BMW Championship 2018: Xander Schauffele upstages Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy to seize halfway lead

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Chasing a second victory of the season Justin Rose goes low four days in a row to comfortably take care of business in the ball-striking paradise that is historic Colonial Country Club. Welcome to the Monday Finish where the former U.S. Open champion held off the challenge from the current U.S. Open champion to become the fifth multiple winner of the 2017-18 FedExCup season as he cruised to a three-shot win. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Rose – when he’s got his game clicking – is both awesome and annoying to watch. Awesome because the precision and skill with which he strikes the ball just leaves you in awe, and annoying because it just reminds you how your own game will likely never feel that flawless. Of course Rose made mistakes over the four days, but they were few and far between. And when he did he bounced back quickly. A bogey on the third hole on Sunday was followed by four birdies in the next six holes. A short miss for birdie on the 10th was followed with birdie on 11. He just stayed clutch all week long. Now second in the FedExCup, Rose is one of the early favorites to take the season-long race. And his chances for the upcoming U.S. Open look very good indeed. Read more about his win here. 2. Speaking of players rounding into form heading towards the U.S. Open … last year’s winner at Erin Hills is clearly back from his injury concerns. Brooks Koepka did everything he could to make Rose uncomfortable on Sunday but it wasn’t enough. His final-round 63 was his second of the tournament and third in five rounds after he equaled the TPC Sawgrass course-record 63 in the final round at THE PLAYERS. The concerns about his wrist injury, which had him out of action for months after surgery earlier this season, have seemingly completely disappeared. Koepka might be sick of Rose though. He was runner-up to him at the World Golf Championships–HSBC Champions also. 3. What a roller coaster week for Kevin Na. Open with a sublime 62. Finish with a scintillating course-record tying 61. But sadly he was 3 over for the middle rounds (73-70). It shows how hard it is to put four rounds together on the PGA TOUR. You can be untouchable for half a tournament but it won’t cut it against the best. His putting stats from Round 1 to Round 2 were insane. Round 1: Na gained 3.358 strokes on the field but then lost 4.273 strokes on the greens in Round 2. Thursday he had 22 putts, making 126 feet, 7 inches of them. Friday it was 34 putts and just 44 feet, 8 inches. With back-to-back top-10 results in Texas, Na has moved to 46th in the FedExCup and is how we say … trending. 4. Emiliano Grillo is having a sneaky decent season. His rookie season of 2015-16 – where he claimed his lone PGA TOUR win and was Rookie of The Year after finishing 11th in the FedExCup – was backed up with a fair 2017. He finished 67th last season with just two top-10s but yesterday’s third-place finish now gives him five top-10s this season. The Argentinean missed just one cut out of 16 starts this season and sits 29th in the FedExCup standings. He’s one to keep an eye on. 5. It is getting harder to believe Jordan Spieth when it comes to his putting. He says it is coming around. He says he made progress this week. But he ranked 70th of the 78 players to make the cut in Strokes Gained: Putting at Colonial. Now we certainly hold Spieth to a higher standard than others on the greens because we have seen him be incredible with the flat stick in the past but the longer this continues the less likely it won’t grow into a more significant mental road block. He missed seven putts inside 10 feet this week – one of those was inside 3 feet, another one inside 5 feet and two more inside 7 feet. He is now 192nd on the PGA TOUR in Strokes Gained: Putting this season. Yes that’s right. The guy who was ninth on TOUR in 2015, second on TOUR two seasons ago and 42nd on TOUR last year in the stat is now 192nd. While it is certainly a funk, champions always seem to find a way and we remain hopeful an uptick is just around the corner. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Rose opened his final round with a front-nine 30, marking the 20th time he has shot 30 or better for his front or back nine holes in a round on TOUR (fifth time in a final round). Rose finished with a four-round total of 260 coming one shot short of Zach Johnson’s tournament record of 259 (2010) at the Fort Worth Invitational. He has now converted three of 13 career 36-hole leads or co-leads (2010 The National, 2011 BMW Championship, 2018 Fort Worth Invitational) and four of 14 career 54-hole leads or co-leads (2010 The National, 2011 BMW Championship, 2015 Zurich Classic of New Orleans, 2018 Fort Worth Invitational) to victory. 2. Just over half (55%) of Rose’s total strokes gained for the week were a result of his approach shot performance. Of events where ShotLink lasered all four rounds it was a career second best effort in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green for Rose (+2.562). In fact his SG: Approach-the-Green performance was the best by a winner this season and was also the best dating back to last seasons the Memorial Tournament where Jason Dufner recorded a +2.671 per-round average performance. Rose marked the ninth of the last 10 winners of the Fort Worth Invitational to have outperformed the field by over +0.5 strokes per round in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green. 3. Rose is the first winner since Zach Johnson (2010) to lead the field in Greens in Regulation on the way to victory at the Fort Worth Invitational. Rose played the par 4s at Colonial Country Club at a combined 14 under, which tied for the second-best performance on the par 4s by a winner and the tied for third-best since 1983 at the Fort Worth Invitational. 4. Rose tied Nick Faldo for the most PGA TOUR victories by an Englishman since 1983 and moves to second in the FedExCup following his ninth win. He also moves to third in the world rankings. It is his ninth top-10 finish since the start of the 2017 FedExCup Playoffs, the most of any player in that span. 5. Chilean former top amateur Joaquin Niemann – at just 19-years-old – is on track for potential Special Temporary Membership and perhaps a PGA TOUR card. His eighth place finish helped his season tally to 180 non-member FedExCup points, which would rank him 144th in this season’s FedExCup standings. He can earn his card for the 2018-19 season if he finishes in the top 125. Niemann has starts in the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide and the FedEx St. Jude Classic in the next two weeks. He needs just 89 points to earn special temporary membership, which would allow him to accept unlimited sponsor exemptions this season in his quest for the top 125. He has already likely done more than enough to feature in the Web.com Finals.

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LOS ANGELES — Sam Burns wanted to pay respect to tough Riviera by playing it safe. It led to a 5-under 66 on Friday to tie the 36-hole record at The Genesis Invitational and build a five-shot lead going into the weekend. RELATED: Leaderboard | Dustin Johnson lurks at Riviera Among those chasing is Dustin Johnson, the reigning Masters and FedExCup champion and a past winner at Riviera. Another shot back was Jordan Spieth, who is starting to make himself at home near the top of the leaderboard. Burns kept his bogey-free day intact toward the end of the round when he came up short of the eighth green, his 17th of the morning. He chipped it about 10 feet short — anything too strong could lead to big trouble — and made the par putt. He also handled two of the par 5s, and picked up so much roll on the firm turf at the 476-yard 12th hole that he had only a pitching wedge into the green and made a 5-foot putt. “Whenever we were kind of in a tricky spot, just kind of took what the golf course gave us,” Burns said. “There’s definitely times where I’ve tried to force it a little bit, but this just is not a golf course you want to do that.” Burns was at 12-under 130, matching the record last set in 2004 by Mike Weir and Shigeki Maruyama. Johnson led a group at 7-under 135 despite playing the three par 5s in only 1 under for the week. Part of the problem is that Johnson has hit only one fairway on the par 5s. That was the final one he played Friday, the 17th, and it set up a simple up-and-down that moved him a little closer. He also has a simple solution to improve his par-5 performance. “Drive it in the fairway,” he said. “I feel like I’m playing really well. Just need to get a little bit more out of the rounds.” Joaquin Niemann finished with eight pars for his round of 68 and was five shots behind. He and Johnson were joined by Tyler McCumber and Jason Kokrak, who each shot 68 in the morning. McCumber is the miracle worker this week. His finger got caught trying to open a window is his hotel room Tuesday, and his best option was for a doctor to remove the nail on his left index finger. He did that Wednesday, hit about five balls and figured he could give it a shot. “It’s pretty wild how quickly the body does adapt to things,” McCumber said. “I thought it was a little better today just to focus on the golf and not really worry about the finger.” Riviera injured some of the games best players. Rory McIlroy made only one birdie in his round of 76 and missed the cut. Justin Thomas followed his opening 77 with a 73 and missed the cut. So did U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau after a 69. McIlroy had the PGA TOUR’s longest active cut streak at 25 events dating to the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush. The streak now belongs to Xander Schauffele at 22. Burns is a 24-year-old from LSU who has what it takes to win when it falls into place. He tied for sixth at the Barbasol Championship when he was still an amateur, and it took him only one year on the Korn Ferry Tour before he was in the big leagues. Now it’s a matter of breaking through, and he’s off to a strong start at Riviera. “I’d like to think that I have all the tools to win out here,” Burns said. “There’s a lot of good players — really, really good players. I try not to get caught up in that and just trying to get better each week.” Riviera is playing fast and difficult this year with such beautiful weather and occasional gusts of wind. Aside from Burns and his great play over 36 holes, no one else was better than 7-under par. Ten players in the 120-man field had two rounds in the 60s while playing in ideal weather. “It’s one of those rare weeks where you can’t get away with firing at flagsticks,” Spieth said. “There’s not much rough, but when you get in the rough it takes the spin off enough to where you can’t get into pins. A lot of times when you miss the greens, it’s harder to get it closer than where you could have hit your approach. “It’s such a different experience from what we normally have on TOUR.” Spieth was three shots behind going into the weekend in the Phoenix Open, shot 61 and shared the 54-hole lead. He tied for fourth. Last week at Pebble Beach, he had a one-shot lead after 36 holes and led by two going into the final round before tying for third. Now he’s six shots behind Burns, but in reasonable position on the leaderboard. It’s an upward trend. “It’s not like you can go chase people on this golf course,” Spieth said. “So I’m happy with where I’m at, but just eliminate a couple of the minor mistakes here and there and try to keep clean cards on the weekend and let the rest of it take care of itself.”

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