In the final round of the 2017 Shell Houston Open, Russell Henley starts four behind Sung Kang but wins by three after making 10 birdies and shooting 65 in gusting winds. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Henley, who will turn 28 on April 12, notched his third PGA TOUR win to remind everyone he’s among the game’s top young players. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. All week players commented on the pristine greens at the Golf Club of Houston, and putting told the story at the Shell Houston Open. First came Sung Kang’s 300 feet of putts made over the first 36 holes as he raced to 16-under, and a big lead halfway through the tournament. Henley took over from there, making seemingly everything on the weekend to shoot 69-65. “He played like I did the first two rounds,” said Kang, who could have made things tighter at the end but missed a 4 foot, 8-inch birdie putt at the par-3 16th hole Sunday. “He putted really well,” Kang said of Henley. “Made almost everything.” Henley led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting, and made 541 feet, 10 inches worth of putts for the week. “When he gets rolling with his putter, I’ve seen him just make everything,” said Todd Gjesvold, Henley’s caddie, who also cited his man’s improved wedge play this season. “He just seems fearless. He didn’t seem nervous. He gets over the hump and then it’s just, hang on.” 2. Golf is a game of crippling self-doubt, and winning (or losing) the battle to overcome it. Henley’s surprising comments after he won were a reminder that no one is immune. Looking like a baton-twirling overachiever when he first hit the scene, Henley won in his first start as a PGA TOUR member at the 2013 Sony Open in Hawaii. He made everything seem easy with three rounds of 63, but to hear him talk now, it was anything but. “I had a win and then was a little inconsistent and kind of lost—wasn’t very confident with where I was going with improving my game and kind of what I needed to do to play well,” Henley said. “I was lost with my swing and questioning everything. I think that happens when you play against the best players in the world. “Some guys obviously just have quick starts and have never really looked back,” he added. “I struggled that year, and then the start of ’14 was awful.” After missing a slew of cuts, Henley said he has no idea how he won The Honda Classic in 2014. “The rest of that year I can’t say I was really a confident golfer at that point.” He rebounded in 2015, making 20 cuts and more than $2 million in 24 starts, but again can’t explain how, other than to say he wasn’t practicing as much because he was frustrated. Then came 2016, and more disappointment: just 13 made cuts, and 87th in the FedExCup. “I don’t know what happened last year,” Henley said. “Just—it’s a humbling game. This is a great experience for me to win. I’m confident about it, but, I mean, I also look back on all the times I’ve struggled, too, and I feel like it’s molded me to be tougher.” Psychologically, the winner’s most important hole in Houston on Sunday may have been the par-4 10th. Henley had just doubled the 9th to hand the lead back to Kang, who bogeyed, but Henley hit his wedge second shot to just over 14 feet from the pin for birdie on 10, and rolled in the putt. “It was starting to rain and, you know, things could have got out of hand,” Gjesvold said. “It settled him down. He just kept hitting one shot at a time.” 3. You’ll likely be hearing more from runner-up Kang, perhaps as a key cog on the International side at the Presidents Cup at Liberty National, Sept. 28-Oct. 1. Kang seemed to have found the silver lining in a phone call with his Los Angeles-based coach George Gankas on Sunday night. “He wasn’t unhappy,” said Gankas, who teaches out of Westlake Golf Course, a 5,053-yard, par-67 track. “He just knows he played more conservatively and that was it.” Kang was looking for his first TOUR victory in his 95th career start, but his other consideration was to play well enough to keep his card for next season. He likely did that with his solo second-place finish, which boosted him from 104th to 28th in the FedExCup standings. As Gankas pointed out, “Security is one thing, and firing at pins is another.” The two have been working together for about six months, and Gankas was in Houston on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to help Kang sharpen up for the tournament. By leveraging the ground more optimally, Kang has picked up distance, and because Kang struggled with too much curvature on his shots, they’ve worked on increasing his body rotation. “Before he met me, he had a lot of confidence,” said Gankas, who also teaches Tristan Gretzky, 15-year-old son of Wayne, and has become friendly with world No. 1 Dustin Johnson. “He’s probably the smartest guy I’ve worked with,” Gankas said of Kang. “He understands everything, motion-wise, that I’m telling him. And he can actually do it. He didn’t have a lot of flaws when he came to me. We picked up distance and created ball patterns that he hadn’t had before. He’s always been able to hit a cut or a draw, but he’s controlling his over-draw to tucked left pins, and his over-fade to tucked right pins. He’s not short-siding himself as much.” 4. Rickie Fowler is feeling optimistic heading into the Masters. Fowler tallied 27 birdies in Houston, which was tied with winner Henley for most in the field. Other than missing three putts of five feet or less on his final two holes Saturday, and getting off to a 3-over start through his first four holes Sunday, Fowler played well enough to win the tournament instead of finishing tied for third place with Luke List. “Actually just an alignment problem that just caused me to make a couple bad swings,” Fowler said of his Sunday hiccups. He hit an ugly hook off the second tee that found a swampy marsh area and led to a double-bogey. Two holes later he tried to reach the green of the par-5 fourth hole in two by hitting driver off the fairway, but hit a less severe hook, his attempt missing left and into the water hazard, leading to a bogey 6. The four-time TOUR winner Fowler steadied himself and birdied five of his last 11 holes for a 70 in tricky, gusting winds as a predicted thunderstorm never materialized. “I’m happy about it,” Fowler said of the week. “Come here—for me I come here as a prep for next week and I did, you know, as much as I wanted to, if not more. Winning would have been a bonus for sure, and, obviously, that’s what I would have liked to have done. “To come out of here in a better mindset than I was going in,” he added, “[I am] feeling good about the work that we did, and being able to, like I said, kind of turn things around out there when I knew there was something off and was able to figure that out and get it going.” 5. Justin Rose liked parts of his game in Houston, and he really likes Augusta. Rose tied for 15th at the Golf Club of Houston, which wasn’t the type of finish that will go down in the history books, but like Fowler he was also preparing for the Masters. “I’m going to really take the last three holes and just boil the week down to the last three holes, I suppose,” said Rose, who gave himself birdie looks on those last three holes, converting on one of them, from just under seven feet at the 17th hole, as he shot a final-round 70. “There were lots of ups-and-downs before that,” he added, “but the last three holes I kind of refocused and tried to think about next week a little bit, even hit some good shots. Felt my iron play over the weekend was a little sharper. That’s good.” Rose’s consistency at Augusta National has been remarkable, with six top-15 finishes and no missed cuts in nine starts. He is coming off a T10 last year and a T2 in 2015. “I hit a lot of good putts that didn’t go in this week,” he said. “I felt like I over-read them a little bit. I think that there’s a lot of—putts break a little less [in Houston] than they are going to be doing at Augusta. Over-reading this week might work to my advantage next week.” FIVE INSIGHTS 1. The statistics tell us Henley not only had the best putting performance of anyone in the field in Houston, he also had one of the best weeks of all time. He made 16 putts of over 10 feet (first in the field), and his more than 541 feet of putts made for the week was the second best on record in the ShotLink era. Only Ben Martin’s more than 551 feet of putts made at the 2015 DEAN & DELUCA at Colonial was better. What’s more, Henley’s +12.5 strokes gained: putting mark not only led the field in Houston, it was 10th best ever. Martin Laird (+13.80, 2008 Wyndham Championship) has the all-time mark. Keep in mind, Henley did all this despite missing a 4 ½-foot bogey putt on the 9th hole in the final round. 2. Of the 29 players in Houston who are also in the field for this week’s Masters, Fowler led the way with his T3 finish. Daniel Berger (5), Hudson Swafford (6), Jon Rahm (10), Jason Dufner (T12), Justin Rose (T15), Andy Sullivan (T15) and Jhonattan Vegas (T15) will also carry momentum into Augusta. Others who made the 54-hole cut in Houston included Bernd Wiesberger (T23), Charley Hoffman (T23), Mackenzie Hughes (T23), Angel Cabrera (T34), Kevin Chappell (T44), Chris Wood (T49) and Sean O’Hair (T49). While they might understandably be disappointed at not winning in Houston, it’s worth remembering that while it’s very hard to win on TOUR, it’s even harder to win back-to-back. Only four players have won the week before the Masters and gone on to win at Augusta National the following week: Ralph Guldahl (Wyndham Championship) in 1939, Art Wall (Azalea Open) in 1959, Sandy Lyle (Wyndham) in 1988, and Phil Mickelson (BellSouth Classic) in 2006. Sam Snead won the 1949 Wyndham and the next official event on TOUR, the Masters, two weeks later. 3. If you’re looking for a longshot pick at Augusta, look no further than 2009 Masters winner Angel Cabrera. After starting his final round in Houston on the 10th hole—players were put into groups of three and sent off early Sunday to get ahead of an approaching weather system—Cabrera made a hole-in-one on his final hole of the tournament, No. 9, with a 3-iron from 220 yards. It was Cabrera’s fourth ace on the PGA TOUR, and he becomes the first player this season with two aces to his name. (He also made a 1 at the CareerBuilder Challenge.) What’s more, Cabrera made history in becoming the first player in Shell Houston Open history to ace the ninth hole. Perhaps “El Pato” (the Duck) can thank Aflac for the good mojo. The insurance giant sent its live duck mascot, with its handler, on a goodwill tour of the Golf Club of Houston on Saturday. 4. “Jon Rahm is one of the top 10 players in the world,” one player agent said as Rahm finished tied for third at the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship in early March. “It’s just a question of when the rankings will catch up to that fact.” It looks like that day will soon be upon us. Although he made no moves from fourth in the FedExCup standings and 12th in the Official World Golf Ranking, Rahm, the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open winner, notched his fifth top-10 finish in his last six starts in Houston. His excellent results of late are almost Dustin Johnson-like for their consistency: Won—Farmers Insurance Open T16—Waste Management Phoenix Open T5—AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am T3—WGC-Mexico Championship 2—World Golf Championships—Dell Technology Match Play T10—Shell Houston Open 5. Only one player went without a bogey Saturday, Michael Thompson (69), and yet there were eight bogey-free rounds in a similarly gusting, swirling wind Sunday. What gives? For one thing, the course was softer Sunday, thanks to some overnight precipitation and a few bursts of intense rain during the round. The other big difference: Players competed under lift, clean and place rules under the threat of severe thunderstorms that never materialized. As a result of those factors and some pretty great golf under tough conditions, Hudson Swafford (67), Vaughn Taylor (67), Zac Blair (67), Thompson (68), Ryan Blaum (68), Rafael Campos (69), Bryson DeChambeau (69) and D.A. Points (70) all went bogey-free on Sunday. TOP 3 VIDEOS 1. Angel Cabrera’s walk-off ace was an electric way to finish his round. 2. The No. 2 video of the weekend comes in two parts. Just in case the shot wasn’t good enough, what Kevin Streelman does next is perfect. 3. Houston, we are go for launch.
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