Haas charges out to lead at Phoenix Open

TULSA, Okla. — Mito Pereira skidded out of control just like so many other contenders in the wind and cold of Southern Hills. He got back on course at just the right time Saturday in the PGA Championship. Pereira steadied himself with three birdies over the last six holes, the final one from just outside 25 feet for a 1-under 69. That gave the 27-year-old from Chile a three-shot lead over Matt Fitzpatrick and Will Zalatoris. For Tiger Woods, his slide on a battered right leg seemed to last all day in what turned out to be his last round. Woods withdrew for the first time in a major as a pro. He limped around Southern Hills for a 79, his worst score ever in the PGA Championship. At stake for the 27-year-old Pereira is a chance to become the first PGA TOUR rookie to win a major since Keegan Bradley in the 2011 PGA Championship. “I was playing really good and suddenly I made four bogeys in five holes. It was a tough place to be at that moment,” he said. “But just found myself from 13 on. Those holes are pretty tough. So really happy how I ended up playing. The birdie on 18 was a bonus. “Just happy to be in this position.” There were missed opportunities for so many others on a rough day featuring a wind out of the north that made Southern Hills play entirely different. Former PGA champion Justin Thomas went 12 holes without a birdie, and then he gave it back with a bogey on the closing hole for a 74. Two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson looked shaky as ever on the greens, making three bogeys over his last four holes for a 73. They went from the cusp of contention to seven shots behind. Rory McIlroy had a six-hole stretch around the turn that he played in 6 over — and that even included a birdie — for a 74 to fall nine shots back. Zalatoris had his problems, too. He dropped four shots in the opening seven holes and went from a one-shot lead to a five-shot deficit until he crawled his way back into the game. “I was pretty frustrated with the start but I would rather have a frustrating start and good finish. It’s good momentum heading into tomorrow,” Zalatoris said. Pereira, the top player on the Korn Ferry Tour last year, was at 9-under 201. He will be in the final group of his first PGA Championship — and only his second major — with Fitzpatrick, who birdied his last two holes for a 67 to quietly sneak into contention. Zalatoris will be in the penultimate group with Cameron Young, the son of a PGA professional, who charged into the mix by driving the 296-yard 17th hole and making a 25-foot eagle. He wound up with a 67 and was four shots behind. What the leading four players have in common is inexperience at the highest level. None has won a major. None has even won on the PGA TOUR, the toughest circuit in golf, although Fitzpatrick is the No. 17 player in the world with seven titles on the DP World Tour. Pereira wasn’t immune from a slide. He became the first player to reach 10 under for the championship with a 10-foot birdie putt on the par-5 sixth, and he stretched the lead to five shots when Zalatoris made another bogey. But then the Chilean took bogey on the par-3 eighth, chunked an approach from the fairway on the ninth and made bogey, had a wedge spin off the front of the green at No. 10 and into the bunker for bogey, and went over the 12th green for a fourth bogey in five holes. Zalatoris briefly caught him with a 35-foot birdie putt on the par-5 13th. That only lasted as long as it took Pereira who match birdies from 18 feet, and the Chilean answered with a daring shot over the edge of a bunker to 6 feet for birdie on the par-3 14th. Woods was long gone and aching when all this action unfolded. He looked pained as ever in the morning after a half-hour delay from rain, making five straight bogeys, hitting two balls in the water and having to hole a 5-foot putt on the final hole to break 80. The only other time he withdrew from a major was when he injured his wrist in the 1995 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills when he was an amateur. Only 16 players remained under par at Southern Hills, a list that included Webb Simpson. On Friday, he had to save par from a bunker on his final hole to make the cut on the number. In a tie for 64th at the start of the third round, Simpson shot a 65 and moved into a tie for 10th. He was eight shots back, seemingly too far to catch Pereira, but so little is known about how he will be react to the Sunday pressure of trying to win a major.

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ERIN, Wis. — Brooks Koepka traveled around the world to find his game. He found stardom right at home as the U.S. Open champion. Koepka broke away from a tight pack with three straight birdies on the back nine Sunday at Erin Hills and closed with a 5-under 67 to win the U.S. Open for his first major championship. A par on the final hole tied Rory McIlroy’s record score to par at 16 under for a four-shot victory. Not even the wind could stop the onslaught of low scores at Erin Hills. And nothing could stop Koepka. “What I’ve done this week is amazing,” Koepka. Tied for the lead with six holes to play, Koepka made an 8-foot par putt on the 13th hole. As Brian Harman began to fade, Koepka poured it on with birdies over the next three holes, lightly pumping his fist after each one. His reaction was subdued, just like his close friend and last year’s U.S. Open champion, Dustin Johnson. They spend time a lot of time together on the course, in the gym and at home, so Koepka has seen that U.S. Open trophy plenty at Johnson’s house in south Florida. And now he gets to keep it for a year, with his name on it. It capped quite a journey for the 27-year-old Floridian. Without a card on any tour when Koepka got out of Florida State, he filled his passport with stamps from the most unlikely outposts in golf while playing the minor leagues on the European Tour — Kazakhstan and Kenya, Portugal and India and throughout Europe. It was at the U.S. Open three years ago when Koepka tied for fourth that helped earn a PGA TOUR card, and he powered his way from obscurity to his first PGA TOUR victory in Phoenix, his first Ryder Cup team last fall and now a major championship. Harman’s chances ended with two straight bogeys, and a bogey on the par-5 18th hole gave him a 72 and a tie for second with Hideki Matsuyama of Japan, who closed with a 66. Matsuyama didn’t need to stick around very long. Koepka simply couldn’t miss. Koepka, who finished at 16-under 272, became the seventh straight first-time winner of a major championship, and it was the first time since 1998-2000 that Americans won their national championship three straight years. Tommy Fleetwood, who played alongside Koepka and closed with a 72 to finish fourth, played the Challenge Tour a year before Koepka arrived. “It gives you a good grounding,” Fleetwood said. “Obviously, Brooks dealt with it amazingly. He came and kicked everyone’s (behind) over there, didn’t he? But he’s proven for a long time how good he is. Now he’s done it in a major.” It was only fitting that Koepka left Erin Hills with yet another record matched or broken. McIlroy finished at 16-under 268 when he won on rain-softened Congressional in the 2011 U.S. Open. But the low scoring went much deeper than that. Only six players had ever reached double digits under par in the previous 116 times at the U.S. Open. McIlroy and Tiger Woods (12 under at Pebble Beach in 2000) had been the only players to finish there. This week alone, nine players reached at least 10 under and seven finished there. Xander Schauffele, a rookie on the PGA TOUR playing in his first U.S. Open, birdied his last hole for a 69 to tie for fifth at 10-under 268 along with Bill Haas (69) and Rickie Fowler (72), who was poised at yet another major to win only to fall back. Fowler started one shot out of the lead at the Masters this year and shot 76. He was only two behind when he made the turn, but bogeys on the 12th and 15th holes — and no birdies until No. 18 — ended his hopes. Justin Thomas, coming off a 9-under 63 that matched the major championship scoring record and was the first 9-under round at a U.S. Open, went out in 39 and closed with a 75 to tie for ninth. The week ended with 31 players under par, breaking the U.S. Open record of 28 players at Medinah in 1990. There were 133 sub-par rounds, nine more than the previous record in that 1990 U.S. Open. Erin Hills, an 11-year-old course shaped out of Wisconsin pastureland, didn’t put up much of a fight without much wind. The strongest gusts were Sunday morning and it tapered to a strong breeze by the afternoon. No one was more solid from start to finish than Koepka. He opened with a pair of tap-in birdies and putted for birdie on every hole but the par-3 13th. Of all his birdies, that 8-foot par putt might have been as big as any. “I needed something to go in and see that to build momentum off it, and just carried that over,” Koepka said.

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