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Rahm Ends Remarkable Streak, Spieth’s Wild Ride, & Hovland Turns Heads

Published

3 years ago

February 19, 2022

Cameron Young broke the 36-hole scoring record for the Genesis Invitational, a pretty big deal considering the annual PGA Tour stop at Riviera dates back nearly a century. There’s just one slightly disappointing part about the 24-year-old’s first two days: He’s not even leading the golf tournament.

That’s because 23-year-old Joaquin Niemann broke that record as well, thanks to a second consecutive 63. That gives Niemann a blistering 16-under-par total of 126 through two days—five shots better than the previous 36-hole low at Riviera.

“I think everything is working pretty well,” Niemann told reporters after. “Obviously I’m making a lot of putts right now. I feel I’m starting my ball online with the putter. When you have greens this good when you start your line, I think you’ve got a good chance of making putts, so I think that’s been big this week.”

The young star from Chile said he didn’t get much sleep with an early tee time, but he eagled the first and birdied the second. After making the turn at five under, he bogeyed the famed 10th hole before bouncing back with birdies on four of his final eight holes.

There will be plenty of time to sleep before Niemann and Young have Saturday’s last afternoon tee time; however, nerves could always get in the way. Young, a two-time winner on the Korn Ferry Tour last year, will be looking for his first PGA Tour title. And for Niemann, who won at The Greenbrier in 2019, it seems that way.

“Yeah, it feels forever actually. I think it was two or three years ago. It feels a long time,” Niemann said. “Obviously you play this game to try to win every week and yeah, but you know how hard it is to win here and how competitive they are, how many good players there are here. You have to be patient and just wait for my week.”

At this rate, he might not have to wait much longer. Here’s what else you may have missed from Friday’s second round at Riviera.

Viktor Hovland turns heads

As he did on Thursday, Hovland played the 15th hole by hitting his tee shot down No. 16. And as he did on Thursday, he made par on the difficult par 4. Have a look:

Take two. ? https://t.co/tqnHYsPmF4 pic.twitter.com/pLH6l7p4YJ— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 18, 2022

After posting a second-round 64 to vault into contention, Hovland explained his eye-opening strategy.

“So I did that at the U.S. Amateur here in 2017,” Hovland said. “Actually, got to give my buddy Zach Bauchou some credit. He was the guy that first mentioned it. Yeah, I did it there and I did it once last year, I believe it was the third day and it was humming downwind. I think I hit a driver and a sand wedge in there. And there’s not too much trouble there I thought. Obviously that bunker on the left side is no good, but at the same time the bunker down 15 on the right is no good either. I don’t know, just fits my eye.”

But what caught the eyes of other people were Hovland’s lightning pants. Check these bad boys out:

Lightning pants for the win. ⚡️ pic.twitter.com/3fTY6pX3dU— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 18, 2022

“It’s my first time,” Hovland said of wearing the pants. “Maybe I should keep wearing them.”

Hey, when you’re ranked fourth in the entire world, you can wear whatever you want. And he was certainly in better spirits than the World No. 1 following his round …

Jon Rahm’s remarkable streak ends

Well, he was due for a bad round. And it really wasn’t even that bad.

Rahm shot a one-over-par 72 on Friday, his first over-par round on the PGA Tour since Day 1 of the Open Championship. Yep, that’s right. We’re talking about July. As in seven months ago.

Rahm’s streak of shooting rounds of par or better ended at 34, one of the longest in tour history, and the longest since Charles Howell III also had 34 in 2003. The record, as you probably guess, belongs to Tiger Woods, who once went 52 rounds without shooting over par. Crazy.

On the bright side for Rahm, thanks to a clutch seven-foot par putt on 18, he’ll get to play the weekend. Unlike the next guy . . .

Dustin Johnson’s weird week

Although not technically the betting favorite entering this week (that would be Rahm), Johnson was certainly a favorite among fantasy experts, and for good reason. The two-time major champ has a sparkling record at Riviera with 10 top-10s in 14 starts, highlighted by a win and two runner-ups. But he was the most surprising player to miss the cut—especially when you consider how well he played during his Friday back nine.

Ben Jared

Johnson closed with a bogey-free 31, capped by a birdie on his final hole. But it proved to be too little too late. His undoing? A 40 on his front nine, including a double bogey on the par-3 16th. Oh, and a 73 on Thursday that also featured a double bogey on No. 10.

And all of this amid speculation that Johnson could join the Saudi-backed Super Golf League. Although he was able to avoid the media this week, he was unable to overcome a sloppy short game that cost him more than three shots over two rounds.

It’s been a slow start to the season for Johnson, who has only played in three events with a T-25 at Torrey Pines his best result. If he is thinking about leaving the PGA Tour, that can’t be helping his bargaining power.

Jordan Spieth’s (latest) wild ride

One guy who was using his short game to make up strokes on the field was Jordan Spieth. Shocking, we know.

The three-time major champ flashed some magic on the back nine, beginning with this chip-in eagle on No. 11:

Chip-in eagle at 11. ?@JordanSpieth gets to -10 and -5 on the day. pic.twitter.com/iqQwG0guh4— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 18, 2022

But then he managed four consecutive up-and-down pars on 12-15, three of which only required tap-in putts. And despite only hitting 11 greens in regulation and losing strokes on the greens, including a three-putt on No. 18, Spieth shot 67 and is T-4 heading into the weekend.

In other words, he’s just where he wants to be. Ready to make another Saturday charge—just this time at a place with no dangerous cliffs.

This article originally appeared on Golf Digest.

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Meet The Canadian Open Qualifier Tied To ClickIt Golf!

“This week was incredible,” he said. “A dream come true.”

Published

3 days ago

June 9, 2025

James Fairway

Josh Goldenberg doesn’t plan to quit his day job. But he had a great time dabbling in his old career.

RBC-Final-Qualifier-Story-Image-1748825470

He gave up on pro golf, then qualified for his first PGA Tour event.

Read the full story here
https://golf.com/news/josh-goldenberg-rbc-canadian-open/?amp=1

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Bets & Babes: Betting on Birdies

Published

1 week ago

June 4, 2025

Sports Betting Babe

In this latest episode of Bets and Babes join me and my special guest Robert from the World Series of Golf as we tee up a whole new way to think about betting on the green.

We break down golf betting basics, share hilarious stories and talk about how to bet in a way that might resonate with us ladies.

Whether you’re a total newbie or just curious how to make golf Sundays more exciting, this episode delivers fun, flirty, and smart tips to get you in the game. 🎧⛳💸

Click below to listen to the entire episode and leave your comments and suggestions for future episodes.

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The Bogey Man’s Guide to Accidental Course Exploration: Or, How I Found My Ball (Eventually) in the Rough of Life

Published

2 weeks ago

May 27, 2025

The Bogeyman "Boo"

Ah, golf. The gentle game of precision, patience, and occasionally, profound personal humiliation. You know, the kind that makes you question all your life choices, particularly the one where you decided to spend your Saturday morning chasing a tiny white ball around 18 acres of manicured torture.

Boo here, reporting live from the depths of a particularly thorny patch of “rough” that I’m fairly certain wasn’t on the course map. My mission? To recount a tale of a golf shot so spectacularly off-target, it became less about breaking par and more about breaking new ground. Literally.

It was a glorious Tuesday. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and my swing felt… well, it felt like something. I was on the par-4 7th, a hole notorious for its deceptive dogleg and a bunker that swallows balls faster than a hungry teenager devours pizza. My plan was simple: a nice, controlled fade, landing gently just short of the green. A textbook approach, really.

What actually happened was less “textbook” and more “abstract expressionism.” My driver, bless its misguided heart, decided that “fade” was merely a suggestion, and “controlled” was a concept best left to professional pilots. The ball, a brand-new, gleaming Titleist Pro V1 (because, you know, optimism), launched with the trajectory of a startled pheasant and veered sharply right. So sharply, in fact, it cleared the cart path, hopped over the maintenance shed, and disappeared into what I can only describe as a dense, untamed jungle previously known as “the woods bordering the 7th fairway.”

Now, a lesser golfer, a more sensible golfer, might have declared it lost, taken a drop, and moved on with their dignity mostly intact. But I, dear readers, am Mr. Bogey Man. And the Bogey Man doesn’t abandon his children, especially when they cost $5 a pop.

So, armed with a 7-iron (optimism again, clearly), a profound sense of misplaced determination, and a faint hope that perhaps a deer had picked it up and was using it as a chew toy, I plunged into the abyss.

The first five minutes were a blur of tangled vines, unseen roots, and the distinct feeling that I was being watched by small, judgmental woodland creatures. My pristine golf shoes quickly became mud-caked relics. My carefully tucked-in shirt became a casualty of low-hanging branches. I swear, I heard a squirrel snicker.

Then, a glimmer! A flash of white amidst the green. “Aha!” I cried, startling a family of robins. I pushed through a particularly stubborn bush, only to find… a discarded plastic water bottle. My heart sank faster than my last putt from 3 feet.

I pressed on, muttering to myself about the unfairness of golf, the existential dread of lost balls, and whether it was too late to take up competitive napping. Just as I was about to give up and declare the ball a permanent resident of the arboreal underworld, I saw it. Nestled perfectly at the base of an ancient oak, gleaming defiantly, was my Pro V1.

The triumph! The sheer, unadulterated joy! It was like finding the Holy Grail, if the Holy Grail was spherical and prone to slicing. I carefully extracted it, brushed off a few leaves, and held it aloft.

Then I looked around. I had no idea where I was. The fairway was a distant, hazy memory. The cart path? A myth. I was utterly, gloriously lost.

It took another fifteen minutes of bushwhacking, a brief but intense wrestling match with a particularly aggressive thistle, and the accidental discovery of what I’m pretty sure was a very old, very moldy sandwich, but I eventually stumbled back onto the course. My playing partners, who had long since finished the hole and were contemplating sending out a search party (or at least ordering another round of drinks), looked at me with a mixture of pity and amusement.

My score on the 7th? Let’s just say it involved a number that would make a mathematician weep. But the story? The adventure? The sheer ridiculousness of it all? Priceless.

So, the next time your ball decides to take an unscheduled tour of the local flora and fauna, don’t despair. Embrace it. See it as an opportunity for accidental exploration. You might not break 80, but you’ll definitely have a story. And isn’t that what golf is really about? (Besides the frustration, the lost balls, and the occasional snickering squirrel, of course.)

Until next time, keep those swings (mostly) in bounds, and remember: even a bogey can be an adventure.

Boo