February 18-21
The Riviera Country Club, Pacific Palisades, California
$9,300,000
Round 1, Round 3, Round 4

Sam Burns played it safe on Friday and produced a bogey-free 66, firing five birdies along the way, to tie the 36-hole record at the Genesis Invitational. His 12-under 130 matched the record set by Mike Weir and Shigeki Maruyama in 2004.

"I'd like to think that I have all the tools to win out here," said Burns. "There's a lot of good players -- really, really good players. I try not to get caught up in that and just trying to get better each week."

"Whenever we were kind of in a tricky spot, just kind of took what the golf course gave us. There's definitely times where I've tried to force it a little bit, but this just is not a golf course you want to do that."

Five shots behind him is a group of four players including World Number 1 and former champion Dustin Johnson, who won in 2017 and has had nine top-10 finished in thirteen appearances.

Johnson leads the field in Strokes Gained ( Tee-to-Green: +7.267) in spite of seeming problems with his driver. He has hit just 10 of 28 fairways to rank 102nd in a 120-man field in driving accuracy. 

“I like my position. I'm five back, but on this golf course there's only one guy in front of me,” said Johnson. “I like where I'm at and I do like this golf course, and hopefully I can drive it a little bit better on the weekend and give myself a few more chances.”

His biggest obstacle so far are the three par-5s where he has only made one birdie in two rounds and is ranked T94 for those holes. Burns on the other hand is 5-under on the same holes.

“One under is not going to get the job done (on the par-5s) over the weekend. Definitely need to take advantage of the par 5s the next couple days,” said Johnson. “But other than that I feel like I'm swinging my irons really well, I'm rolling the putter nicely, so looking forward to the weekend.”

Also tied in second place is Tyler McCumber, who could not have anticipated his good form this week after injuring his index finger on Tuesday and requiring emergency minor surgery.

“I was coming out to the course and I went to open the windows to cool off the hotel room before I left, and I smashed it in a sliding window door right in the crevice. It went underneath the back of the nail bed and lifted half of the back of the nail up,” said McCumber. 

“It was pretty torn up, but fortunately the surgeon on site, the emergency surgeon, is a hand specialist. Dr. Modabber. So he gave me the option, he said we can bandage it up, obviously you can't play because it's just too painful, or we can do a procedure where we just rip off the nail, but half of the nail is still intact.”

“Basically I was able to kind of see if I could hit balls that next day and I was (able to). I just kind of altered my glove and kept it on all day and putted with it on. It's a lot less (pain) without the fingernail on there, but you can tell it's just kind of bleeding all the way through this bandage. Thankfully Riviera will take your mind off the pain.”

Behind the quartet in second place is a group of three players at 6-under, among them Jordan Spieth.

"It's one of those rare weeks where you can't get away with firing at flagsticks," said Spieth. "There's not much rough, but when you get in the rough it takes the spin off enough to where you can't get into pins. A lot of times when you miss the greens, it's harder to get it closer than where you could have hit your approach. It's such a different experience from what we normally have on TOUR."

Spieth fired five birdies and two bogeys for a 68.

"It's not like you can go chase people on this golf course," said Spieth. "So I'm happy with where I'm at, but just eliminate a couple of the minor mistakes here and there and try to keep clean cards on the weekend and let the rest of it take care of itself."

Rory McIlroy missed the cut (73-76) as did Justin Thomas (77-73) and Bryson DeChambeau (75-69).

McIlroy has lost the longest active cut streak on Tour of 25 dating back to the 2019 Open. The new longest is now Xander Schauffele's 22.