Miguel Angel Jimenez in thick of Schwab race

Consider Miguel Angel Jimenez the de facto defending champion this week at the Constellation Furyk & Friends.

With last year’s winner Phil Mickelson on suspension after jumping to the LIV Golf Tour, Jimenez is the top finisher from the inaugural Furyk & Friends to return to the Timuquana Country Club. He was the runner-up to Mickelson, two shots behind the winning score of 15-under-par 201, but put the pressure on all weekend after a pedestrian 70 in the first round.

Jimenez played his final 47 holes bogey-free and his second-round 65 tied John Daly’s closing score for the low round of the tournament.

“It’s nice to be back here,” the 58-year-old native of Spain said during a news conference on Wednesday. “It’s a beautiful golf course … firm and fast, very nice.”

Jimenez is having another solid season, tying four other players for first with three victories. He enters the week fifth in the Charles Schwab Cup race and has earned $1,896,413, with 12 top-10s in 18 starts. He’s been outside the top 20 only three times and now has 13 PGA Tour Champions titles, and 39 worldwide.

Jimenez was in the hunt in three of the Champions Tour majors, with a tie for third at the Regions Tradition, a tie for fourth at the KitchenAid Senior PGA and a tie for seventh at the U.S. Senior Open.

Jimenez loves Timuquana’s challenges

Jimenez likes to keep life interesting, to say the least, and the subtleties of the historic Donald Ross course make him eager to get to the first tee on Friday at 11:45 a.m., where he will play with Ernie Els and Stephen Ames.

“It’s not that long, but you need to put the ball always in position,” he said of Timuquana. “This bermudagrass you have all over the golf course … you need to be in the fairway. If you miss the fairway [it’s] going to [be] almost impossible to stop the ball on these greens. You need to be very precise with all your clubs.”

Jimenez said the Champions Tour doesn’t get many challenges like Timuquana.

“It’s quite different because every week we play [soft] greens that are different kind of grass that you can hold better,” he said. “The way the golf course is set up, you need to be nice and sharp and precise. A little bit different with the other golf courses.”

Working hard to stay…