Tiger Woods is making a move on Sunday at Bay Hill, but Henrik Stenson is doing his best to keep his challengers at bay at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
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Welcome to the Monday Finish, the day after one native Ohioan (Cleveland-born Jason Dufner) dug deep in winning on the Golden Bear’s home course while another (Akron-born LeBron James) saw his Cavs dig a 2-0 hole by losing on Golden State’s home court. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Not sure how many recent PGA TOUR winners have endured the kind of rollercoaster ride Jason Dufner experienced at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide. After 36 holes, he led by 5 shots. After 54 holes, he trailed by 4 shots. After 72 holes, he won by 3 shots. Talk about highs and lows. For a guy who’s always displayed a fairly low-key disposition (Dufnering, anyone?), it had to be challenging to keep his emotions in check. Even Dufner acknowledged being angry after his Saturday 5-over 77 sent him tumbling down the leaderboard. So he went to the range to burn off some steam and release some frustration. “I didn’t want to go home mad,â€� he said. It paid big dividends. He came back on Sunday with a positive outlook … and ultimately, a winning performance. 2. Tom Weiskopf (born in Massillon) couldn’t do it in 11 starts at Muirfield Village. His best finish was a T-4 in 1980, three shots behind David Graham. Ben Curtis (born in Columbus) couldn’t do it in 13 starts. Same number of attempts for Steve Flesch (born in Cincinnati). John Cook (born in Toledo) had 24 starts and couldn’t do it. He tied for second in 2002 and was solo third in 1994. Until Sunday, tournament founder/course designer/Mr. Columbus Jack Nicklaus had been the only Ohio-born winner of the Memorial. Dufner, in his sixth appearance at Muirfield Village, now becomes the second. “I grew up here,â€� Dufner said after his win. “I wasn’t living here for a long time. I moved away when I was about 9 or 10. But I have a lot of friends and family here, a lot of support out on the golf course. It’s hard to have equal support when you’re playing with Rickie Fowler, but I felt like I had it today.â€� 3. It’ll be fun to watch the fluctuations in the Presidents Cup standings for the rest of the season. Dunfer’s win allowed him to move from 25th to 6th, while Matt Kuchar’s T-4 moved him from 14th to 10th in the U.S. Team standings. The top 10 players after the Dell Technologies Championship – the second event in the FedExCup Playoffs – will get automatic spots for the Presidents Cup. There was no movement inside the top 10 for the International Team. The most significant move belonged to India’s Anirban Lahiri, who closed with the low round of the day, a 7-under 65, to tie for second. That elevated him from 22nd to 15th, and no doubt caused captain Nick Price to take notice. Lahiri was on the International Team two years ago, the first player from his country to make the team. Alas, he lost all three of his matches – including his singles match to Chris Kirk that reached the 18th hole. The U.S. won by just a single point. A better performance could’ve been the difference. No wonder Lahiri would like another crack at the U.S. squad. “I have unfinished business,â€� Lahiri said. “I’ve said that before. I would like nothing better than to go out there and get points.â€� 4. Call it the power of a handshake. Daniel Summerhays, looking for his first win in his 185th start on TOUR, suffered through a miserable Sunday. Having entered the final round with a 3-shot lead, he dropped three shots in his first four holes, and then after making the turn, dropped five more strokes on the back nine. A double bogey at the 18th left him signing for a 6-over 78, barely hanging on to a top-10 finish. But there was Jack Nicklaus greeting him after his round, helping to brighten up a frustrating afternoon. “He’s looking me straight in the eyes and giving me encouragement,â€� Summerhays said. “I’ll bounce back really quick. A handshake and a little something from Jack Nicklaus will prove to be very useful.â€� 5. In December of 2015, Columbus resident Jason Day and his wife Ellie were sitting on the front row of a Cavs home game when LeBron James chased after a loose ball toward the sidelines. James knocked over Ellie, who had to be taken to a hospital. Released the next day, she compared it to a minor car accident. On Wednesday, Jason will be back on the front row for Game 3 of the Cavs-Warriors NBA Finals. Ellie will not be in harm’s way this time. “The wife isn’t coming,â€� Jason said with a laugh. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Jason Dufner is one of the best ball-strikers on TOUR. No surprise that his iron play was key to Sunday’s win at Muirfield Village. Dufner ranked first in the field in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green. He gained an average of 2.670 strokes each round on the field in that category. That’s the most by a TOUR winner this season. It’s the third time this year the eventual tournament winner has led the field in that category. 2. Speaking of hitting greens … Dufner hit 17 of 18 greens in his opening round. That’s the 14th time he’s gone 17 of 18 in a single round in his TOUR career. 3. It was a legendary bounce-back performance for Dufner on Sunday, who shot a 4-under 68 after shooting a 77 the previous round. Since 1983, only one tournament winner (non-major) has ever shot a third-round score higher than Dufner’s 77. That came at the 1986 Honda Classic, when Kenny Knox shot 80 on Saturday, then followed it up with a 70 to win by a stroke at TPC Eagle Trace. Knox’s 80 came on a day in which nobody in the field could break par. The best score was a couple of even-par 72s. Of the 72 players who made the cut, 37 ended up shooting 80 or higher in the third round, Unlike Dufner, who suffered a swing of 9 shots (5-shot lead to 4-shot deficit), Knox had a less dramatic swing. He went from a 1-shot lead to a 2-shot deficit. 4. Rickie Fowler’s last drive of the tournament went 350 yards. But it wasn’t his longest drive of the week. Fowler busted a 370-yard drive at the 13th hole in the first round. Overall, he had 22 drives of 300 yards or longer. Here’s the kicker – he actually dropped four spots on the TOUR’s driving distance ranking this season, going from 27th to 31st. Even with all those 300-yard drives, his overall average went from 299.7 yards to 299.2 yards. 5. Not sure if you caught the cut differential but it was pretty amazing. Dufner led at 14 under after 36 holes. The cut was 3 over. The 17-stroke difference not only was a tournament record, it was the first time in 12 years that it’s been that large at any event. The last time there was a 17-stroke difference after 36 holes was in 2005 at Harbour Town. Darren Clarke led at 12 under, and the cut was 5 over. TOP 3 VIDEOS 1. Rickie Fowler’s shot from the bunker behind 18 green on Thursday sidespun its way into an impossible birdie. 2. In the middle of an all-time great two-day stretch at Muirfield Village, Dufner’s shot on 18 fit in nicely. 3. Dufner picked the perfect time to drain his longest putt of the week, pouring one in for par to lock up his fifth TOUR win.
On a brutally hard day for scoring at the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook Resort & Golf Club, Paul Casey manages a 1-over 72 for a one-stroke victory over surging Louis Oosthuizen (69) and Jason Kokrak (71). Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Casey became the first player to successfully defend his title on TOUR this season as he moved from 16th all the way to 4th in the FedExCup. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Casey getting better with age. At 41, Casey feels like he might just now be coming into his own. Who can argue? Casey, who said he’s getting older but better, picked up his third career PGA TOUR title in his 250th start. But it was his second in as many years at the Copperhead Course. The one-year gap was a big departure from the nine years between his first (2009 Houston Open) and second victories. Casey, whose resume lists back-to-back English Amateur titles, is the first to successfully defend a Valspar Championship title, the first player to successfully defend a title of any kind since Brooks Koepka at the 2018 U.S. Open, and the third player to win the Valspar multiple times, joining K.J. Choi (2002, 2006) and Retief Goosen (2003, ’09).   2. You had to crush the 5s at Copperhead. Casey did, playing them in 15 under. (He won at 8 under.) You had to feast on the 5s because the par 4s took a heavy toll. Louis Oosthuizen (69, T2) bogeyed the par-4 16th hole both Saturday and Sunday, and missed a playoff with Casey by one. Sergio Garcia (73, T54) was having a good round until he made a 9 on 16, the hardest hole on Saturday (4.300) and Sunday (4.414). The par-4 third was the toughest on Thursday (4.271) and Friday (4.406). 3. Oosthuizen is figuring out the Valspar. The sweet-swinging South African, whose lone TOUR win is the 2010 Open Championship, missed three straight cuts at the Copperhead from 2013-’15. It’s been all good since then: a T7 in 2016, T16 in 2018, and T2 this time around. He had the best weekend (66-69) but had left himself too far back after the opening two rounds. 4. Im is playing up to expectations. South Korea’s Sungjae Im was the first player to lead the money list from start to finish on the Web.com Tour last season, when he was Player of the Year. Big things were expected of him. He has not disappointed. Im fired a final-round 70 to finish T4, his second top-five showing in his last three starts (T3/Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard). He moved up 13 spots to 17th in the FedExCup, and with a victory could move ahead of winners Cameron Champ, Adam Long and Martin Trainer in the Rookie of the Year race. 5. Johnson will shrug this off. Playing in the final group, Dustin Johnson (T6) was the favorite, or so said Casey, afterward. Alas, the favorite didn’t make a birdie and struggled to a 3-over 74. That ended his streak of rounds in the 60s at 14, which was the longest active streak on TOUR and the longest of his career. It was also the first time in over two years he has failed to make a single birdie. But Johnson shrugged it off, insisting he didn’t play that bad. (The Copperhead Course was a brute all week, but especially in the final round.) Why the optimism? First, Johnson had missed the cut in his two previous starts at the Valspar (2008, 2010). The T6 was better, and gives him five top-10 finishes in his last six starts, most notably his 20th win at the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship last month. And he now heads to the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play Championship, which he won in 2017. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Casey dominated the par 5s. His 15-under total on those holes, where he made birdie or better 14 times in 16 chances (87.5 percent) was easily the best in the field. Nick Taylor (75, T24), Jon Rahm (68, T6) and Sungjae Im (70, T4) were second best with 10-under totals. It was by far the best performance on the par 5s at the Valspar since 2000, and the best of Casey’s career. 2.The winner led the field in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green (+2.810), which marked the TOUR-leading eighth time Casey has led in that category since the start of the 2014-’15 season. Justin Thomas is next best, having done it seven times in that span. Five players have done it six times. 3. Dustin Johnson’s 74 (T6) marked the first time he has failed to birdie a single hole since the 2017 WGC-HSBC Champions, where he lost a six-shot lead. It was the first time in 31 starts worldwide that he’d not made a single red number on the scorecard. 4. After yielding just five bogey-free rounds Thursday through Saturday, the Copperhead Course gave up none in the final round. The course played nearly a full shot tougher than it had the day before, and the 72.143 stroke average was highest of the week. Casey became the second player this season, and first since Rickie Fowler at the Waste Management Phoenix Open (74), to win with an over-par score in the final round. 5. This marked the third straight week for a European winner on the PGA TOUR, after Rory McIlroy at THE PLAYERS Championship and Francesco Molinari at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. It’s the first such streak since 2010, when Justin Rose (Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide), Lee Westwood (WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational) and Graeme McDowell (U.S. Open) won in consecutive weeks. WYNDHAM REWARDS The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is in its first season and adds another layer of excitement to the FedExCup Regular Season. The top 10 players at the end of the FedExCup Regular Season will earn bonus payouts from the Wyndham Rewards Top 10. There were no changes at the top after the Valspar Championship, with the top three players holding their positions. There was, however, a big mover: In successfully defending his title at the Copperhead Course, Paul Casey moved from 16th to 4th.
Tiger Woods and the field of 30 golfers look to get off to a good start in the PGA Tour’s season-ending event in Atlanta.
