50-year-old Phil provides thrill with win for ages

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Cutting through a crowded leaderboard, Rory McIlroy birdies five of his last six holes to post a final-round 64 and resume his winning ways after an 18-month dry spell. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where the 2016 FedExCup champion and former world No. 1 went 8 under for his last 13 holes at Bay Hill, picking up his 14th PGA TOUR victory. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. McIlroy bears watching now more than ever. The 28-year-old former world No. 1 has always been a streaky player who can reel off birdies and wins in bunches. He won The Open Championship, the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, and the PGA Championship in three consecutive starts in 2014. Now he’s got his sights set on this week’s WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, and will go for the career Grand Slam at the Masters next month after a much-need injection of confidence at Bay Hill. “It’s huge,â€� said McIlroy, whose victory moved him up to 24th in the FedExCup standings. “The shots that I was able to hit today under pressure, coming down the stretch, the two 5-irons into the par-3s on the back nine, the wedge shots, the putts, the drive on 16, the 3-wood on 18 after the last 3-wood I hit on that hole I hit it OB left on Thursday. “So just stuff that you, all these little barriers that you have to overcome,â€� he added, “whether it be physical or mental, yeah, it’s huge for my confidence going into the next few weeks, and I kept saying I didn’t need a win going into Augusta to feel like I had a chance, I just wanted to see signs of good golf, and thankfully I’ve been able to get both today.â€� 2. We should all get putting lessons from Brad Faxon, as McIlroy looked like he was putting to a pizza-sized hole at Bay Hill. His 100 putts for the week were the fewest of his career, and he led the field in strokes gained: putting, picking up an average of 2.507 strokes per round on the field. “When he is making putts,â€� said playing partner Justin Rose, “he’s incredibly hard to beat.â€� McIlroy’s most dramatic of his eight birdies was a toss-up. He didn’t even need his putter after his nearly 42-foot chip-in from just off the 15th green, and his curling, 25-foot birdie putt on 18 was reminiscent of eight-time API winner Tiger Woods. In fact, McIlroy said afterward, he dialed up his memories of Woods making the exact same putt in order to visualize the line. “Look, I would be lying if I said that I was trying to totally make it,â€� McIlroy said. As for those putting lessons from Faxon, McIlroy said they were more helpful to his psyche than his mechanics, freeing him up to just aim and shoot. Hey, whatever works. 3. Bryson DeChambeau may have the clutch gene. The par on 15? “Unbelievable out of the rough,â€� he said. “I couldn’t believe I got that up and down. That’s a one out of 20 to 30 chance right there.â€� As for the details of his eagle at the par-5 16th hole, DeChambeau was a little fuzzy. ShotLink tells us the drive traveled 331 yards and settled in the right rough. The second shot went 157 yards and cozied up to 15 feet, 8 inches from the pin. The putt snuck in the left edge. “I hit a perfect drive,â€� DeChambeau said. “Just needed to fly like three, four more yards, would have been all the way down in the fairway in the middle of the fairway and unfortunately got down on that down slope in the rough, but was able to somehow get it to 15 feet. I have no idea how it got to 15 feet. Then that putt was nice as well.â€� His birdie try at 17, from just inside 22 feet, veered left at the hole. “I thought it was going right,â€� DeChambeau said. “The book said it was going right, and I hit it and like halfway there I’m like, man, this is on track.â€� Alas, the ball missed and DeChambeau bent low, his hands on his knees. Needing to eagle the par-4 18th hole to tie, he bogeyed it instead, but that was inconsequential as DeChambeau remained in second place alone. “I definitely learned a lot today,â€� he said. “I know that I can play with the best in the world.â€� 4. Justin Rose, 37, is on a major roll. In fact, it’s getting hard to keep up with all of his top-10 finishes, what with his solo third at Bay Hill part of an epic run since last fall. Rose racked up top-10s in all four FedExCup Playoffs events last year; won the WGC-HSBC Champions on Oct. 29; won the European Tour’s Turkish Airlines Open; and already had top-10s at the TOUR’s Farmers Insurance Open (T8) and Valspar Championship (T5) when he got to Orlando. “Obviously a very good week,â€� Rose said. “Fourteen under par on this golf course is never to be sniffed at, I suppose. I got off to a really poor start on Thursday, getting 4 over [through six holes]. I thought it was a good omen for me. I won the U.S. Open from 4 over, I won at Congressional from 4 over, this week I was 4 over early, I was hoping that was a good sign.â€� Rose’s only ho-hum result of late, a T37 at the WGC-Mexico Championship, came in his return to competition after a four-week break. 5. The potential for a Tiger Woods win mesmerized everyone. “It was amazing,â€� said runner-up DeChambeau. “I told my caddie, Tim, on the 11th fairway, I’m like, ‘Man, Tiger’s doing it.’ I mean, I was incredibly happy for him. At the same point in time I’m still trying to win a golf tournament, right?â€� Woods, 42, closed to within a shot of the lead before hooking his tee shot out of bounds left of the 16th fairway. As it turned out, his bogey at the par-5 hole hardly mattered in light of McIlroy’s closing burst of five birdies in his last six holes. Woods (T5) finished 10-under, eight shots back, and moved up eight spots to 35th in the FedExCup standings. “It was a great two weeks of being in contention again,â€� Woods tweeted. “I feel like I’m getting a little better. Great playing by Rory today to win at the King’s place. Arnie would have been proud of golf today and the charges!!!â€� FIVE INSIGHTS 1. McIlroy’s deadeye putting gained 10.027 strokes on the field for the week, which made him No. 1 in strokes gained: putting (not surprising) and was his best-ever performance on the greens. He also was second in the field in putting from outside 10 feet, holing 11 in 39 attempts (28.21 percent). 2. Bay Hill had undergone some changes since Woods won his eighth API in 2013, but length is still hugely important. McIlroy topped the field at 316.5 yards per drive, with DeChambeau second at 309.4, and Woods sixth at 306.8. Ryan Moore (287.1, 65th in the field) was the outlier here as he finished T5. 3. DeChambeau was solid from tee-to-green, ranking in the top 10 in all ball-striking stats, but his short game was merely average with bursts of brilliance. Even with his remarkable up-and-down par at the 15th hole on Sunday, he was 57th in scrambling (55 percent) for the week. 4. Rose triple-bogeyed his second hole of the tournament, but led the field with 24 birdies, two more than McIlroy and Patrick Reed, and finished solo third. Rose was also the only player to beat Woods when paired with him at Bay Hill, edging the 14-time major winner 67 to 69 in the third round. 5. Woods racked up 12 birdies on the par-5s, tied for first in the field. He also was second in strokes gained: around-the-green (+4.356), and eighth in strokes gained: putting (+1.381). Less impressive: He hit eight fairways in each of the first two rounds, and nine in each of the weekend rounds, for a driving accuracy percentage of 60.71, tied for 66th best. He also was behind the curve in greens in regulation; at 62.5 percent, Woods ranked T53 in that stat. TOP THREE VIDEOS

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For all the innate glories of golf, perhaps the most rewarding is its ability to bring you places where you otherwise wouldn’t have traveled and introduce you to people who elsewise wouldn’t have dropped in on your life. It’s part of why Arnold Palmer called golf “the greatest game mankind has ever invented.â€� Yet, one place where golf cannot take you is back in time. Unfortunate, if you happen to believe there might have been an era and a place that would have afforded exponential charm. Like the Met Section in those days of hickory and early steel when gifted players honed their games on our greatest courses with a profound camaraderie. Rich doesn’t even begin to describe the depths of flavor to the golf world in the metropolitan New York area of this period and while most of us can only imagine, there are those who feel blessed to have savored it. “The Met Section was about golf. The pros were players. The assistants were players. The members were players,â€� said Billy Harmon, the youngest of the four brothers whose father, 1948 Masters champ Claude Harmon, for years the head professional at Winged Foot. “In the Met, members stood behind their pros.â€� Picture being chased out of the Winged Foot pro shop by one iconic golf figure, your father, only to wander outside where another future Masters champion and legend-in-the-making, Jack Burke Jr., was the assistant pro now in charge of your care. “He gave me my first golf lessons when I was like 5 or 6. How good is that?â€� said Butch Harmon, the oldest of the Harmon boys. “Years later, when I ran into Jack at River Oaks in Houston, he just looked at me and said, ‘Damn, am I going to have to babysit you and your brothers again today?’ â€� laughed Billy Harmon, whose other brothers, Dick and Craig, were likewise charmed by the aura of being a golf-happy kid raised within the confines of our country’s greatest golf area. Mind you, that is said with the utmost respect to other golf areas in the country. But let’s just come out and say it – the Met Section stands alone and never did it shine brighter than that bygone era.   *    *    *   When the PGA TOUR announced that its 2017 FedExCup playoffs opener, THE NORTHERN TRUST, would be staged at the Glen Oaks Club on Long Island, intrigue set in. What was the history of this club that had never hosted a PGA TOUR stop? Turns out, the club dates to the “Roarin’ 20sâ€� and newspaper reports from those years stated that Leo Diegel, a Michigan native who settled in the Met Section, played his golf for a time out of Glen Oaks. Diegel piled up 28 wins in a colorful PGA TOUR career, but he was in a long line of players who supplied the Met Section with star power. Surely, the people of White Plains, Harrison and the Eastchester villages of Tuckahoe and Bronxville had plenty to boast about. In one glorious 10-year stretch, five golfers who called that area home won eight majors – Gene Sarazen the 1922 U.S. Open and 1922 and ‘23 PGA Championship; Jesse Sweetser the 1922 British Amateur and 1926 U.S. Amateur; Willie Macfarlane the 1925 U.S. Open; Johnny Farrell the 1928 U.S. Open; and Tom Creavy the 1931 PGA Championship. “When I did research, I read how some reporters called that area the ‘cradle of golf,’ â€� said Tom Creavy, who was named after his uncle and can remember shagging balls for him. “The area and the time was so rich in golf and golfers.â€� That will resonate if you simply look at the rollcall of Met Open winners. Consider, for example, the tournaments played between 1916 and 1951. In all but two years (1921, 1929), the winner or runner-up was either a World Golf Hall of Fame member or major winner. We’re talking Sarazen, Walter Hagen, Tommy Armour, Paul Runyan, Henry Picard, Byron Nelson, Craig Wood, Sam Snead and Ben Hogan, and that list takes on a greater shine when you comprehend that many of them either grew up at a Met Section golf course or worked at one. Testaments to the depth of golf talent in the Met Section back in the golden age could have come from many sources, but surely Bobby Jones would have confirmed it. Always, it seemed, his U.S. Open hopes rested on how he fared against a golfer from the New York area. In 1922, Jones finished joint second, one behind Sarazen. The next year, Jones edged Bobby Cruickshank, who worked at the Progress Club. Cyril Walker, who beat Jones in ’24, worked at Englewood. Macfarlane, a playoff winner over Jones in 1925, was a Scotsman who emigrated here and worked at Oak Ridge. Jones won the 1926 U.S. Open by one over a kid named Joe Turnesa, the third of seven brothers from Elmsford who made up the grandest golf-playing family in American history. And on it went for Jones, who had one last U.S. Open tussle with a golfer from the New York area, losing in a playoff to Farrell at the 1928 U.S. Open. “The Gentleman,â€� they called Farrell, who grew up in White Plains, worked at Quaker Ridge and later had a storied career at Baltusrol. Such was the symmetry of that era, so many great players connected. Macfarlane gave Creavy, a caddie at Siwanoy, his first lessons and introduced him to Farrell. The three of them played in exhibition matches together, and each won a major. It was a different time, when being a good golfer meant you worked at a club and oh, how the tree flourished in the Met area. Before going to Winged Foot, Wood was head pro at Forest Hills GC where his assistant was Paul Runyan. Later, Runyan took over from Harry Cooper as head pro at Metropolis, where he was eventually succeeded by Burke, who had served as assistant at Winged Foot to Claude Harmon, who had succeeded Wood. Cooper didn’t go far, settling in Westchester CC where he taught into his 90s. And who moved in as a Winged Foot assistant when Burke left? Guy by the name of Dave Marr. Ted Kroll, Doug Ford and so many Turnesas – they all worked at Met Section clubs. “It was a wonderful area for us to grow up in,â€� said Butch Harmon. “We had the greatest apprentice program and we didn’t even know it at the time.â€� You wanted to learn the golf swing? You wanted to polish your competitive talents? The Met Section provided for it – in Butch Harmon’s days, just as in his father’s time. In 1938, a golfer named Hogan joined the staff at Century CC. A few years earlier, members at Ridgewood CC in New Jersey received a letter from head pro George Jacobus that began: “I have engaged as Assistant, Byron Nelson of Texarkana, Texas.â€� Think Jacobus knew golf and knew golfers? Consider he reached out and hired Jimmy Thompson, Jug McSpaden and Chick Harbert as assistants, PGA TOUR winners each of them. “Incredible, the talent that went through the doors up there,â€� said Butch Harmon, who still holds the record for largest victory in a Met Junior final. He beat Mike Turnesa Jr., 8 and 7, in 1961 at Inwood. But what sticks in his mind isn’t the margin of victory nor the win – it is the indelible image of two men who walked and watched. “I remember dad and Mike’s dad (Mike Turnesa, the fourth brother in line and one of four who played the PGA TOUR) walking around, just watching, not saying much. “Just two great players watching their sons play.”

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