Dustin Johnson cited the need for rest as the reason for his withdrawal from Mayakoba Golf Classic.
Dustin Johnson has withdrawn from next week’s Mayakoba Golf Classic in Riviera Maya, Mexico.
The 2020 Masters champion said in a statement released by the tournament Friday that he needed to rest and apologized for missing the event held Dec. 3-6 at El Camaleón Golf Club.
“I have heard nothing but great things about the tournament, golf course and the Mayakoba resort, so I was excited to play. However, my mind and body are telling me it’s time for a break, so I look forward to spending some much-needed time at home with Paulina (Gretzky) and the boys.”
Johnson, 36, has three top-10 finishes in as many appearances this season, including his Masters win and a T-2 at the Vivint Houston Open. Last season, he had seven top-10 finishes out of 14 events including wins at the Travelers Championship, the Northern Trust and Tour Championship.
In October, the reigning FedEx Cup champion tested positive for COVID-19 and withdrew from the CJ Cup at Shadow Creek and the Zozo Championship at Sherwood.
Unfortunately Dustin Johnson has withdrawn from the tournament. Here is his statement. pic.twitter.com/dNan3zg6nV
Browse through the list of how much money PGA Tour players won at the Zozo Championship at Sherwood.
Patrick Cantlay won the Zozo Championship at Sherwood on Sunday after carding rounds of 67-65-68-65 to finish 23-under 265.
Finishing one shot behind Cantlay was Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas. Rahm carded a 4-under 68 in the final round while Thomas shot a 69. They both were 22 under. Russell Henley, Cameron Smith, Bubba Watson and Ryan Palmer all finished T-4 at 19 under.
Tiger Woods, who was paired with Phil Mickelson on Sunday, finished the tournament T-72 at 1 under after carding 2-over 74 in the final round. Mickelson, who shot a final-round 78, finished T-76 at 3 over.
Take a look through the amount of money each golfer earned this week at the Zozo Championship at Sherwood.
After wrapping up disappointing weeks at the Zozo Championship at Sherwood on a soggy Sunday north of Los Angeles, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson turned their attention to the Masters in November.
The itineraries of the two men who have won eight green jackets and 20 majors between them are far from chiseled in stone. Both could put a peg in the ground in the Vivant Houston Open the week before the Masters. Both could take the next two weeks off. Mickelson might even play in a PGA Tour Champions event.
What is finalized is that neither will play a competitive round this coming week.
On Sunday, their play matched the grey, listless skies above. Playing together for the 38th time as professionals, neither got any momentum going; both hit into a water hazard. Woods birdied the last to shoot 2-over-par 74, Mickelson a 78. Adam Long, the third member in the group, shot 71.
“The only thing I can take out of this week that I did positively I feel like each and every day and pretty much every hole is I putted well,” said Woods, the defending champion who finished with rounds of 76-66-71-74 and 22 shots behind winner Patrick Cantlay. The 76 and 74 were two of the three worst rounds he’s ever shot at Sherwood in 52 rounds. He won five times here and finished runner-up five times in 12 starts heading into this week. “I feel like I rolled it great. Unfortunately, most of them were for pars and a couple for bogeys here and there, but not enough for birdies.”
Woods has just one top-10 this year in eight starts.
“Work needs to be done,” said Joe LaCava, Woods’ caddie. “Good news is he’s not afraid of hard work. It all needs work. And he realizes that. Nothing was really bad, but nothing was really sharp.
Tiger Woods plays a shot on the tenth hole during the final round of the Zozo Championship @ Sherwood on Oct. 25, 2020 in Thousand Oaks, California. Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
“The biggest positive is he felt pretty decent each and every day. And after the rounds he still felt pretty strong. And those were 5-hour rounds, tough, soft walks. That’s a good sign. He’s certainly feeling better than the last stretch from the PGA Championship through the U.S. Open. And that, in turn, will allow him to practice. Now, he still has to put the time in and work at it. Which he will.”
Woods said he will consider playing the Houston Open, but he’s never played the week before the Masters in 20 starts there as a professional. Yes, he needs competitive reps, but he likely will find it more beneficial to work at home.
“We were talking about that this morning, our progression and our training sessions, and we’ll be in the gym tomorrow afternoon and get back after it that way,” Woods said. “But I’ll make a decision quickly on whether or not I’m going to play Houston or not.”
What he does know is Augusta National. And he knows what he’ll need there to successfully defending his 2019 title when he won his fifth green jacket.
“Each and every year same thing, hitting the ball high draws, making sure I can hit a high draw anytime I want,” he said. “There are a few holes like 10 and 13, a little bit on 14, depends on the conditions, but it’s so advantageous to hit a high draw.
“That’s always been my game plan ever since I was an amateur.”
Mickelson posted rounds of 72-74-67-78 to finish at 6 over. While he has three top-3s on the PGA Tour this year in 15 starts, he’s missed seven cuts and finished worse than a tie for 41st on five occasions.
He has won both of his starts on the senior circuit.
“Disappointing week, but fun,” Mickelson said. “I love the golf course and got a few things out of the week. I have some pretty good direction on where I need to go with my game and I’ll take this week to work on it.”
Mickelson said he will talk with his wife, Amy, to decided if he’ll play the Houston Open at Memorial Park or head to Arizona for the PGA Tour Champions’ Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Phoenix Country Club.
Mickelson said he’s concerned, despite the PGA Tour’s highly successful protocols to deal with COVID-19, about the Houston Open’s decision to allow 2,000 fans per day on site. That might send him westward unless the Champions’ event allows spectators. If both allow fans, he’ll likely play Houston.
“I’ll see what course is best to get ready and I’ll do that,” he said. “But this week I’ll take to work on a couple of things and, you know, see if I can get my game sharper. I need to be much more disciplined out here. Obviously I’m making way too many mistakes and big numbers and penalty strokes and so forth, and the Champions Tour is a little bit more forgiving, you can recover a little bit easier, pins aren’t as penalizing.
“So I certainly enjoy that style of play because I can play aggressive and it’s more comparable to the way Augusta is because Augusta allows you to recover a number of times if you hit less‑than‑perfect shots.”
Patrick Cantlay had nine birdies on Sunday and rallied past third-round leader Justin Thomas to claim the 2020 Zozo Championship at Sherwood.
Patrick Cantlay charged up the leaderboard on Sunday at the Zozo Championship and perhaps didn’t even realize he had vaulted into the lead.
Golf Channel’s on-course reporter Notah Begay was following Cantlay and his group and mentioned a couple times there’s a stretch on the back nine where there is not a scoreboard.
Maybe that was a good thing.
Cantlay had nine birdies in his stellar final round, including three in a row on Nos. 13-15. His 2 on the par-3 15th was almost a 1, as his tee shot was dead-on the flagstick. His ball almost went into the hole on the second bounce. He then drained a left-to-right 10-footer to get to 24 under.
His lead went to three after a bogey by third-round leader Justin Thomas on the 15th hole.
Cantlay bogeyed the 16th but parred 17 and 18 to post a final-round 65, and then he had to wait.
Thomas couldn’t keep pace. He parred all three par-5s on the back nine and bogeyed the par-3 15th after he plugged his ball in deep grass on the rocky face short of the green.
Jon Rahm, playing in the final group with Thomas, also made a run, taking the outright lead with a birdie at 11, but he then gave two back with bogeys on 12 and 13. He later made birdie on 16 to get to 22 under to get within a shot of Cantlay.
Rahm needed a birdie on 18 to force a playoff but his 19-footer on the last was wide right. Thomas then made a birdie to forge a T-2 finish with Rahm at 22 under.
Russell Henley, Cameron Smith, Bubba Watson and Ryan Palmer were T-4 at 19 under, four shots back.
Cantlay’s win at Sherwood is his third PGA Tour win and marks the third year in a row he’s won on Tour, following his 2019 Memorial and 2018 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open titles.
The PGA Tour heads to the Bermuda Championship next week, where Brendon Todd is the defending champion.
Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are mostly having a ho-hum week at the Zozo Championship but they’re giving golf fans a nice little treat on Sunday. As Justin Ray of the 15th Club points out, Tiger and Phil will be grouped in a PGA Tour round for the …
Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are mostly having a ho-hum week at the Zozo Championship but they’re giving golf fans a nice little treat on Sunday.
As Justin Ray of the 15th Club points out, Tiger and Phil will be grouped in a PGA Tour round for the 38th time in the final round at Sherwood Country Club.
That ties Mickelson with Ernie Els for most rounds played with the Big Cat all-time.
Justin Thomas holds a one shot lead headed into the final round of the Zozo Championship, but don’t count out Jon Rahm.
The Zozo Championship ought to be renamed The Shootout at Sherwood. On another overcast, windless day with soft conditions, the Zozo at Sherwood Country Club continued to be a birdie-fest. The scores through 54 holes look like the Bob Hope Desert Classic. As Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee put it, “It’s like these guys are in a 100-meter race and everybody’s running downhill.”
Justin Thomas sprinted to the lead on Friday and while he didn’t have his best stuff on Moving Day, he birdied two of the last three holes to fire 5-under 67 and maintain a one-stroke lead over Jon Rahm.
“It was a good fight, hung in there well,” Thomas said. “To shoot a round like that is huge on a course like this. Usually I’m grinding to shoot a 1, 2, 3 under, but here at Sherwood the scores are very low and you need to be able to, as crazy as it is, shoot 5 under to keep pace.”
Thomas was coasting along early with birdies at his first two holes, but a bogey at eight and a couple wild shots, including one he hit off the cart path at No. 13, allowed the chasers to catch and pass Thomas. As Thomas will be the first to attest, you have to keep playing offense at Sherwood.
“You literally can birdie every single hole out here,” he said. “if you’re playing well, you can really get after it.”
Thomas, No.3 in the world, is in position to claim his 14th PGA Tour title this week because his putting stroke may have never looked better. He started working with putting coach John Graham ahead of the U.S. Open in September and this week he ranks third in the field in Strokes Gained: Putting. At 17, Thomas drained a 28-foot birdie putt to improve to 19 under and claim the 54-hole lead. But Thomas, who has closed out eight of his previous 13 54-hole leads on the Tour, knows he will need to go low on Sunday if he expects to hoist the trophy this week.
“It’s a course where you can shoot 61, 62, 63 so I can’t go out and protect the lead, I have to build it,” he said.
Especially with the World No. 2 breathing down his neck. Rahm charged up the leaderboard early playing his first seven holes in 6-under par. Rahm sank a pair of 17-foot putts on the first two holes, the latter for eagle, and he was off to the races.
“Just one dropped and it’s like OK, it’s possible to make putts and just keep going,” he said. “The last five and a half rounds my putter was absolutely cold, didn’t make anything at all. And I think the stats are there to back me up because last week I was, I think, bottom five putting and up to yesterday before getting to the back nine I was probably in bottom 10 percent. It was that putt on 11, that 20-footer for eagle that I made just kind of freed me up a little bit, made a couple more putts. And then today those putts on 1 and 2 were really helpful, obviously were key to good momentum and got confidence going. Nothing technical at all, though.”
And while the idea of World Nos. 2 and 3 trading birdies on Sunday is quite appealing, don’t rule out a spoiler such as Lanto Griffin, No. 59 in the world, who trails by two strokes after shooting 68. Griffin notched his maiden Tour title last year at the Houston Open and came out guns blazing on Saturday, making birdie at his first four holes. He had a share of the lead until he bogeyed two of his final four holes. He said he will try to draw on his experience of chasing victory in Houston last year, but conceded the bar has been raised.
“Playing against Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas is different. It’s a different field, there’s no way around it, so I’m going to have to play really well tomorrow, I’m aware of that,” he said. “But it’s fun. This is what I dreamed about, position I dreamed about being in my whole life. From being on mini tours, the Korn Ferry Tour, now to be here playing with the best players in the world in the final group, it’s a lot of fun.”
Others are lurking including Patrick Cantlay, who is the only player in the field bogey-free through 54 holes, and is part of a trio of players three back.
“It will be a little bit of a shootout, and hopefully around here you can get off to a quick start, so that’s the plan for tomorrow and try and make as many birdies as I can,” Cantlay said.
Another half dozen players including Bubba Watson and Scottie Scheffler, the last player to shoot 59 on Tour, are lurking four behind. With birdies being made in bunches, no lead is safe, said Thomas, who has failed to convert his last two 54-hole leads.
“It’s really tough,” he said of sleeping on the lead. “It doesn’t matter how big the lead is.”
Check out Sunday tee times, TV and streaming information for the PGA Tour’s Zozo Championship at Sherwood.
With the November Masters on the horizon, the world’s top players prep their games on the West Coast during the Zozo Championship at Sherwood.
After Saturday’s third round, Justin Thomas holds a one-shot lead at 19 under after carding a third-round 67. Jon Rahm sits in second at 18 under. Rahm finished Saturday with a bogey-free 9-under 63 to jump 20 spots up the leaderboard.
Lanto Griffin is in third at 17 under while Sebastián Muñoz, Ryan Palmer and Patrick Cantlay are T-4 at 16 under.
Tiger Woods shot a 71 on Saturday to sit T-68 at 3 under.
From tee times to TV info, here’s everything you need to know for the final round on Sunday.
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PGA Tour player Tony Finau said he has a new respect for COVID-19 after contracting the virus and self-isolating.
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – “It got me really good.”
That’s what Tony Finau told reporters this week about contracting COVID-19, which knocked him down and knocked him out of the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open two weeks ago.
“It was not the experience I thought I was going to have,” Finau said at the Zozo Championship at Sherwood, where he was tied for sixth entering the third round after firing 69-64. “Most guys are asymptomatic. They’re saying if you’re young and healthy, it’s not a big deal. I think I gained a little bit of respect for the virus.
“I could see that you could definitely die from it. Not that I ever felt I was going to die. But it can take your immune system to a place where I could totally see you being hospitalized from it, and it affecting your life. So I think in a way, I just gained respect for the actual virus. Not that I didn’t take it seriously, not that I wasn’t social distancing or anything like that, but just that I understand some of the measures that our country has taken in certain states. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s probably the right thing to do.
“It was worse than the flu, and it lasted way longer.”
Finau, 31, is feeling much better than he did three weeks ago. He began experiencing flu-like symptoms Oct. 3. Two days later, he drove from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas for the Shriners. He took his off-site test on Oct. 6 and got the phone call from a PGA Tour official that day that he had tested positive.
He quarantined alone for 10 days in a Las Vegas condo.
“For the first five days it got worse,” said Finau, who does not know where he contracted the virus. “I had massive headaches, body aches, and I didn’t feel like doing anything. It got me really good, fatigue wise. I’m very active. Work out quite often. Always playing golf or with my (four) kids. It knocked me down. There’s no question about it.
“For those 10 days, I didn’t feel like doing anything. I obviously didn’t get to practice. I lost my taste and smell after about four days. Still don’t have it back. That kind of sucks; I’m quite a foodie.”
Finau, No. 17 in the Official World Golf Rankings, has tested positive five times since the initial positive test, but that’s due to dead COVID-19 cells in his body. He is allowed to play because he is no longer contagious according to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control, which further state a person can return to work 10 days after the developing symptoms, provided he or she is not running a fever.
Finau could have played in last week’s CJ Cup at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas but said he didn’t feel ready.
“I needed another week,” he said.
Tony Finau looks on over the 18th green during the second round of the Zozo Championship in Thousand Oaks, California. (Harry How/Getty Images)
So far, he’s having a good week at Sherwood Country Club north of Los Angeles. And he’s looking forward to the Masters in November. Last year, he was in the final group alongside eventual winner Tiger Woods and Francesco Molinari and tied for fifth. He tied for 10th in 2018 in his only other Masters appearance.
“The silver lining for me is I’m 100 percent going to play in the Masters,” said Finau, who is making his 13th start this week since the PGA Tour returned in June after a 13-week break due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. He tied for eighth in the U.S. Open in his most recent start ahead of the Zozo and tied for fourth in the PGA Championship. He had three other top-10 finishes.
“I’m just trying to be as healthy as possible now,” he said. “I’ve made some great strides in the last week. Just how my body feels. I’ve got this week. I’m playing Houston. And I think (Augusta National) is a place where I can play well no matter what. (This ordeal) was quite rough. But I’m on the back end of it and I’m happy about that.”
Check out Round 3 tee times, TV and streaming information for the PGA Tour’s Zozo Championship at Sherwood.
With the November Masters on the horizon, the world’s top players prep their games on the West Coast during the Zozo Championship at Sherwood.
After Friday’s second round, Justin Thomas holds a one-shot lead at 14 under after back-to-back rounds of 65. Dylan Frittelli and Lanto Griffin, who also shot second-round 65s, are T-2 at 13 under headed in to the weekend.
Patrick Cantlay and Scottie Scheffler are T-4 at 12 under while Bubba Watson is tied with Richy Werenski, who shot a course-record 61 on Friday, and six others are T-6 at 11 under.
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Justin Thomas had no experience with Sherwood headed into the 2020 Zozo Championship, but he has the lead through 36 holes.
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Justin Thomas knew next to nothing about Sherwood Country Club when he set foot on the grounds to get ready for the Zozo Championship at Sherwood.
“I remember 18 and 17 and is it 15 a little bit just from seeing them on TV?” Thomas said.
Hasn’t taken him long to acclimate. Especially to the back nine.
Thomas posted his second consecutive 7-under-par 65 on Friday to take the lead in the Zozo at 14 under through 36 holes. He has shot 60 this week on the back nine, which features three par-5s. Thomas shot 7-under 29 in the first round on the back nine and a 5-under 31 in the second round.
“I think it’s a coincidence,” Thomas said of his success on the back nine. “One extra par-5 on the back helps, and I parred three of the par-5s on the front, so that’s a big difference right there. I feel like you can get just as hot on the front nine, I just haven’t done so. Hopefully I’ll do it one of these days this weekend.
“(The course) is not very difficult. It’s short and the greens are soft right now. So obviously if they get firmer and they tuck the pins a little bit more, it is going to be harder and the scores will be higher. With some of the pins that they’ve had and definitely just the softer conditions, that’s good scoring conditions for us.”
There certainly has been.
Thomas is just one clear of a stampede of players rolling toward the top of the leaderboard. Just one back are Lanto Griffin (65) and Dylan Frittelli (65). Two back are Patrick Cantlay (65) and Scottie Scheffler (65).
Eight players are three back at 11 under, including Richy Werenski, who shot a course-record 61. Also at 11 under are Patrick Reed (63), Bubba Watson (63), Tyrell Hatton (68), Harris English (67), Abraham Ancer (66), Tony Finau (64) and Kevin Kisner (67). Eight more players are at 10 under.
Thomas is already comfortable at Sherwood. Then again, he’s usually comfortable on most courses. The 2017 PGA Tour Player of the Year, a five-win campaign that included victory in the PGA Championship, is looking for his 14th PGA Tour title. The world No. 3 has six top-10 finishes in 12 starts since play resumed in June following a 13-week break due to COVID-19, including a win in WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational.
“I played well. I’m not very pleased with the finish. The last six holes I would have liked to at least have got something. Definitely having a 5‑iron and a 5‑wood out of the fairway into two par-5s and making two pars is not good,” Thomas said. “I had a great par save there on eight and I hit a lot of good shots, I just wasn’t near as tight and tidy those last four holes. So just try to go work on that a little bit to where hopefully it’s fixed for the weekend.”
