Molinari tied with McIlroy after 3 rounds at Wentworth

Jon Rahm becomes the first Spaniard to win the U.S. Open.

Click here to read the full article…

Boo! That wind gust you just felt through your open window, that’s not a ghost. That’s the weather from the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, whooshing all the way from Port Royal to your living room. Lucas Herbert, who has let the wind take him around the globe the last few years, tamed the elements to shoot a final-round 69 and become the season’s first first-time winner, holding off Patrick Reed and Danny Lee by one shot. Herbert making name in America Already a two-time winner on the European Tour, Herbert, 25, accidentally made news off the course in August. Set to play in the National Children’s Hospital Open in Columbus, Ohio, part of the Korn Ferry Tour Finals, he booked his trip to Columbus, Georgia, roughly 670 miles away. He still made it to The Buckeye State in time for a T58 finish. He also had a good laugh. After all, he had locked up his PGA TOUR card for 2021-22 after a T4 the previous week, and now he’s a TOUR winner, holding steady in the wind at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship. While his closest pursuers succumbed to mistakes on the front nine (third-round leader Taylor Pendrith) and back (Danny Lee), Herbert hung tough and parred the final four holes. “I think growing up in Australia, we had a lot of this kind of stuff,” Herbert said of the conditions. “I played countless junior events where the wind was just brutal. And especially playing on the European Tour now for two or three years, it gets pretty windy out there, as well.” Herbert will be learning more about the variety of conditions on TOUR. After missing the cut in his first two starts, he has now punched his ticket to the Sentry Tournament of Champions, THE PLAYERS Championship, and the Masters Tournament, among other biggies in 2022. He moves to fifth in the FedExCup and 43rd in the world, his highest-ever ranking. Reed makes late charge At 24th in the world and with nine TOUR titles to his name, Patrick Reed was one of the biggest names in Bermuda. After battling bilateral pneumonia in August and starting his 2021-22 season with a missed cut and a T68, Port Royal would provide a glimpse into the state of his game. The answer: It is still very good. Reed was the only player in the field to shoot four rounds in the 60s, going 68-69-68-65. On Thursday, after taking a drop from just off the cart path at the par-5 17th hole, he provided one of the highlights of the tournament with a hole-out eagle. His final-round 65 was the second-lowest score of the day (Scott Stallings, 62). Playing in the seventh-to-last group, Reed birdied four of his last six holes for a 31 and the clubhouse lead. He would watch Herbert for the next hour, losing out on a playoff by just one shot. “Ever since I got back from being sick, it just seemed like the offense wasn’t quite there,” Reed said. “I wasn’t making enough birdies and when that happens, one loose swing here or there, it turns around, and you try to salvage a mediocre round. This week, I definitely produced enough offense, but I need to take away some of the careless errors.” Reed will tee it up at this week’s World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba. Winds make for spooky conditions The Wednesday pro-am was canceled due to “dangerous wind gusts” reaching 40 mph, and the treachery continued into Thursday morning with only six players in the early wave posting an under-par score. When play was stopped due to darkness, only 33 players were under par. “You see winds like this, but normally you don’t play in them. This was the hardest wind I’ve ever played in,” said Matt Fitzpatrick, who grew up in Sheffield, England and briefly went to college at Northwestern University, outside Chicago. “I absolutely ripped a drive on seven. People are going to laugh at this because they probably think it’s my normal tee shot, but anyway, I ripped it and it went 245. I think my season average last year was like 295.” Improved conditions led to lower scores – Taylor Pendrith shot a course-record 61 on Friday – but the break in the weather didn’t last. With a Sunday afternoon storm building, fourth-round tee times were moved up to the morning. Officials still had to briefly stop play as winds hovered around 20 mph. Pendrith struggled to a 76, tied for the eighth-worst score of the day. Herbert refused to buckle. “I felt like I grinded really well early and I had the right attitude going into the day that it wasn’t going to be easy,” he said. “I don’t think we even hit drivers on the range because you just couldn’t hit it, it was just pointless, so you just knew it was going to be one of those days where you had to battle really, really hard. Under par was going to be a great score.” Rodgers making most of solid play Patrick Rodgers has been on TOUR since the 2015-16 season, but after falling to No. 128 in the FedEx Cup last season his streak was in jeopardy. Acting fast, he went T20-CUT-T15 in the three events of the Korn Ferry Tour Finals to earn back his PGA TOUR card. How close did he come to losing it? A lot closer than people realized, according to caddie Brian Nichol. Nichol, who was on the bag for Kristoffer Ventura and in Rodgers’ group at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship in September, said Rodgers was looking for an errant tee ball on the 15th hole when the third member of the group, Tyson Alexander, found it after a search of 2 minutes and 58 seconds. Two more seconds and Rodgers would have had to take a penalty. He saved par and birdied 17 to jump from 33rd to 20th in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals (top 25 make the PGA TOUR). Rodgers is clearly embracing his good fortune. He opened his season with a T6 at the Fortinet Championship, and after a missed cut at the Sanderson Farms Championship, his 4th place finish in Bermuda is his best result since a runner-up at the 2018 RSM Classic. “That was a really difficult emotional battle,” he said of his Korn Ferry Tour adventure. “I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders since coming back.” With 221 FedExCup points this fall, Rodgers is already more than halfway to matching his 433 all last season. Gay adds another Bermuda highlight A year ago, Brian Gay shot a final-round 64 to force a playoff with Wyndham Clark, which Gay won on the first extra hole. The Bermuda title was Gay’s fifth on TOUR but first since 2013. This time around, Gay, 49, came into the week having failed to finish better than T29 since his win. But Bermuda brought out the good mojo again. After starting with a 75, he climbed back with a 67 on Friday (including an eagle on No. 17) to make the cut on the number. He shot 64 on Saturday, tied for best of the day, and on Sunday he holed out for eagle on 18 for a 68. Gay finished T12 at 10 under. Comcast Business TOUR TOP 10 The Comcast Business TOUR TOP 10 highlights and rewards the extraordinary level of play required to earn a spot in the TOP 10 at the conclusion of the FedExCup Regular Season as determined by the FedExCup standings. The competition recognizes and awards the most elite in golf.

Click here to read the full article…

LAS VEGAS — Mito Pereira of Chile led a parade of players from the International Team at the Presidents Cup in the Shriners Children’s Open on Friday, making birdie on half of his holes for an 8-under 63 that gave him a one-shot lead. Pereira took care of the par 5s at the TPC Summerlin and putted for birdie on every hole except the par-4 12th, where he had to save par from a bunker left of the green. His one lapse was on the seventh hole toward the end of his round when he ran a 20-foot birdie putt some 6 feet by the cup and three-putted for bogey. Pereira was at 12-under 130, one shot ahead of Robby Shelton, who birdied the par-5 ninth on his final hole for a 63. Right behind were 20-year-old Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim, top performers for the International Team in their own right two weeks ago at Quail Hollow. Another shot back was Cam Davis of Australia, who also had a solid debut in the Presidents Cup. Perhaps it was no accident. The International Team was outmanned and yet they gave the mighty Americans a brief scare on the final day before another U.S. Team victory. Pereira said it was a case of captain Trevor Immelman reminding them each night they were great players who could win. “I think Trevor did a really good job with us, encouraging us how good we are, how good we play golf,” Pereira said. “So I think we carry that over here. Right now we’re just playing really good.” Also in the mix were two other International Team players, Christiaan Bezuidenhout and defending champion Sungjae Im, who were five behind. One of the American stars isn’t faring too badly. Patrick Cantlay continued to give himself great looks at birdie, no small task on a TPC Summerlin course that was renovated with new grass on the fairways and greens. That takes time to settle, meaning the greens are hard and it’s tough to get it close. Cantlay had to settle for another 67, leaving him in the group four behind. Cantlay, the No. 4 player in the world with two wins this year, has a victory and two runner-up finishes in his four appearances at the TPC Summerlin. Asked if he was freaked out making a bogey given the good scoring, Cantlay replied, “I don’t get freaked out by much.” Pereira is riding high from his confidence gained at the Presidents Cup. Further in his mind is May, when the Chilean was on the cusp of winning the PGA Championship. He had a one-shot lead playing the 18th at Southern Hills when he drove into a stream, missed the green and made double bogey to miss the playoff by one shot. It was a crushing loss, though it got him into the top 50 for the other majors and led to him playing in the Presidents Cup. He still thinks about it from time to time, “but it’s just way over there in the past.” “I’m just trying to get my first win here,” he said. Si Woo Kim had the best and worst of the back nine at Summerlin. He chipped from the back of the green on the par-4 12th into the water on his way to a triple bogey. On the reachable par-4 15th, he holed a bunker shot for eagle. It added up to a 68, and he’s a big part of the picture on the weekend. So is Tom Kim, who won two months ago for his first PGA TOUR victory. He had a 67 despite not making birdie on any of the par 5s and going through the scorable stretch on the back with nothing better than par. “I just got really mellow,” Tom Kim said. “I just didn’t make any birdies and closed out with 10 pars in a row. It was pretty boring after nine, but I hung in there and I kept myself in it. I think that was the biggest thing.”

Click here to read the full article…