The major championship season is at hand.
Fittingly, the desert is home to the year’s first major championship, where the heat is rising for the women at the ANA Inspiration. The men’s first major is a week away, but our heat gauge detects rising temperatures in Houston, where players have a last chance to get their games right for the Masters next week.
Here is our special heat index for this week’s Hot Seat lineup:
Coachella Valley Fever: Lexi Thompson
A year after getting socked with a four-shot penalty in the final round, Thompson returns to the ANA Inspiration looking to win what was so painfully lost.
Thompson is the story this week in golf.
While a lot of focus is on Thompson’s motivation, her putter is another key storyline this week. She elevated her game a year ago, improving her stroke and especially her pace and lag putting. She will play bomb and gouge around the ANA again this week, but will her putting allow her to take advantage of opportunities? She’s averaging 30 putts per round this year, 70th on tour. She’s one of the best ball-strikers in the women’s game, but the putter put her in contention regularly last year.
Thompson loved the Bettinardi Queen Bee putter she used last year, but she struggled to feel lined up over it late in the year. She switched to a Happy Putter, designed to look and feel like the Bettinardi, but with different alignment aids. If she gets hot with it again this week, the rest of the field may be on the Hot Seat.
Lone Star Sizzle: Jordan Spieth
A lot of Masters favorites will be going to Augusta National next week with wins under their belt this year. Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, Jason Day, Jon Rahm and Bubba Watson have all won this calendar year.
Spieth? He has logged just two top 10s in 2018, with little momentum in this late run up to the Masters. He missed the cut in his last stroke-play start at the Valspar Championship, where he’s a past champion, and he failed to make it out of his four-man group at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play Championship in his last start.
Spieth, who has a victory and two second-place finishes at the Masters, will be looking to find some momentum at the Houston Open this week.
Corporate pressure cooker: Houston Golf Association
Will the 72nd rendition of the Houston Open be its last?
With the event being staged without a corporate sponsor this week, it just might.
With Shell ending its affiliation after 26 years, and with Hurricane Harvey’s devastating effects late last summer, there is intensifying pressure on the Houston Golf Association to find a title sponsor to keep this proud event going. The clock will be ticking before the final putt falls Sunday.