Talk about taking the road less traveled.

The PGA Tour board has approved sweeping changes to eligibility that wipes out 25 cards starting in 2026.

Keegan Bradley has gone from the last man in the BMW Championship to the winner.

Keegan Bradley finished a wild day at Castle Pines with a birdie for a 70 and a one-shot lead over Adam Scott.

Adam Scott was happy to be in the BMW Championship because he's assured of being in all the signature events next year.

Keegan Bradley went from sweating whether he would get to the BMW Championship to taking the lead at Castle Pines.

Hideki Matsuyama is running away with the FedEx St. Jude Championship in sweltering Memphis, Tennessee.

Robert MacIntyre is an Open champion in his native Scotland.

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan says the difficulty in finalizing a deal with the Saudi backers of LIV Golf isn’t a reason for concern.

Tiger Woods was out early on Pinehurst No. 2 for the first official practice day at the U.S. Open.

Tiger Woods fired a 1-over par 72 during the opening round of the PGA Championship.

How much has golf changed in the 10 years since the PGA Championship was last at Valhalla.

Jimmy Dunne is one of the key architects behind the PGA Tour's stunning deal with the Saudi backers of LIV Golf.

Tiger Woods has company in player negotiations with the Saudi-backers of LIV Golf.

Rory McIlroy could be rejoining the PGA Tour board just six months after he resigned.

Hideki Matsuyama felt plenty of nerves on the back nine at Augusta National when he won the Masters.

The PGA Tour has taken a step toward sparking negotiations with the Saudi Arabia national wealth fund behind LIV Golf.

Players on the PGA Tour board of directors are moving closer to meeting with the Saudi leader behind rival LIV Golf.

LIV Golf is a different breed of golf with its 54-hole tournaments, guaranteed cash and music blaring.

Min Woo Lee has extended his lead to three shots at the Australian PGA Championship after a 5-under 66 to move to 17 under after three rounds.

Lexi Thompson had a remarkable week in Las Vegas and still missed the cut by three shots on the PGA Tour.

A group of two dozen officers posed for a photo with escaped murderer Danelo Cavalcante, minutes after his capture.

The new PGA Tour model has eight $20 million events that cater to the best players.

Lucas Glover has won the Wyndham Championship for his first PGA Tour title in more than two years.

Russell Henley still thinks about a poor finish that cost him the Wyndham Championship two years ago.

Denny McCarthy came inches from shooting a 59, settling for a 10-under 60 for the lowest round of his PGA Tour career, and Rory McIlroy made his first ace on tour on a day of low numbers at the Travelers Championship.

Max Homa didn’t make the cut in his home U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club.

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Wyndham Clark shot 68 on Sunday for a four-shot victory over Xander Schauffele at the Wells Fargo Championship to earn his first career win on the PGA Tour.

Wyndham Clark shot an 8-under 63 in the Wells Fargo Championship, putting him in position for his first PGA Tour win.

Tyrrell Hatton shot a 6-under 65 to move into a share of the second-round lead at the Wells Fargo Championship, while Rory McIlroy’s bid for a record fourth tournament title hit a major snag.

Heavy rain that left pools of standing water across Augusta National brought play to a halt at the Masters on Saturday.

Zendaya, Jason Bateman, Jeff Bridges and Aubrey Plaza will be some of the presenters at Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy are closer to seeing their high-tech golf league become reality.

Getting to No. 1 in the world is difficult enough.

Jordan Spieth is playing about how he expects, and that's a good thing.

No two golf tournaments held in consecutive weeks in the same state have so little in common.

Scott Stallings received the best package of all for Christmas because it included an invitation to play in the Masters.

The Presidents Cup stays with the Americans, just like it always does.

The Americans have what otherwise would look to be a commanding lead in the Presidents Cup.

The matches were close at the end.

The Americans have the stronger team and they looked the part at the Presidents Cup.

So much has changed since the International team nearly won the Presidents Cup the last time.

Trevor Immelman is using five of his six captain’s picks on Presidents Cup rookies.

It sure doesn't sound like Wentworth will be a place for PGA Tour players and LIV Golf players to visit over tea.

Justin Lower lost his PGA Tour card in brutal fashion when he three-putted from 60 feet on the final hole of the regular season.

Patrick Cantlay is a winner again at the BMW Championship in another thriller.

Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele play practice rounds just about every tournament.

Adam Scott felt he was playing well enough that he should start seeing some better scores at some point.

Keegan Bradley hasn’t been to the FedEx Cup finale in four years.

Getting to the Tour Championship isn’t all that’s at stake in the second FedEx Cup playoff event.

Will Zalatoris is finally a winner on the PGA Tour.

Ted Scott was retiring last fall.

Rory McIlroy’s wait to complete the career Grand Slam will extend into at least 2023.

As tradition dictates, there is now very bad news to report about Canadian golfers Mike Weir and Mackenzie Hughes.

Kevin Kisner is back in the semifinals of the Dell Technologies Match Play.

Sixteen players have made it to the weekend in the Dell Technologies Match Play.

Takumi Kanaya of Japan is headed to the weekend of the Dell Technologies Match Play in a surprising turn of events.

The opening day of the Dell Technologies Match Play has had its share of pillow fights.

No other tournament in golf is more fickle than Match Play.

Tommy Fleetwood and Tom Hoge share the lead after a long and wet start to The Players Championship.

Rory McIlroy has opened with a 65 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and has a three-shot lead over the early starters.

Joaquin Niemann has another scoring record at Riviera and is one step closer to winning the Genesis Invitational.

Joaquin Niemann returned from his best day of golf at Riviera and had another round just like it.

Tiger Woods is back on the PGA Tour but not the way he would prefer.

Tiger Woods now has everyone guessing.

Talor Gooch of Oklahoma had no problem with 25 mph wind that swept over Sea Island.

Rickie Fowler is back in the spotlight in Las Vegas.

Jon Rahm made it through another bogey-free round and has a one-shot lead in The Northern Trust.

Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas share the lead at 63 after one round of The Northern Trust.

Kevin Kisner made birdie on the second extra hole to win a record-tying six-man playoff at the Wyndham Championship.

Russell Henley shot an 8-under 62, his lowest round in more than two years, to take the lead Thursday in the suspended first round of the Wyndham Championship.

Two editions in its return to the Olympic program, golf is building momentum.

The hardest part of Sergio Garcia's day was before he even got to Royal St. George's.

Argentinian golfer Ángel Cabrera has been sentenced to two years in prison on assault charges against his former partner.

Louis Oosthuizen and Sergio Garcia are among Olympic qualifiers who aren't going to Tokyo next month.

Anyone hopeful of a Bryson DeChambeau-Brooks Koepka pairing at the U.S. Open will have to wait.

The PGA Championship gets underway at the Ocean Course, stretched to 7,800-plus yards as a defense against a new generation of power-hitters.

Jordan Spieth remembers being in a bad place mentally the last time the PGA Championship was at Kiawah Island.

The PGA Tour is awarding a $40 million bonus pool to the top 10 players who move the needle in golf, regardless of how they perform inside the ropes.

There was a time when the top golfers at big tournaments would always get a question from Japanese media about Hideki Matsuyama.

Herman Keiser won a green jacket after the Masters went four years without being played because of World War II.

The Masters features only six players, three of them amateurs, who have never played in the Masters.

(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)AUSTIN, Texas – For a sport known for its glacial pace, fortunes can change quickly in golf. That was the cutoff for the top 64 players to get in the Dell Technologies Match Play. Rozner won all four of his matches at Formby Golf Club on the Lancashire coast of England. Rozner said he spoke to Dubuisson last week to find out why he did so well in the Match Play in 2014. I'm trying to take it match after match, step after step.”He makes it sound like a slow process.

“I'm happy to go low with the ball flight and I'm probably a little more conservative when the wind is up," Jones said. That’s when his woes started, and what became a nine-shot turnaround between he and Jones began. Jones grabbed a share of the lead with a birdie at the par-4 14th. And when Wise made bogey at the par-3 15th, Jones was the outright leader again. “Just keep doing what I'm doing," Jones said.

Then, Brian Harman shot 69 to tie for third at The Players Championship and went from No. Most curious is the case of Gary Woodland, the former U.S. Open champion and a Match Play finalist in 2015. Under the PGA Tour guidelines, he has to self-isolate for 10 days. THE BOUNCEIt didn’t take Collin Morikawa long to learn how to win on the PGA Tour. A year later, he won a playoff over Justin Thomas at Muirfield Village and a major at the PGA Championship.

(AP Photo/Ryan Kang)LOS ANGELES – Sam Burns had the ideal start at Riviera. The 24-year-old Burns is still looking for his first PGA Tour victory. On one of the best courses of the year, against another stacked field, it was a good first step. “You can’t ask for a course in better shape,” said Johnson, who won two weeks ago in Saudi Arabia. The 72-hole record, 20-under 264 that Lanny Wadkins set in 1985, has stood the longest of any PGA Tour event.

It's just sometimes results take a little bit longer.”There are photos to illustrate what Koepka did to his clubs, but those stay among his posse. A lot of players feel that way, but not to the point of naming their son after Riviera (Johnson's youngest is River). “I feel like it’s a tough golf course,” Johnson said. “Generally, the quality of golf course they’re played on is at a very high standard and Riviera fits that category. I feel like if you’ve had a good week here, it’s a good measure certainly generally of where your game is at.”

(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)SAN DIEGO – Patrick Reed was involved in another rules controversy Saturday in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines. Believing the ball didn't bounce, Reed picked it up to see if it was embedded before a rules official arrived. Reed told the official that no one in his group, as well as a nearby volunteer, saw it bounce. “At that point we go with what the rules official said and also with what the volunteers and what we see,” Reed said. Reed shared the lead with Alex Noren after the first round and was one shot off the lead after 36 holes.

Viktor Hovland, left, of Norway, waits to putt on the eighth hole of the South Course during the second round of the Farmers Insurance Open golf tournament at Torrey Pines, Friday, Jan. 29, 2021, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)SAN DIEGO – Viktor Hovland birdied his final for a 7-under 65 on Torrey Pines’ tough South Course on a rainy, miserable Friday, giving him a one-shot lead after two rounds of the Farmers Insurance Open. Reed shot an even-par 72 on the South Course a day after firing an 8-under 64 on the easier North Course. AdThe weather is supposed to clear up for the weekend rounds on the South Course. “I just played really solid and made some putts.”He had just one bogey, on the par-4 15th.

Nick Taylor hits from the eighth fairway during the second round of the Sony Open golf tournament Friday, Jan. 15, 2021, at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu. Taylor gave himself at least some separation with a gap wedge to 6 feet for birdie on No. 8, and then even his worst swing of the day turned into a birdie on the par-5 ninth. “I think it's probably harder out here to make double (bogey) and there's a lot of birdie opportunities,” Taylor said. Cink already won the season-opener in the Safeway Open in September, his first victory since the 2009 British Open at Turnberry.

“Motivation for me, it's not that hard,” Johnson said Wednesday at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, where he has won twice. Johnson was runner-up at the PGA Championship, losing a one-shot lead at Harding Park to a closing 64 by Collin Morikawa. And he did enough at the Tour Championship to claim the FedEx Cup for the first time. Johnson spent much of last week down the coast in Makena to chill out and do a little work. Because of the shortened season, anyone who made it to the Tour Championship joined the 26 winners at Kapalua.

No one has ever gone more than a year without winning and ended the drought at the Sentry Tournament of Champions. Winning is the only way to get to Maui at the start of the year, so Schauffele and 15 other players ordinarily wouldn't be here. “I got an asterisk for winning the Tour Championship that counted in certain things and not in others,” Schauffele said. Horschel said the tour has crunched numbers and in a normal year, it would add eight to 10 players to Kapalua. The tour has contemplated an expanded field over the years, such as giving a two-year exemption to Kapalua for winning a tournament.

On the heels of shooting 67, 68 and 69 over the first three rounds, Smith finished with a 15-under total that would've been good enough to win most years. “It would have been cool to do that and win,” Smith said “I would take 15 under around here for the rest of my career. Smith, playing up ahead in the next-to-last threesome, brilliantly scrambled for birdies at the seventh and ninth holes, leaving him two behind at the turn. “I wouldn't say I brought my best stuff, especially my longer stuff,” Smith said. Unfortunately for Smith and Im, Johnson was even better.

Five-time and defending champion Tiger Woods dropped a turn-back-the-clock round of his own, relying more on experience than current form to post a 68. “There is a sense of ease when I come here, just because I understand how to prepare for this golf course,” Woods said after hitting 10 of 14 fairways and 15 of 18 greens. Small wonder, then, that Woods flashed a wide grin when asked what was most encouraging about the round. “This golf course, as much as I’m trying to attack it, it can bite back,” he said. Still to be determined is how much firmer the greens and the rest of the golf course will get.

Instead of Augusta National members and their guests, the course was filled Monday with Tiger Woods and Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson and Jordan Spieth, all of them playing a practice round on a course that only looked the same. The COVID-19 pandemic that shut down golf for three months forced a reconfigured major championship schedule unlike any other, particularly at the Masters. "The things that will be the same is it still means the same to us all, and maybe even more so because we return to Augusta National every year. This is the Augusta National hardly anyone gets to see. When it means going to Augusta National to get ready for the Masters — April, November, doesn't matter — it takes the sting off.

FILE - In this Oct. 28, 2019, file photo, Tiger Woods celebrates after winning the Zozo Championship golf tournament at the Accordia Golf Narashino country club in Inzai, east of Tokyo, Japan. The Zozo Championship is the second Asia-based event to move to the United States this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. PGA champion Collin Morikawa was at Sherwood back then, as a young spectator looking for an autograph (he didn't get it). The happiest memories belong to Woods, who won his tournament five times at Sherwood and was runner-up on five other occasions. The Zozo Championship made its debut last year in Japan, and it was a big success despite rain that wiped out one day and led to a Monday finish.

Patrick Reed embraced every aspect of it Friday when the U.S. Open lived up to its reputation as the toughest test in golf, and so did Winged Foot. Amateur champion and current muscleman who powered and putted his way to a 68, the lowest score on a day Winged Foot played to an average score of 75.25. After an opening round in which 21 players broke par, Winged Foot allowed only three players under par. Because I’m pretty tired.”There's still 36 holes to go, and no indication that Winged Foot is going to get any easier. “I love when it’s hard, when you have to be creative on all different golf shots,” he said.

Every par at Olympia Fields is hard work, and Johnson played the final 13 holes Saturday with nothing worse than that. It's what carried him to a 1-under 69 and a share of the lead with Hideki Matsuyama, leaving them as the only players under par going into the final round. I feel like it's fairly similar, just obviously these conditions and the greens are a lot more difficult," he said. Rounds like that go a long way at Olympia Fields, the former U.S. Open course playing like one with its thick rough and rock-hard greens and enough wind to make the fairways look tighter than they are. All of them are one round away on a golf course where small mistakes can lead to bogeys or worse on just about every hole.

Woods, Charles Howell III, Adam Scott and Paul Casey are the only players who competed in that 2003 U.S. Open (Woods tied for 20th). Amateur at Olympia Fields, which featured five other players in the BMW Championship field, including PGA champion Collin Morikawa. For some, this week is about improving their position going to the Tour Championship, which features a staggered start to par. Woods said he looked at few videos of Olympia Fields before he arrived. This golf course is set up more toward an Open than it is anything else.___More AP golf: https://apnews.com/apf-Golf and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports