Day leads Els’ picks for Presidents Cup Int’l team

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HOUSTON – As Tony Finau walked off Memorial Park’s 18th green, a handful of the fans brave enough to endure the falling temperatures at the end of a brisk fall day started chanting, “Let’s go, Tony!” The people of Houston, still riding the excitement of the Astros’ World Series win last week, appreciate a winner. They knew they were looking at the man who seems likely to be hoisting the Cadence Bank Houston Open’s trophy on Sunday alongside Orbit, the mascot for the city’s victorious baseball team. The question no longer is “Can Tony Finau win?” It’s “Can Tony Finau be stopped?” Beginning Saturday’s third round with a four-shot lead, Finau played a near-flawless round in difficult conditions to make Sunday an opportunity to marvel at an incredible run. Finau will begin the final round of the Cadence Bank Houston Open at 15 under par (65-62-68) after a bogey-free round on a cold and windy Saturday. This was just the second time in his 748 career rounds on TOUR that he hit every fairway in a round. He missed just two greens, as well. One of those came on No. 18, where he holed a 9-foot par putt to maintain the four-shot advantage he began the day with. It may have been the most stressful stroke of the week. Finau has looked to be in complete control otherwise. He leads the field in driving accuracy this week and is second in greens hit, as well. “I hit the driver as good as I’ve ever hit it,” he said, A win Sunday would be Finau’s third in his last seven starts after he won back-to-back weeks in July to double his career victory total in a single fortnight. He won the 3M Open by three and the Rocket Mortgage Classic by five and has the opportunity to run up another large margin Sunday (Tom Kim is the only other player with multiple wins of three-plus shots since the start of last season). “Winning just breeds confidence,” Finau said. “I’ve always felt like I was confident to win, but you’ve got to do it, you’ve got to make it happen. Having done that back-to-back (in July), I think it just breeds confidence more into my belief and to my game.” Ben Taylor, who’s in second at 11 under, is the only player within a half-dozen shots of Finau. Former FedExCup champ Justin Rose, Wyndham Clark and Tyson Alexander are tied for third at 8 under par. Rose is the only one among Finau’s four closest pursuers with a PGA TOUR win. “It’s all in Tony’s hands,” said Rose. Finau has the preternatural gifts that are a prerequisite to sustained stretches of success. His physique is an outlier on the PGA TOUR, a 6-foot-4 frame with long levers that efficiently apply explosive force to a golf ball. For Finau, fulfilling his promise has come from reigning in his incredible power. His performance this week has shown his ability to adapt to a variety of conditions. Finau has the firepower to go low – he was 43 under in his back-to-back wins this summer – and thrive in the toughest conditions. He has nine top-10s in majors over the last five years. On Friday, he didn’t need to make a putt longer than 15 feet to shoot a 62 that tied the course record and put him four shots ahead of the field. Of his 10 birdies, six came on putts of 5 feet or less. The average length of those 10 birdie putts made was 6.2 feet. The round was impressive enough for playing partner Mackenzie Hughes to joke that, “Tony had a long pro-am day today.” Finau dusted the other two members of his group, Hughes and Joel Dahmen, by a half-dozen shots each. When the weather worsened Saturday, Finau buckled down and displayed supreme control of his ball. “That was a really good round,” Finau said about his play Saturday. “I think the score doesn’t say that, but I think I played better than yesterday. You know, yesterday I shot 62, but today that 68 I thought was pretty impressive for the conditions.” Sunday’s forecast calls for more of the same, with a high of just 59 degrees. A win this week would be Finau’s fourth in his last 30 starts on TOUR, as well, dating back to the opener of last year’s FedExCup Playoffs. It would tie him with the reigning FedExCup champ (Rory McIlroy) and PGA TOUR Player of the Year (Scottie Scheffler) for the most in that span. Finau’s win to begin last year’s FedExCup Playoffs ended nearly 2,000 days of waiting since his first TOUR win, and not for a lack of opportunities. He recorded 39 top-10s in the 142 starts between his first and second wins, including eight runners-up. Those days are long gone, however. Sunday provides another opportunity to show that.

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As the PGA TOUR settles into its annual hibernation for the holidays, we’re reminded immediately that the sport is global. There may not be a better example of it than this week’s ISPS HANDA World Cup of Golf. Two-man teams representing 28 countries from six continents have assembled at The Metropolitan Golf Club in Melbourne, Australia, for the biennial competition. Scroll beneath the ranking for details on the course, the format and more. WILD CARDS Belgium … Former University of Illinois teammates Thomas Pieters and Thomas Detry should have a blast. Detry is as much of a machine as any non-winner on the European Tour. Pieters’ profile as a bomber overshadows his phenomenal putting. China … Hao Tong Li and Ashun Wu surprised en route to sharing runner-up honors at Kingston Heath two years ago, so they’re back to go one better. Li recently connected five straight top-11 finishes. Mexico … Fresh off victory at the Emirates Australian Open, Abraham Ancer is one of the hottest talents in the world right now, but teammate Roberto Díaz is 742nd in the Official World Golf Ranking. As spring blooms Down Under, this international field gets everything it wants at The Metropolitan Golf Club. A cornerstone of the famed Sandbelt, its history and beauty rivals any other test on the planet. Metropolitan may be most familiar to longtime fans of the sport as the host of the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play in 2001, but it’s also served as the backdrop at times for all three of the events comprising the Triple Crown in Australia as well as the 2009 Women’s Australian Open. Presented at 7,308 yards for this week’s 72-hole, stroke-play contest, Metropolitan is a stock par 72, but three each of the par 3s and par 5s are situated on the outward nine. This won’t matter in four-ball in Rounds 1 and 3, but because all four of the par 3s are even-numbered holes – Nos. 2, 6, 8 and 12 – strategy will come into play in Rounds 2 and 4 when foursomes is utilized. (This is the opposite format from when Denmark’s Thorbjørn Olesen and Søren Kjeldsen rode a 12-under 60 in four-ball in the second round en route to a four-stroke victory at Kingston Heath Golf Club in 2016.) Unlike the majority of tracks outside the United States, Metropolitan’s greens are manicured to run fast. In ideal conditions, Stimpmeter readings exceed 12 feet on the bentgrass putting surfaces. Unfortunately, bad weather is forecast. After daytime temperatures climbed into the 80s through Monday, a cold front will limit reading to no higher than the upper 50s and low 60s throughout the tournament. What’s more, rain is all but guaranteed to fall on Thursday and Friday. And that’s still not all. Winds will howl steadily at approximately 15 mph and gust to 25 mph or more. As it concerns the challenges within the control of the competitors, the longest rough is trimmed to 2 inches, but the primary hazard are the striking bunkers that dominate the landscape. There’s zero margin for error adjacent to most of them as fairways and greens drop helplessly over sharp edges of numerous revamped faces. Of the 56 golfers in all, 33 competed somewhere last weekend, 25 of whom at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. Seven acclimated at the Emirates Australian Open over in Sydney, while Zimbabwe’s Scott Vincent descended from the Japan Golf Tour’s Dunlop Phoenix. No doubt the champions of the World Cup entirely will feel like they’ve not only prevailed over the competition, but the elements as well. First place of the $7-million prize fund awards $2.24 million with $1.12 million going to each member of the winning team.

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