PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Golf’s biggest stars are at The Players Championship this week.
Many of them are heading home after missing the cut.
While the official 36-hole cut won’t come until Saturday morning when the second round will be completed, the following players have no chance of playing two more rounds in the PGA Tour’s flagship event.
Among those saying goodbye were defending champion Rory McIlroy, 2009 Players champion Henrik Stenson, 2015 Players champion Rickie Fowler, 2018 Players champion Webb Simpson, Viktor Hovland, Xander Schauffele, Tony Finau, Tommy Fleetwood, Patrick Cantlay, Gary Woodland, Ian Poulter and two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson.
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The projected cut is even par. The top 65 players and ties make the cut.
“I’m looking forward to (getting home),” said McIlroy, who has played four consecutive weeks and seven of the last eight. “I don’t want to say it’s been a long four weeks, but it’s funny. I used to think four weeks in a row was nothing, and then I feel like I’m getting old because by the fourth week I’m like, a little achy, a couple things are hurting, so I’m looking forward to getting home.
“That’s not the reason I didn’t play very well this week, but yeah, it’s felt like a long four weeks.”
Here are some of the game’s biggest names and best players who won’t be playing on the weekend.
Rory McIlroy, 79-75 (+10)
Rory McIlroy during the second round of the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. (Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)
The four-time major champion and former world No. 1 said last Sunday after a flat final round in the Arnold Palmer Invitational that he needed a spark to turn things around. He didn’t find it at TPC Sawgrass. McIlroy, who hasn’t won since the fall of 2019, started his week with a double bogey and eight holes later he made a quadruple-bogey 8. His 154 total is the highest 36-hole score he’s posted when missing the cut. His recent struggles trace back to the fall when he started chasing Bryson DeChambeau, who bulked up and sped up to become of the one game’s longest hitters and the U.S. Open champion. “Doing a little bit of speed training, started getting sucked into that stuff, swing got flat, long, and too rotational,” he said. “Obviously I added some speed and am hitting the ball longer, but what that did to my swing as a whole probably wasn’t a good thing, so I’m sort of fighting to get back out of that. “I felt like I made some good strides. I played well at Tour Championship, played well at the U.S. Open. I sort of look back at Winged Foot and I look at my swing there, and I would be pretty happy with that again, and then after Winged Foot I had a few weeks before we went to the West Coast and I started to try to hit the ball a bit harder, hit a lot of drivers, get a bit more speed, and I felt like that was sort of the infancy of where these swing problems have come from.” McIlroy said it will take a little time to get back to where he wants but that it’s not too far away. Basically, he has to back away from being like Bryson. “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t anything to do with what Bryson did at the U.S. Open,” he said. “I think a lot of people saw that and were like, whoa, if this is the way they’re going to set golf courses up in the future, it helps. It really helps. “The one thing that people don’t appreciate is how good Bryson is out of the rough. Not only because of how upright he is but because his short irons are longer than standard, so he can get a little more speed through the rough than us, than other guys. And I thought being able to get some more speed is a good thing, and to the detriment a little bit of my swing, I got there, but I just need to maybe rein it back in a little bit.”
Viktor Hovland, 72-74 (+2)
Viktor Hovland during the second round of The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass – Stadium Course. (Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports)
The rising youngster and world No. 13 got a call from his mother, Galina, from Norway shortly after his first round and was alerted he may have committed a penalty. Hovland got in contact with Tour officials and video evidence confirmed he failed to return his mark to its proper place. Hovland had marked his ball and then moved it the length of a putter head to get out of the way of Justin Thomas’ putting line. But he didn’t move the marker back to its original position. He was penalized two shots under rule 3.3b. The two shots cost him the cut. “Yeah, it’s unfortunate,” he said. “I’ve already kind of put that past me. I’m just more disappointed that I wasn’t able to play better because I had a good start today, and if I would have just kept going in that direction, I could have been, let’s say, 5-under par and then going into the weekend with a chance to win the golf tournament. Just disappointed I didn’t play very good today.” Hovland had made 22 consecutive cuts.
Rickie Fowler, 77-73 (+6)
Rickie Fowler during the first round of The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass – Stadium Course. (Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports)
The struggle continued for one of the game’s most popular players. A swing change hasn’t fully taken hold and he hasn’t won since capturing the 2019 Waste Management Phoenix Open. His most recent top-10 came in the 2020 Sentry Tournament of Champions 14 months ago, and in his last 45 starts, his missed cuts (14) have more than doubled his top-10s (6). He isn’t qualified for the upcoming Masters, which he’s played 10 consecutive years.
Xander Schauffele, 76-72 (+4)
Xander Schauffele during the first round of The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass – Stadium Course. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports
The world No. 5 had the longest made-cut streak of 23 starts heading to the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass but started his first round with four bogeys and two double bogeys in his first 10 holes and couldn’t recover. His last missed cut came in the 2020 Farmers Insurance Open.
Tony Finau, 78-69 (+3)
Tony Finau during the second round of The Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass – Stadium Course. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports
He’s ranked No. 14 in the world and rolled into TPC Sawgrass as one of the hottest players on the planet with finishes of 4th-T2-T2-2nd-14th in his last five starts. And then he started The Players by going double bogey-bogey-bogey-par-bogey-par-bogey-par-par-bogey-bogey. Go figure. He made a longshot run at making the cut by posting a 4-under 32 on his first nine in the second round but ran into a string of pars on his inward nine. His last missed cut came 14 starts ago.
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