Los Angeles earns second victory, tops Boston

Collin Morikawa was dancing from his first tee shot on Tuesday, helping Los Angeles Golf Club to its second win of the season with a 6-2 victory over Boston Common Golf at SoFi Center.

LA grabbed first place outright in the SoFi Cup Standings with the win and turned in another dominant performance, with Morikawa, Justin Rose and Tommy Fleetwood taking a 5-0 lead into Singles and never letting Boston see a window of opportunity. It was a tough night for the Ballfrogs and Rory McIlroy, who entered the match fresh off his 27th PGA TOUR win after a two-shot victory at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am.

LAGC held the Hammer from the first hole and never put it in play, despite plenty of not-so-subtle requests from the fans in the arena.

“We don’t need the Hammer! We’re fine!” Fleetwood shouted back at the crowd midway through the ninth hole, at which point McIlroy, Adam Scott and Keegan Bradley were growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of scoring opportunities.

“Momentum counts for a lot,” Scott said after the match. “This [format] moves really quick and the points got away from us tonight. It was hard to claw back and the Hammer seemed to vanish. As that stayed away, our chances dwindled.”

Said Morikawa: “If you can get under their skin, that’s exactly what you want to do.”

Fleetwood fit right in throughout his TGL debut, replacing Sahith Theegala in the lineup following Los Angeles’ 12-1 win over Jupiter Links Golf Club last month. Fleetwood hit a perfect drive that led to a birdie and a 1-0 lead for Los Angeles at the first hole, and extended the lead to 3-0 with a 7-foot birdie make at No. 3.

“How much fun is [this]? What a team. What a group of lads,” Fleetwood said. “This is a challenging game in a different environment, in a really cool environment...it’s epic, isn’t it?”

Boston turned it up a notch in Singles with Bradley winning both holes against Rose, earning two points that could prove critical in the event of a tiebreaker in the standings entering the postseason. That was a nice consolation for the diehard New England sports fan, who has entered SoFi Center wearing Boston Red Sox and Boston Celtics jerseys ahead of his first two matches.

Los Angeles earned another two points with the victory and now sits alone on top of the SoFi Cup Standings with four points total. Boston remains at one point after its overtime loss to Jupiter last week.

TGL is off next week and will return with a Presidents' Day tripleheader on Feb. 17, which begins with Los Angeles taking on Atlanta Drive Golf Club at 1 p.m. ET. Boston is also in action in the final match of the night at 7 p.m. against The Bay Golf Club. Atlanta and The Bay will compete in the second match at 4 p.m.