a birdie-birdie-birdie stretch at 15, 16 and 17 that tied him for the lead. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t enough, though it did earn him solo second, which marks the fourth time he’s finished runner-up since 2019. There are some serious Tony Finau vibes going on with Ancer, which is a compliment even if it doesn’t sound like it. Ancer will surely stay patient, and it feels like the win is coming, but as Finau has proven, it ain’t easy to close the deal no matter how many cracks you get.

Jared C. Tilton

Bubba Watson spent some serious coin on 17 and 18
Bubba Watson has plenty of money and plenty of PGA Tour wins, but that doesn’t make it any less painful when you throw away a huge chunk of change late on a Sunday. That’s exactly what happened when Watson, who had reached six-under to pull within a few of the lead, completely imploded on the final two holes at Quail Hollow. We’re talking triple-double to finish, folks, which is great in hoops but disastrous in golf.

Brutal. At the par-3 17th Watson only got wet once, but had to drop it 130 yards away and hit it over the water again. He put it to 61 feet and three-putted from there for a six. At 18, which has given everybody fits all week, he got wet off the tee again, eventually making another six. In two holes, he went from the top five to T-18, a difference of around $200,000. Sheeeeesh. Again, we think Bubba will be fine, but that still has to sting.

Apologise to Brad Faxon, cowards
Yeah, you know who you are. For those who have no idea what we’re referring to, Brad Faxon, one of the great putters ever, revealed his “top 10 putters” ever list on Twitter earlier this week. The list is completely his opinion, but when you post it on social media you better be prepared to hear a million more opinions, too. One of the glaring omissions on Faxon’s list was Jordan Spieth, and one of the most puzzling inclusions for many was Rory McIlroy, who Faxon has worked with before, so he was clearly biased.

Then again, McIlroy is a great putter, at least he once was in his majors-winning hey day. He was elite this week with the flat stick, too, gaining nearly seven strokes on the greens, his best-putting performance since … wait for it … the 2018 Arnold Palmer Invitational, which he won and made everything in sight. When he’s rolling it, he really might be an all-time great with the putter. For that, we all owe Faxon an apology.

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The post Rory runs away, Ancer keeps getting closer and Bubba spends some serious coin appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.