Golf highlights: Talor Gooch equals lowest round of his career to share Houston Open lead

After slow and steady improvement but a failure to play his best on Sundays, Kevin Tway comes up huge with five closing birdies, three in a sudden-death playoff, to break through for his first PGA TOUR victory at the Safeway Open at Silverado Resort & Spa. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Tway made like his famous dad, Bob, who watched with tears in his eyes at home in Oklahoma. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. The father-son thing doesn’t always work out. Golf is hard, playing it at this level is beyond hard, and being the son of a famous golf pro can be downright daunting. The name (and high expectations) follows you everywhere, and Bob Tway was more accomplished than most, his eight victories on TOUR including the 1986 PGA Championship at Inverness, where he holed out from a bunker to win. Still, Kevin persevered, turning his DNA into a positive. “He knows my swing so well,� Kevin said of his dad. “He can watch on the telecast or he can look at ShotLink and he knows what kind of tendencies I have, where I’m aiming, why I hit that one left. We talk after every round about each shot and what I was feeling and what I wasn’t feeling.� 2. The big number at Safeway was 10, but not how we anticipated. Brandt Snedeker, who took a four-shot lead into the back nine, was vying for the 10th TOUR win of his career. He didn’t get it, faltering with a back-nine 39 to open the door for Tway, who stormed through it with his birdie-birdie finish in regulation and three straight birdies in the playoff. Still, we got a historic 10 at the Safeway: Kevin’s victory made the Tways the 10th father-son duo to win on TOUR. “Well, it just shows it’s very difficult to do,� Bob said. “People always ask the kids, ‘Is it hard to play with a father who has played on TOUR?’ I think when they’re young, I think it is. I think there are expectations that other people have, and I think you feel it. “But I think overall, and I think Kevin would even admit, that overall it’s a good thing,� Bob continued. “There’s a lot of knowledge that can be passed (on).� 3. Moore distinguished himself. The five-time TOUR winner hung tough with a birdie on the last hole of regulation, plus two more on the first two holes of the playoff (also the par-5 18th). He just couldn’t match winner Tway’s birdie on the third extra hole, the par-4 10th. “I’m going to be honest,� Moore said, “I didn’t even expect to be in this position.� Finishing 40 minutes ahead of the last threesome, Moore carded a 67 and then hung around to watch as Snedeker hit a tree and bogeyed the par-4 17th, then failed to birdie the easy 18th. On the first playoff hole, Moore got up and down from behind the 18th green, sinking a testy short putt for birdie to extend the playoff with Tway. (Snedeker had bowed out with a par.) And Moore nearly eagled the second playoff hole, also 18, his long putt coming up just short. “I was proud of how I played,� Moore said, “and hitting good shots in the moment.� 4. Snedeker will have to regroup. This was a stunning result, considering Snedeker was four ahead at the turn. His three bogeys on holes 10-12 gave everyone else hope, and while it seemed he had steadied himself with a birdie at the par-5 16th hole, he got out of position and hit a tree on 17, leading to a costly bogey. Knowing he needed to birdie 18 to win, and fighting a left miss that had plagued him for much of the back nine, Snedeker blocked his drive right, into a fairway bunker. Then he made matters worse as he accidentally laid up into the right rough with his second shot. “I tried like hell to get out of it,� Snedeker said of his left miss, “and kind of kept doing it, kept doing it, and it stinks when that happens. That’s why you practice and play so much, put yourself in position to see how it holds up. Today it didn’t hold up. That’s disappointing. “It will be a long night and a long trip to Malaysia,� he added, “but Thursday next week, another opportunity to come out here and try to fix what I did wrong.� 5. Couples was the feel-good story of the week. Fred Couples finally accepted a sponsor’s exemption to play the Safeway, and was happy he did as the week was full of highlights. He loved the course, celebrated his 59th birthday, and shot a second-round 65 in the company of pals Snedeker and Patrick Cantlay to make the 500th cut of his PGA TOUR career. It was all so much fun he’s thinking of coming back next year. “I’d love to come back,� said Couples, who earlier had said this would be his final non-major TOUR start. There’s just something about Napa. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Tway was 19th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, 22nd in SG: Approach-the-Green, 7th in SG: Around-the-Green, and 18th in SG: Putting. For the week, Tway was one of three players to go a combined 8-under on holes 16-18 in regulation. This marked the best week of Tway’s career in Scrambling, as he saved par 80 percent (16/20) of the time he missed the green. His previous bests were: 76 percent (19/25) at the 2018 Corales Puntacana Resort Championship, 75 percent (18/24) at the Valero Texas Open. 2. Ryan Moore’s playoff record fell to 2-3, but he has five TOUR wins and has been remarkably consistent. This marked his fourth top-10 finish in six Safeway starts, and he is coming off a 71st place finish in the FedExCup, the 12th straight season in which he’s advanced to at least the second Playoffs event. 3. Snedeker’s playoff record fell to 2-2 as he recorded his eighth runner-up finish on TOUR. He led the field with 23 birdies, with Troy Merritt (T4) finishing second with 22. Snedeker was aiming to win back-to-back Regular Season tournaments (Wyndham Championship). 4. Luke List (T4) played his final five holes in 4-under (birdie, par, birdie, par, eagle) to close with a 5-under 67. In 123 TOUR starts, he also owns two runner-up finishes (2017 Sanderson Farms Championship, 2018 The Honda Classic) and two thirds (2017 Houston Open, 2018 RBC Heritage). 5. Aaron Baddeley (69, T4) was trying to become the first Monday qualifier to win since Arjun Atwal at the 2010 Wyndham Championship. With the top-10 finish, Baddeley earned a spot in the field at the Sanderson Farms Championship, Oct. 25-28.

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For the golfer who wants his resume to be the envy of his fellow professionals, there are certain venues that capture attention. Obviously wins at Augusta National come not only with a Green Jacket but yards of cache. Really, wins at any major, of which Mark O’Meara has a pair including one at the Masters, look good on a resume. But what about other venues? Where does it really matter if a guy has won outside of the four majors? Surely, TPC Sawgrass is on the short list. And so is Pebble Beach, home of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on the PGA TOUR and the PURE Insurance Championship on PGA TOUR Champions, otherwise known as O’Meara’s personal playground. O’Meara, 65, won an event at Pebble Beach in each of three decades beginning with the 1979 California State Amateur. He won the PGA TOUR event played at Pebble five times, including the last time it was called the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am and four times after AT&T became the title sponsor. “Sometimes you hear people say O’Meara won 16 times but five were at Pebble Beach,” O’Meara said Wednesday. “Well, with all due respect to the great venues out there, where would you rather win five? Unless you win a major or The Players Championship, Pebble is probably next on the hit list.” Phil Mickelson joined O’Meara in 2019 as a five-time winner at Pebble. O’Meara said he texted Lefty in the aftermath and said, “Congratulations but I think that’s enough, young man.” O’Meara has been hitting Pebble hard since his first trip to the Monterey Peninsula, for the California State Amateur in 1979, when he was a senior at Long Beach State. He was immediately taken by the beauty and mystique of the area. It also didn’t hurt that he won the 36-hole final match 8&7. O’Meara credits that first trip as being a cornerstone of his success at Pebble Beach. Before he had even turned pro, he had good vibes for the place. He also didn’t mind the poa annua greens. They can be very bumpy and tricky to read, but O’Meara grew up in Mission Viejo putting on poa annua. “It was a combination of factors that lead to my success at Pebble,” said O’Meara, who added that he’ll play about a dozen events on PGA TOUR Champions this season, including the PURE Insurance Championship. “First for me to go back there and have all the fond memories of the State Amateur. And a lot of great players won the California State Amateur. I also love to play so much in the natural beauty and growing up on poa annua greens that are very bumpy and knowing you have to be very patient. “You also have to be patient because being in the final group it can take almost six hours to play. You’re playing with amateurs. I love amateurs. My dad was a real people person, a sales guy. I had more fun playing with amateurs than I did my pros. They were an escape for me to not always worry about what was happening with Mark O’Meara on the golf course. It took my mind off what I was doing right or wrong on the course. Instead of just focusing on me, if I could engage with the amateurs it took my mind away. I just used them as a positive, not a distraction. Other guys don’t feel the same way about it. That’s why I had a lot of success at Pebble.” O’Meara won the tournament once with his dad as his amateur partner. He cited that as one of the most cherished memories of his life. The year was 1990. They had first played together in 1986, the year after his first victory at the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am. And they made the cut. After O’Meara won in 1989, he invited his dad to come play with him one more time. “I gave it to him as a Christmas present,” O’Meara said. “I flew him and mom out and then I won the tournament playing alongside my dad. I put that right at the top of the list of great things, winning at Augusta with a putt on the final hole, winning the U.S. Amateur. But to play with my father and coming up the last hole, the 18th hole at Pebble, you can’t do better than that.”

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He came with a plan of attack in November. It didn’t work. But that’s not going to cause him to change five months later. He’s still going to try to overpower the place.

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