Analyst: Kuchar’s nice guy image a ‘big facade’

Jim Furyk joined Arnold Palmer and Bruce Fleisher as the only players to win their first two PGA Tour Champions starts.

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GREENSBORO, N.C. - Jim Herman had planned to get in his rental car on Sunday night and start driving down 1-95 toward his home in Florida. Herman had about 10 hours and 70-odd miles ahead of him. If he made it halfway and grabbed some sleep, he figured he could make it home Monday in time to see the kids get back from school. RELATED: Final leaderboard | The clubs Herman used to win | FedExCup standings "It was just going to be dad again and try to figure out this thing, figure out this game of golf, try to get my head right and start back up at Safeway," Herman said, thinking ahead to what he expected to be a three-week break before the PGA TOUR's 2020-21 season began. Even the best-laid plans have a way of changing, though. And Herman's did - in a big way - when he fired a 63 on Sunday to beat Billy Horschel at the Wyndham Championship and grab the Sam Snead Cup. So, instead of driving to Palm City, Florida, to see his wife Carolyn and their kids Abigail and Andrew, Herman will head to TPC Boston for the FedExCup Playoffs opener at THE NORTHERN TRUST. "My son’s probably not going to be too happy about that, but he’ll forgive me since I’m bringing home the trophy," Herman said with a smile. Herman's victory, one that even he called "out of the blue," enabled him to jump from No. 192 to 54th in the FedExCup and make the Playoffs for only the fourth time in his career. It was the largest move in the regular season finale since 2009, eclipsing the 110-point surge when Davis Love III won at Sedgefield in 2015. "Yeah, the FedExCup was definitely off the radar," Herman said. In some ways, so was Herman, a three-time winner who nonetheless has spent the bulk of his career living on the fringes of the PGA TOUR. The 42-year-old has only had 10 top-10 finishes in 195 starts on TOUR - but defied the odds by turning three of those into victories. The first, which Herman termed "life-changing," came at the 2016 Houston Open when he beat Henrik Stenson by one and Dustin Johnson by two. The second, which was "redemptive," he said, came a year ago at the Barbasol Championship, ending a dismal string of 16 missed cuts in his previous 19 starts. "Last summer was just a little validating, overcoming some injuries and just, you know, getting old," Herman said. "You get old pretty quick out here with the young guys. They make you feel inadequate off the tee and especially long irons. You know, it’s mentally frustrating. "To overcome it all and get here for a third time is pretty amazing." And making the win at Sedgefield even more satisfying was Herman's performance on the weekend. To even get to play the final two rounds at Sedgefield, Herman had to fight on the back nine Friday. When he bogeyed the 14th hole he actually had dropped outside the cutline but clutch birdies on his next three holes landed him Saturday's opening tee time. He shot a stellar bogey-free 61 on Saturday, one of two rounds of 9 under that the Donald Ross gem relinquished that day. He then came from four shots back and held off some of the TOUR's best in Horschel, the 2014 FedExCup winner, and former Wyndham and PLAYERS champs, Si Woo Kim and Webb Simpson, to name a few, with a final-round 63. Not bad for a guy who has now used a different putting stroke in each of his wins - the claw at Houston, a conventional grip at Barbasol and cross-handed at the Wyndham where he went back to one of his old Bettinardi putters. "I was thinking about doing it on Sunday at PGA," Herman reported. "I had it with me, a different model, and was going to do it, but I didn’t. I just stuck with what I was doing, conventional, at Harding Park. "But I got here, and these greens are so perfect, you’ve got to be able to start the ball where you’re looking with the correct speed, and cross-handed just gets the ball rolling a little bit better for me at the moment and just went with it." The decision proved to be an inspired one. Among the many keys on Sunday was the 59-footer Herman holed for eagle at the fifth hole. In all, he made 157 feet of putts in the final round and 444 for the week. He ranked first in greens in regulation and among the top five in Strokes Gained: Putting, Approach-the-Green, Off-the-Tee and Tee-to-Green. So, while we may not have seen the win coming, Herman's performance was solid at Sedgefield. Forget about the 27 missed cuts in his last 40 starts. He played with confidence and conviction in a victory he called "very satisfying" and should allow himself to savor. "I guess whenever you win, you never really truly expect it," Herman said. "I mean, there’s the guys at the top, they’re expected to win every week and they should expect that, they’re that good. You know, we’re all really darn good out here, but the mental game, it beats you down. … "I really don’t know that yet other than it’s very, very satisfying to, you know, be in the mix after yesterday’s round, put myself in a position to be near the lead and then come from behind and go low on a Sunday to get a win. "You watch it on TV, I watch that on TV all the time watching the guys and now to be able to do it is pretty amazing."

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Justin Thomas is playing his third Presidents Cup and is 6-2-2 for his career, so it’s not unusual for rookies to ask him how to handle nerves. In this case, though, the rookie was singer/songwriter/keyboardist Sam Harrop. They were at the VIP party at the Westin hotel on Tuesday night, and Harrop, who had come from London to belt out his International and U.S. Team songs for fans on the first tee, was feeling anxious. Thomas told him that everyone, even the world’s best golfers, felt first-tee jitters, and he would be fine. Harrop was. With a 12:08 p.m. start Thursday – “Sounds like a tee time, doesn’t it?” – golf Twitter’s beloved crooner commenced playing from his perch in the stands, a Presidents Cup first. The crowd quieted down and even laughed, cheered and/or jeered at his lyrics. “It was an adrenaline rush like I’ve never experienced,” said Harrop, whose golf-themed cover songs have earned him nearly 20,000 Twitter followers, including many of the TOUR players he writes songs about. “I’ve never done this!” This Presidents Cup has set new standards with the more than 500,000-square-foot buildout, among other benchmarks, but it has also been the first of its kind in involving Harrop, a married father of two who works for a maker of sheet music in his day job. He flew here Sunday with his manager/former bandmate Jonathan Haselden not knowing what to expect. Haselden, who said they’re like an old married couple, had never even been to a golf tournament. “Sam’s generally always been pretty humble about his talents,” Harrop’s wife, Julia, a child psychologist, said via email from London. “I think he’s been more surprised than anyone by how it’s taken off. He gets really happy when any of the pro golfers reference him or re-tweet one of his songs. “He’s had cool things sent to him, too,” she continued, “like an engraved club and more recently his precious Tony Finau-signed cap!” (Harrop calls himself perhaps Finau’s biggest fan.) Harrop and Haselden used to play in a band called RedBoxBlue. Haselden was the lead singer; Harrop was the keyboardist. “We were the first band in the world to do a gig live on Facebook,” Haselden said. “London, 2008.” Alas, their fate was like that of so many bands: They broke up. For a while, Harrop scratched the creative itch by writing songs about family members, but he was always such a golf nut that it made sense to mash up two of his greatest passions. When his golf parodies began to take off, he enlisted Haselden to be his manager. Their first order of business this week was to sit with members of both teams to make a sort of music video of the U.S. and International Team songs, with the players singing lyrics. Harrop assumed they wouldn’t know him – not true; Finau, the subject of some of his earlier songs, knew who he was – and was pleasantly surprised when they played along. “They all got into it,” Harrop said. “Jordan Spieth, Max Homa, Tony Finau – they got the lines out and they’re not terrible singers. Taylor Pendrith was in a band when he was younger. He wasn’t a singer; he played guitar, so we talked about that. And Tom Kim said he’d rather run around a room naked than sing, but two minutes later, he sang.” Harrop chuckled. As for Thomas, he refused to sing, but played along, otherwise, Harrop said. “J.T. was the most engaging one,” he said. The collaboration resulted in a pair of videos that made the rounds on social media. Then came the VIP party before the man who has been called “golf’s premier parodist” took his moment in the sun shortly after lunch Thursday. Adapting the lyrics of “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis & The News to the specifics of the U.S. Team, and “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire to the makeup of the International Team, Harrop belted out his latest masterpieces. The crowd ate it up, especially the line that the U.S. Team might just win by five. “I told him, ‘You might get booed when you’re singing the other team’s song,’” Haselden said. “And he did, a bit, but in jest. What’s cool is how well received he is – no negativity at all.” Haselden and Harrop were in the hospitality chalet to the right of the first tee with the matches about to begin. Harrop, clutching a cold beer, was trying to come down off his performance high while taking in the scene. “I’m meters away from Jack Nicklaus,” he said, awe-struck. They planned to fly home after the second round Friday. Harrop said he would be taking a bus from Heathrow Airport to his house about an hour outside London. “I’m not big enough for a private car,” he said. Next week he’ll be back to his normal life, taking the kids to school. He doesn’t play as much golf as he used to, but the kids – Georgia, 9 and Theo, 7 – are old enough to go with him to the driving range. Be that as it may, Harrop will likely continue spending more time with keyboard than clubs. After all, the Ryder Cup in Italy is only a year away; now is not the time for rest.

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