The headline on the press release reads: “Golf boom in jeopardy?”

“The continued growth and health of golf in Canada depends on getting more young people into the game,” states the first paragraph of the release, “but a lack of focus in the golf industry threatens its future, the first Canadian Golf Summit was told Thursday.”

The date? Dec. 8, 1989.

Twenty-five years ago, as managing editor of SCOREGolf magazine, I organized and chaired the first and, to date, only Canadian Golf Summit. That event, open to the public, brought together the heads of all the national golf associations and other involved parties not only to explain their roles in the context of the game, but to participate in panel discussions on topics such as The Next Generation of Canadian Golfers, Development of Facilities and Funding, Teaching and Coaching, and Research.  It was a stellar cast featuring people who, both as individuals and as representatives of the game in Canada, had a vested interest in its future.

I was motivated to dig out my files on that Summit recently in the wake of alarmist announcements from the media and the “industry” about the perceived imminent demise of golf. I didn’t quite dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the back for my foresight and vision way back in 1989, but I think I might have strained something.

Then I read The Kingdom of Golf in America by Richard Moss and The Future of Golf in America by Geoff Shackelford.

The former is a guide to the historic ebb and flow of the game in the U.S. by an academic who is an avid golfer. The latter is a compilation of essays by one of today’s most insightful and opinionated writers. Both tell us loud and clear that people who care about the game have shepherded it through tough times—not just for a mere 25 years, but for centuries.

Distilling the essence of both books and other related research was a humbling experience, although I had been given the head’s up just after I joined SCOREGolf back in 1985. Tom McBroom, for years now one of Canada’s most notable architects, took a couple of hours to explain the facts of golf life to this rookie. At that time we were, he pointed out, in the midst of the third golf boom of the 20^th Century. The first occurred during the 1920s, often called golf’s Golden Age, and the next in the affluent 1960s. Despite the undeniable fact that both those waves had crested and troughed, it seemed that just about everyone believed this latest one would last forever. Not bloody likely.

Golf, like the people who play it, is a living, breathing thing. Like us, its existence is typified by cycles. We are in a down cycle now and for how long is anyone’s guess. But that uncertainty is unacceptable in these fast-food times when immediate gratification is not just expected, but demanded.

Fear-mongering and nay-saying are fashionable. After hearing such dire comments emanating from the PGA Show in Orlando in January, my 27-year-old son called me. He and his fiancée play two or three times a week on an executive course with their friends.  “Wanted to let you know we are giving up golf, Dad,” he said. “We just heard it isn’t fun or cool anymore.” (He was kidding, of course, having inherited his father’s dubious sense of humour.)

My son, like many kids, played golf when he was young, then migrated away from it when university and then getting a job became priorities. Now he is back in the fold and, I hope, will stay. He got into the game because my wife and I played and we played because my wife’s parents gave us each a half-set of clubs. Off we would go, the four of us, to the local nine-holer where the scores were secondary to the experience.

In his book, Moss makes a great deal of the value of “community” to the vitality of the game. When I read those passages, I smiled, remembering those nine-hole rounds with my in-laws and, later, when I played with my son and his grandfather. Who won? Don’t recall. Don’t care. In the final analysis, we all did.

That is golf. It will always be golf, despite these recent dire predictions which, history teaches us, are just updated regurgitations of what has been said during golf’s many past and, it must be emphasized again, temporary declines.

“We have seen the enemy and he is us,” a comic-strip character said a long time ago. We, all of us, are to blame for some of the blemishes on today’s game—slow play, courses that are too difficult and too expensive—but these are not life-threatening. They can be remedied with care and attention. They do not demand radical surgery.

If you love the game, you will take personal responsibility for it. Protect it. Adopt common-sense initiatives like Tee It Forward and While We’re Young. Support CN Future Links, Golf in Schools and the Golf Canada Foundation. Create the sense of community Moss speaks of by inviting a kid or your spouse or a friend to play with you.

And have faith in the game and its future. That faith will eventually be justified—yet again.

About John Gordon

It’s been said that John Gordon has “done it all” in Canadian golf since he first got involved in 1985 as managing editor of SCOREGolf.

Based on his resume, it’s a statement that’s hard to dispute. He left SCOREGolf to become Golf Canada’s director of communications and member services and was the founding editor of Golf Canada magazine.

In 1994, he turned to golf writing fulltime, authoring eight books, penning a regular column for the Toronto Sun and then the National Post, and writing innumerable articles for golf consumer and trade publications. He was the on-air and online golf analyst for Rogers Sportsnet for eight years before joining ClubLink, one of the world’s largest multi-course owners and operators, to build their communications department, re-launch their magazine and build out their websites.

In 2014, John returned to golf writing fulltime and will contribute regularly to golfcanada.ca. You can follow him on Twitter at @gordongolf.

Owen Russell knew he had a problem when the smell hit him.

Russell, the superintendent at Markland Woods in Etobicoke, Ont. for the past eight years, ventured out on his course in February, worried about the impact of ice and cold on his club’s greens. Like many superintendents concerned about how the coldest winter in the last three decades would affect his course, Russell drilled through the ice to see what was happening with the grass underneath.

“I knew from the smell that we had a problem,” he says. “It smelled bad, sort of like rotten eggs.”

What Russell smelled was dead Poa annua grass, the most common grass found on older golf courses throughout North America. The grass is known to struggle if under ice for extended periods of time. In the case of many Ontario courses, ice encased golf course greens for more than three months, twice what most Poa grasses can withstand.

By the time Markland Woods’ greens were clear, Russell recognized the extent of the damage brought by the extreme cold. On most greens at least 50% of the grass was damaged or dead, and that amount rose to more than 70% on other greens.

“There was nothing we could do,” says Russell. “If we cleared them the temperatures were so cold we may have created more problems. It was a mess.”

What Markland Woods experienced is now being felt across Ontario courses where Poa is the covering for their greens. The damage to golf courses is widespread not only in Ontario, but across the northern U.S. as well. In Ontario some of the best-known golf courses—from host courses of the RBC Canadian Open like St. George’s to Hamilton Golf and Country Club through to modest public courses like Guelph’s Victoria Park East—have been hit by extensive damage. The cold, it turns out, doesn’t discriminate based on the cost of the green fee—it killed Poa greens regardless.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in the 25 years I’ve been in the business,” says Rhod Trainor, the superintendent at Hamilton where he’s prepared the golf course for three PGA Tour events. “It is like something out of a textbook. It is just a freak thing.”

The problems facing golf courses with Poa greens have different names, but the result is the same. Hit hard by a the coldest winter in years, Poa grasses were damaged by crown hydration, whereby grass takes in water and is hit by a sudden freeze; winter desiccation, which is essentially dehydration due to constant exposure to exposed, higher areas; depleted oxygen by anoxia; low temperatures; and ice. In some instances, superintendents say they were hit by all four problems, something that has never occurred before.

“It was a double-edged sword all winter,” says Rob Ackermann, superintendent at Weston Golf and Country Club in Toronto. “If you chose to do something to deal with the build-up on the greens you were exposing them to extreme cold and could kill them. If you chose to do nothing it could kill them.”

Ackermann used Ackermann used a combination of permeable and impermeable tarps on many of his greens to protect them from water and ice damage. But this year the tarps weren’t enough, and water managed to find its way to the grass anyway, leaving the club with seven temporary greens.

“The tarps help, but they couldn’t keep the water out,” he says, “and this could happen again next year. It is the worst devastation on golf courses that I’ve seen in my life.”

Now Ontario superintendents face decisions on how to deal with the difficult hand Mother Nature has dealt them. Do they reseed the greens with a strain of bent grass that will be more resilient to Ontario’s harsh winters, or do they try to grow Poa and reestablish it in the hope they don’t face a recurrence of the stunning cold?

“There’s one fix for this and that’s to grow bent grass,” says USGA agronomist Adam Moeller, who has been consulting with Ontario courses about the damage. “It is really your most reliable insurance policy, but it comes with a cost.”

Keith Bartlett, superintendent at St. George’s, has problems with Poa damage on most of the club’s greens, though he hopes to have most of the greens open by mid-June. Bartlett, who has worked as a superintendent for 22 years, says bent grass is the only true solution to the possibility of winter damage in Ontario. He adds that bent grasses take less water, fewer fertilizers, and create a better playing surface.

“To me this problem we’re facing is a wake-up call to the industry,” he says. “We’re just kidding ourselves if we think this won’t happen again.”

Trainor has been promoting a move to bent grass at Hamilton, which hosted the 2012 RBC Canadian Open, for some time. He was starting to feel optimistic about the chances of making the change when the club hired a new golf architect, Martin Ebert, and was hopeful the club might move that way when he put the historic course to bed in December. A late rain later that month, followed by intense cold, left him worried about what would happen in the spring.

“You know the Poa gets close [to dying] every year,” he says, noting most of his club’s 27 greens are damaged. “But this winter wasn’t typical.”

Ian McQueen knew he had an issue when he took a sample from one of his greens in February. The superintendent at Islington Golf and Country Club in Toronto, a course designed by the legendary Stanley Thompson, McQueen struggled to even get a sample from the frozen ground. As is typical for superintendents, he brought the sample indoors and attempted to restart the grass . . . only his sample wouldn’t grow. All that remained was for McQueen to wait two more months for the snow and ice to clear and find the extent of the damage. He found between 60 and 95% of the grass on Islington’s greens dead.

McQueen is suggesting having Islington not only plant bent grass, but completely rebuild the club’s greens with new strains of bent grass that keep Poa from taking hold. It is an ambitious project, but one that will limit future spring damage, he says.

“If you have a 90-year-old house, it isn’t easy to simply renovate the kitchen,” he says.  “You have to get to the heart of the problem.”

Like McQueen, David DeCorso has tough decisions to make. DeCorso is the superintendent at Victoria Park East, a 40-year old public course in Guelph. The course, like many of its age, has Poa greens, many of which have varying levels of damage from the ice and cold. Victoria Park East is owned by the DeCorso family, as is a newer course, Victoria Park Valley. The new course, with its bent grass greens, had no issues from the winter, but on the east course DeCorso has opened the season with three greens closed, and nine with tarps covering large sections as he attempts to grow grass. Closing the course to reseed with bent grass or sod the damaged greens isn’t financially viable, he explains, especially in a market where the long winter has already cut into paid rounds.

“This isn’t like the old days when the business had money for capital projects,” says DeCorso, who has been a superintendent for 22 years. “There’s not a lot of money to go around and we can’t afford the long-term solution of closing the course to solve the problem.”

DeCorso says many golfers have shrugged off this year’s problem as typical of Ontario courses during a long winter. But the situation is much more severe than other years, he points out, and he wonders if golfers will feel so charitable if public courses don’t recover by June.

“They are going to get impatient,” he says. “And they’ll make their point known by not spending their money at certain courses.”

At Markland Woods, Russell is preparing his course for incoming sod. The superintendent and the club have elected to make a drastic move and sod all of the club’s greens with bent grass that wasn’t used in another golf course construction project. There’s not enough bent grass sod to go around for other clubs to follow suit, but Russell is convinced it will resolve Markland’s issues with winter and Poa grasses for the foreseeable future.

“It has been like putting a puzzle together and every time you think you have it right a bully comes and wrecks it,” Russell says. “If we are going to spend money every year to fix this, we should do it once and spend it on bent grass. It is the only solution.”

Veteran golf journalist Robert Thompson is Senior Writer at SCOREGolf magazine, edits the PGA of Canada’s publications and is the golf analyst for Global News. 

DALY CITY, Calif. – Poised and unflappable, Lydia Ko birdied the final hole for her third LPGA Tour victory and first as a professional, holding off Stacy Lewis and Jenny Shin on Sunday in the inaugural Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic.

It went down to the final shots, and the teen made a 6-foot birdie putt moments before Lewis knocked in a 4-footer of her own to finish one stroke back.

“The 18th hole I knew how loud the claps were and that I needed to get close and give myself a birdie chance,” Ko said.

After beginning the day a stroke behind Lewis, Ko birdied three of her final four holes on the front nine on the way to a 3-under 69 and 12-under 276 total at Lake Merced.

Ko earned $270,000, celebrating on the 18th green three days after celebrating her 17th birthday at the first tee box with the gallery singing “Happy Birthday.”

Ko will move up two spots to No. 2 in the next world ranking.

She won the Canadian Women’s Open as an amateur the last two years and took the Swinging Skirts World Ladies Masters in December in Thailand in her second start as a professional. She has six victories in pro events, also winning in Australia and New Zealand.

Lewis will head to her home state of Texas next week looking to build on a disappointing near miss in which she struggled all day with her short game.

“I knew she wasn’t going away. Lydia played great,” Lewis said. “Every time I hit a shot in there, she answered.”

Shin, still looking for her first tour win after her best finish this year, finished at 10-under 278 with a 68 over the 6,507-yard course.

Playing together for the fourth straight day, neither Ko nor Lewis hit any dazzling shots early. Ko’s second of three bogeys came on the 417-yard, par-4 seventh in which her tee shot hit a tree and dropped in the rough. Lewis’ 10-foot birdie putt on No. 9 lipped out.

Ko pulled into a first-place tie at 10 under as they made the turn on a picture-perfect spring day.

“The front nine, I did everything I wanted to do, the putts just didn’t go in,” Lewis said. “I expected her to do exactly what she did today. … She hit every shot she needed to make from 13 on in.”

The third-ranked Lewis had her sixth runner-up finish since winning the Women’s British Open in August.

Michelle Wie, who won last week in her home state of Hawaii, tied for ninth at 2 under. Second-ranked Suzann Pettersen shot a 70 finish at 3 over in her first event since last month after missing three tournaments with a back injury. Top-ranked Inbee Park tied for fourth at 6 under.

There were two holes-in-one Sunday: Jimin Kang on the 164-yard third and Dewi Claire Schreefel with a 7-iron on the par-3 157-yard 12th hole that earned her a $100,000 prize from China Trust Bank.

Canada’s Alena Sharp finished at 12-over 300 and tied for 68th.

The weather held for the final day after both fog and rain delays earlier in the tournament.

This event was the LPGA’s first in the Bay Area since the 2010 CVS/pharmacy LPGA Challenge at Blackhawk in Danville.

SARASOTA, Fla. – Marissa Steen won the Guardian Retirement Championship on Sunday for her first Symetra Tour title, beating China’s Yueer Cindy Feng with a short birdie putt on the fifth hole of a playoff.

The 24-year-old Steen birdied the final two holes of regulation at Sara Bay for a 3-under 69 to finish at 3-under 213 and got into the playoff when Feng closed with a par for a 73.

They matched pars on the par-5 18th on the first four playoff holes before Steen finally won.

“To get the job done and seal the deal, it is really surreal right now,” Steen said. “I looked at my caddie when I was done and said, `Oh, my gosh, I won.’ … It was a great week from start to finish. This is my third playoff, so it feels good to finally get the job done.”

Steen lost a seven-hole playoff to Cydney Clanton last year in the Four Winds Invitational.

“I kept telling myself that if you put yourself in contention, good things are going to happen and it finally did today,” said Steen, a former University of Memphis player from West Chester, Ohio.

Steen began the round four strokes behind the 18-year-old Feng, the winner of the Florida’s Natural Charity Classic in March at Lake Wales.

Steen earned $15,000 to jump from fifth to second on the money list with $30,977. Feng made $9,367 to push her tour-leading total to $35,351. The top 10 at the end of the season will earn 2015 LPGA Tour cards.

Megan McChrysal had a 71 to finish a stroke back. Rachel Rohanna, Kris Tamulis and Therese Koelbaek followed at 1 under. Rohanna shot 71, Tamulis 72 and Koelbaek 63.

Canadian Results:

T13. Sara-Maude Juneau (+3) 76-72-71–219
T13. Maude-Aimee LeBlanc (+3) 76-71-72–219
T31. Jessica Shepley (+7) 71-78-74–223
T41. Samantha Richdale (+9) 75-74-76–225
T51. Ashley Sholer (+11) 74-77-76–227
T57. Jessica Wallace (+12) 79-71-78–228
MC. Angela Buzminski
MC. Nicole Vandermade
MC. Christine Wong
MC. Erica Rivard
MC. Lisa Meldrum

AVONDALE, La. – As Seung-Yul Noh exhaled and tilted his head back in a skyward gaze on the 18th green, follow South Korean players Y.E. Yang and Charlie Wi charged toward him, spraying him with bottled beer.

Noh smiled, removed his hat, held both arms out and soaked it all in.

The 22-year-old overcame windy conditions and the pressure that goes with attempting to secure a maiden PGA Tour triumph, shooting a 1-under 71 on Sunday to win the Zurich Classic by two shots.

He also knew he achieved another goal of providing some joy to a nation that has been reeling since a passenger ship capsized April 16, leaving 300 missing or dead.

“Hopefully, they’ll be happy,” said Noh, who wore black and yellow ribbons on his white golf hat to honor victims of the ferry accident.

While Noh, the leader through three rounds, never fell out of first, he did make his first three bogeys of the tournament and briefly fell into a tie with Keegan Bradley, the 2011 PGA Championship winner who had the gallery behind him.

But Bradley did himself in with a bogey on the fifth hole and a triple bogey on the sixth.

“I actually played pretty well,” Bradley said. “Just made one bad swing on 6 and had a bunch of lip-outs.”

Noh remained steady enough- even with wind gusting up to 30 mph – to hold off the remaining challengers.

“Very challenging today out there, especially playing with Keegan, a major champion, and heavy wind,” Noh said.

Noh needed a few clutch shots on the back nine, including a chip out of a grassy downhill lie on the edge of a bunker on 13, which hit the flag on a bounce, setting up a routine birdie putt. On 16, with wind in his face, Noh landed his approach 3 feet from the hole to set up his last birdie, then made a 14-foot par putt on 17 to assure a two-shot cushion on the final hole, uncharacteristically pumping his first afterward.

“Yeah, that was a clutch putt,” Noh said, explaining that it left him “very comfortable” on 18.

Noh had made 77 previous PGA Tour starts, never finishing better than tied for fourth at the 2012 AT&T National.

He took the third-round lead in New Orleans while becoming the first to play 54 holes at TPC Louisiana without a bogey. The seventh first-time PGA Tour winner in the last 10 years in the New Orleans event, Noh finished at 19-under 269 and earned $1,224,000. He was playing for the first time with caddie Scott Sajtinac, who seemed awe struck by Noh’s combination of talent, wisdom and sense of calm for a player so young.

“He’s going to be good,” Sajtinac said. “He was unflappable. You need to be unflappable to win on the PGA Tour.”

Andrew Svoboda and Robert Streb tied for second. Svoboda had a 69. Streb shot 70, including an eagle on the second hole, and was one shot off the lead after a birdie on 8, but his tee shot was pushed into water by a crosswind on the par-3 ninth hole, and he made double-bogey.

Jeff Overton, who briefly pulled within a stroke of Noh on the back nine, had a 70 to finish fourth at 16 under.

Bradley wound up with a 75 to tie for eighth at 13 under.

On Saturday, Bradley worked his way into the final group, two strokes behind Noh, with a 65.

Bradley was within a stroke after the first hole Sunday, which saw Noh hit his drive into mulch right of the fairway en route to his first bogey. Bradley then birdied the par-5 second hole to tie Noh.

But just a few holes later, Bradley missed a par putt from less than 2 feet, and followed that up by hitting his drive into the water on No. 6. Then, he three-putted to complete a pivotal two-hole stretch in which he dropped four strokes.

While Bradley never recovered from his front-nine falter, Noh still had to ward off a challenge from Overton, who was one stroke back after his 20-foot birdie putt on 10.

Overton, however, bogeyed 11 when he hit his drive into a bunker left of the fairway and his second shot over the fairway and right of the cart path.

Noh, meanwhile, has the victory he needed to get into The Players Championship next month, and his first Masters next spring.

“Dreams come true,” Noh said. “When I started at 7 playing golf, I dreamed of always playing (on the) PGA Tour … or playing any major, especially the Masters.”

In Canadian action, Graham DeLaet secured a top-30 finish thanks for a 7-under 281 finish. David Hearn was a shot back at 6-under 282 and tied for 34th.

MIDLAND, Texas – Andrew Putnam won the WNB Golf Classic for his first Web.com Tour title Sunday when high wind wiped out the final round at Midland Country Club.

The 25-year-old Putnam completed seven holes and had an eight-stroke lead when play was stopped shortly after noon with sustained wind of 28 mph and gusts to 43 mph. The gusts reached 50 mph about an hour later.

Putnam, a former Pepperdine player from Tacoma, Wash., shot an 8-under 64 on Saturday to reach 20 under and open a seven-stroke advantage.

“Seven shots was a big margin and I was playing well, but you never really know how it’s going to work out,” Putnam said. “I had some nervous feelings not knowing if I was going to go out and play. It’s a bummer that we couldn’t play it all the way out. I’m sure it would have been a different feeling walking up 18 with a big lead. I can’t remember the last time I won.”

Putnam earned $108,000 to jump from sixth to second on the money list with $248,273, more than enough to earn a spot on the 2014-15 PGA Tour. His older brother, Michael, is on the PGA Tour this season and after winning the Web.com Tour money title last year.

“It was always my goal to win early this year,” Andrew Putnam said. “I saw my brother do it last year when he won twice. He was able to keep that confidence going. When you get off to a hot start it takes pressure off of you.”

Sweden’s Richard S. Johnson and Australia’s Rod Pamlping tied for second.

Albin Choi of Toronto finished at 7-under 209 and tied for 22nd. Nick Taylor of Abbotsford, B.C. tied for 51st at at 4-under 212, while Roger Sloan of Merrit, B.C. tied for 60th after finishing at 3-under 213.

Mexico’s Carlos Ortiz, a two-time winner this year, leads the money list with $318,588. The former North Texas player tied for ninth at 10 under.

FISHERS, Ind. – Team Canada’s Jennifer Ha continued her red hot play of late, winning medalist honours at the Mid-American Conference Championship on Sunday.

Ha kept her foot on the gas heading into Sunday’s final round, shooting a round-low 74 to sneak from behind to capture the win. The 20-year-old finished one stroke ahead of runner-up and Kent State teammate, Natalie Goodson.

Ha put herself in a great position to win after Saturday’s 3-under 69, highlighted by eight birdies. The Kent State junior is also fresh off of winning the Women’s Golfer of the Week for the Mid-American Conference just one week earlier. This was in large part due to her win at the Lady Buckeye Invitational that same week.

Other Canadians in the field included, Jenna Hague of Burlington, Ont. who finished in solo fifth at 11-over, while Kent State’s Josee Doyon of St-Georges-de-Beauce, Que. finished T6 after rounds of  73-79-77.

Collectively, the Kent State Golden Flashes dominated the competition with a 19-stroke victory. Ha, Goodson and Wad Phaewchimplee finished 1,2,3 respectively, with Doyon finishing tied for sixth and Erin Hawe finishing 18^th.

The Golden Flashes will look to ride their momentum into the NCAA Regionals from May 8-10.

Click here for the full leaderboard.

SHENZHEN, China – Alexander Levy was so relaxed on the course at the China Open on Sunday, not even a double bogey that erased his comfortable lead could wipe the grin from his face.

Rather than get down over what could have been a costly mistake, the 23-year-old Frenchman recovered with back-to-back birdies on his final two holes to capture his maiden European Tour title by four strokes over Tommy Fleetwood.

The smile, he said, was the key to victory.

“You need to take the pleasure on the golf course and keep the smile because if you are upset about a missed shot or not lucky because you make a lip out or something like that, it’s not good to have this feeling on the golf course,” he said. “You need to enjoy and have the smile.”

Levy, playing in just his second year on the tour, vaulted into the lead with a career-best 10-under 62 in the second round and looked to be headed for a runaway victory after making a birdie on the 13th Sunday to extend his lead to five shots.

But then he ran into trouble on the par-4 15th. After hitting his approach shot well past the green, he putted from the fringe and sent the ball off the other side of the green. He chipped back to the green and two-putted for a double bogey, allowing Fleetwood back within two strokes.

Fleetwood, playing in the group ahead of Levy, then tightened the pressure further with a birdie on the par-5 17th to pull another shot back.

Levy responded, however, with a flawless 3-iron approach shot over a lake on the same hole to set up a three-foot birdie putt.

“I just closed my eyes and got one of the best shots of the week to the green,” he said.

After Fleetwood bogeyed the 18th, Levy sealed the win by dropping another perfectly placed approach shot three feet from the pin for another birdie. He shot a final-round 69 for a 19-under 269 overall.

“We aim for wins, but today I didn’t really have a chance. I had to play outstanding golf, but Alex has led from Friday, and that’s one of the hardest things you can do,” Fleetwood said. “What a performance from him.”

Levy has faltered under pressure before. Last year, he was tied with Ernie Els entering the final round of the BMW International Open in Munich but let the title slip away with four bogeys on the back nine. He ended up in third, his previous best result on the tour.

Since then, however, he said he’s been inspired by the success of his good friend and compatriot, Victor Dubuisson, who beat Tiger Woods to win his first European Tour title at the Turkish Airlines Open in November and then was runner-up to Jason Day at the Match Play Championship in February.

The other French players have given him plenty of encouragement as he chased his first tour victory this week, too.

Dubuisson has sent him text messages throughout the week, and the French contingent in Shenzhen doused him with celebratory champagne after he sank his final putt on the 18th.

“We have some great players in France, both young and old, and we all have a great relationship,” Levy said. “There are some very good players and have been some great wins for Victor, Julien Quesne, Greg Bourdy, Raphael Jacquelin over the past couple of years which is great for French golf and great with the Ryder Cup coming to France in 2018.”

Fleetwood was second at 15 under and Alvaro Quiros of Spain was third, another two strokes back.

No. 3-ranked Henrik Stenson, who was bedridden with the flu earlier this week, finally put together his first solid round of the tournament, with seven birdies and no bogeys for a 65. The Swede improved to joint fifth place but still fell short of the win he needed to overtake Tiger Woods at the top of the world rankings.

“It’s really tight and I just need to play better if I want to get to that spot. And I should have to play better than I have done earlier on this year if I want to get to world No. 1, that’s for sure,” he said.

PGA champion Jason Dufner opened with a birdie-eagle on his first two holes before slipping back to joint 54th with two double bogeys and a triple bogey on the 17th.

DALY CITY, Calif. – Stacy Lewis matched 17-year-old playing partner Lydia Ko with birdies on Nos. 15 and 16 and added another on the 17th to take a one-stroke lead Saturday in the Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic.

The third-ranked Lewis and fourth-ranked Ko each shot 4-under 68 at Lake Merced. Winless since the Women’s British Open in August, Lewis had a 10-under 206 total.

Ko won the Canadian Women’s Open as an amateur the last two years and took the Swinging Skirts World Ladies Masters in December in Thailand in her second start as a professional. She has five victories in pro events.

Jenny Shin was four strokes back at 6 under. She also shot 68.

Michelle Wie, the winner last week in Hawaii, was tied for 13th at 1 under after a 71.

Canada’s Alena Sharp was 6-over thru three rounds and tied for 48th.

AVONDALE, La. – Seung-Yul Noh became the first player to complete 54 holes at the TPC Louisiana without a bogey and strung together three birdies late in his round Saturday to surge two strokes ahead of Keegan Bradley atop the Zurich Classic leaderboard.

Noh shot a 7-under 65 to reach 18-under 198.

Bradley, who began the day tied for seventh at 9 under, pulled into a tie with Noh for first on No. 15 with his seventh birdie of the day. Then, Noh, who was tied for third at 11 under after two rounds, made birdie putts of 13 feet on 14 and 10 feet on 15 before hitting a 112-yard approach shot to a foot for another birdie, bringing him to 18 under.

Bradley also shot 65.

Robert Streb was third, three shots back after a 68.

Ben Martin, who had a three-shot lead after two rounds, shot a 73 to drop into a tie for fourth with Jeff Overton and Andrew Svoboda at 14 under. Overton shot 67, and Svoboda 70.

Noh, from South Korea, has been playing with yellow and blue ribbons affixed to his cap to honor victims of the fatal ferry accident in the waters off of his home country.

He said he hoped he could play well Sunday to provide Koreans with a dose of good news.

This marks the first time that Noh has led a PGA Tour event through three rounds. This is his third year on the tour, but he finished outside the top 125 on the money list last season, forcing him to play in Web.com Tour Finals events to retain his tour card.

He had never before been higher on the leaderboard than tied for second through three rounds. That happened once at the 2012 AT&T National, but he shot a 2-over 73 in his final round to finish tied fo fourth, his best finish in 77 previous career PGA Tour starts.

Martin had raced to the lead with a course-record 10-under 62 in his first round, and his 36-hole score of 129 also was a course record. Teeing off with the final group, his trouble began on the par-5 second hole. He pushed his second shot to the right toward the crowd. His ball hit a spectator and kicked right into a cluster of long pompass grass, out of which it was virtually impossible to hit.

Martin took a drop and wound up with a bogey.

Two Canadians qualified for weekend action in Louisiana.

Graham DeLaet is at 8-under 208 and is tied for 28th, while David Hearn is tied for 50th at 5-under 211.