Kuchar leads by 2 at Riviera as Woods falls 9 shots behind

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Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Horschel, who’d gone dormant since winning the 2014 FedExCup, notched his fourth PGA TOUR victory to remind everyone how good he is when the putts are falling. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. There’s nothing like watching your ball fall in the hole to beat back the golfing blues. At the suggestion of his coach Todd Anderson, a slumping Horschel put a new PXG putter in the bag for the Byron. The change paid off handsomely as he made 453 feet, 9 inches of putts for the week, including a 60-footer at the 14th hole Sunday. That was the second best putting performance of his career (2014 BMW Championship, 498’8’’). He also ranked first in Strokes Gained: Putting at TPC Four Seasons Resort, becoming the first TOUR winner to lead that stat since Russell Henley at the Shell Houston Open. “I putted beautifully all week,â€� said Horschel, who moved from 71st to 15th in the FedExCup standings, and from 76th to 44th in the Official World Golf Ranking, giving him an automatic berth in the U.S. Open at Erin Hills next month. As for his bomb on 14, he said it was an unexpected bonus after three-putting the previous two holes. “I’m thinking to myself, man just get it close, I don’t want to 3-putt again.â€� 2. Golf psychology continues to make perfect sense, and no sense at all. Horschel’s four straight missed cuts meant he was coming off the worst stretch of golf since his rookie year in 2011, when he missed five straight. By his own admission, he landed in Dallas with “nothingâ€� in terms of momentum. What’s more, he’d never warmed to TPC Four Seasons while missing the cut there in his only two Byron starts, in 2011 and 2012. None of that mattered. What mattered was something his caddie Josh Cassell said to Horschel while he was shooting a second-round 76 to miss the cut at THE PLAYERS Championship the previous week. As Horschel’s paraphrased it, Cassell said, “You know what, we’re going to go next week to Dallas, to the Byron Nelson, and we’re going to win.â€� What did the caddie see? How did he know? Meanwhile, Day’s resurgence was almost predictable. Although it had been a year since his last victory, at the 2016 PLAYERS, and he came into the week at 106th in the FedExCup race, his poor play had coincided with his mother Dening’s lung cancer. With the recent upswing in her health—she’s back working in Australia—Jason’s game figured to bounce back accordingly. It did. Day’s playoff loss, while disappointing, moved him up to 39th in the FedExCup race. He also reclaimed his No. 3 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking, ahead of Hideki Matsuyama.      3. The also-rans are often just as interesting as the winners, and sometimes they’re even more so. That’s the premise of Neil Steinberg’s highly entertaining 1994 book, “Complete & Utter Failure: A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres & Total Flops.â€� And for the second straight week, we saw that simple truth play out on TOUR. First, we got Ian Poulter’s wild-and-wooly bogey from the trees on the 72nd hole at THE PLAYERS. Then, on Sunday, we saw James Hahn come to 18 needing an eagle to elbow his way into the playoff. Impossible? Nah. From 121 yards, Hahn hit a wedge and watched along with everyone else as the ball hit by the flagstick, spun back and caught part of the hole but spun out to four feet away. He made the birdie putt to shoot 71 and finish alone in third place, a shot out of the playoff. Even after Horschel’s long birdie putt on 14, and Day’s chip-in at 15, Hahn’s lip out from long range was unforgettable. And kudos to CBS for its cutaway to the hands-over-heads reaction of Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo in the booth—a nice touch that mirrored how the rest of us looked.    4. Boring golf is winning golf. Still. Nowhere was that more evident than the par-5 16th hole, where Hahn missed right off the tee and Day missed left. Horschel, meanwhile, split the fairway and hit a stock 5-iron onto the green, leading to a routine, two-putt birdie to move him into a tie for the lead with Day. “I knew the stuff I was doing at home was the right stuff,â€� said Horschel, who has long been known as one of the game’s premier ball-strikers. “I knew the stuff I was doing in early weeks of tournaments was the right stuff. I just had to keep believing in it and keep believing that, you know, in tournament golf that I’ve done this stuff I needed to do that week to play well. And sometimes I just didn’t have that belief I needed.â€� Afterward, Day was left to rue not just his missed four-foot par try in sudden death, but also his failure to birdie 16, where he “basically three-puttedâ€� from the left fringe. 5. Jordan Spieth will remember this tournament as a wake-up call. Yes, he shot an out-of-left-field 75 (including a quadruple-bogey 9 on 16) to miss the cut at the Byron for the first time. And yes, it was a particularly painful result at TPC Four Seasons, where Spieth watched the TOUR pros as a boy, and where he finished T16 at a 16-year-old in 2010. “It didn’t need to happen,â€� he said, sounding like he was in shock.   But sometimes athletes find the most unlikely places to pivot. Just ask Horschel, who said he found something in his swing while missing the cut at THE PLAYERS. This week Spieth heads just down the road to the DEAN & DELUCA Invitational, where he says the course (Colonial) fits his game better and where he is in fact the defending champion. Spieth has a history of turning negatives into positives—think of his defiant back-to-back birdies after he four-putted the par-3 eighth hole at the 2015 Open Championship at St. Andrews. Don’t be surprised to see another bounce-back this week.   FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Horschel’s short-game stats coming into the Byron were not very good, which was yet one more reason why his performance at TPC Four Seasons was such a shocker.   Coming into the tournament, he was a middling 127th in Scrambling, 193rd in Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green, and 113th in Strokes Gained: Putting. Whether it was his new putter, his newfound peace, or something else, Horschel transformed at the Byron: T7 in Scrambling, ninth in SG: Around-the-Green, and first in SG: Putting. Who was that guy? 2. The winner was not only better on the greens, he got there with greater ease, too. Unafraid to hit driver off the tee, Horschel ranked T6 in driving distance (305 yards per pop) and T17 in driving accuracy (57.14 percent). He was also T5 in Greens in Regulation (70.83%). Day laid back off the tee to rank 17th in driving distance (298.9) and T12 in driving accuracy (58.93%), but was well back at T32 in Greens in Regulation (63.89%). Over time, those differences, especially the GIR differential, tend to add up. 3. The 20-somethings have fallen back. Golfers under 30 got off to a hot start this season, and they got a boost from 21-year-old Si Woo Kim’s victory at THE PLAYERS. They account for 16 tournament victories in total. That said, the 30-somethings are staging a modest rally, having won or jointly won (in the case of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans) four times in the last five weeks. Thanks to Horschel, 30, outlasting Day, 29, they account for 10 victories and seem to be catching up. The 40-somethings, by the way, account for three Ws so far this season.     4 TPC Four Seasons held up well and played tough in its final year as host. The cut was at 2 over for the second straight week on TOUR, but it was only the fifth over-par cut in 43 tournaments so far this season. How hard was it? FedExCup leader Dustin Johnson made nine bogeys while shooting weekend rounds of 71-69 to finish T13. “It’s sad that it’s leaving,â€� Horschel said, “because I was never a fan of this course, but came here and now I am and I won and I don’t want to leave (laughter).â€� 5. Okay, maybe putting isn’t everything. As much as we like to point to Strokes Gained: Putting to explain tournament results, it’s not always that simple. Case in point: Although he led the field in SG: Putting for the week, Horschel took an untidy 32 putts Sunday. He made up for it by hitting 10 of 14 fairways and 14 of 18 greens in regulation, his best of the week in both categories. Meanwhile, with 100 putts at the Byron, Patrick Reed became just the fifth player this season to take 100 or fewer for the week. He tied for 20th. Of the five players to keep their total putts at 100 or fewer, only one has won the tournament: Wesley Bryan at the RBC Heritage. Figure that one out. TOP THREE VIDEOS

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About an hour after Adam Hadwin’s first PGA TOUR victory at the Valspar Championship this March, he had begun to fulfill his media obligations and was chatting with his soon-to-be wife Jessica, when something hit him. He celebrated his tournament-winning putt with a double fist pump and a bit of a holler, and he was overwhelmed with concern, as he thought he might have rubbed some people – including his playing partner that day, Patrick Cantlay – the wrong way. “Total Canadian in me,â€� Hadwin says with a laugh. “I know. I was crazy for thinking that.â€� Flashing his signature smile across a bearded face, Hadwin admits he would, on one hand, enjoy ‘many, many’ March’s like the one he had earlier this year, but on the other, he says it would never want to go through that again. “It was crazy,â€� he admits. After Hadwin’s victory, he and Jessica hoped in a car and drove to the next week’s event, the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. The following Saturday, the pair – they met while Adam was playing a Web.com Tour event in her hometown of Wichita, Kansas – got married in Arizona. Two days later, he and his now-wife closed on their first home in Phoenix. It was a whirlwind month, and a stretch of time that changed Hadwin’s life forever. And he wouldn’t trade it for anything. 59 Before Hadwin experienced the 31 days of March, there was another number that was top-of-mind. In the third round of the CareerBuilder Challenge Hadwin shot a 59, becoming the second TOUR member (Justin Thomas did it at the Sony Open) of 2017 to hit that score. The result catapulted him into contention. Although he admits now he didn’t feel the 59 convinced him that good things were on the horizon, he did think it was a sign that all the work he had been doing up to this point in his career was starting to shine through. “I was so focused on trying to win the golf tournament that it went immediately there and that’s all I could think about. I had no time to appreciate what happened. When you have a round like that to get into position to win a golf tournament… more than anything I didn’t want to be that guy that flukes one round and then doesn’t have a chance in the final round,â€� he says. “I wouldn’t say that it’s been one event or one round that’s led me to believe that I can compete on the PGA TOUR, it’s just been a body of work.â€� Hadwin points to his previous best finish on the PGA TOUR as proof of how hard it actually is to contend (and win) on the TOUR. He finished tied for fourth at the RBC Canadian Open in 2011 in, essentially, his hometown (although he was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan – a fact that television announcers just can’t ignore because it sounds so typically Canadian – he’s spent almost his whole life in Abbotsford, British Columbia) at Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club. He hadn’t matched that result on the TOUR in the nearly six years since. “It took three full years on the PGA TOUR to better that finish. Being out here and playing against the best players in the world and having success against them, it added up to that day,â€� he says of the Moving Day 59 in the desert. Hadwin couldn’t convert his 13-under par Saturday into a win that week, but he walked away from that tournament with a greater appreciation of those on TOUR who make it look easy. “You can shoot 65 one day and 75 the next day and nothing that much changes. That’s golf in a nutshell. A putt here, a bounce there, and you’re three or four shots worse that you were before and you think you played the same. Some would argue that some wins are more difficult than others, but a win is a win in my opinion,â€� he says. “It’s so hard to explain to people, especially when they see what Tiger did and what Jordan’s done and Rory… all these guys that are just playing so well. It’s so difficult. Everything needs to go your way. Every aspect of your game needs to be good. If one part is lacking it’s going to be exposed and you won’t win. To do that in one round, or a couple rounds is one thing, but to do that over all four days is even that much more difficult and that’s what makes it even harder.“ And 50 days after his 59, he’d prove just how difficult it is to find the PGA TOUR winner’s circle. Winning There were questions as to why Hadwin didn’t play the Honda Classic, since he was so close to being in the top 10 of the FedEx Cup standings, and he would have earned a spot in the WGC-Mexico. But he had a feeling there were going to be ‘plenty’ of World Golf Championships to play in, and all cards were just falling in their rightful place as Hadwin arrived in Tampa Bay, Fla. for the 2017 Valspar Championship. “I was rested. I was fully ready to go play… mentally, physically, (and) emotionally. I had some really good things coming up two weeks later… I was getting married. Life was good. I was in a good place,â€� he says. “I felt good with my game all year. I was close in the desert (at the CareerBuilder), and just had a really consistent year up to that point. Lot of good finishes, lot of consistency. It’s a tough golf course but thought it would suit my game. I think that’s what makes professional golf so hard to describe. I didn’t feel that much different going into that week versus any other week.â€� Hadwin shot a 3-under-par 68 Thursday at the Copperhead course, and didn’t think much of it, saying he was ‘kind of cruising along.’ Friday, though, was a different story. He fired a 6-under-par 29 on his back nine en route to a 7-under-par 65 and the 36-hole lead – his first on the PGA TOUR. But he says the follow-up round, the bogey-free 67 on Saturday, was even more impressive to him. “I put myself in a leading position after 36 holes… it was a big round for me for my career, to be honest. I went out and played bogey-free, mistake-free golf on Saturday in the pressure and in a situation I hadn’t been in and I was able to perform. It was a big round for me, and a big round for me moving forward in my career,â€� he explains. “I knew Sunday was going to be a difficult day as well. I had played very well the first three days, but I was still going to have to follow it up with another good round. If you’re just a little bit off it can bite you pretty quickly.â€� Unfortunately for Hadwin, he got bit, hard, and at the most inopportune of times. Cantlay had gone 5-under par for six holes through the middle of his round, and was nipping at Hadwin’s heels. Even when Hadwin got to the tee on the par-4 16th at the Copperhead Course, the tournament was far from over. And then it almost was. Hadwin blew his tee shot on No. 16 into the water, and had to scramble for a double bogey. He says now that he just tried to stay in the moment and get over what he had done, blocking out the noise as best he could. “I can remember the tee shot on 16 and hitting it into the water, and at no point did I ever start thinking that I was going to throw it away. I had zero negative thoughts. I just thought about what I needed to do next,â€� he says. “I never felt stressed about the situation. I just wanted to make the best bogey of the tournament. I made double but then moved on to 17 and 18. It was just the next golf shot and what I needed to do. There wasn’t any other pressure.â€� On the 17th tee, Hadwin had a bit of a viral-sensation moment. His caddy, Joe Cruz, began unleashing a string of caddy-type talk about yardages and going back-and-forth on which club to choose, and Hadwin, although the politest of Canadians, had had enough. With his eyes on the green of the par three, told Cruz he was going to “hit the s—tâ€� out of his 6-iron, to which Cruz said, “yeah.â€� Sports and pop culture blogs picked up the exchange, and Hadwin still laughs as he recalls receiving a text from his brother later that evening saying he knew his brother had ‘made it’ because a popular men’s blog had written a story about Hadwin’s on-camera flub. “It was just one of those weird situations. That’s not the first time I’ve said that,â€� Hadwin says, chuckling. “That happens. In the situation it got caught and people found it funny. But that’s where we were at in the round.â€� He parred 17 and came to 18 with the tournament still not over. Hadwin did what he needed to do to put the pressure on Cantlay, and Cantlay didn’t attack the 72nd with the same kind of vigor he had been showing earlier in the day, finding the greenside bunker. 

Still, Hadwin was thinking Cantlay was going to get up-and-down and force a playoff. Hadwin had missed the green on 18 and still had to chip and putt for a par, and, it turns out, the win. “When he hit the bunker shot, it wasn’t a gimmie, so I wanted to increase that pressure on him. I didn’t want to leave it three or four feet short and give him an out, where he can take the pressure off of himself. I wanted to put as much pressure as possible on him. I bellied a wedge, judged the speed perfectly. I lagged it down to a distance where I felt like, even if I couldn’t keep my hands on the club, I could somehow get it in,â€� he recalls, laughing. “I do remember standing there and when he missed his putt, I looked over at Jess and thought, ‘holy crap this is real. This is going to happen.’ I didn’t have to grind over a putt… this is happening. It’s going to happen. It was a very surreal moment to stand on a green and know that you’re going to win.â€� Life Changer At this point, Jessica, who had been on site at the Valspar all week long, gave her soon-to-be-husband a smile, as he had looked at her with that hearty smile just seconds before. “It was funny because I was standing on the green and Patrick missed his putt for par and all Adam had to do was make that short putt and he looked at me and gave me this big grin. The cameraman looked at me because I was smiling and said, ‘oh he’s confident huh?’ and I was like, ‘I hope so!’ and he made the putt,â€� remembers Jessica. “For me, I was just so happy and proud for me because it actually happened. He had been in contention at CareerBuilder and I was there for that too. It was hard to watch him fight so hard and then miss. But at the Valspar I was just so happy that he was able to close the deal. I was super excited.â€� Jessica, 31, was working as a nurse at the time she met Adam, who turns 30 this year. Adam had missed the cut at the Web.com Tour event and the two went to dinner. Jessica remembers Adam being a good date and keeping good, normal conversation going. “He seemed intelligent, and he was very polite. He’s Canadian, so of course,â€� she explains. The couple embraced on the green after Adam had drained his winning putt, and all of a sudden, their life had changed. They drove the few hours up to Bay Hill for the next week’s event, and despite some extra media attention, Adam was trying to come back to ‘real life.’ And then he finished sixth, with a chance to win late. Again. Married Life Hadwin remembers his final stretch of holes in Orlando fondly – despite the fact that he made a double-bogey again (“On the 15th hole this time, not 16,â€� he says) and thinking he could have gone on a bit of a run and notched another top-3 finish. It was not to be, though, and it was time to get married. Adam and Jessica tied the knot on March 24th and nothing, even after the win, had changed in their wedding plan. Even though the guests of the Hadwin nuptials were in the presence of the latest PGA TOUR winner, that wasn’t the focus of the day. “It was nice, because you’re always hoping that the win didn’t overshadow the big day, that would be something the guests are focused on, but I don’t think anyone focused on golf,â€� says Jessica. “It was on us and the wedding and it was exactly how I hoped it would be.â€� Surrounded by family and friends, Adam wore a three-piece navy suit with a white shirt and pink tie, while Jessica had a classic gown with a bouquet of white and pink flowers. The couple said their ‘I Do’sâ€� at a sunset ceremony at an idyllic mountainside setting in Scottsdale. After the wedding, two days after, to be precise, the Hadwin’s closed on their first home, and some special mail arrived not long after that. For Adam, he received his invite to the 2017 Masters, and for Jessica, she received her PGA TOUR season-long credential that said ‘Jessica Hadwin’ – the first piece of official identification with her new last name. Jessica recalls how their home purchase came to be, as they were looking pretty seriously even before Adam’s win at a handful of homes in the Phoenix area. “We had seen it, and we went and looked through it, but it was over our budget. We went to look at it and I think he said jokingly, ‘if I win maybe we can look at it then’ so then we he won we thought we could do it. We saw it before the win and we said it was our dream home but we said we’d see, and then the next week he won,â€� says Jessica. “We had been looking at houses, and before we went to Tampa we went to five or six houses. That whole week in Tampa we were looking at houses online and we found one, and it was outside the price range we wanted. And then it suddenly became obtainable after (the Valspar),â€� echoes Adam, with a laugh. Funny how things work out. The Future For the Hadwin’s, their honeymoon plans were put on hiatus as the week of their trip to Bora Bora was scheduled for the time of the Masters – where Adam made a fine debut, finishing tied for 36th – but the trip which has essentially the same itinerary, according to Jessica, has since been rescheduled for December (“Unless something changes between then and now,â€� she says with a laugh). Adam hasn’t quite had the same level of success he experienced earlier in the year, and he admitted to reporters during The Open Championship a week ago that he has done a ‘terrible job’ of handing the pressure that comes along with being the top-ranked golfer in the country, and fighting for a spot on the Presidents Cup team. “I haven’t played that well since Bay Hill and bring more of the game I had the first couple months of the season,â€� he said. But despite the fact his performance on the course hasn’t been what he’s hoped for, off the course, things could not be better. It’s likely the Hadwin’s will never have another month like the one they had in March of 2017. They admit it was amazing, but they’re glad to have it in their collective rear-view mirrors. “I don’t think I would change March, even though it was pretty hectic,â€� says Jessica. “The win, playing well the next week, the wedding, closing on a house a couple days after the wedding… it was a little crazy there for a little bit, then we got to breathe,â€� continues Adam. “There was a lot going on, but all very good things which made it a lot easier.â€� Life comes at you fast, but for Adam Hadwin, it’s just getting started. No apologies necessary.

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