Erik van Rooyen blows his top at PGA Championship

PALM HARBOR, Fla. — Sam Burns is a winner again in the Valspar Championship, this time with a lot more stress and plenty of more emotion. RELATED: Leaderboard | Winner’s Bag: Sam Burns, Valspar Championship Burns holed a birdie putt from just over 30 feet on the 16th hole to beat Davis Riley on the second playoff hole, giving him three PGA TOUR victories in his last 22 starts. Burns, who closed with a 2-under 69, is the second straight back-to-back winner at Innisbrook following Paul Casey’s consecutive wins in 2018 and 2019. The tournament was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic. The victory moves Burns to No. 2 in the FexExCup and No. 10 in the world for the first time, knocking Dustin Johnson out of the top 10 for the first time in seven years. “Man, it’s crazy,” Burns said. “Davis played well today, especially the way he finished. I tried to stay steady. I didn’t make a lot of mistakes. A lot of time on Sunday if you plot your way around, make a bunch of pars, throw in a few birdies, a lot of times it works well. So happy.” Burns won last year by three shots. Riley, a rookie contending for the first time on the PGA TOUR, overcame a triple bogey on the par-5 fifth hole with a clutch 5-iron for birdie on the par-3 17th. He had a 15-foot birdie putt on the 18th for the win and left it out to the right, closing with a 72. Both made pars on the 18th in the playoff, with Riley saving par from a front bunker. Neither looked to be in great birdie position on the 16th until Burns’ putt caught the left edge and went 180 degrees around the cup before falling in the back side. Riley hit a strong pitch needing to hole it to extend the playoff and missed long. Justin Thomas (70) and Matthew NeSmith (71) each finished one shot out of the playoff, and each had a share of the lead at some point during a tense final round in warm, windy conditions on the Copperhead course. Thomas was one shot out of the lead when he laid up 54 yards short on the par-5 11th. It settled in a tiny hole that kept him from clean contact, and his wedge went just long into light rough. His chip ran 12 feet by the hole and he took bogey at the easiest hole on the course. One hole later, Burns made a 15-foot birdie putt and Thomas suddenly was four shots behind. He had two straight birdies to stay in the game and had a chance when Burns took bogey from the bunker on the 17th. But then Thomas hit his tee shot into the slope of a bunker right of the 18th and couldn’t reach the green. It was his fourth top 10 in six starts this year for Thomas. “I didn’t really do anything at all today and I very easily could have won the tournament,” Thomas said. “I mean, good drive on 18, and I have a wedge in there and could be in this playoff just as easily. But a lot to build on a, lot of positives, and we got a big stretch coming up, so I’m excited for it.” NeSmith fell back with consecutive bogeys late on the front nine. One shot behind heading to the 10th tee, he didn’t make birdie until his 12-foot putt on the 17th. He had a 35-foot putt from the fringe to join the playoff, and it just slid by the hole. Those were the only four who had a serious chance at winning. Riley had never been in contention on the back nine on the PGA TOUR and looked like he might not get there at Innisbrook. Even though he started with a two-shot lead and opened with four solid pars, the par-5 fifth turned into a nightmare. From well left of the fairway, he went left down the adjacent sixth fairway, only to chunk his third shot from 106 yards into the base of a tree. He took a penalty drop, hit long into the rough, chipped long again into the rough and made triple bogey. But he steadied himself with a 50-foot birdie putt from the fringe on No. 8 and a nervy 7-foot par putt on the ninth and the race was on.

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With the season’s final major championship right around the corner, only seven PGA TOUR events remain before the beginning of the lucrative FedExCup Playoffs. Several postseason stalwarts find themselves in precarious spots with less than two months to go in the Regular Season. As marquee names jockey for position down the stretch, Twenty First Group ran more than 10,000 simulations of how the rest of the PGA TOUR regular season would play out to project the likelihood of different points scenarios unfolding. The projection gives newly-minted major winner Jon Rahm the best chance at leading the FedExCup race entering THE NORTHERN TRUST (36.3%), with current FedExCup leader Patrick Cantlay right behind him (32.8%). RELATED LINKS: Twenty First Group | FedExCup standings The math says that currently, 100 of 125 spots in the standings are projected to be taken. The most intrigue lies with the remaining 20 percent of the spots still up for grabs. Here are some of the more interesting probabilities the mathematical projections unearthed: Rickie Fowler Current FedExCup position: 114 Probability of reaching Playoffs: 73.3% Strong finishes at the PGA Championship (T8) and the Memorial Tournament (T11) moved Fowler from outside the playoff picture to firmly inside the top 125. Twenty First Group probability models now have Fowler at a better than 73 percent chance to reach the FedExCup Playoffs. Fowler’s marked recent improvement can’t just be tied to one particular statistic. Entering the PGA Championship, he was averaging +0.22 Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green per round, and -0.39 Strokes Gained: Putting per round. In his last four starts, he’s gaining more than half-a-stroke per round in both statistics. Fowler has qualified for the FedExCup Playoffs every full season he’s been on TOUR (since 2010). Chesson Hadley Current FedExCup position: 116 Probability of reaching Playoffs: 55.8% Hadley’s season is a perfect example of how one week can change the narrative of an entire season. The lanky TOUR veteran has missed 13 cuts in 21 starts entering this week’s John Deere Classic, but a runner-up finish at the Palmetto Championship in June has him in a great position to make the FedExCup Playoffs for the fifth time in his career. More than 42% of Hadley’s FedExCup points for the 2020-2021 PGA TOUR season came that week in South Carolina. With just a few events left, can he turn an up-and-down campaign into a spot in the Playoffs? Tommy Fleetwood Current FedExCup position: 125 Probability of reaching Playoffs: 71.1% The man currently in the final qualifying spot in the standings, Tommy Fleetwood, is not in that spot due to the nature of his global schedule. On the contrary, his 15 starts this season are his most entering the month of July in his PGA TOUR career. Currently, Twenty First Group has Fleetwood at about a 71% chance to reach the Playoffs. Fleetwood has just a single top-10 finish in a stroke play event this season, a far cry from the previous three PGA TOUR seasons, when he was tenth or better in 38% of his starts. Fleetwood has not been as proficient with his driver in 2021, ranking outside the top 150 in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee. Still, The Open Championship – where Fleetwood finished runner-up in 2019 – presents a great opportunity to accrue the points needed to lock up a playoff spot. Dylan Frittelli Current FedExCup position: 130 Probability of reaching Playoffs: 43.8% Sitting just outside the top 125 is this week’s defending champion, Dylan Frittelli. In his 2019 John Deere Classic victory, Frittelli was lights out on and around the greens, leading the field in scrambling percentage and ranking second in Strokes Gained: Putting. Those are two statistics Frittelli has struggled with in 2021, as he’s ranked 114th in scrambling percentage and 186th in putting. After seven missed cuts in his last nine starts, the friendly confines of Sylvis, Illinois, might be just what the South African needs to right the ship. Charles Howell III Current FedExCup position: 131 Probability of reaching Playoffs: 55.1% He is one of just nine players to qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs every season since its inception in 2007, but Charles Howell III has some work to do in the coming weeks if he wants to make it 15-for-15. This week’s John Deere Classic would be a good place to start a resurgence – he finished tied for sixth here in 2019 and has eight top-25 finishes in twelve previous career starts. Howell’s approach play, in particular, has betrayed him a bit this season, as he is on pace for a career-low finish in Strokes Gained: Approach (currently ranks 194th on TOUR). TPC Deere Run could be a place that turns around, through: In his last 16 rounds played at the John Deere Classic, he’s gained a strong four-tenths of a stroke on approach shots per round.

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