Just a few hours after being suspended by the PGA Tour, Charl Schwartzel took the lead in the inaugural LIV Golf.
Just a few hours after being suspended by the PGA Tour, Charl Schwartzel shot a 5-under 65 and holds the overnight lead in the inaugural LIV Golf Invitational Series tournament.
Centurion Golf Club near London is hosting the first-ever LIV event. The course is playing as a par 70 for the three-day, 54-hole, no-cut tournament. Schwartzel started his day on the third hole as the LIV circuit uses a shotgun start for its tournaments.
The 2011 Masters champion was among 17 golfers suspended by the PGA Tour on Thursday morning, not long after the first tee shots were struck. Of those 17, 10, including Schwartzel, had already resigned their PGA Tour membership.
In solo second is another South African, Hennie Du Plessis, who is at 4 under. He has five top-five finishes on the DP World Tour this season but has yet to win there.
Scott Vincent and Phachara Khongwatmai are tied for third at 3 under. Branden Grace and Justin Harding are tied for fifth at 2 under. Two of the LIV Golf circuit’s headliners, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson, are among four golfers tied for seventh at 1 under, along with Sam Horsfeld and Laurie Canter.
The winner this week in London will receive $4 million. Everyone in the 48-man field will earn a payday by the end of the final round Saturday.
The league is spearheaded by Greg Norman and backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds.
Only five players have won a major championship for their lone PGA Tour win.
Will Zalatoris is one of the many young talents on the PGA Tour. He’s one of the best iron players in the game, has some power off the tee, and understands when to be aggressive and when to lay off.
But, he’s still searching for his first PGA Tour win.
He’s played well in major championships so far in his brief career, including a runner-up finish to Hideki Matsuyama at the 2020 Masters and after a first-round 66, he’s in the hunt at the 2022 PGA Championship.
So, that got us thinking, who are the golfers whose only win came in a major championship?
The answer to the question? Five. Just five players have won a major championship as their lone PGA Tour victory.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Greg Sissel of Denver is here in Augusta this week as he takes in his third Masters tournament.
And the 50-year-old was in the right spot at the right time Saturday to make a memory that will last a lifetime.
Sissel was in the gallery to the right of the 10th green as the final group, featuring tournament leader Scottie Scheffler and Charl Schwartzel, came through in the late afternoon.
He watched as Schwartzel bombed a drive 344 yards, leaving a 136-yard approach that he laced perfectly above the hole,with the ball hitting about 10 feet above the hole before rolling back into the bottom of the cup for an eagle.
Schwartzel moved to 6 under for the tournament on the shot but made four bogeys the rest of the way. He finished at 2-under 214 after a 73 and is tied for fourth with Shane Lowry after 54 holes.
Schwartzel then pulled the ball from the hole and tossed it into the gallery as the patrons roared.
“We almost left to go to Amen Corner, but we decided to stay and I’m glad we did,” Sissel said. “When he threw it up I said, ‘It’s coming our way,’ and if my friend had better hands he would have got it, but he fouled it off to me. That was the most exciting shot we’ve seen here.”
The eagle was just the 10th on the 10th hole in Masters Tournament history but also the second this week as Gary Woodland did it during Friday’s second round.
Eagles on the 10th hole during the Masters
Dick Metz, 1940
Doug Ford, 1960
Rick Fehr, 1987
Guy Yamamoto, 1995
Masashi ‘Jumbo’ Ozaki, 1999
Casey Wittenberg, 2004
Brandt Jobe, 2006
Robert Allenby, 2008
Gary Woodland, 2022
Charl Schwartzel, 2022
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With two days in the books and two days still ahead of us, here’s a look at some of the top storylines.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — If Thursday at the Masters was like Christmas morning, with golf fans frenetically ripping the bow and wrapping paper off a Tiger Woods return, Friday was a day to exhale and catch a nap on the couch. The conditions at Augusta National got a bit trickier and the 2022 Masters became more of a battle than a sprint.
Well, perhaps for everyone who isn’t named Scottie Scheffler. While others tried to simply stay in motion, Scheffler just kept running and running, becoming the golf equivalent of Forrest Gump. His five-stroke lead is one few saw coming, even considering his recent hot streak.
With two days in the books and two days still ahead of us, here’s a look at some of the top storylines you need to know:
The 2011 Masters champion now finds himself with a share of the clubhouse lead.
AUGUSTA, Georgia – Charl Schwartzel saw this coming. Never mind the six consecutive missed cuts on the PGA Tour heading into this week. Schwartzel took a fortnight off, watched old footage of the Masters and felt his confidence begin to swell. The 2011 Masters champion now finds himself with a share of the clubhouse lead with overnight leader Sungjae Im (74) at 3-under 141 after a second-round 69.
“The bad results didn’t really determine how I felt coming in here,” said a reserved Schwartzel. “I actually took two weeks off, and as the two weeks went by, my confidence grew in belief that I could win this tournament because I was starting to hit it very good and just looked at old footages, and it’s still there.”
Schwartzel, 37, made tournament history 11 years ago when he became the first player to win the Masters by closing his round on Sunday with four consecutive birdies. The young South African had to fend off a host of contenders to do it, too. Eight different players held a share of the lead on the back nine that Sunday, including five at one time. His triumph came exactly 50 years after fellow South African Gary Player became the first international player to win at Augusta.
In a way, the challenging winds on a chilly day in Georgia helped keep Schwartzel’s mind from becoming too active. Schwartzel has spent too much time of late, he said, thinking about what can go wrong inside the ropes.
An 11-time winner on the DP World Tour, Schwartzel’s most recent victory on the PGA Tour came at the 2016 Valspar Championship. His last top 10 on the PGA Tour came at the 2021 3M Open in July, where he took a share of second.
When asked what he focused on coming into this week, Schwartzel said he’s been working on it the whole season.
“I haven’t felt like I’ve played as badly as my results, though,” he said. “I tried to tighten the swing up a little bit. Get the hands a little more passive. Hands were a little too active. I must be honest. These two rounds are one of the two best ball-striking rounds I’ve had in a very long time.”
2020 Masters champion Dustin Johnson and Harold Varner III are one shot back at 2 under.
How tough was it out there?
Schwartzel said any player in the field would be happy shooting level par in Friday’s conditions. His 3 under was a bit of a bonus.
Lee Westwood, like first-round lead Im, shot 74 in Round 2 and pointed out the sand blowing out of a bunker during his post-round interview.
“I said to (Russell) Henley coming down 15,” said Westwood, “there’s so many smelly shots out on that golf course today that you need a bit of fortune to hit it at the right time.”
Johnson said he felt like he had to grind all day in the gusty conditions.
“Two under is definitely in a better position than I thought it would be,” he said.
It’s always fun to see a club throw on the PGA Tour.
We’ve all been there.
And if you say you haven’t, you’re lying.
We don’t see it very often on the PGA Tour, but when it happens, it’s absolutely glorious.
Charl Schwartzel hit his tee shot on the par-3 15th during the first round of the Valspar Championship and obviously didn’t like the outcome. He took a few gather steps toward the green, like a centerfielder looking to gun someone down at the plate, and then let it fly like Tom Brady over the middle to Rob Gronkowski.
The form was impeccable. The carry distance was impressive. Just an overall well-executed club toss from the South African.
The Australian duo were all business on Sunday, however, as they took home the title at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans.
A fun week in New Orleans was highlighted by a lot of talk about hair, specifically the mullet sported by Cameron Smith. His teammate Marc Leishman amped up the fun by showing up to the first tee wearing a mullet wig on Saturday.
The Australian duo were all business on Sunday, however, as they took home the title at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans in a playoff to fend off the South African team of Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel.
But not after some back-nine suspense:
A penalty shot on the 13th hole against the Smith and Leishman team led to a bogey. A two-shot swing on 15 after another Smith/Leishman bogey coupled with a Schwartzel/Oosthuizen birdie to give the South Africans the lead once again. A Smith drive on 17 that went into the water was followed by a birdie chip-in by Leishman, which tied things up once again.
A pair of bogeys on 17 and two pars on 18 kept things tied, forcing a playoff.
On the first playoff hole, the 18th, Oosthuizen pushed his tee shot hard right into the water, while Smith made sure he went left but did end up in a bunker.
From there, the Smith/Leishman team parred the hole to claim the title.
Smith earned his first PGA Tour win in this event in 2017 when he teamed with Jonas Blixt. It was the first year the event used the team format. Leishman’s last Tour win was at Torrey Pines at the 2020 Farmers Insurance Open.
For Oosthuizen and Schwartzel, the droughts continue. Oosthuizen still has yet to win on American soil. He also hasn’t tasted victory since he won the 2010 British Open. For 2011 Masters champion Schwartzel, his last win on the PGA Tour remains the 2016 Valspar Championship.
The team of Peter Uihlein and Richie Werenski shot a final-round 67 to get to 19 and finish third. Uihlein won a week ago on the Korn Ferry Tour in Vegas.
Billy Horschel and Sam Burns tied for fourth with Keith Mitchell and Brandt Snedeker. The defending champion team of Jon Rahm and Ryan Palmer finished solo seventh.
Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel will try to end long winless droughts on the PGA Tour in New Orleans but 16 teams are within 4 shots.
AVONDALE, La. – Tony Finau and Cameron Champ have been flipping a coin on the first tee all week to decide who leads things off and said they likely would do so again on Sunday when the format at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans flips back to alternate-shot in the team competition.
Might as well flip a coin to decide who is going to win the title, too. There are 16 teams within four strokes of the 54-hole leaders, the South African pair of Louis Oosthuiazen and Charl Schwartzel, who “dovetailed” on Saturday to a best-ball score of 9-under 63 and a 54-hole total of 19-under 197 at TPC Louisiana.
Schwartzel led the way early as Oosthuizen didn’t make a birdie until pouring in a 19-foot birdie putt at No. 11. But once his putter warmed up the team birdied six of the last eight holes, including the final three. Oosthuizen provided the exclamation point at the par-3 17th, canning a bomb from 34 feet, the only birdie at the hole all day.
“Now and then you get a putt like that where you feel like you’re actually going to make it, you stand over it and just need to hit a good stroke,” Oosthuizen said. “It was one of those.”
But the veteran South Africans know that tomorrow is another day and a more challenging format, where birdies will be more scarce, especially if the wind blows again. Oosthuizen has never won on American soil and is winless on the PGA Tour since the 2010 British Open, while Schwartzel, the 2011 Masters champion, hasn’t hoisted a trophy on the PGA Tour since the 2016 Valspar Championship. Could they follow in the footsteps of Jordan Spieth and Hideki Matsuyama on the PGA Tour and Lydia Ko on the LPGA by ending lengthy victory droughts tomorrow?
“I think anyone within four shots of the lead has got a chance with the format that it is tomorrow,” Oosthuizen said. “It’s going to be tough. We need to play really well.”
Indeed, there is a lot of golf still to be played before a team gets to slip on the championship belts. But to hear Schwartzel tell it, the tougher the better for them.
“The more difficult it is, the better we both play, so the format for tomorrow in a way suits us, and if we execute the shots the way we see it, we’ll have a good chance,” he said.
Hot on their heels include the team of Australians Cameron Smith, who won the team title in 2017, and Marc Leishman, who showed up to the first team wearing a mullet wig to match that of his partner and resembled the hairdo of competitor Pat Perez who was playing in the same group.
The first-tee hijinks wasn’t Leishman’s only contribution on Saturday. He went to the range after Friday’s round and realized his setup was too open. With his wedges dialed in once again, Leishman made five birdies including all three for their team on the second nine en route to a second round of 63 in the four-ball format.
“I was happy just being there and watching Leish play good golf,” said Smith, who chipped in at the third hole but didn’t make a birdie after the eighth. “It was good to see.”
On a day when six teams posted 63, Cameron Champ and Tony Finau, co-leaders after 36 holes, managed only to shoot 5-under 67, but a birdie at the last lifted them within one stroke of the lead heading into the final round. as Champ was held to one birdie on the day.
“When I was a little off, he picked me up; when he was a little off, I picked him up,” Finau said. “That’s the essence of team golf.”
Bubba Watson, who won here in 2011 as an individual, and partner Scottie Scheffler, who is still looking for his maiden win on the PGA Tour, and the Norwegian duo of Viktor Hovland and Kris Ventura are each two strokes back in a tie for fourth. Hovland and Ventura struggled to shoot 68 in best ball, but were encouraged by the fact that they tied for the low round of the day in the alternate-shot format on Friday (68). Their plan for Sunday?
“I would just say play stress-free golf,” Hovland said. “Boring golf is good.”
Defending champions Jon Rahm and Ryan Palmer (T-9) are among the group four back, and shot 7-under 65 in the alternate-shot format in 2019. Finau predicted a score in the 60s would probably be good enough for any of the top contenders. He, too, is trying to end a winless streak dating to 2016. How meaningful would it be to win a team event versus an individual title for him?
“It would be quite special,” Finau said. “I don’t know too many guys that can say that they’ve won team events because there’s only one out here. So it almost would be I think even more special to win, and to win with this guy would be really special.”
AVONDALE, La. – The foursomes format for round two of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans sent scores soaring on Friday. After Thursday’s birdie barrage in four-ball (best ball), par became a friend again for the field in the alternate-shot format. …
AVONDALE, La. – The foursomes format for round two of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans sent scores soaring on Friday. After Thursday’s birdie barrage in four-ball (best ball), par became a friend again for the field in the alternate-shot format. Rounds went from relatively stress-free to stressful.
Trust and a certain comfort level with a partner became paramount and not surprisingly two teams rose to the challenge.
“It’s never going to be as tricky when you’ve got a good partner like I do,” said Henrik Stenson of his teammate Justin Rose.
Stenson and Rose are both in their 40s and while their games have taken a recent dip, they continue to make sweet music as a duet. They teamed to shoot the low round of the morning wave, a 4-under-par 68 to grab the clubhouse lead at 11-under 133, and one stroke ahead of South Africans Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel.
Rose and Stenson have a wonderful Ryder Cup pedigree, including a 3-1 record in foursomes and were victorious in both of their foursome matches at the 2018 Cup in France. But they had shot 71, 72 and 73 in three previous rounds of foursomes at TPC Louisiana, where they have teamed to miss the cut in 2017 and finished T-19 in 2018.
Stenson’s game has been downright pitiful of late, missing six straight cuts before finishing T-38 at the Masters, but said he’s heading in the right direction.
“I shouldn’t say this while my partner is listening; it’s not always that I feel as confident as maybe some of the shots that I pulled off today, but it’s work in progress,” Stenson said.
On Friday, the Swede delivered the goods, including a 7-iron from 179 to 5 feet to set up a birdie at the par-4 12th hole, which happened to be the only hole Team Rose-Stenson both bogeyed in best ball.
“Henrik was a rock today,” Rose said. “I was kind of looking at it in terms of I don’t think he made one mistake that led to us dropping a shot really. It was pretty fun just to have someone that was so solid today. He pulled his weight today.”
On the three occasions when Team Rose-Stenson made bogey, they bounced back with birdie, making seven circles on the card in all. England’s Rose has endured his own recent rough patch and struggled with a back injury ahead of the Masters before contending to the finish and a tie for seventh.
“The biggest thing is you have to trust yourself but then you’ve got to trust your partner, but more so you have to trust yourself,” Rose said. “You’ve got to not worry about what your partner is going to be facing and I think it’s all about committing to your shots.”
Louis Oosthuizen at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans at TPC Louisiana on April 22, 2021 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo: Stacy Revere/Getty Images)
That level of trust has to be earned together in the trenches. The South African pair of Oosthuizen and Schwartzel are former Presidents Cup teammates and have built trust between them over decades of competition that dates to the South African Boys’ Champions (Under-13 division). Oosthuizen was 12, Schwartzel 10.
“I think we know each other really well,” Oosthuizen said. “So, we’re very comfortable together, and never once really said sorry to the guy.”
While Schwartzel and Oosthuizen grew up in opposite corners of the country – Schwartzel in the northern part and Oosthuizen down south – their friendship blossomed traveling to golf tournaments throughout Africa and India and then on the European and PGA Tours.
The pair, who dressed in different shades of green but matching white pants, belts, hats and shoes, was pleased as punch to shoot 1-under 71 in difficult conditions on Friday, especially after starting 2 over through their first six holes of alternate shot. After a critical par at 16 to stem the bleeding, they made three birdies on the par 5s coming home and an all-world par at No. 6 after Schwartzel’s second shot from an old divot and with mud on the ball sailed into trouble left.
“Luckily I had a clear shot, but adjusted nicely and pitched it up there and he made quite a few of those length putts today,” Oosthuizen said of a 7-foot par putt. “It definitely felt like a net birdie.”
When Schwartzel was asked what was his partner’s best shot on Friday had been, Oosthuizen interjected, “Well, there wasn’t many.”
When their laughter subsided, Schwartzel said, “He drives the ball so well, and he makes me really uncomfortable. I’m not used to hitting out of so many fairways.”
On Saturday, these veteran teams of Rose-Stenson and Oosthuizen-Schwartzel will try to keep the magic going when the format flips back to four-ball and they can return to – pick your expression – trying to brother-in-law-it or ham-n-egg it. When asked if there was a South African version of those classic American idioms, Oosthuizen said, “We call it dovetail. I don’t know why, but yeah, we call it dovetail.”
It’s been a frustrating stretch for Rickie Fowler, who likely won’t be in Augusta next week and is on pace to miss the FedEx Cup playoffs.
SAN ANTONIO — Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Four guys walk onto a green …
It certainly has been a frustrating stretch for Rickie Fowler, who likely won’t be in Augusta next week and is on pace to miss the FedEx Cup playoffs as well, sitting at 136th in the standings heading into this week.
And of course, Sir Nick Faldo’s shot at Fowler and subsequent apology firmly put the spotlight on the 2010 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, the man many consider the best current Tour player to have never won a major.
Fowler rallied to reach the weekend at the Valero Texas Open by virtue of a 68 on Friday, but just as he looked to be trending in the right direction, the five-time PGA Tour winner posted three bogeys in his first four holes coming out of a rain delay Saturday.
A microcosm of Fowler’s season came on the No. 3 at the TPC San Antonio Oaks Course, a short par 3 over a pond. Fowler’s tee shot found the green, but he had a 55-foot putt for birdie.
That’s when he tried to pull the flagstick from the hole and things got a little bizarre.
Both Fowler and playing partner Charl Schwartzel struggled to get the stick removed from the hole, as did their caddies. The pin finally came free after Schwartzel lodged a club in to hold the hole down while his caddie pulled it free.
Fowler, who was 1 over for the tournament at the time, proceeded to three-putt the hole, dropping 11 shots off the lead.
The putting fiasco wasn’t an aberration for Fowler; in fact, it’s becoming the norm. Fowler’s drop in the world rankings — he’s fallen to 94th in Official World Golf Ranking and 118th in the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings — has coincided with his lack of touch on the greens.
In 2017, Fowler finished in the top-10 in nearly half (10) of his 21 PGA Tour starts, won the Honda Classic and was second in scoring average. That also happened to be his best putting season, one in which he led the Tour in Strokes Gaines: Putting.
But since then, Fowler has been in a freefall — he was 43rd in 2018 in SG:P, followed by 13th in 2019, 60th in 2020 and now 176th in the current season.
Fowler did respond on Saturday with a pair of birdies after his string of bogeys, but without his putter showing marked improvement, there’s no reason to think he’ll snap out of this slump any time soon.
