Masters champion Jon Rahm, Tyrell Hatton wrap up PGA Tour's season-long campaigns
Jon Rahm and Tyrell Hatton won the PGA Tour's two main points-based races that cover the regular FedEx Cup season.
Rahm finished on top of the regular-season FedEx Cup points list to claim the top position in the Comcast Business Tour Top 10. He earned a $4 million bonus — more than the first-place check of the first two FedEx Cup playoffs, this week at the St. Jude Championship and next week at the BMW Championship.
Rahm's Masters victory highlighted a four-win season, currently two more than six players tied with two titles each.
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The rest of the top 10 were Players Championship winner Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Max Homa, U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark, British Open champion Brian Harman of St. Simons Island, Ga., Viktor Hovland, Keegan Bradley, Rickie Fowler and Tony Finau. They earned bonuses ranging from $3 million for Scheffler to $1 million for Finau.
Rahm said in a statement that it was "a reminder of the season I put together and all of the hard work and support the team put in to get there. I try my hardest to win each and every time I tee it up in a tournament, and this award is a great acknowledgment of that goal.”
Rahm opened the season with six top-10s finishes in a row and ended with 10 top-10s and 12 top-25s. He hasn't won since the Masters but neither has he yielded first on the points list since winning the Genesis Invitational.
Hatton takes the Risk-Reward
Hatton, from England, earned a $1 million bonus for capturing the Tour's Aon Risk Reward Challenge, a season-long competition of how players finished on the most strategically challenging holes on the Tour.
Hatton hit 82 percent of the greens on the designated hole she played and made birdie 81 percent of the time. The seven-time winner worldwide finished solo second at The Players Championship behind Scheffler, helped by the lowest back-nine score in tournament history with a 29, highlighted by birdies on his last five holes.
The challenge used 39 holes on the PGA Tour. The LPGA is conducting a separate competition that will earn the winner the same bonus as Hatton: $1 million.
Big changes at Pebble
Whenever the PGA Tour changes its scheduling format, pleasing every tournament director and fan base is next to impossible.
Even though the Tour's event at Pebble Beach replaces the WM Phoenix Open as a "signature event," not everyone is happy with the changes to the tournament that began in the 1930s as the "Crosby Clambake," a nod to its founder, entertainer Bing Crosby.
Pebble, however, won't be the same. The 156-player field has pared almost in half to 80, there is no weekend cut, the number of courses used goes from three to two (Monterey Peninsula is out, Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill remain in) and while there will still be one amateur player with each pro, they won't be playing on the weekend: amateurs will compete in only the first 36 holes.
So no more chilly Saturday afternoons spent watching Bill Murray dance with female volunteers in a bunker.
The only other signature events to have a 36-hole cut are the invitationals hosted by Hall of Fame players: the Genesis Invitational at Riviera (Tiger Woods), the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill and the Memorial (Jack Nicklaus).
The cut in those tournaments is to the low 50 and anyone else within 10 shots of the lead.
The other signature events are The Sentry at Kapalua, RBC Heritage at Hilton Head; the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow; and the Travelers Championship in Connecticut.
Leaderboards enhanced
The PGA Tour's website and app will begin featuring a "win probability," in real-time next to every participant's name on the leaderboard, beginning with this week's St. Jude Championship.
Using ShotLink data, fans can view a player's odds to win, make the cut or earn a top-10 finish at any point in the tournament. The win probability function combines statistics for individual players, aggregated Tour player metrics, and hole-specific data to create thousands of tournament outcome simulations for each player in the field to determine probabilities and then recalculates and updates the probabilities hundreds of times during play using real-time ShotLink-generated data.
PGA TOUR
Event: FedEx St. Jude Championship, Thursday-Sunday, TPC Southwind, Memphis, Tenn.
At stake: $20 million purse ($3.6 million and 2,000 FedEx Cup points to the winner).
Defending champion: Will Zalatoris.
TV: Golf Channel (Thursday-Friday, 2-6 p.m.; Saturday, 1-3 p.m.; Sunday, 12-2 p.m.); CBS (Saturday, 3-6 p.m.; Sunday, 2-6 p.m.).
Area players entered (FedEx Cup rank): Brian Harman (6), Harris English (43), J.T. Poston (48), Keith Mitchell (55), Sam Ryder (63).
Notable: The FedEx Cup playoffs begin with 55 fewer players in the first leg than the previous 16 years, and with the top 50 on the points list moving on next week to Olympia Fields, 40 less advancing to the next step. … Zalatoris, who is out for the season with a back injury, defeated Sepp Straka with a bogey on the third playoff hole. … The field is led by the top three on the points list, Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy.
LIV GOLF LEAGUE
Event: LIV Golf Bedminster, Friday-Sunday, Trump National, Bedminster N.J.
At stake: $20 million purse ($4 million to the winner).
Defending champion: Henrik Stenson.
TV: CW (Saturday-Sunday, 1-6 p.m.).
Area players entered: Cameron Smith.
Notable: Stenson defeated Dustin Johnson and Matthew Wolfe by two shots.
LPGA TOUR
Event: AIG Women’s Open, Thursday-Sunday, Walton Heath Golf Club, Surrey, England.
At stake: $7.6 million purse ($1,095,000 to the winner).
Defending champion: Ashleigh Buhai.
TV: USA (Thursday-Friday, 6 a.m.-1 p.m.; Saturday, 7 a.m.-1 p.m.; Sunday, 7 a.m.-12 p.m.); NBC (Sunday, 12-2 p.m.).
Area players entered: Mel Reid.
Notable: Buhai defeated In Gee Chun with a par on the fourth playoff hole.
PGA TOUR CHAMPIONS
Event: Boeing Classic, Friday-Sunday, The Club at Snoqualmie Ridge, Snoqualmie, Wash.
At stake: $2.2 million purse ($330,000 to the winner).
Defending champion: Miguel Angel Jimenez.
TV: Golf Channel (Friday, 10 a.m.-12 p.m.; Saturday, 6-8 p.m.; Sunday, 5-7 p.m.).
Area players entered: Fred Funk, Davis Love III, Vijay Singh.
Notable: Jimenez defeated David McKenzie by two shots.
KORN FERRY TOUR
Event: Pinnacle Bank Championship, Thursday-Sunday, The Club at Indian Creek, Omaha, Neb.
At stake: $1 million purse ($180,000 to the winner).
Defending champion: Robby Shelton.
TV: None.
Area players entered: Blayne Barber, A.J. Crouch, Lanto Griffin, Michael Mattiace, Jared Wolfe.
Notable: Mattiace, a Bolles and UNF graduate, is playing his third Korn Ferry Tour event after shooting 64 to win a Monday qualifier at the Wilderness Ridge Golf Club. … Shelton shot 65 in the final round to beat Ben Taylor by one shot.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Masters champion Jon Rahm, Players runner-up Tyrell Hatton collect bonuses
