Tony

Romo

The 41-year-old Romo, who won at Edgewood Tahoe in 2018 and ’19, will make his 11th appearance at Lake Tahoe where he also finished runner-up in three consecutive years from 2009-11. Romo withdrew after the second round in last year’s event due to a wrist injury, but he told media Wednesday that he’s back to “full strength.” “I feel now I feel more comfortable wanting more holes,” he said regarding his approach this week. “It feels like there’s more holes to have a chance to birdie. I think overall my game is a little bit more consistent. I’m not scared that tomorrow I’m not going to quite have the same swing. … It’s much more repeatable since I’ve worked on the sequencing of how the body and the weight shift. It’s much closer to football than I’ve ever realized throwing a ball the way that the body works. So that’s helped quite a bit this year.”

The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback is playing in his sixth professional event and still searching for his first cut made. He’s playing well leading into this week but the course set up in pro events will challenge his skills. When asked about his goals he had this to say, “Like anything, it’s always to improve. In a lot of ways, you want to show to yourself the improvement you’re always hoping to obtain. I’m playing some of my best golf coming in so hopefully it will show up.” He remains a long shot to make the cut but he’ll be a fun name to watch this week at Texas Rangers Golf Club.

The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback will be making his third career start in a PGA TOUR event. Given his ties to the Dallas area, it was surprising to see his first invite wasn’t to the Byron Nelson. Both of his previous starts have come at the Corales in the Dominican Republic. He’s lost at least 5.7 strokes to the field in all four rounds played. Romo has hit fewer fairways than the field and fewer greens than the field in all four of his PGA TOUR rounds. Romo has actually held his own on the par 3s but the longer the hole gets, the more he’s at a disadvantage. Gamers and fans should keep an eye on him this week but he remains a long shot to make the cut.

The 38-year-old is making his second career TOUR start, both on sponsor exemptions. He missed the cut here last year by 16 on 15-over 77-82=159, the worst finisher by six shots. For the short week, Romo outbalanced 5 birdies with 12 bogeys and 4 doubles. He was unranked last year and enters this week as World No. 2017.

The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback showed some nerves out of the gate with back-to-back bogeys but bounced back nicely with a pair of birdies at 4 and 5. He would trade one more birdie with a bogey before making the turn at even par. He was beating 14 professionals at that time. From there, the floodgates opened and not in a good way. Starting at the par-4 13th he swallowed BOGEY-DOUBLE BOGEY-BOGEY-BOGEY to plummet down the leaderboard. While poor ball-striking was the culprit on the back nine, he actually left a good chunk of strokes on the course with his putter, three-putting three times before reaching the homeward nine. Overall, he took 30 putts, something he’ll need to clean up if he wants to rally on Friday and have a chance to make the cut. He will likely need at least a 5-under 67 in R2 to have a chance but realistically, 6 or 7-under needs to be the target. A tall task for anyone in the field, let alone an amateur that doesn’t do this for a living.

The 37-year-old is one (of two) amateurs in the 132-man field but has obviously garnered the most attention, even among the players in the paid ranks for that matter. So much so, there was even a pre-tourney presser. The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback, and current lead analyst for the NFL ON CBS, is a long-time participant in celebrity events and as a partner in pro-am stops. Most recently, he played with Wake Forest product Will Zalatoris -- who’s hometown is Plano, Texas -- at the AT&T Pebble Beach last month. In Romo’s presser, he mentioned that he didn’t have any expectations insofar as this week is concerned, but said he felt comfortable among the guys, particularly since he plays a lot of golf with Texas-based pros back home. The four-time Pro Bowler, who’s unsuccessfully tried to qualify for the U.S. Open three times, carries a +0.3 handicap at Dallas National Golf Club.