2C z FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2019 z USA TODAY SPORTS
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — The views at
Liberty National Golf Club have always
been great. But the course, typically, has
not been easy.
The first time the PGA Tour visited
here, in 2009, no player finished better
than 9-under par. And in 2013, only five
were able to complete the week double-
digits under par.
But with the course softened by
heavy rains, and the wind almost com-
pletely still on Thursday morning, the
first round of The Northern Trust was a
completely different story.
The best players in the world weren’t
thinking about the trouble that lurks ev-
erywhere around this picturesque
place. They were trying to hit it right at
the flag, because they knew this was an
opportunity to make birdies.
“It’s so soft out there, you need to
shoot low scores this week to have a
chance,” said Rory McIlroy, who fin-
ished with a 6-under 65. “Obviously ...
there are some pretty good players that
have shot good scores, so just going to
try to have to keep the foot down.”
Take dead aim was the motto on this
day, as 11 players in the morning wave of
golfers shot 5-under par or better in the
first event of the FedEx Cup playoffs.
There were a couple of notable ex-
ceptions: World No. 1 Brooks Koepka
just couldn’t find any momentum,
shooting 1-under 70. And Tiger Woods
never looked sharp on the way to a 75.
Troy Merritt took the early lead, tying
the course record with a 9-under 62.
Merritt came in ranked No. 72 in the
standings, and needed to move into the
top 70 to advance to the BMW Champi-
onship next week.
But most of the golfers who played
well Thursday were already well estab-
lished in that race.
No. 2 Dustin Johnson shot a 63, No. 3
Rory McIlroy shot a 65, as did No. 9
Webb Simpson and No. 16 Tony Finau.
And No. 10 Jon Rahm shot a 64.
So why did so many of the top players
in the game excel? Rahm says it’s be-
cause the course favors guys who hit the
long ball: “The rough is not very, very
thick. We were pretty aggressive off the
tee, and you start taking certain lines
and hitting drivers everywhere, with a
little bit of a loose attitude knowing that
if you miss a couple shots and still have
a chance with the rough, it helps out.”
Rahm played in a threesome with
Simpson and Johnson, and he said it
was helpful seeing his partners make somany birdies — they were a combined
21-under.
“Everything looked easy and we fed
off each other,” Rahm said. “One of uswas always close and we were trying to
get it closer than the next person and
making putts. There was a good vibe in
the group going on.”Merritt scorches Liberty National with 62
Andy Vasquez
North Jersey Record
USA TODAY Sports Network
Troy Merritt lines up his putt on the 2nd hole en route to shooting 9-under-par
62 in The Northern Trust. MARK KONEZNY/USA TODAY SPORTSJERSEY CITY, N.J. – Brooks Koepka
seemed to smolder as he watched J.B.
Holmes work in the final round of the
British Open last month, out of the run-
ning for golf ’s final major of the season
but diligently lining up shots anyway -
to an almost obnoxious degree.
The time it took to play each shot
didn’t pay off. Holmes finished with a 16-
over-par 87 after starting the round in
second place, six shots behind leader
Shane Lowry.
And while Koepka, the world No. 1,
didn’t place any blame on Holmes for his
own 3-over-par 74, Koepka has become
an outspoken adversary to slow play.
Ahead of the Northern Trust at Liberty
National Golf Course, Koepka continued
his campaign against a paint-drying
pace.
“I get that you can take a long time for
your thought process, but once you’re
done thinking about it, just go. What
else is there to do? That’s been the prob-
lem I have,” Koepka said Wednesday.
“It’s just gotten out of hand. It seems
now that there are so many sports psy-
chologists and everybody telling every-
body that they can’t hit it until they are
ready, that you have to fully process ev-
erything. I mean, I take 15 seconds and
go, and I’ve done all right.”
Koepka’s done more than all right,
entering the FedEx Cup Playoffs with a
commanding lead after three wins - in-cluding the PGA Championship and
WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational - and
eight top-10 finishes.
Koepka figured players might be de-
ciding which club to hit. But for players
who arrive earlier in the week for prac-
tice rounds, Koepka feels it should al-
ready be fairly obvious to them which
club to use, particularly in the tee box.
Midway through the final round at
Royal Portrush last month, Koepka
pointed to an imaginary watch on his
wrist, staring at an official. The message
was clear: let’s speed this round up. But
officials are hesitant to enforce pace of
play regulations, he says.
“Try to get put on the clock, but
doesn’t seem to work because nobody
will penalize anybody,” Koepka said.
“And you know what, even if I take over
40 seconds, penalize me. I’ll be the guin-
ea pig. It doesn’t matter. It needs to hap-
pen.”
Rory McIlroy doesn’t think a shot
clock in golf would be the perfect fix to
pacing issues, but the Northern Irish-
man wants something done.
“For me, I think the guys that are slow
are the guys that get too many chances
before they are penalized,” McIlroy said.
“So, it should be a warning and then ashot. It should be, you’re put on the
clock and that is your warning, and then
if you get a bad time while on the clock,
it’s a shot. That will stamp it out right
away.
“I don’t understand why we can’t just
implement that. We are not children
that need to [be] told five or six times
what to do. OK, you’re on the clock. OK, I
know if I play slowly here, I’m going to
get penalized, and I think that’s the way
forward.”
Koepka believes slow play is “
percent” on players taking their time
rather than hazards and adverse weath-
er conditions forcing increased time and
attention to be paid on each shot.
But with lengthy rounds and waiting
on tee boxes for groups ahead to finish
up, golf can get frustrating, even for the
world’s best players.
“Five and a half hours to play golf is a
long time. Everybody’s going to get
bored,” Koepka said. “There’s not much
action in golf. If you really think about it,
you’re probably only playing for about
five minutes - maybe six, seven minutes
total - and the rest of the time, I’m just
walking. You try walking by yourself for
four, four and a half hours, and see how
boring it gets.”Koepka, McIlroy tired of unpunished slow play
Andy Kostka
Golfweek USA TODAY Network
Brooks Koepka lines up a putt on the
17th hole during the FedEx St. Jude
Invitational.
CHRISTOPHER HANEWINCKEL/USA TODAY SPORTSGOLF
JERSEY CITY, N.J. – There is no
Strokes Gained statistic that measures
a man’s energy or his passion, which is
probably just as well for Tiger Woods
since any reading would surely have
been as uninspiring as the other num-
bers he produced Thursday at the
Northern Trust.
The last time Woods was at Liberty
National Golf Club was in the fall of 2017,
when he was a captain’s assistant at the
Presidents Cup and deep into an injury
layoff that left him unsure if he would
ever again play golf at the highest level.
He did, as we all know. In one of the
most remarkable comebacks in sport,
Woods won the Tour Championship last
September and a fifth Masters title in
April. But since then Woods has been a
seldom-seen ghostly figure on Tour, ap-
pearing somewhere between physically
spent and emotionally uninterested.
His week at Liberty National was ef-
fectively over by lunchtime on Day One.
His four-over-par 75 was a hodgepodge
of erratic tee shots, mediocre irons and
uninspired putting. Worse is that it
came on an easy golf course, where
more than half the field was under par
by early afternoon. The Masters cham-
pion was at the shabby end of the lea-
derboard, 13 shots off the pace. There
weren’t many positive takeaways from
his post-round comments.
“I just didn’t play well.”
“It was just off.”
“I had my opportunities to turn it
around and I didn’t do it.”
“I was off.”
Woods entered the week 28th in the
FedEx Cup standings, guaranteed a spot
in next week’s BMW Championship in
Chicago, where the top 70 players ad-
vance. A missed cut at the Northern
Trust—which would seem highly likely
at this juncture—will leave Woods out-
side the top 30 on the points list heading
to Chicago. Which means he would have
to fight to qualify for the Tour Champi-
onship at East Lake. And fight is one
thing he seems short of these days.
Woods has immense pride—even inthe darkest of times that never
changed—but that famous passion is
gone, for now at least. He admitted this
week to aches and pains that make
high-level golf next to impossible some
days. But there have also been days
when he insists his balky back is fine
and that he simply played poorly. “It’s a
little bit stiff, yeah, but that’s just the
way it’s going to be,” he said with a re-
signed realism.
Barring a bounce-back on Friday—he
will need something in the mid-to-low
60s to have any chance of making the
cut—and a turnaround in his form next
week at Medinah, Woods’ season will
likely end in Chicago. In retrospect it
probably ended April 14, the day heslipped into the green jacket at Augusta
National. Woods is not a man who play
for trophies with title sponsors. Nothing
else he did for the year would matter
more than the Masters, and Woods
knew it.
Like many an affluent father, Woods
took most of the summer off.
Unfortunately, he works in an indus-
try that places a premium on per-
formances delivered during those
months.
The Northern Trust is only his second
non-major start since the Masters. He
missed the cut at the PGA Champion-
ship in May, labored to a T-21 at the Peb-
ble Beach in the U.S. Open, then had an-
other early exit at the Open Champion-
ship.
Woods’s slender schedule has less in
common with a major champion than
with Jack Nicklaus when he joined the
senior circuit 30 years ago—just the ma-
jors and a handful of other events. In
short, be a legend in his spare time.
And maybe that’s enough for his
fans, who for several years had to con-
sider the prospect that their hero
couldn’t even get healthy enough to be a
part-time player. No matter how poorly
he played Thursday, or how truncated
his run in the FedEx Cup playoffs may
prove to be, there exists no measure by
which Woods’ year can be deemed a fail-
ure. He carries himself with the air of a
man who knows as much. The king has
abdicated his throne for the rest of the
year. Best to just give thanks for what he
brought to the battlefield while he could,
and hope for the same in 2020.Eamon Lynch
Columnist
Golfweek
USA TODAY NETWORKTiger Woods hits his tee shot on the 17th hole during the first round of The
Northern Trust at Liberty National Golf Course. MARK KONEZNY/USA TODAY SPORTSTiger’s season fell off since Augusta