Brooks Koepka pretty quiet on The Match, but praises DeChambeau’s great showing at World Long Drive

Here are nine tidbits from the third round of A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier gamers can use tomorrow, this weekend or down the road. The Old White TPC at The Greenbrier Resort in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia hosts for the eighth time and measures 7,287 yards and plays to Par-70. Know Thy Enemy These were the top-10 selected golfers in the PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf game presented by SERVPRO. With temperatures in dipping into the 70’s the breeze blowing, The Old White TPC showed its teeth, to a degree, in Round 3. After giving up a round of 61 in the first two rounds the lowest total on moving day was just 65. The track and the greens both firmed up nicely and there’s hardly a wonder why the top 10 was turned upside down. The Final Pairing Kelly Kraft has never held the 36-hole lead before and now he’s never lost it. He’ll want to forget he played the three holes in two-over par as he saw his three-shot lead evaporate as he shares the 54-hole lead. The good news is he finished the day in red numbers (69) and he’s 13-under on the Par-4 holes. He’ll be playing alongside another looking for win No. 1 on TOUR, Harold Varner, III, so that should help both of them relax. Varner’s last bogey was 39 holes ago as he posted 66 after 64 in Round 2 to share the lead. The last time we checked in with Varner he was putting all four rounds under-par at TPC Sawgrass for T7, his only top 10 of the year. He’ll be looking to join the first-timers club in the winner’s circle tomorrow. He closed with 67 last year in much different circumstances. Na-ht Out of It Kevin Na backed up his 63 in Round 2 with the co-low round of the day, 65, in Round 3 and sits just one back of the lead. He’ll have no problem stalking two players who have never won as he looks to pick up his first win since 2011. He closed with 61 at Trinity Forest for solo fourth at the AT&T Byron Nelson in May and his only top 10 here was posting 65 in 2012. Country Roads, Take Me Home Bubba Watson isn’t worried about stats or trends and shouldn’t be as well as he’s playing. He’s never led this week so he can join the previous seven winners in keeping that streak alive if he does the business tomorrow. He matched the low round of the day on Saturday with 65 as he led the field in SG: off the tee, tee to green, driving distance and proximity. He fired 63 on Sunday his last time out to win the Travelers so I’m not going to be surprised with another low one tomorrow! Mountain Climbing Tony Finau is looking to keep up his momentum going at The Old White TPC. His worst round of 11 is 69 and his best is 66 so I’m not surprised with his trio of 67’s this week. His third one of 2018 moved him up 10 spots to T14 as he looks to best his T7 from last year. He was second to Watson in the first three categories listed above and third in proximity. He’ll need to make a few tomorrow to get back into the top 10. I’m not betting against him as he’s T4 in birdies for the week. The Defending Champ All the talk of coming from behind to win is great but I’ll also point out that nobody has successfully defended either. Xander Schauffele doesn’t care about any stats or streaks as he became the first rookie to win The TOUR Championship last year. He’ll gladly take his chances on a course he loves as his 65 today pushes his two-year total to 27-under in seven rounds. Moving Day For the second week in a row Bronson Burgoon has forced himself into the conversation with a big round on Saturday. And for the second Saturday running it’s a 65 on Par-70 layout that’s put him in the mix. Last week he backed it up with 67 for his first top-10 TOUR finish and a trip to Carnoustie. He’ll have to feel like he’s playing with house money on Sunday as he moved up 24 spots, the most into the top 10. … J.T. Poston went out early and posted the first 65 of the as he jumped 42 spots to T18. … Brandon Harkins continues to rumble as well as his 66 leapfrogged 39 players to T21. Moving Day: Wrong Way Webb Simpson (T2) and Whee Kim (T5) both shared the worst round of the day with matching 76’s. Simpson dropped 28 spots to T30 while Kim plummeted 43 spots to T48. Simpson’s rough day affected more gamers than Kim’s to say the least. … The next step for cut-maker extraordinaire Tyler Duncan is putting together two solid WEEKEND rounds. He’s made nine cuts in a row but he dropped 52 places from T8 to T60 after 75 Saturday. I’ll keep reminding everyone that he’s a rookie playing his 26th event. Study Hall Saturday’s scoring average was the most difficult of the week but still played under-par at 69.753 (-0.247). Round 1 was 69.340 (-0.660) and Round 2 went lower at 68.636 (-1.364) before the correction in Round 3. … Varner has the cleanest card of week so far with just two bogeys and zero others. … Ollie Schniederjans (T14) has circled the most birdies thus far with 19 but has eight bogeys and a double to go with them. … Every player inside the top 10 SG: approach the green is in the top 21 save for Simpson. … Every player inside the top 10 SG: putting is T21 or better as well. … Only Varner and John Peterson (T38) played bogey-free golf in Round 3. Check yesterday’s Emergency 9 for more info on Peterson.

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They could only share a laugh while looking over their creation and realizing how far it had come. Hosting one of the PGA TOUR’s top events was not the goal when they started the renovation of Long Island’s Glen Oaks Club. But there they were, standing on the scaffolding behind the 17th green, mere weeks before the club would host THE NORTHERN TRUST — the first event of the 2017 FedExCup Playoffs. “Craig turned to me and said, ‘Never in my wildest imagination would I ever think we’d be getting ready for a TOUR event,’â€� said course designer Joel Weiman. Craig Currier is Glen Oaks’ superintendent. He has some experience preparing courses for prestigious events. He was hired at Bethpage Black for the 2002 and 2009 U.S. Opens. Currier came to Glen Oaks a year after the second Open, lured to the private club to lead a dramatic renovation of a tired, tree-lined course. Some golf enthusiasts refer to Glen Oaks as “the Augusta National of the northâ€� because its wide fairways flow into each other, the deep hues of green dotted by bright white bunkers. Of course, the Alister Mackenzie design down in Georgia holds an incomparable place in the sport. Weiman insists that they weren’t trying to copy one of golf’s most famous courses, but Glen Oaks’ crisp, clean look is the inspiration for the comparisons. Stewart Hagestad has played both Glen Oaks and Augusta National. He was the low amateur at this year’s Masters (T36) and played Glen Oaks in the 2016 Metropolitan Open, finishing 11th with a 54-hole score of 7-over 217. He called Glen Oaks’ conditioning “pretty elite.â€� “They really nailed the aesthetics,â€� said Hagestad, winner of the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur. BK Sweeney’s Parkside Tavern is a watering hole just outside the grounds of Bethpage State Park that advertises “family-friendly dining and delicious, hearty foodsâ€� on its website. It’s where Howard Smith went to meet the man he wanted to lead Glen Oaks’ transformation. Smith, a longtime Glen Oaks member, was the club’s president. Currier’s reputation, as the man who prepared a municipal course for two U.S. Opens, preceded him. They had never met, but Smith was able to procure his phone number and arrange a meeting. “I had heard, ‘If you want to hire the best, hire Craig,’â€� Smith said. “Based on that, I told myself that I had to give it a try. It was a process. I was doing a lot of selling on Glen Oaks and trying to convince him that going from a public course to a private course … would be a great next step. I guess I was appealing.â€� Currier grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York, which gave him an appreciation for hard labor and long hours. A small private club, The Cedar Lake Club, was adjacent to the family farm. He started working on the course as a teenager. “I think my dad almost pushed me away from farming, told me I should do something else,â€� Currier said. “After growing up on a dairy farm, almost any job you do seems easy.â€� He worked at several clubs, including two winters at Augusta National, before becoming the superintendent at Bethpage in June 1997, months after the U.S. Golf Association announced it was taking its biggest tournament to the course. The $2 million Rees Jones renovation to toughen up the Black Course started two months later. It was a dramatic renovation that transformed a run-down municipal course into a worthy host of a major championship. “Craig had a reputation as being one of the best, certainly in the Met Section, but also the nation, based on what he had done with Bethpage,â€� Smith said. “I just saw the passion. I saw how dedicated he was. I saw his love for what he does.â€� Smith saw that dedication first-hand while he was playing Glen Oaks on a dreary Sunday. He spotted Currier, who had yet to accept the job, scouting the property. “He came somewhat unannounced, but he walked all 27 holes by himself, envisioning what he could do on each hole,â€� Smith said. What did Currier see during that visit? “It was like walking through a forest,â€� said Currier, who became Glen Oaks’ superintendent in 2010. “I’m not going to tell you I loved it. I liked the greens. Every hole looked the same to me. It was really tight. Literally, if you hit it off the fairway, you were punching out sideways. “They were looking to turn over a new leaf so to speak and re-do the whole place. It looked like a great challenge.â€� Long Island is home to some of the best courses in the United States, including Shinnecock Hills, the site of next year’s U.S. Open and the National Golf Links of America. Even the local courses that aren’t built on links land use fescue to create a rugged look. Glen Oaks wanted to do something to differentiate itself. “A lot of the courses in the area have a lot of native fescue, like Bethpage Black, a big, rugged golf course,â€� Currier said. “We were certainly trying to separate ourselves a little bit with a real clean, elegant, sharp, manicured look.â€� Said Weiman, “We couldn’t do Shinnecock better than Shinnecock, or National Golf Links better than NGLA, so we went 180 degrees in the opposite direction.â€� Weiman called the course’s metamorphosis a “bold transition.â€� Mother Nature helped the process. Hurricane Irene in 2011 and Superstorm Sandy a year later removed approximately 1,000 trees from the property. “The golf course was very tight, narrow and nondescript,â€� Weiman said. “It didn’t have a lot of memorable holes. It wasn’t very strategic by any stretch. We opened it up, created angles and options and gave each hole its own identity.â€� Weiman estimates that 30 percent of the property’s bunkers were removed, but the ones that remain were strategically placed to make players take risks to open up the best angles for playing the hole. The wide fairways encourage players to be aggressive and hit driver. Weiman uses the fifth hole, a dogleg-left par-4, as an example. Before the renovation, players had to nearly snap-hook their tee shot to keep it in the fairway. With the trees gone, fairway bunkers were built on the inside corner of the dogleg. Now players can take a risk by trying to carry those traps, or they can play safely to the right of them, leaving a longer approach. There is no rough between the fairway and bunkers. Short grass leads directly into the sand traps, and connects green complexes to the next hole. It’s a look that is reminiscent of that famous course down in Georgia, and shows how dramatically Glen Oaks has changed. Although Currier provided input with the strategic design elements, his main contribution, according to Weiman, was “to always push the envelope. In each instance, his first thought was grounded in the impact to the overall golf experience – not the impact to the future maintenance program.â€� Currier was dedicated to creating a truly unique facility in Long Island. Now Glen Oaks gets its opportunity this week to shine. “We were running with a bold vision,â€� Weiman said. “He never said, ‘That’s too much, that’s over the top.’ He was always willing to take the challenge, and that’s why it’s so spectacular now. That was the attitude, that the sky’s the limit.â€�

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