Injured Snedeker Withdraws from Australian PGA





GOLD COAST, Australia (AP) Brandt Snedeker has withdrawn from the Australian PGA Championship on the Gold Coast.

PGA of Australian CEO Brian Thorburn announced Snedeker's withdrawal on Tuesday morning, confirming the American golfer did not board his flight from Shanghai on Monday after injuring his knee. Snedeker played in the HSBC Champions tournament in China over the weekend.

Adam Scott is the main draw card for the tournament starting Thursday, playing for the first time in Australia since winning the Masters.

Johnson Pulls Away for 1st World Golf Championship

 

              SHANGHAI (AP) Against an all-world cast of contenders, Dustin Johnson pulled away with power and a clutch putt to win his first World Golf Championship on Sunday.

Johnson played a pivotal five-hole stretch on the back nine in 5-under par, seizing control by pitching in for eagle from just short of the green on the par-4 16th. He followed with an 8-foot birdie putt on the 17th and closed with a 6-under 66 for a three-shot win over Ian Poulter in the HSBC Champions.

"It was a lot of fun out there," Johnson said. "Those guys put a lot of pressure on me. I'm really proud of the way I handled myself."

Johnson set a tournament record at 24-under 264.

He started the final round with a three-shot lead and lost it in two holes. But it wasn't just Poulter who made the 29-year-old American sweat.

Graeme McDowell also had a share of the lead of the lead at one point, and they battled across Sheshan International for the better part of four hours on a cloudy, hazy afternoon that made it feel like twilight.

Poulter, who won last year at Mission Hills, closed with a 66 to finish alone in second. McDowell also had a 66 to finish third. Sergio Garcia birdied half of his holes for a 63. At one point, the leaderboard featured Johnson and half of Europe's winning Ryder Cup team from Medinah.

It was the second straight PGA Tour season that Johnson won the first tournament he played - even though it was in the same year. His last win was the Tournament of Championship at Kapalua in January. This is the first time the tour has gone to a wraparound season, which began a month ago.

Johnson now has won in each of his first seven seasons on the PGA Tour, the most by any player since Woods in his first 14 seasons through 2009.

He opened with a three-putt bogey and muffed a chip on the second hole, keeping from making birdie. Poulter birdied his opening two holes. McDowell started with three straight birdies, and all of them were tied at 17-under.

Johnson began to recover by closing out the front nine with back-to-back birdies.

The tournament took shape, however, over the final two hours starting on the 13th. Johnson hit a massive tee shot over the corner of the slight dogleg, leaving him a short wedge to 5 feet for birdie to tie Poulter for the lead, with McDowell one shot behind.

On the par-5 14th, Poulter appeared to have a big edge. He reached the green with a fairway metal and lagged his 40-foot eagle putt to within inches. Johnson found the rough off the tee, had to lay up, and hit a poor chip to 20 feet. McDowell was in the deep collar of rough around a bunker and did well to hit a chunk-and-run to 40 feet. McDowell's long birdie putt banged into the back of the cup, and Johnson rolled in his birdie putt to stay tied.

Poulter fell back with an approach into the bunker left of the 15th green for bogey.

Johnson put them away with his power on the 16th. The pin was to the front, making it risky for anyone to try to drive the green. Johnson has such strength that he was able to hit 3-iron off the tee - as he has done previous rounds - to 25 yards short. His pitch was so pure it rolled into the cup as if it were a putt.

The eagle gave him a two-shot lead, and he widened it with another great shot for birdie at the 17th.

"Dustin Johnson was in a different league off the tee and gave us a little bit of a sniff, and then promptly slammed the door," McDowell said. "So a lot of fun. Really enjoyed it."

U.S. Open champion Justin Rose (68) finished alone in fifth, while Rory McIlroy (69) and Graham DeLaet (69) were another shot behind.

McDowell's third-place finish at least allowed him to make up big ground on Henrik Stenson in the Race to Dubai, now trailing about 140,000 euros. McDowell is not playing the Turkish Open next week, but did enough that a shot at the European Tour money title is still in reach when he gets to Dubai in two weeks.

Can Dustin Johnson Be a Great One, too?

Dustin Johnson's challenge, once he officially joins the Family Gretzky, is whether he eventually will be identified the way the family patriarch is, whether he can be a great one, too.

Johnson, 29, already is better than most, the latest evidence coming in the dead of night in the U.S. He won the HSBC Champions in Shanghai, China, by three strokes overnight, prevailing over a top 10 that included Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell.

The victory was his eighth on the PGA Tour and extended the number of seasons in which he has won to seven (the HSBC Champions is part of the 2014 schedule), winning in each year of his PGA Tour career.

The statistic is impressive on the surface, portending superstar status, but is marginally less so beneath it. He began the week 23rd in the World Ranking, a number based on performance. If talent were the measure, Johnson would be a fixture in the top 10. His is still potential not entirely fulfilled.

Johnson, who is engaged to Wayne Gretzky's daughter Paulina, tends to drift in and out of greatness, as he did at the outset of 2013. He won the Hyundai Tournament of Champions, then played seven straight tournaments without finishing in the top 10, missing the cut in two and withdrawing from a third.

The pattern was evident in Shanghai, too. He had six birdies in seven-hole stretches in rounds two and three, including five straight birdies in the latter, when he opened a six-stroke lead. Then he hit his tee shot into the water at 18, eventually cutting his lead in half.

In the final round, his indifferent play on the front nine invited all comers into the mix, one of them, Poulter, joining him atop the leaderboard. He was toying with them, as it were. He found another gear, and played a five-hole stretch in five-under par, including a pitch-in eagle at 16 and a birdie at 17 to coast into the winner's circle.

It is the stuff of legend, or would be were it to occur at more frequent intervals. If Johnson ever inserts consistency into his repertoire, major championships might begin to creep onto his resume. But they're not won with the flick of an on-off switch.

The tandem of maturity and patience should help. "It takes a lot to learn that," Johnson said. "I wish I would have had some of that a few times a few years ago."

It was evident on Sunday, when the lead slipped away momentarily. "I was swinging well and putting well," he said. "I knew if I stuck to my game plan and played the course how I wanted to play it it was going to come.

"This is probably my biggest win, with the field and the tournament, a World Golf Championship. Hopefully, it's better things to come."

The key for Johnson is to emulate his future father-in-law, the Great One, and bring it every night, or in Johnson's case, every week. If he can beat this kind of field this handily, greatness seems destined to follow.