• “Bubba Watson, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed and a host of others who have to return Friday morning to Austin Country Club with no chance of advancing out of their group.”

• “The Match Play began to take shape, more because of 20 players from the 64-man field mathematically eliminated than who can still reach the weekend.”

• “Jordan Spieth is still alive after building a 6-up lead through 12 holes on Kevin Na, but not winning until four holes later when Na missed a 4-foot birdie putt. Jim Furyk and Henrik Stenson emerged with 2-0 records from the group of FedExCup champions. They play Friday after knocking out Mickelson and Jason Day.”

• “Dahmen rebounded from a bogey on the par-4 third with four straight birdies and closed with another birdie on the par-3 ninth. Winless on the PGA Tour, the 31-year-old former University of Washington player was tied with Matt Jones and Paul Dunne.”

• “Slow start,” Dahmen said. “I bogeyed the par 5 early, but knew that the front was gettable. The wind was pretty consistent all day, which was nice. Then just made a couple nice putts.”

Full piece.

• The American entered the second round at DLF Golf and Country Club with a share of the overnight lead but played his first nine holes in one over to slip a shot behind fellow first round leader Stephen Gallacher.”

• “He then produced a stunning run of scoring, picking up six shots in as many holes to get to ten under with a second consecutive 67 and lead the way from England’s Callum Shinkwin.”

Full piece.

• “Not necessarily. As Woods said after the Players Championship: “It’s kind of nice knowing that I’ll be able to get at least three good rounds in, possibly more if I play well, and that’s basically like a tournament.”

• “If anything, it might be good for Woods‘ Masters prep if he gets a couple of days at home. Unlike a year ago, when he was coming off two top-five finishes and seemingly in good form heading to Augusta, there are some flaws he’ll need to address. And a trip to Augusta National this week might be in order either way.”

• “Making his second PGA Tour start, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback fired an opening 79. Romo is currently in last place. Matt Jones is the early leader after carding a 66 to start the opposite-field event to the WGC-Dell Match Play.”

• “If having last year’s start in the same event under his belt helped settle Romo’s nerves on Thursday, it didn’t show. The NFL on CBS analyst bogeyed three of his first four holes before adding a triple bogey on No. 8. Romo failed to record a birdie during the round, but managed a respectable back nine of one-over-par 37.”

• “Asked for an explanation on why the two cases differed, since both Li and Romo are amateurs, a USGA spokesman said that the amateur status rule (6-2) specifically discusses whether an amateur golfer is one of golf skill or reputation – and since Romo is known first as a professional football player, and thus his reputation is not solely based on his skill as a golfer, the rule does not apply.”

• “While Romo is an amateur golfer, it appears his football celebrity motivated this advertisement,” said Craig Winter, the USGA’s senior director of rules and amateur status. “Additionally, the Rules of Amateur Status prohibit an amateur golfer from being part of such promotions only when he or she has ‘golf skill.’ In the case of Tony Romo, while he plays at a high level, he is not considered to have ‘golf skill’ as they are defined in the rules.”

• “The Forecaddie has since learned of another casualty of the simplified language: dormie. A word floating around the sport since the days of Mary Queen of Scots and first seen in an 1847 dictionary, dormie has been used to describe an insurmountable lead and was often misunderstood by broadcasters if an event was going extra holes to settle matches.”

• “Sadly, “dormie” has been dropped from the rules of golf, perhaps less due to its lack of accessibility and more to its relative uselessness. But as this week has shown, it’s still acceptable to use the word, if necessary.”

• Discussing Tiger Woods’ irons…”When Tiger moved to Nike Golf, he was introduced to Mike Taylor. There’s no need to really go too deep on MT’s impact on the game of golf, since so much has already been said, but a quick refresher: his roots run deep with shaping clubs to perfection, from Hogan, to Impact Golf Technologies (Tom Stites post-Hogan Company, which in essence became Nike Golf overnight), to now Artisan Golf. Together, they worked on a number if irons from the original forged blades to the MM Proto.”

• “With Nike’s departure from the equipment space and now being a part of TaylorMade’s staff, Tiger has the ability to work with their entire R&D team, while also benefiting from Mike Taylor’s work at Artisan Golf in Ft Worth Texas, to create the original masters for what are now the P7TW irons.”

• “There was always speculation about this relationship until recently when it was confirmed by PGA Tour.com’s Equipment Writer, Andrew Tursky, during an interview with Tiger

• “Yeah, he ( Mike Taylor ) worked on all these irons. He worked on all my wedges. I talk to him probably every few weeks, giving updates on how I feel, things that I think could be better. He’ll bounce a few ideas off me, what I think, what direction we need to go down the road, how can we make them any better than what they are. And this is the same process I went through all those years when I was working with him at Nike. But now working with him at TaylorMade, it’s a lot more seamless.”

• “Woods’ approach shot from 162 yards out sailed over the green and settled into a cluster of bushes just in front of a hospitality tent. It looked to be dead with no chance of getting up and down from there.”

• “But Woods decided he could take a swipe at it. He got down on one knee and assumed a modified left-handed stance, the toe of the club pointed toward the ground. With a flick of the wrists, the ball popped out of the bushes and rolled onto the green just 4 feet from the cup.”