The RSM Classic, final round: Leaderboard, tee times, TV schedule

Here are nine tidbits from the third round of the 100th PGA Championship gamers can use tomorrow, this weekend or down the road. Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis plays 7,316 yards to par-70. Know Thy Enemy These were the top-10 selected, plus one, golfers in the PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf game presented by SERVPRO. Round 2 was completed before 11:00 a.m. Saturday morning before Round 3 tee times began at 11:30 a.m. The cut landed on 140 (E) and for the first time in the history of the majors, +1 did NOT make the weekend. Of the 81 who made the cut they play both weekend rounds as there is no MDF in the major championships. Sunshine and hot temperatures made for ideal scoring conditions for the third round running. 54-Hole Leader After tying the PGA Championship record with 63 in Round 2, Brooks Koepka raced out of the blocks in Round 3. He was cruising with a five-shot lead as he went out in 30 before a pair of bogeys kept the field interested. He eventually signed for 66, tied for the second-best round of the day, and his total of 12 under par will give him a two-shot cushion in Round 4. He’ll look to join Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods as the only players to win the U.S. Open and PGA Championship in the same season. Shotgun Rider Australian Adam Scott, as his investors will remind me, only has one top-10 payday this season on the Zoysia fairways at Trinity Forest (T9). He’ll play in the final group after posting the round of the day, 65, with birdies on two of his last three holes. He’s played the final three holes in 4 under the last two rounds and has plenty of experience in big moments. Beware the Injured Golfer Rickie Fowler is dealing with an oblique injury but gutted out 69 and will begin Sunday in the penultimate group with Jon Rahm. He’s three back but sits third in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green. He hasn’t made anything this week but only has five total bogeys on his card. As long as he wakes up feeling well he should be in the fight on the back nine. Rahm-bo Fowler’s playing partner is also three back and is also looking to find answers with the putter on Sunday. Jon Rahm hasn’t squared a bogey in his last 45 holes but he resides in the bottom half of Strokes Gained: Putting. The good news is he’s in the top six in both Tee-to-Green and Approach-the-Green and that doesn’t hurt. He’s chased before this year as he signed for 3 under at Augusta on Sunday for solo fourth. First Time for Everything? Tiger Woods has never won a major championship in come-from-behind fashion but he’ll have a chance to change that Sunday. After back-to-back rounds of 66, Woods is in with a shout as he’ll begin the final round four shots behind Koepka (T6). The key for Woods will be simple in the final round as he’ll have to find some fortune on the back nine. He’s 2 over for the week on the inward nine and hasn’t broken par in three tries. Moving Day Daniel Berger has been battling a wrist injury but admitted before his round it’s go-time. He stepped on the gas after his opening nine of 41 to post 12 under in his last 45 holes. He moved up 21 spots to T15 after 66 in Round 3. … Xander Schauffele is looking to claim his third consecutive top-10 payday in the majors after T6 at Shinnecock Hills and T2 at Carnoustie. His 67 moved him to T15 and like Berger sits just one shot out of the top 10. Moving Day: Wrong Way Dustin Johnson didn’t make a birdie through the first 14 holes and saw the field run right past him as he was 5 over. Birdies on three of the last four holes saw him post 72 (+2) rally to T21 but he was T5 to begin Round 3. … Kevin Kisner played in the final group Saturday for the second year running and the results were similar. His 72 last year saw him maintain his lead but his 72 this time dropped him from second to T12. He finished T7 last year. Study Hall It keeps getting “easier” and that’s hardly a surprise after the weather. Round 2 finished under par at 69.594 while Round 3 was a tick lower at 69.500. … There were three bogey-free rounds in Round 3 as club professional Ben Kern joined Rahm and Berger in this elite club.  … Tony Finau has circled 18 birdies to lead the way but is T57. … Englishman Matt Wallace made a hole-in-one on No. 15 with a 5-iron from 232 yards. … The top four plus ties get into the Masters next year. … Every winner in recent memory has been in the top five entering Sunday.

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In pursuit of his first PGA TOUR victory, 21-year-old Aaron Wise weathers a 4-hour rain delay, pulls away at the turn, and fires a final-round 65 to capture the AT&T Byron Nelson. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Wise outplayed fellow 54-hole co-leader Marc Leishman to salt away a comfortable three-stroke victory at Trinity Forest, his audacious 23-under total making him the seventh first-time winner this season. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1 With the 20-somethings already in command of the FedExCup (Justin Thomas), and having won the last four majors, Aaron Wise, 21, stamped himself for greatness. Not that we didn’t see him coming. He was the 2016 individual NCAA champion when he also helped his Oregon Ducks to the team title, and becomes just the second player, after Mackenzie Hughes, to win on the PGA TOUR after having won on the Web.com Tour and the Mackenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada. Now he has his sights set on being in the top 30 at season’s end. “I haven’t had time to reassess my goals, but moving up to 18 on the FedExCup is incredible,� Wise said. “Not many rookies have made it to the TOUR Championship.� That may be so, but last year rookie Xander Schauffele won it on the way to top rookie honors. A good omen for the latest AT&T Byron Nelson winner? 2 This was just the 26th start of Wise’s TOUR career, and he’s the first rookie to win the Byron since Keegan Bradley in 2011. Also, at 21 years, 10 months and 29 days old, he’s the youngest Byron winner since Tiger Woods (21 years, 4 months, 18 days) in 1997. Oh, and Wise is also the youngest winner on TOUR this season, and the youngest overall since Si Woo Kim (21 years, 10 months, 16 days) captured THE PLAYERS Championship a year ago. Only once on Sunday did Wise show his youthful inexperience. “Back nine,� he said, “my caddie kind of calmed me down. Like, ‘Dude, you got to focus on these shots, we’ve got some big shots coming up. We’ll finish before dark, don’t worry about that.’ Kind of calmed me back down.� The details on Wise’s rapid rise: He has played eight straight rounds under par, finishing T2 and first at the Wells Fargo Championship and AT&T Byron Nelson, respectively, to rack up 745 FedExCup points and jump from 105th to 18th in the standings. He’s also up to 66th in the Official World Golf Ranking. The top 60 after the FedEx St. Jude Classic get into the U.S. Open. 3 Runner-up Marc Leishman notched his sixth top-10 finish and his second runner-up (P2, THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES) this season, but after an opening-round 61 he was hoping for more. Culprit: the putter. “He hit the ball incredible,� Wise said. “I knew he would have a ton of looks. He did. Unfortunately, he didn’t make all the putts and I was able to edge him out.� Leishman, who jumped from 33rd to 14th in the FedExCup, led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting for the week (+2.226) but struggled, relatively speaking, on Sunday (.085). 4 With Trinity Forest all but defenseless, several players enjoyed career-low performances. Keith Mitchell (T3) shot a career-low, 8-under 63 in the final round. J.J. Spaun (T3) also shot 63 and came one shot shy of tying his career-low round on TOUR (8-under 62, R3, 2017 RSM Classic). Not to be outdone, Branden Grace (T3) fired a final-round 62 to match his career low and the lowest-ever round in a major, which he shot at The Open Championship last summer. “Feels like a breath of fresh air coming to something different,� Grace said of first-year Byron host Trinity Forest. “Really is nice. I really enjoyed the golf course, I enjoyed how it played.� 5 Despite the low scores, Trinity Forest’s big greens could be vexing. Adam Scott (65, T9), who moved up to 61st in the world and barely missed automatically qualifying for the upcoming U.S. Open (top 60 on May 21 and June 11), said he had trouble reading the breaks. Ditto for Jordan Spieth, who is a Trinity member but still didn’t make much while finishing T21 at the Byron. Both now head to one of their favorite TOUR stops in the Fort Worth Invitational. Scott won the tournament in 2014, while Spieth, a runner-up in 2015 and 2017, won it in 2016. “I don’t struggle reading the greens at Colonial,� Spieth said. FIVE INSIGHTS 1 Wise hit the longest drive of the week, a 402-yard blast at the ninth hole Saturday, ranked first in Greens in Regulation (91.67 percent), and recorded the highest GIR percentage by a winner on TOUR since 1997. He is the first this season, and the first since Dustin Johnson last year (THE NORTHERN TRUST), to rank either first or second in both Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee (Wise was second) and Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green (first) en route to victory. 2 Five players have a win and a runner-up in consecutive starts this season: Wise; Justin Thomas (won The Honda Classic, P2 at World Golf Championship-Mexico Championship); Jason Day (won Farmers Insurance Open, T2 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am); Jon Rahm (2nd Sentry Tournament of Champions, won CareerBuilder Challenge); and Dustin Johnson (T2 WGC-HSBC Champions, won Sentry Tournament of Champions). Wise, 56th in the FedExCup, is the only one of the five players who is not currently in the top 10 in the standings. 3 With the wind mostly down, Trinity Forest was a pushover. There were 12 bogey-free rounds Sunday, with the course softened by rain, and Branden Grace shot 62 on his 30th birthday. Wise’s 23-under total was the third-lowest total in relation to par this season, behind only the CIMB Classic and Sentry Tournament of Champions, where 24-under won. 4 Wise moved up a healthy 38 spots to 18th in the FedExCup, but was outdone, in a way, by Parker McLachlin. His T26 finish at Trinity moved him from 242nd to 203rd, up 39 spots. 5 Only one player, Jimmy Walker, recorded top-10 finishes at both the AT&T Byron Nelson (T6) and the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (T8). Walker, who was coming off a T2 at THE PLAYERS, is clearly back from his Lyme Disease, and he’s dialed in. 

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DETROIT – Rickie Fowler was fourth in the world in 2016, but came into this week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic at 31st, and 108th in the FedExCup. He dabbled with cross-handed putting as he missed his fourth cut in six starts at the RBC Heritage in South Carolina two weeks ago. For his full swing he resorted to an overlapping grip as he practiced at home last week. Oh, and he also has a (relatively) new coach as he searches for some sort of rebound in the Motor City. Add it all up and you might think Fowler, a five-time PGA TOUR winner, was pressing. Think again. RELATED: Featured groups, tee times | Getting dialed in on the AREA 313 Challenge “Anytime you make seven birdies,” he said at Detroit Golf Club, where he signed for a 5-under 67 that included a double-bogey at the 18th hole, “it’s a good day.” Fowler was in a logjam at 5 under and two back of early first-round leaders Doc Redman and Scott Stallings. For Fowler, a Rocket Mortgage and Quicken Loans ambassador, the solid opening round wasn’t so surprising. The cross-handed putting at RBC Heritage? “A reset,” he said – and something he’s done throughout his career. As for the overlapping grip he used while practicing with his new coach John Tillery last week? “I was working on some stuff,” Fowler said. “Colonial, Hilton Head, unfortunately I got some pretty bad blisters and so yeah, last week at home – I mean Friday at Hilton Head was not fun trying to fight through that. Felt like I did OK, but not good enough. “So last week at home I wasn’t able to play interlock,” he continued, “which is my normal grip, so just kind of had to hit balls overlap and work on some fundamentals and not really worry too much about how I was hitting it and stuff like that. So once I got here, Tuesday was the first day I was actually able to start hitting balls somewhat interlock. It was still bothering me, but they’re healing, so today was the first day that it felt at least good enough to go ahead and go.” Oh, and those recent missed cuts? “It’s a fine line,” he said. True enough. He only missed by one at Harbour Town. Change has been the name of the game for Fowler. He began working with Tillery, who also teaches Kevin Kisner and Scott Brown, last September. He also got married. He came down with a bacterial infection. In the midst of all that, results have been uneven. Fowler finished T5 at the Sentry Tournament of Champions and T10 at The American Express, but missed the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open. He was T37 as the Waste Management Phoenix Open defending champ, and missed the cut at The Honda Classic. He played OK in a T18 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, but after round one of THE PLAYERS Championship came the pandemic and a three-month hiatus. The goal of his work with Tillery, Fowler has said, is to be less reliant on timing. “With the body working correctly,” he said at The American Express, “there’s really only one place for the arms and the club to go.” His stats – 120th in Greens in Regulation, 110th in birdies – suggest a work in progress. He was better Thursday, hitting nine of 14 fairways and 15 greens in regulation. On 18, his ninth hole of the day, his ball found a nasty lie in front of the green. Fowler took a mighty hack, hoping the ball might come out softly, but it shot over the green. If anything, he said, he chalks up his recent lull to poor putting. “I was standing too close to the ball and the putter was going a little outside on the way back,” he said. “And then with that it was causing me to have to back out or my head moving backwards through impact. I was pulling a lot of putts, and once you do that, you start getting two‑way misses because you’re trying to match it up.” Fowler, who has dropped to 64th in Strokes Gained: Putting this season, is now standing slightly farther from the ball, and with the ball slightly farther back in his stance. “Just cleaned up some fundamentals to allow me to actually go ahead and stroke the ball and not try and manipulate it,” he said. He took a tidy 27 putts Thursday. That didn’t exactly qualify as “off like a rocket,” but he’d achieved liftoff.

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