Rory McIlroy earned his first win in 553 days on Sunday, ending the second-longest winless drought of his career.
For the first time in 553 days, Rory McIlroy is once again a winner on the PGA Tour.
The 32-year-old Northern Irishman earned his first win since the 2019 WGC-HSBC Champions — the second longest winless drought of his career — on Sunday, claiming the Wells Fargo Championship at 10 under.
McIlroy shot a final-round 3-under 68 at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, separating from 54-hole leader Keith Mitchell, who finished T-3 at 8 under alongside Viktor Hovland. Abraham Ancer had the low round of the day, shooting a 5-under 66 to claim solo second. Gary Woodland, the 2019 U.S. Open champion, rounded out the top-five at 7 under.
Phil Mickelson opened with a 64 at the Wells Fargo Championship, but stumbled through rounds of 75-76-76 over the next three days.
Phil Mickelson started his week with a 64 at the Wells Fargo Championship to take a two-shot lead, stirring talk that he might become the eighth player to win a PGA Tour event after turning 50.
A second-round 75 quieted such talk pretty quickly. Weekend rounds of 76-76 guaranteed he wouldn’t join that exclusive group.
Mickelson spoke of renewed ability to stay focused after his opening round.
“I’m just present on each shot,” he said Thursday. “I’ve been doing some like, you know, some mental exercises and so forth just to try to get my focus to elongate over five hours and so forth. That’s been a real struggle for me the last few years because physically, there’s nothing physically holding me back from playing at a high level, but you cannot make mistakes at this level.”
Those mistakes were evident Friday, Saturday and Sunday, when Mickelson had just six birdies over three days while posting 10 bogeys and five double bogeys.
After his round Friday, Lefty offered a specific example of how his mental game needs to sharpen.
“Kind of an example of what I’ve been talking about is like on 17, we’re standing over the ball and I’m changing my mind and I’m changing the shot, moving the clubhead a little bit and it just. … instead of backing away and kind of refocusing, I just kind of hit it and I’m not really kind of aware of what I’m doing. So I’ve got to fix that and work on it.”
Mickelson is not in the field for next week’s AT&T Byron Nelson, but he’s among the 15 past winners of the PGA Championship headed to Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina in two weeks.
The week after the PGA Championship is the Senior PGA Championship, but when asked, Mickelson said he hadn’t given thought about entering that event.
A winner of 44 PGA Tour titles, including five majors, Mickelson’s best result this season was a tie for 21st in the Masters. He has not won since the 2019 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s everything you need to know about Sunday’s final round of the Wells Fargo Championship.
It’s a tight race at the top of the leaderboard entering the final round of the 2021 Wells Fargo Championship.
Keith Mitchell, looking for his second PGA Tour win, sits in first at 9 under at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina. Rory McIlroy and Gary Woodland are T-2 at 7 under. Luke List sits fourth at 6 under, followed by Satoshi Kodaira and Scott Stallings, T-5 at 5 under.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s everything you need to know for the final round of the Wells Fargo Championship. All times listed are Eastern Standard Time.
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Keith Mitchell leads Rory McIlroy and a trio of players trying to end victory droughts on Sunday at the PGA Tour’s Wells Fargo Championship.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Keith Mitchell ended the Valspar Championship with a thud last week with a final-round 82.
Gary Woodland said he hit rock bottom when he missed the Valspar cut as issues with his left hip had him contemplating about taking a long break.
And four-time major champion Rory McIlroy hasn’t won in more than 550 days as he hasn’t been himself since the PGA Tour returned last June following a 13-week break due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Well, those are the three names at the top of the leaderboard at the Wells Fargo Championship after a testing sun-drenched Saturday had players on edge throughout their rounds at Quail Hollow.
“Golf can be very lucky and very unlucky all at the same time,” Mitchell said when asked what it says about golf when he can shoot 82 one week and lead the next week. “You have to take the ebbs and flows, there’s ups and downs, lucky and unlucky. Last week I got unlucky, this week right now I’ve had some good breaks.
Mitchell grabbed a two-shot lead with a bogey-free, 5-under-par 66 that moved him to 9 under through 54 holes. He’ll be playing in the final group with McIlroy, who hasn’t won since the fall of 2019 and will be playing in the final group for the first time since the 2020 Genesis Invitational. McIlroy, who fell to 15th in the world this week, his lowest ranking since 2009, moved to 7 under with a 68.
Woodland is also at 7 under after a 70 and Luke List is at 6 under after a 68. Satoshi Kodaira (68) and Scott Stallings (70) are 5 under.
While he doesn’t look the worse for wear and tear from his struggles – he’s had just one top-10 since the start of 2020 – Mitchell was certainly pleased through three days. His 66 Saturday was his first bogey-free round since the final round of the 2020 Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship last September. His lone PGA Tour title came in the 2019 Honda Classic and his struggles have dropped him to 249th in the official world rankings.
“I didn’t play very well last year after the restart, just didn’t have the energy, didn’t have the patience with that short of a season last year, trying to climb the leaderboard,” he said. “Then felt like my game this year is really starting to blossom and it’s just really kind of all starting to shape up right now.
“I just feel like everything’s really working. My driver feels great, and around this place you’ve really got to drive it well. Really all of it feels good right now. Really just trying to keep the ball in front of me right now and see what we can do.”
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McIlroy said he felt good about his game after taking three weeks off following his missed cut at the Masters. In the first round, his iron play was outstanding. In the second round, he overpowered the course with his new strategy off the tee – he’s committed to hitting the fade with his driver and no longer hits a swinging draw, which was his bread-and-butter for years. In the third round, his putter was the star of the golf bag.
“I’m excited to be in the position I’m in. I wasn’t really expecting to be in this position coming into this week. I felt like I was still working on my game and I thought progress this week was being here today, which I am,” he said. “Then I play well again today. So I just have to go out and try to play well again tomorrow and see where that leaves me.”
McIlroy especially liked the buzz that has swept over Quail Hollow this week as roughly 10,000 fans have been in attendance each day.
“I’ve missed it. I didn’t think I would miss it as much as I did, but I really have,” he said. “So to be in contention, to have the fans back, I really enjoyed it out there today and I’m excited about tomorrow.”
McIlroy is the clear favorite to win on Sunday considering his track record here – he won his first PGA Tour title in 2010, won again in 2015, lost in a playoff in 2012 and has four other top-10s in nine starts.
But Woodland and Mitchell will have something to say about that. So possibly will many others, as many players say no lead is safe at Quail Hollow.
Woodland, who won the 2019 U.S. Open, had a long talk with noted coach Butch Harmon on Saturday after missing the Valspar cut and worked with prominent coach Pete Cowen and discovered his swing needed slight alterations. Woodland tore his labrum in his left hip and instead of surgery, he opted for rest and rehab and kept playing. But to alleviate pain, he got into bad swing habits. Harmon and Cowen got him back to swinging like Gary Woodland and he’s pain free.
“The ball‑striking’s been coming this week,” he said. “I just haven’t drove it well, and today I drove it very well. I hit a couple bad shots, but all in all I controlled the golf ball the way I wanted to and I’m excited about that. It sets up well for me tomorrow. I felt confident today and that’s a good thing. It’s been a while for that. It feels great to be back in this position, feel some nerves.
“The U.S. Open wasn’t too far in the past, so I’ll rely on that a lot. But the big deal for me is to trust what I’m doing, enjoy, take a step back, take a second every once in a while, enjoy it and trust it because it’s there, it’s there for the taking.”
“I learned my lesson,” said Bryson DeChambeau on his 1,000-mile commute to make his Wells Fargo Championship third-round tee time.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – High in the sky heading home to Dallas on Friday after thinking he had missed the cut in the Wells Fargo Championship, Bryson DeChambeau got a text message from his agent that changed his itinerary.
“Hey, you’re 68th now.”
“What? No way,” DeChambeau thought to himself, realizing weekend play was actually in play. Turns out DeChambeau, who was in 90th place when he finished his second round, was moving up the leaderboard during his flight as strong winds started to batter Quail Hollow Club.
Sure enough, when the world No. 5’s three-hour flight on the NetJets private aircraft touched down, he was inside the cut.
Some 30 minutes later he realized he had made the 2-over cut on the number. And was a touch over 1,000 miles from the Queen City.
“Well, whoops, that was a mistake,” he said to Connor Olson, a member of his team who was on the flight.
DeChambeau made the most of the awkward predicament. He went into scramble mode but secured a new flight crew to head back to the Wells Fargo Championship for the third round. He got in one of his one-hour intense workouts. Had a nice dinner. Couple of protein shakes. Went to bed at 8 p.m. to wake up in time for his 2:45 a.m. CT eastward flight from Dallas.
The return flight landed at 6:20 a.m. local time and after a 30-minute drive to the course, he had a little more than one hour to make his 8:10 a.m. tee time.
“Put on my clothes in the locker room and headed out to the putting green,” the reigning U.S. Open Champion said. “This morning was not easy. But, you know, for whatever reason I just feel like the more weird things happen to me, the greater my resolve sometimes can be and today was a case of that. And got a little unlucky on 18, but other than that, you know, I played a great round of golf today. I’m very pleased.”
Indeed it was a splendid round of golf – until the punishing 18th hole. DeChambeau continued his ascent up the leaderboard with five birdies through 17 holes and was within three strokes of the lead. But he ran into turbulence on the 468-yard finishing hole when his drive was left in the rough and hit his second into a greenside bunker. He needed two to get out of the bunker and made double.
His 3-under-par 68 left him 1 under through 54 holes and five shots out of the lead with the leaders yet to tee off.
Afterward, he said it was an expensive mistake to have made.
“Way too expensive,” he said. “But the thing is, I have a chance to go make a good check this week and I think that would offset it. So if I was to not come back and withdraw, lose world ranking points and all that, I had to incur the cost. It’s my fault. It did (think of not coming back), but I said there’s no way I can do that. I can’t let down Wells Fargo, I can’t let down Quail Hollow.
Seventy-seven players made the cut and will play the weekend at the Wells Fargo Championship. Here’s the when and where on TV and tee times.
Rory McIlroy will have a late tee time Saturday at the Wells Fargo Championship after he fired a 5-under-par 66 to vault up the leaderboard at Quail Hollow Club.
He is two back of a trio players who share the lead at 6 under: Matt Wallace (67), Gary Woodland (69) and Patrick Rodgers (68). At 5 under was Kramer Hickok (69). Joining McIlroy at 4 under were Scott Piercy (68), Keith Mitchell (71), Carlos Ortiz (68) and Scott Stallings (69).
One day after shooting a tournament-best 7-under 64, Phil Mickelson complained that he went brain dead on the back nine at Quail Hollow Club, shooting 4-over 75 to fall to 3-under 139. He did survive the cut though.
Jon Rahm, meanwhile, did not, his PGA Tour-leading streak of 22 straight made cuts coming to an end. He and other notables went home on Friday night after missing the cut.
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After Friday’s second round of the Wells Fargo Championship, the cut it landed on +2, and that meant some big names heading home.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Throughout the blustery afternoon at Quail Hollow in Friday’s second round of the Wells Fargo Championship, the projected cut hovered around 1 over.
As evening approached, the cut started to go back and forth between +1 and +2.
And then +2 and +3.
At day’s end, it landed on +2.
That meant some big names heading home, including world No. 3 Jon Rahm, who had made a PGA Tour-leading 22 consecutive cuts. The new leader is Joaquin Niemann with 18. Also among those missing the weekend are Masters runner-up Will Zalatoris, Patrick Cantlay, Tony Finau, defending champion Max Homa and Rickie Fowler.
Making the cut on the number were reigning U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau and reigning Open champion Shane Lowry.
Seventy-seven players made the cut. Here are the notables who didn’t:
Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler are making headlines as the Wells Fargo Championship moves to Friday’s second round.
Quail Hollow plays host once again for the Wells Fargo Championship. The 2020 tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Five-time PGA Tour winner Rickie Fowler looked upbeat as he shot a 1-under-par 70 in Thursday’s first round at Quail Hollow. He said a recent break was a reset as he tries to find his past form with a new swing.
Peter Malnati had missed eight consecutive cuts heading into the first round. So of course he shot 4-under-par 67 to get on the first page of the leaderboard.
The first-round leader, by two shots over KH Lee and Keegan Bradley, is Phil Mickelson. Lefty made a lone bogey Thursday as he bested his finest round of the year by three shots. It was clearly Mickelson’s best showing in 2021.
Tee times
1st tee
Tee Time
Players
6:50 a.m.
Talor Gooch, Matt Wallace, Robby Shelton
7:01 a.m.
James Hahn, Luke List, Bronson Burgoon
7:12 a.m.
Kevin Streelman, Lucas Glover, Rory Sabbatini
7:23 a.m.
Michael Thompson, Scott Piercy, Ryan Armour
7:34 a.m.
Joel Dahmen, Lanto Griffin, Phil Mickelson
7:45 a.m.
Shane Lowry, Keith Mitchell, Jason Dufner
7:56 a.m.
Martin Trainer, Brice Garnett, Russell Knox
8:07 a.m.
Sung Kang, Brendan Steele, D.A. Points
8:18 a.m.
Adam Hadwin, Ben Martin, K.J. Choi
8:29 a.m.
Charl Schwartzel, Chesson Hadley, Patrick Rodgers
8:40 a.m.
Kyle Stanley, Sean O’Hair, Seamus Power
8:51 a.m.
Roger Sloan, Hank Lebioda, Kramer Hickok
9:02 a.m.
Rob Oppenheim, Justin Suh, Patrick Cover
12:10 p.m.
Russell Henley, Byeong Hun An, Mark Hubbard
12:21 p.m.
Johnson Wagner, Maverick McNealy, Scott Harrington
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The Tour Championship and even the Ryder Cup could be in the cards for Max Homa if he keeps his name near the top of leaderboards.
As Max Homa entered the locker room at Charlotte’s Quail Hollow, the memories of the last time he was there came flooding back.
That’s when he had to wait out a suspension of play during the final round of the 2019 Wells Fargo Championship as he chased his first PGA Tour title. A sudden queasiness hit his gut, just as it did on that day when he finally tasted victory after an arduous journey to being a Tour winner.
“I felt like I was going to throw up but my hands felt unbelievable on the club,” Homa said of his breakthrough.
Homa’s rise from some of the lowest of lows to a two-time Tour winner and in the midst of his best golf of his career should be the celebrated more than his ability to roast a golf swing on social media. Homa has a tattoo with the word relentless on his forearm, but his forgettable 2017 season when he earned $18,008 on the Tour, made just two cuts and played one Sunday are tattooed in his memory.
“I think that a lot of people would have either quit playing golf or gone into a serious like hole with not their game, like mentally, I think. My game was obviously already in the hole,” he said on the eve of his title defense two years later due to cancellation of last year’s tournament during the global pandemic.
Homa delivered one of the most candid, soul-searching winner’s press conferences, plumbing the depths of his dive to No. 959 in the world at the end of 2017 and how he came out the better for it.
“I used to say when I hit rock bottom I found a shovel and kept digging,” Homa said. “I went to some low places and there would be times when I would wallow and honestly just hate my golf game, dislike what I was out there in what’s supposed to be my favorite place in the world is a golf course, and all of a sudden I started to hate it, hated going. All I’ve ever known is working as hard as humanly possible, and I realized in that year, year or two when I started to play bad, that my attitude was going to have to get a lot better because if my golf game was going to be that bad, my brain better be on point. I think that was a big turning point for me. I’m very proud I finally found a ladder and started climbing upwards because it was getting dark down there.”
Homa credits being “tough” with helping him find that ladder, and his mental strength was his biggest asset during his dark period but while he didn’t throw a pity party for himself that doesn’t mean there wasn’t pain along the way. Imagine feeling that your game was in such shambles that you didn’t want to play practice rounds with other golfers.
Max Homa reacts as he walks off the 12th green during the final round of the 2019 Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow Club on May 5, 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo: Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)
“I felt like I was on an island and it was, you know, borderline embarrassing,” he said after his victory in 2019. “It was embarrassing at times. But it ain’t embarrassing anymore. It’s a cool story now.”
As he put it, he kept dusting himself off and got back to work at getting better bit by bit. When he arrived in Charlotte in 2019, Homa was ranked No. 413 in the world and improved more than 300 spots with the W. In the aftermath, he recorded a few top 10s, including a T-3 at the 3M Open last summer that lifted him to No. 68 in the world, but he also missed eight cuts in a span of 13 events. His game still lacked consistency. The feeling of victory was fleeting and he wondered why he couldn’t do it again.
“When you come up short or when you miss a cut, it feels like you’re so far away from what your potential, what you should be doing,” he explained. “Once you win, unless you keep winning every week like Tiger, it feels like you’re kind of going backwards.”
Backwards was unacceptable for Homa, whose game had come so far. He made a difficult decision and parted ways with his longtime instructor Les Johnson.
“I felt like I was kind of going in a bit of a circle at times, and I was confused I guessed,” Homa said.
Time for a change
Homa’s caddie Joe Greiner had worked with Tour pro Kevin Chappell, who became a top-50 player in the world under the tutelage of Englishman Mark Blackburn. Greiner suggested Blackburn might be a good fit. They worked together for the first time at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot in September, where Homa had missed the cut. Blackburn screened his body at a Marriott and then did a session at the course.
“I called Joe afterwards,” Blackburn recalled, “and said, ‘This kid is pretty special.’ Joe said, ‘I told you so.’ ”
“I was shocked how fast everything’s clicked,” said Homa, who notched his second Tour title at the Genesis Invitational in February and has climbed to No. 39 in the world.
Max Homa stands with the trophy and tournament host Tiger Woods at the 2021 Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club on February 21, 2021 in Pacific Palisades, California. (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
When asked last week at the Valspar Championship, what he’s figured out, he gave a succinct and honest answer, “I’m just better at golf now.”
And coming off a T-6 finish in Tampa playing what he termed “one of the most all‑around good weeks of golf I’ve had as far as my game goes,” Homa is ranked No. 16 in the FedEx Cup and poised to make his first trip to the Tour Championship.
He’s even thinking the U.S. Ryder Cup team – he’s ranked 16th in the points standing for that, too – could be in the cards if he keeps his name near the top of leaderboards. It’s quite a remarkable improvement from where he was just two years ago.
“I have a really cool perspective on this game because I’ve seen what pretty much the bottom looks like,” Homa said, “so anytime I’m playing OK I feel like I appreciate it more and I appreciate how easy it is.”
Thomas had 117 putts for the week at Valspar. The longest he made all week was 14 feet.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – En route to a tie for 13th in last week’s Valspar Championship, world No. 2 Justin Thomas had most of his game spot on.
He ranked first in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, first in Strokes Gained: Approach to the Green, and first in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green.
As for his putting, he ranked 67th in strokes gained.
Ouch.
His frustration on the greens reached a crescendo after Saturday’s third round when he said, “If I’m putting well this week, I’m winning this tournament without question.” While he had his best putting day in the final round – he needed just 26 putts – he had 117 putts for the week. The longest he made all week was 14 feet.
Thomas, the reigning Players champion, didn’t take out his disappointment by breaking his flat stick. Nor did he banish it to the trunk and find a new one. He didn’t go changing his grip, either.
Instead, he chalked up tournament as being one of those weeks where no matter what he did, no matter how good his stroke was, no matter how good the putts looked, they just would not fall.
“It wasn’t like something was really that off,” Thomas said Wednesday at Quail Hollow Club, home to the Wells Fargo Championship. “I hit a lot of really, really good putts, a lot of quality putts. Everything fundamentally was pretty good, just the ball wasn’t going in.
“You have weeks like that, but obviously it doesn’t get that bad very often and hopefully not ever. But it was just one of those weeks where I felt like I was stroking it well, I felt good over the putter on Thursday and Friday and just nothing went in.”
With his putter not cooperating heading into the weekend, Thomas fell into some old tendencies that did nothing to improve the situation.
“I was opening the putting face too much going back and then I have a tendency to drag it a little bit or have a hard time timing it up right to get the clubface square, putter face square,” he said. “That was something I was fighting a little bit maybe over the course of the week in terms of some misses, but overall as a whole I felt like they’re very difficult greens to read.
“You have a lot of grain that kind of goes opposite of the slopes and a lot of subtle ridges. Clearly Sam Burns (the winner) didn’t feel that way, and many others, but I felt like I was putting the ball actually pretty well, just nothing was going in.”
Thomas put in some extra work on the practice putting green on Tuesday and Wednesday and feels good heading in the first round. And he certainly fancies the track this week – he won the 2017 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.
“I have a lot of great memories,” said Thomas, who tied for seventh in the Wells Fargo Championship in 2015, missed the cut in 2016 and finished in a tie for 21st in 2018. “I love Charlotte, I love the fans here, I love the golf course. It’s a fun atmosphere and it’s a very good golf course, so it should be a good week.”
