Kirk settles in at Sea Island

Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Horschel, who’d gone dormant since winning the 2014 FedExCup, notched his fourth PGA TOUR victory to remind everyone how good he is when the putts are falling. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. There’s nothing like watching your ball fall in the hole to beat back the golfing blues. At the suggestion of his coach Todd Anderson, a slumping Horschel put a new PXG putter in the bag for the Byron. The change paid off handsomely as he made 453 feet, 9 inches of putts for the week, including a 60-footer at the 14th hole Sunday. That was the second best putting performance of his career (2014 BMW Championship, 498’8’’). He also ranked first in Strokes Gained: Putting at TPC Four Seasons Resort, becoming the first TOUR winner to lead that stat since Russell Henley at the Shell Houston Open. “I putted beautifully all week,â€� said Horschel, who moved from 71st to 15th in the FedExCup standings, and from 76th to 44th in the Official World Golf Ranking, giving him an automatic berth in the U.S. Open at Erin Hills next month. As for his bomb on 14, he said it was an unexpected bonus after three-putting the previous two holes. “I’m thinking to myself, man just get it close, I don’t want to 3-putt again.â€� 2. Golf psychology continues to make perfect sense, and no sense at all. Horschel’s four straight missed cuts meant he was coming off the worst stretch of golf since his rookie year in 2011, when he missed five straight. By his own admission, he landed in Dallas with “nothingâ€� in terms of momentum. What’s more, he’d never warmed to TPC Four Seasons while missing the cut there in his only two Byron starts, in 2011 and 2012. None of that mattered. What mattered was something his caddie Josh Cassell said to Horschel while he was shooting a second-round 76 to miss the cut at THE PLAYERS Championship the previous week. As Horschel’s paraphrased it, Cassell said, “You know what, we’re going to go next week to Dallas, to the Byron Nelson, and we’re going to win.â€� What did the caddie see? How did he know? Meanwhile, Day’s resurgence was almost predictable. Although it had been a year since his last victory, at the 2016 PLAYERS, and he came into the week at 106th in the FedExCup race, his poor play had coincided with his mother Dening’s lung cancer. With the recent upswing in her health—she’s back working in Australia—Jason’s game figured to bounce back accordingly. It did. Day’s playoff loss, while disappointing, moved him up to 39th in the FedExCup race. He also reclaimed his No. 3 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking, ahead of Hideki Matsuyama.      3. The also-rans are often just as interesting as the winners, and sometimes they’re even more so. That’s the premise of Neil Steinberg’s highly entertaining 1994 book, “Complete & Utter Failure: A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres & Total Flops.â€� And for the second straight week, we saw that simple truth play out on TOUR. First, we got Ian Poulter’s wild-and-wooly bogey from the trees on the 72nd hole at THE PLAYERS. Then, on Sunday, we saw James Hahn come to 18 needing an eagle to elbow his way into the playoff. Impossible? Nah. From 121 yards, Hahn hit a wedge and watched along with everyone else as the ball hit by the flagstick, spun back and caught part of the hole but spun out to four feet away. He made the birdie putt to shoot 71 and finish alone in third place, a shot out of the playoff. Even after Horschel’s long birdie putt on 14, and Day’s chip-in at 15, Hahn’s lip out from long range was unforgettable. And kudos to CBS for its cutaway to the hands-over-heads reaction of Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo in the booth—a nice touch that mirrored how the rest of us looked.    4. Boring golf is winning golf. Still. Nowhere was that more evident than the par-5 16th hole, where Hahn missed right off the tee and Day missed left. Horschel, meanwhile, split the fairway and hit a stock 5-iron onto the green, leading to a routine, two-putt birdie to move him into a tie for the lead with Day. “I knew the stuff I was doing at home was the right stuff,â€� said Horschel, who has long been known as one of the game’s premier ball-strikers. “I knew the stuff I was doing in early weeks of tournaments was the right stuff. I just had to keep believing in it and keep believing that, you know, in tournament golf that I’ve done this stuff I needed to do that week to play well. And sometimes I just didn’t have that belief I needed.â€� Afterward, Day was left to rue not just his missed four-foot par try in sudden death, but also his failure to birdie 16, where he “basically three-puttedâ€� from the left fringe. 5. Jordan Spieth will remember this tournament as a wake-up call. Yes, he shot an out-of-left-field 75 (including a quadruple-bogey 9 on 16) to miss the cut at the Byron for the first time. And yes, it was a particularly painful result at TPC Four Seasons, where Spieth watched the TOUR pros as a boy, and where he finished T16 at a 16-year-old in 2010. “It didn’t need to happen,â€� he said, sounding like he was in shock.   But sometimes athletes find the most unlikely places to pivot. Just ask Horschel, who said he found something in his swing while missing the cut at THE PLAYERS. This week Spieth heads just down the road to the DEAN & DELUCA Invitational, where he says the course (Colonial) fits his game better and where he is in fact the defending champion. Spieth has a history of turning negatives into positives—think of his defiant back-to-back birdies after he four-putted the par-3 eighth hole at the 2015 Open Championship at St. Andrews. Don’t be surprised to see another bounce-back this week.   FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Horschel’s short-game stats coming into the Byron were not very good, which was yet one more reason why his performance at TPC Four Seasons was such a shocker.   Coming into the tournament, he was a middling 127th in Scrambling, 193rd in Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green, and 113th in Strokes Gained: Putting. Whether it was his new putter, his newfound peace, or something else, Horschel transformed at the Byron: T7 in Scrambling, ninth in SG: Around-the-Green, and first in SG: Putting. Who was that guy? 2. The winner was not only better on the greens, he got there with greater ease, too. Unafraid to hit driver off the tee, Horschel ranked T6 in driving distance (305 yards per pop) and T17 in driving accuracy (57.14 percent). He was also T5 in Greens in Regulation (70.83%). Day laid back off the tee to rank 17th in driving distance (298.9) and T12 in driving accuracy (58.93%), but was well back at T32 in Greens in Regulation (63.89%). Over time, those differences, especially the GIR differential, tend to add up. 3. The 20-somethings have fallen back. Golfers under 30 got off to a hot start this season, and they got a boost from 21-year-old Si Woo Kim’s victory at THE PLAYERS. They account for 16 tournament victories in total. That said, the 30-somethings are staging a modest rally, having won or jointly won (in the case of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans) four times in the last five weeks. Thanks to Horschel, 30, outlasting Day, 29, they account for 10 victories and seem to be catching up. The 40-somethings, by the way, account for three Ws so far this season.     4 TPC Four Seasons held up well and played tough in its final year as host. The cut was at 2 over for the second straight week on TOUR, but it was only the fifth over-par cut in 43 tournaments so far this season. How hard was it? FedExCup leader Dustin Johnson made nine bogeys while shooting weekend rounds of 71-69 to finish T13. “It’s sad that it’s leaving,â€� Horschel said, “because I was never a fan of this course, but came here and now I am and I won and I don’t want to leave (laughter).â€� 5. Okay, maybe putting isn’t everything. As much as we like to point to Strokes Gained: Putting to explain tournament results, it’s not always that simple. Case in point: Although he led the field in SG: Putting for the week, Horschel took an untidy 32 putts Sunday. He made up for it by hitting 10 of 14 fairways and 14 of 18 greens in regulation, his best of the week in both categories. Meanwhile, with 100 putts at the Byron, Patrick Reed became just the fifth player this season to take 100 or fewer for the week. He tied for 20th. Of the five players to keep their total putts at 100 or fewer, only one has won the tournament: Wesley Bryan at the RBC Heritage. Figure that one out. TOP THREE VIDEOS

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LAS VEGAS — Robert Streb went from making putts to wondering if he would ever miss Thursday in THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT. It led to his best start to any tournament and his lowest score on the PGA TOUR. RELATED: Leaderboard | Adam Scott’s new Titleist irons ‘one of one’ And on this day at The Summit Club, his 11-under 61 was only good for a one-shot lead. A world-class field lit up a very pretty and mostly defenseless golf course overlooking the Las Vegas Strip. The result was the lowest average score — 68.95 — for the opening round on the PGA TOUR all year. Streb had 10 birdies and an eagle and led by one shot over Keith Mitchell, who had more birdies than pars in matching his low round with a 62. Harry Higgs was at 64, while the group at 65 included Sergio Garcia and Viktor Hovland. Such scoring in ideal conditions was what players were expecting on this Tom Fazio desert course, and Streb wasted little time proving it. He started with a pair of 6-foot birdie putts and followed with a 12-footer for eagle. When he walked off the par-5 sixth hole after a long two-putt for birdie, he already was 7-under par. “I’ve never had a start like that, so it was kind of fun,” Streb said. “I was trying to stay in the moment the best I can, and I don’t know. You just feel like you can start aiming at stuff. Things seemed to be going my way.” Streb broke by two shots his previous low score on the PGA TOUR, one of those 63s in the PGA Championship at rain-soaked Baltusrol in 2016. But while low scores were plentiful — 25 players at 67 or lower — so was trouble if anything left the emerald green fairways. Consider how it must have felt for Justin Rose. Two holes into the tournament, he already was 10 shots behind. Rose came up short of the par-3 second green into a native area of mostly rocks and some sand. He tried to play it and the ball ricocheted off a stone wall into a desert bush. His only option was to take a penalty drop — but where? Going back on a line with the hole, he found a fairly sparse area only to duff it toward the wall and more rocks. After another penalty drop, he got up-and-down for a quadruple-bogey 7. It’s not as though Rose was alone in his travails. Dustin Johnson, trying to avoid only his second winless year in his 14 years on the PGA TOUR, tried to drive the 12th green and wound up in the desert. He took a drop 50 yards behind him in a lot for the next mansion and made double bogey. He made his only birdie on the back nine at the par-5 closing hole for a 74. Justin Thomas was off to a slow start and then went into reverse when he tried to play out of the desert and kept banging it off the rocks. One shot went 25 feet. Another went 30 yards into a lie so bad he had to take a penalty. Plus, his wedge had a gouge in the face, and a rules official had to fetch a replacement from his car. Thomas birdied his last three holes for a 69. Rory McIlroy was making his move until going into the desert, clanging it off rocks that led to a penalty drop and making triple bogey. He had to settle for a 68. “It’s one of those courses where if you just keep it in play, it’s obviously very scorable,” McIlroy said. “But you hit a couple just offline and you get a bad break or a little unlucky, you can make a big number and I did that on 17. But the other 17 holes were good.” All 18 holes were good for Mitchell, at least at The Summit Club. He missed the cut last week down the road at the TPC Summerlin and then spent five days working harder than most visitors to Las Vegas, and it helped that putting coach Ramon Bescansa was in town. Mitchell made a 15-foot birdie putt on the par-5 third and was on his way. He followed with two more birdies from about that range and never let up. “When that went in with good speed, I felt like I had a chance today,” he said. Good putting goes a long way on any course. Keeping it on the grass on a course built in the desert also helps. “If you hit the fairways, you have good chances. It’s that simple,” Mitchell said. “Because if you miss the fairways, the desert is a big penalty. It just depends on luck after that. … If you get out of position out here it can bite you.” Defending champion Jason Kokrak probably wished he was back at Shadow Creek. He opened with a 77. This is the second straight year the CJ Cup has moved from South Korea to Las Vegas because of the pandemic.

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OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. - History told Jon Rahm there would be drama at Olympia Fields. But this time the Spaniard wasn't going to let the place get the better of him. Rahm knew it would take something like his incredible 66-foot birdie putt that snaked across the entire 18th green, over a ridge and down into the cup to win a playoff against Dustin Johnson for the BMW Championship. Because strange things happen for the now 25-year-old at this venue. RELATED: Final leaderboard | What's in Rahm's bag? Five years ago, a young Rahm came to the course that sits southwest of Chicago as part of the field for the 2015 U.S. Amateur. He was the world No. 1 in the amateur game and expected to be a huge factor. But things did not come easy that week. First, Rahm needed to make two birdie bombs in his last three holes of stroke play just to make it into a playoff for the match play portion of the championship. He survived that playoff but needed 21 holes to get through the round of 64. Having then pushed his way to the quarterfinals, Rahm looked headed for the final four when he sat 3 up with eight holes remaining against unheralded Derek Bard. Instead, he lost two straight holes and then power-lipped out a 5-foot putt on the 15th that would have reclaimed a 2-up lead. He missed from 4 feet on the next hole to be back square and then three-putted the 17th to go behind. A hole later, he was eliminated in an upset. So Rahm returned this week for the BMW Championship determined to make amends. That amateur story belongs to Bryson DeChambeau, who would go on to beat Bard in the final. But the story of the FedExCup Playoffs event will forever be Rahm's. It didn't appear that would be the case for most of the week. Rahm started with a 5-over 75 and added a 71 the next day to sit 6 over. Then on the fifth hole Saturday, after back-to-back birdies, he inexplicably picked up his ball on the green before marking it. He was assessed a one-shot penalty, turning a par into a bogey. It could have sparked the end for Rahm, who is known for wearing his passion on his sleeve. But instead, much like he did when penalized two shots on his way to winning the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide in July, Rahm remained calm. In fact, he zeroed in his focus and went on to shoot 66. "I just hope I don’t lose by one," Rahm said afterwards. "I’m just going to say that. I just hope. And if I do, well, very well my fault. It’s as simple as that." That night he and wife Kelley were talking, and the ball marking fiasco came up. Rahm reiterated the above statement but, as Kelley puts it, made a point to move on. If one thing happens one way, then chances are the next thing would be different to. He vowed not to think about it as he tried to chase down a three-shot deficit. And he managed that as he went about shooting a sublime bogey free 6-under 64 to post in the clubhouse at 4 under. That "bogey" on Saturday was his last of the tournament that saw just five players finish under par. But the moment eventually flashed back as Dustin Johnson played the final hole sitting a shot behind while Rahm tried to stay loose on the range. "When they told me DJ had hit it on the green on the 18th hole and the situation. I was like, ‘That extra shot cushion would be extremely nice right now, I’m not going to lie,' " Rahm smiled. "But at the same time, I don’t know if I would have won had it not happened. It kind of made me mad at myself, and I just went on with my focus after that and was able to play amazing golf and stayed aggressive. "Maybe if I hadn’t, I would have two-putted and maybe stayed complacent. I don’t know because I had such a good start. I can tell you after that two-putt, making that 6-footer for bogey, I was like, okay, that’s it, no playing around, go. That’s kind of what mentally did it for me." It was that focus that allowed him to handle the fact Johnson made a ridiculously good 43-foot snaking downhill putt of his own to force the playoff. Because of course he would. He's world No. 1 and the FedExCup leader who was coming off an 11-shot victory at THE NORTHERN TRUST. And this is Olympia Fields after all. "Last time I had a wait having a one-shot lead with a couple groups to go was in Palm Springs, and Andrew Landry came in at 18 and made birdie and we went into a playoff. I reminded myself that anything is possible," Rahm said. “When they told me where DJ was putting from, I didn’t see it, I just knew he just had to get the ball rolling on the right direction and that putt was in, and I knew how good DJ has been playing I was expecting nothing else. I was fully confident it was going to come into a playoff and hoping to win it." What he wasn't expecting was to win the tournament on the first playoff hole when Johnson split the fairway and he found the rough and consequently faced 66 feet for birdie to Johnson's 33 feet. In fact, while he stalked the putt hoping to find the right line, his focus was on speed as the slick downhill effort was most likely to run past the hole and leave a tester for par. He need not have worried. It was like a magnet to the hole, much like Johnson's earlier. When Johnson's attempt to match ended up stopping just inches from the cup, it was over. "Never did I think I would make another 60-footer, a couple of breaks in there to end up winning it," Rahm beamed. "We all want the flashy finish, maybe not the stress that comes with it, but I set out to enjoy even the uncomfortable moments we had out there today, and man, it was fun. Pretty close to the best way to finish it." The win moved him to second in the FedExCup heading to the TOUR Championship. He was three behind Johnson starting Sunday. Next week he will start two behind as he chases the season long trophy. And what a difference one stroke can make.

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