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11:13 PM ET Associated Press LA’UPULEHU-KONA, Hawaii — Jerry Kelly and Darren Clarke shared the second-round lead Friday in the Mitsubishi Electric Championship after first-round leader Retief Goosen stumbled late at Hualalai. Kelly birdied the 18th for a 5-under 67 to match Clarke at 13-under 131 with a round left in the first PGA Tour

Of the two courses the players will face this week (it’s normally three, but La Quinta got the axe this year), the Stadium Course at PGA West is by far the more difficult of the two. It’s a typical Pete Dye design, his West Coast version of TPC Sawgrass. The risks are often worth the

This is Phil Mickelson’s 30th year on the PGA Tour. And he’s never been known as the steadiest player in the world, so Lefty’s done virtually everything there is to do on a golf course. On Friday at The American Express, the 50-year-old did something in his 2,201st round on the PGA Tour that he’s

6:08 PM ET Mark Hubbard was having an awful day at The American Express and was headed toward a certain missed cut. Since he struggled throughout his second round with the putter, he tried something a little different at the ninth, his final hole of the day. You have to see it to believe it.

The property’s wild grasses and unkempt landscaping were broken only by the cracked cement path that serpentined toward nowhere. The neighborhood viewed the pasture as a tombstone for the abandoned golf course that lay beneath, but there was no epitaph for Turkey Creek Golf Club, for what it was and what it had become was

11:24 PM ET Associated Press KA’UPULEHU-KONA, Hawaii — Retief Goosen birdied 10 of the first 14 holes in a 10-under 62 to take the first-round lead Thursday in the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai. Darren Clarke was second after a 63, and Scott Parel and Jerry Kelly shot 64. The tournament is the first of

One of the PGA Tour’s longest-running events kicked off on Thursday, although it was almost unrecognizable: The American Express has no amateurs in the field this year due to COVID-19 concerns. That plus the lack of fans (for the same reason) and playing just two courses rather than three has the event that will always

Phil Mickelson has denied involvement in the commutation of Las Vegas businessman and gambler Billy Walters’ sentence by former President Donald Trump, according to an ESPN report. On Wednesday, Walters, whose insider-trading case was linked to Phil Mickelson, was one of 143 people who Trump granted clemency. A White House release listed Mickelson, along with

6:04 PM ET World No. 6 Rory McIlroy took a one-shot lead in the first round of the HSBC Golf Championship in Abu Dhabi after carding an error-free 64 to finish at eight-under before bad light stopped play on Thursday. After fog delayed the opening of play by nearly three hours, McIlroy was among the

This isn’t how John Augenstein imagined his professional golf career starting—in a pro-am without ams, at a PGA Tour event without fans. The 23-year-old makes his pro debut this week at The American Express on a sponsor’s exemption. The Vanderbilt grad decided to make the jump from the amateur ranks, forgoing one more semester of

5:57 PM ET Professional gambler Billy Walters was granted a commutation by President Donald Trump during his final day in office, and it came with the help of letters written by, among others, Phil Mickelson. Walters was sentenced to five years in prison in 2017 for an insider trading case linked to Mickelson, who ended

Ben Hogan’s career numbers speak for themselves: 64 PGA Tour wins, including nine majors have permanently carved him a spot among’s golf all-time greats. Numbers that undoubtedly would have been even better if not for a nearly life-ending car accident in 1950. But as is the case with any of the older generation of golfers,

Celebrity is the currency on which the PGA Tour Champions trades to create interest and has since it was conceived in part as a means of keeping Arnold Palmer on stage after 50. A good idea, of course. But the value of its currency depends in part on the quality of each new class of

8:29 AM ET Nothing outside of the major championships was ever guaranteed for Tiger Woods’ when it comes to his schedule. And now even that is certain in the wake of the news that the Woods recently had a microdiscectomy procedure to alleviate nerve pain in his lower back. 2 Related Apparently Woods is already

Like a number of players, Tommy Fleetwood had some serious momentum prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought last golf season (and all the other sports seasons) to a screeching halt. Before the cancellation of the Players Championship, the Englishman had a T-2 at the Abu Dhabi Championship last January, then finished third at the

8:00 AM ET A significant anniversary in Phil Mickelson‘s career passed the other day, one that highlights his early greatness while also reminding us of his longevity. It has been 30 years since Mickelson won his first PGA Tour event, doing so as a 20-year-old amateur while playing college golf at Arizona State. The feat

That said, if you backed up either Leishman or Webb did with a top-10 wager like our expert Pat Mayo did with Leish, you still came out OK. For those just getting into betting on golf, it’s usually a good idea to supplement your outright bets with a top 5 or top 10, so you

Returning to the U.S. mainland after an exciting two weeks in Hawaii to kick off 2021, the PGA Tour travels to the California desert for its next stop: The American Express. The tournament, part of the tour’s schedule since 1960, will be played on two courses: the Stadium Course at PGA West and the Nicklaus

4:55 PM ET Tiger Woods has undergone a microdiscectomy to alleviate nerve pain in his lower back and will not compete in next week’s Farmers Insurance Open or the Genesis Invitational next month. An announcement came via Woods’ Twitter account that he had “recently undergone a microdiscectomy procedure to remove a pressurized disc fragment that

There is no worse designation for a golfer than cheater. Slow players, slicers, ball retriever-owners—they are all princes compared to the creative scorekeepers in our midst. It’s not an accusation we toss around lightly, and since we’re reluctant to sully reputations just for sport, we figured the next-best thing was to provide at least a

The first time I saw Kevin Na at a press conference came in 2014 on Saturday at the Valspar Championship. I didn’t know a lot about him at the time and hadn’t really thought much about him, either. The extent of my knowledge was his infamous performance at the 2012 Players Championship, when he became

The old Bob Hope Classic, now The American Express, is one of the hallmarks of the early-year PGA Tour schedule. That includes some memorable moments—from victories by Arnold Palmer (five times), Johnny Miller (twice) and Jack Nicklaus (once)—to celebrity appearances by some of the world-class entertainers. It has given us some long-shot winners in recent

Week in and week out, the equipment scene shifts on the PGA Tour. At the Sony Open in Hawaii that meant new drivers for Russell Henley and Brendan Steele, new irons for Keegan Bradley and a new putter for Marc Leishman based on 20-plus-year-old technology. Oh, and an expanded tour staff for PXG as well.

9:06 PM ET Associated Press HONOLULU — Three shots behind with six holes to play, Kevin Na birdied three straight holes and finished with an up-and-down birdie from behind the 18th green for a 5-under 65 and a one-shot victory in the Sony Open. Na won for the fifth time in his PGA Tour career,

HONOLULU — Kevin Na freely admits there are courses on the PGA Tour that he cannot win on. “Yes, 100 percent,” he said Sunday night in a nod to many of the big ball parks that consume the schedule and serve as a defense against the bomb-and-gouge era. Fortunately for the 37-year-old South Korean, Waialae

Kevin Na hit only seven of 14 fairways on Saturday en route to shooting a third-round 61 at the Sony Open in Hawaii that left him two strokes back of leader Brendan Steele with 18 holes remaining. Presumably, then, he’s not one to worry about failing to find the short grass off the tee, a

12:50 AM ET Associated Press HONOLULU — Joaquin Niemann had no regrets about the 18th hole at the Sony Open. Four days after a pair of pars on the final hole at Kapalua led to a playoff loss, Niemann holed a 50-foot chip for eagle on the 18th hole Thursday for an 8-under 62 and

Golf fans are used to seeing low scores on the PGA Tour. But the numbers posted on Saturday at the Sony Open in Hawaii were lower collectively than usual. Way lower. During the third round at Waialae Country Club, a tight par-70 Seth Raynor design, the scoring average for the 73 golfers playing under calm,

10:40 PM ET Associated Press HONOLULU — Brendan Steele had the lowest score of his PGA Tour career with a 9-under 61, giving him a two-shot lead and another chance to win the Sony Open. Steele has reason to still be smarting from last year. He had the tournament all but won until a series

HONOLULU — New season, same story. Brendan Steele hopes the ending is different this time. A year ago at the Sony Open in Hawaii, Steele led by three going into the final round at Waialae Country Club and was up by a stroke going into the final hole of regulation. He ended up losing in