Brandt Snedeker at home on the water

Here are nine tidbits from the third round of THE NORTHERN TRUST gamers can use tomorrow, this weekend or down the road. Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, New Jersey is hosting for the fourth time since 2008 and plays 7,385 yards to a Par-71. Know Thy Enemy These were the top-10 selected, plus one, golfers in the PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf game presented by SERVPRO. Everyone loves perfect weather including gamers and this week has been just that. For the second time in two rounds the bar was set with the lowest round of the week. Keegan Bradley bested Adam Scott’s 64 by two and Bryson DeChambeau bested it by one. The weather looks to be solid for the final round Sunday so it will be interesting to see if that trend continues. Laying the Wood Bryson DeChambeau birdied half of the holes at Ridgewood Country Club to post a career-best score of 63. He’ll take a four-shot lead into the final round with Bradley as he looks to pick up his second win of the season. Captain Furyk has already had him on the radar and tomorrow’s audition could seal his spot on the Ryder Cup team. He’s in the top 10 in Strokes-Gained: Tee-to-Green (7th) and is second in Strokes-Gained: Putting. Nice combo! Best Round on the Course Keegan Bradley tied the composite course record as his bogey-free 62 equaled Hunter Mahan’s mark from 2008. Bradley is four shots adrift as he looks to pick up his first win since 2012 at the World Golf Championships – Bridgestone Invitational. On that Sunday he began four shots behind 54-hole leader Jim Furyk and fired 64 to steal the title by a shot. Another 64 tomorrow and a repeat of history could be possible. He hit all 18 GIR for the first time in his career and only needed 27 putts. Another Audition Tony Finau racked up 10 birdies playing with Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk at Bellerive but faded on the weekend to T42. His only finish outside the top 10 in the majors didn’t bother the big hitter as he’s right back into the mix this week. His bogey-free 66 was buoyed by converting all five up-and-downs on GIR that he missed. He leads the field in Strokes-Gained: Tee-to-Green and Around-the-Green. Every round this week has been better than the previous one and that trend will need to continue tomorrow if he’s going to make up a five-shot deficit. I Spy Spieth Each round the putter has improved with the best of the bunch coming in Round 3 as Jordan Spieth gained almost 1.5 strokes on the field on the greens. After an opening bogey he produced a clean card that included eight birdies as his 64 pushed him up 37 spots to T7. I’m interested to see if he can back up a low one with another low one as this could be a harbinger of things to come in the FedExCup Playoffs. No Doubting Thomas The most popular selection this week, Justin Thomas, has posted all three rounds in the 60’s but hasn’t busted a low one just yet. He’ll have to find one on Sunday to break into the top 10 and make DeChambeau think about it. His last 11 rounds are 69 or lower so another top 10 should be around the corner. His last two events saw him win at WGC-BI and cash T6 at the PGA Championship. Moving Day Gamers have seen this drill from Billy Horschel before at this time of year! His bogey-free 65 saw him leap frog 19 places to T5 as he looks to break inside the top 30 in the FedExCup Playoffs. He’s 24-under in his last seven rounds dating back to the Wyndham last week. #HeatCheck. … Aussie Cameron Smith jumped 14 spots to T3. Fantasy golf is hard.  Moving Day: Wrong Way The duo of Brooks Koepka and Jamie Lovemark entered Saturday in the final pairing and will start Sunday T7 and T14, respectively. Neither broke par as both of their putters went ice cold. Lovemark still leads the field in Strokes-Gained: Putting but after gaining four shots each round, he lost almost a full shot Saturday. Koepka ranked dead-last in that same stat Saturday. Study Hall The Round 3 scoring average was 69.825, the lowest of the tournament. … There were six bogey-free rounds, including a 68 posted by Tiger Woods (T49), to bring the total on the week to 10. … There’s Louis Oosthuizen inside the top 15 (T14)! The last time he was in the news he was WD just minutes before his tee time at the PGA Championship. … DeChambeau has made 20 birdies to lead the field. … Of the top 10 players in Strokes-Gained: Tee-to-Green category seven currently reside inside T7 or better on the leaderboard.

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PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – They are an old story and Daniel Berger is sticking to them. “I’ve just done a bunch of testing and it’s the best iron for me. So, I don’t see why I need to go out there and look for something else,” Berger said Tuesday as he talked to the media as defending champion of this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. At question was Berger’s decision to remain committed to the TaylorMade Tour Preferred MC irons that he first used in 2011 as a high schooler. When he was a free agent in the equipment world in 2020, Berger signed with TaylorMade, but what fit him best was not the latest equipment but the older stuff. “I’ve just stuck with them (through the years),” Berger said. The issue, of course, is when Berger needs backup help for this forged cavity-back design, because TaylorMade, like all manufacturers, had moved on to newer models. That’s where social media helps. “I’ve got a couple different sets and they’ve come from all over the place,” Berger told GolfWRX at last week’s Farmers Insurance Open. “I bought one set online, just from some guy on the internet. “He messaged me online on social media. It’s a perfect set. I don’t know if he worked at TaylorMade at some point, but the box and everything was from TaylorMade. They were brand new.” That was not a one-off, either. Berger’s search has turned up others who have, or could, come to his rescue. “There are sets available online and people have reached out to me, so I’ve got an extremely large amount of backup sets sitting at my house,” he told GolfWRX. But Berger, who has finished T10, T5 and first in each of his three starts in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, thinks he would be wise to be proactive with his equipment. “I think if I were to do it right, I would have a set at home that I would use to practice with and a set at home that (would be my game set),” he said. Thanks to his presence on social media, however, “I have plenty of clubs right now to last me for a while.”

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There are 21 rookies on the PGA TOUR in 2018-19. This page provides a subjective ranking updated weekly. The Rookie of the Year is voted by PGA TOUR members who make at least 15 starts. There he is again: Cameron Champ doing work. Of the 20 rookies in the field at The RSM Classic, only eight survived the cut and Champ set the pace once again, this time with a sixth-place finish, his third top 10 of the young season. He’s reminding us of Tony Finau, but only because they share the bonus of being able to send the ball out of sight. Instead, and in fact, Champ is excelling everywhere, just as his veteran comparison has illustrated with an exponentially greater sample size of sites and over time. After Champ broke through at the Sanderson Farms Championship at the Country Club of Jackson, a course where attacking on approach is Priority A, the 23-year-old placed T10 at Mayakoba where ball-striking and men of a certain age have thrived. Last week at Sea Island, he finished just T31 in distance of all drives (measured during three rounds on Seaside only) and T22 in greens hit, but he led the field in putts per GIR and finished fourth in converting GIR into par breakers. Finau, who went 22-for-31 with five top 10s (but zero top fives) as a rookie in 2014-15, presents similarly as a home-run hitter, but he’s the complete package. His game travels arguably better than any other one-time winner on the PGA TOUR, but you already can put Champ on that short list. The only rookie who sat out the 156-man contest in the Golden Isles was Cameron Davis. Opting to defend his title at the Emirates Australian Open in his homeland, he finished T40. Since the first edition of the wraparound season in 2013-14, seven rookies have won a tournament in the fall, six of whom entered the holidays inside the top 10 of the FedExCup standings. After winning last year’s RSM Classic, Austin Cook ranked third, best of the bunch. Champ sits sixth right now. Mackenzie Hughes (fourth in 2015-16) and Smylie Kaufman (fifth in 2014-15) also have slotted higher at this point. While Champ didn’t set a new mark compared to rookies early in previous seasons, to further accentuate his success against the current class, Sungjae Im is the only other rookie with at least one low-rookie performance, and he has three. Yet, the 20-year-old has only two top-35 finishes. NOTE: Since the Sentry Tournament of Champions is up next on the schedule, this page likely won’t be updated again until its field is released on Friday, Dec. 28. LOW ROOKIE: Cameron Champ, 6th. Third time. (Previous: Win=Sanderson Farms; T10=Mayakoba.)     CAREER-BEST FINISHES (AND TIES): Chase Wright (T7), Kyle Jones (T23), Hank Lebioda (T32).              * – Qualified for the Sentry Tournament of Champions (Jan. 3-6). Through The RSM Classic NOTE: A player’s rookie season (“Rookie Year”) is defined as the season in which he becomes a PGA TOUR member (including Special Temporary Members) and plays in 10 or more events as a member or finishes in the Top 125 on the Official FedExCup Points List or qualifies as a Top 125 – Nonmember, whichever occurs first. Further, for purposes of this definition, a new member (including Special Temporary Members) shall not be eligible to be a rookie if he has previously played in more than seven (7) Official PGA TOUR Money events as a professional in any prior season.                          

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