• Among his headings…Rory McIlroy dominates…”Fresh off a victory in the Players Championship, McIlroy picked up right where he left off on Wednesday, taking an early 1-up lead over Luke List with a birdie at the second hole. List hung in there, reaching the eighth tee still only 1 down, but back-to-back bogeys saw him make the turn 2 down to McIlroy, and Rory slammed the door from there. The Northern Irishman, who won this event in 2015 and has been a Ryder Cup stalwart over the years, won four of the next five holes, closing out List with birdies at 13 and 14 to win 5 and 4.”

• “Upsets…When it comes to match play involving the best players in the world, it’s hard to call anything an “upset” or “shocking.” There are no UMBC over Virginia type moments in this event, but there are definitely some slightly surprising victories, and the biggest from Wednesday has to be Lucas Bjerregaard taking down Justin Thomas, 3 and 2. And Thomas never really had a chance to win…”

• …”Woods’ 3-and-1 win over Aaron Wise wasn’t all that pretty, but at least it wasn’t uncomfortable. If anything, Woods thinks he might have hit the ball too well.”

• “Joey says it’s a nice problem to have, but I was hitting my irons flush and hitting through the wind,” he said. “But I said, ‘This is not the time to be encouraging me like this right now. I just hit it over the back of three greens in a row.’ So I probably have to dial that down a little bit and figure that out.”

• Woods made a number of references to his being pleased that the scores won’t matter after his opening match, when he technically yielded 1.2 shots to the rest of the field. But he nonetheless said he was encouraged by his driving and putting on Wednesday.

• “My neck has been freed up a little bit, and I’m able to get into a better posture and that helps,” he said. “And because of that, I’m able to log in a little bit of practice time, which is nice.”

• “Q. How would you describe the level of competition now in 2019?…TIGER WOODS: Well, I think that equipment has made it smaller.  The margin is much smaller than it used to be. Now look at these heads, 460 cc’s, you hit the ball anywhere on the face and have it go 300 yards.   Before it put a premium on good ball-strikers to hit the ball in the middle of the face each and every time. And there was a distinction between the guys who could do that and the guys who couldn’t.  And that’s no longer the case.”

• “It promotes people swinging harder.  Teeing the ball higher, swinging harder and hitting the ball further.  And the old shot of hitting just a squeezier, low, heelie cut in play, that’s no longer the case.  Guys are trying to maximize distance off the tee, to try and carry that number 300, 320, 330 in the air.  And it’s become a game that’s played more up in the air than it ever used to be.”

• “Per Michael Bamberger’s report for Golf.com, the two men met each other in the clubhouse at the WGC-Mexico Championship and apologised to each other. Speaking on the 40-minute meeting where the two men buried the hatchet, Ortiz told Bamberger in a phone interview alongside an interpreter that”

• “Matt said, ‘Hey, David, how are you?’ I apologized for the (difficulty) the situation created. I told him it was never my intention to embarrass him, but I felt eventually I had to tell the truth. Matt also offered an apology. He said it was all a misunderstanding. He asked me how my family was. He showed me a picture of his family and a video of a hole-in-one made by one of his sons.”

Full piece.

• …”World Golf Hall of Famer Nancy Lopez along with ANWA participants Sierra Brooks and Maria Fassi helped unveil the bowl that will be handed to the winner on April 6 during an appearance on the “Today Show” on Wednesday morning. It was part of a New York City media tour to help promote the new tournament.”

• “The bowl was designed in collaboration with Tiffany & Co., and made from spun sterling silver and a 24K yellow gold vermeil. Among the design accents are the event’s logo and the namesake flowers for each hole at Augusta National.”

• “This is an industry that for as long as the PGA Tour has been around has been generating profits on the back of the PGA Tour and its product and its brand without a lot of oversight, without really any relationship with the organization. As this activity becomes more widespread, it does put more risk on the PGA Tour, more on the players,” Levinson said.

• “But it’s also something we’ve done prudently and we have taken the steps over the last few years to make sure we had all of our ducks in a row before we really started to jump in and engage in this type of activity. We feel like we’re taking the right steps to mitigate a lot of this.”

• “When the pieces fully come together, what will betting on PGA Tour golf look like?”

• “It can be as simple as trying to pick the winner of each week’s tournament or as complex as wagering on each shot a player hits. It can be as simple or as complex as a bettor chooses to make it.”

• A morsel…”Like some Brexiteer pining for the return of the Empire, I think I must have some rose-tinted specs on when viewing etiquette through the prism of history.”

• “I often find myself sitting on the balcony yelling that I want to take my golf club back before getting into an almighty huff when faced with a litany of pitchmarks on a green.”

• “I know you’re allowed to repair damage on the putting surface these days but I had one at the weekend that looked like a meteor had hit. Several species lay extinct around the crater.”

• “Stephen Gallacher and Julian Suri fired opening rounds of 67 to take a share of the first round lead at the Hero Indian Open.”

• “Gallacher has often flourished on tough courses throughout his career, and showed he had the measure of DLF Golf and Country Club last season as he recorded a top ten finish in New Delhi.”

• “Fast forward 12 months and a sensational putt from off the green at the last handed him a closing eagle and a one shot advantage at five under.”