After a disappointing campaign at the Farmer's Insurance, Indian ace goler Anirban Lahiri will be looking forward to a good week ahead as he gets set for the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
The event, very popular on the PGA Tour, has attracted 23 of the top 30 in the FedEx Cup standings.
Lahiri, who was T-28 in his opening event on the PGA Tour this year at Career Builder Challenge, missed the cut last week in Farmer's Insurance carding two vastly different 80-70 at the tough layout.
Lahiri, who is hanging by a slender thread inside the Top-50 at No. 49, is paired with Ryan Palmer, who was a runner-up at the event last year and fifth in 2013.
Palmer is having a good run with Top-20 in last three events in a row. The third player in the group will be the six-foot-four, Charlie Beljan, who in his seventh starts this season, has missed five cuts, withdrawn once and his only money came from Frys.Com where he was T-74, where he made the third round but missed the fourth round cut-off.
The Waste Management Phoenix Open is famous for its 16th hole, which is an iconic stadium-like par 3.
The field includes a bunch of winners this season, Kevin Kisner, Jason Dufner, rookie Smylie Kaufman and Brandt Snedeker besides Bubba Watson, Phil Mickelson, Zach Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Rickie Fowler.
Fowler, who finished fifth at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions, picked up his third international win earlier this year in Abu Dhabi a fortnight ago, while Kisner is also the current leader on FedEx Cup standings.
Dufner ended a three-year victory drought at the CareerBuilder Challenge and Snedeker won last week's Farmers Insurance. Koepka is the defending champion and Billy Horschel is the 2014 FedExCup champion.
Johnson opened with three straight birdies, made three straight birdies to close out the back nine and added four in a row on the back and wound up with his best score in his nine years at Muirfield Village.
He had a one-shot lead over Brendan Steele, who holed out for eagle on the 18th for a 65. Spieth, winner at Colonial last week, shot 70, but didn't make many putts, while Day avoided his aggressive nature to try to catch Johnson on Thursday.
Day, a member at Muirfield Village, played in the afternoon as the clouds began to hover on the top. Gather. He had three birdies and an eagle on the back and ended at 66. McIlroy, playing with Spieth, changed back to a conventional putting grip.
That helped only so much in his round of 71. The top three players have won five of the last seven majors and all three arrived here at the Memorial coming off victories. But Johnson hasn't won since Doral in 2015 despite 14 top-10 finishes since then.
