Horses for Courses: Safeway Open

DETROIT — Tony Finau sent an approach from 250 yards soaring over trees and onto the seventh green at Detroit Golf Club, going for the reward and ignoring the risk with a difficult shot. The way he has been playing over the last week, it made a lot of sense. Finau, coming off his third career victory on the PGA TOUR, and Taylor Pendrith shared the first-round lead at 8-under 64 on Thursday in the Rocket Mortgage Classic. The pivotal shot on Finau’s 16th hole, a 560-yard par 5, set up a two-putt from 43 feet for one of his eight birdies. “I had to get all of it to get it to the hole and hit it right in the middle of the green,” he said. The leaderboard was filled with players who took advantage of favorable scoring conditions with morning tee times. In the afternoon, the wind picked up and the scores did as well. Former U.S. Open champion Webb Simpson, Michael Thompson, Cameron Champ, Lee Hodges and Matt Wallace were two shots back. Si Woo Kim and Kurt Kitayama, both ranked among the top 70 in the world, were in the pack at 67. Finau, who rallied from a five-shot deficit with 11 holes left to win the 3M Open by three shots Sunday in Minnesota, opened with a birdie and had five birdies on his front nine. After cooling off with four straight pars, Finau closed with his seventh and eighth birdies in a bogey-free round. He hit all 18 greens in regulation for the first time in 728 PGA TOUR stroke-play rounds. “Do the math, I missed 10 putts,” he said. “Obviously, 64′s a very good round, but this is a golf course where a lot of guys are going to make birdies.” On the par-4 eighth hole, he made a 41-foot putt downhill with a slight break from right to left for another birdie and a three-shot lead. “It was nice to just get a bonus birdie on 8 after a poor wedge shot, but that’s why we call our putter the equalizer,” Finau said. Pendrith, a 31-year-old PGA TOUR rookie, surged into a share of the lead with five birdies in a seven-hole stretch on his back nine. Toward the end of his round, the relatively anonymous player in the world noticed the ‘h’ in his last name was missing on the leaderboard. Alas, the 8 under next to his misspelled name was correct. “That’s all that matters,” he said with a grin. Pendrith is atop a leaderboard for the first time on the PGA TOUR following an opening round. The Canadian did have the third-round lead by three shots last October at the Bermuda Championship before closing with a 76 and finishing a career-high fifth. In March, he was 13th at THE PLAYERS Championship and came away with a career-best $327,222 — and a broken rib. The injury prevented him from competing for nearly four months, leading to him being ranked No. 237. He has bounced back with ties for 11th and 13th at tournaments earlier this month. “When I’m healthy, I can compete with the best,” Pendrith said. Nate Lashley, who won his first and only PGA TOUR title in Detroit four years ago, shot a 68 after getting an anti-inflammatory shot in his right foot. “I’m having surgery next week,” he said, adding he will need four to six weeks to recover. Mark Hubbard was also four shots off the lead after a topsy-turvy round with four birdies, two bogeys and an ace on the par-3, 216-yard 11th hole. Hubbard dropped his club and his head after hitting his tee shot. “That’s embarrassing,” he said while the ball was in flight. The ball landed on the front of the green and rolled toward the cup before going around it and dropping in. “That’s probably going to end up being one of my favorite hole-in-ones,” said Hubbard, who has nine career aces. Defending FedExCup champion Patrick Cantlay, ranked No. 4 in the world, and 13th-ranked Will Zalatoris both shot 70. Cameron Young was another shot back and 20th-ranked Max Homa had a 72.

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KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — Phil Mickelson has delivered so many thrills and spills over 30 years of pure theater that no one ever knows what he will do next. RELATED: Ben Cook wins low club professional at PGA Championship | Final leaderboard His latest act was a real stunner: A major champion at age 50. Mickelson captured his sixth major and by far the most surprising Sunday at the PGA Championship. He made two early birdies with that magical wedge game and let a cast of contenders fall too far behind to catch him in the shifting wind of Kiawah Island. He closed with a 1-over 73, building a five-shot lead on the back nine and not making any critical mistakes that kept him from his place in history. Julius Boros for 53 years held the distinction of golf’s oldest major champion. He was 48 when he won the 1968 PGA Championship in San Antonio. Pure chaos broke out along the 18th hole after Mickelson hit 9-iron safely to just outside 15 feet that all but secured a most improbable victory. Thousands of fans engulfed him down the fairway — a scene typically seen only at the Open Championship — until Mickelson emerged into view with a thumbs-up. Chants of “Lefty! Lefty! Lefty!” chased him onto the green and into the scoring tent, his final duty of a week he won’t soon forget. Three months after 43-year-old Tom Brady won a seventh Super Bowl, Mickelson added to this year of ageless wonders. Mickelson became the first player in PGA TOUR history to win tournaments 30 years apart. The first of his 45 titles was in 1991 when he was still a junior at Arizona State. Mickelson became the 10th player to win majors in three decades, an elite list that starts with Harry Vardon and was most recently achieved by Tiger Woods. “He’s been on TOUR as long as I’ve been alive,” Jon Rahm said. “For him to keep that willingness to play and compete and practice, it’s truly admirable.” Brooks Koepka and Louis Oosthuizen had their chances, but only briefly. Koepka was 4 over on the par 5s when the game was still on and closed with a 74. Oosthuizen hit into the water as he was trying to make a final run and shot 73. Mickelson finished at 6-under 282. The victory came one week after Mickelson accepted a special exemption into the U.S. Open because at No. 115 in the world and winless the last two years, he no longer was exempt from qualifying. He had not finished in the top 20 in his last 17 tournaments over nearly nine months. He worried that he was no longer able to keep his focus over 18 holes. The PGA Championship had the largest and loudest crowd since the return from the COVID-19 pandemic — the PGA of America said it limited tickets to 10,000 — and it was clear what they wanted to see. The opening hour made it seem as though the final day could belong to anyone. The wind finished its switch to the opposite direction from the opening rounds, and while there was low scoring early, Mickelson and Koepka traded brilliance and blunder. Koepka flew the green with a wedge on the par-5 second hole, could only chip it about 6 feet to get out of an impossible lie and made double bogey, a three-shot swing when Mickelson hit a deft pitch from thick grass behind the green. Mickelson holed a sand shot from short of the green on the par-5 third, only for Koepka to tie for the lead with a two-shot swing on the sixth hole when he made birdie and Lefty missed the green well to the right. Kevin Streelman briefly had a share of the lead. Louis Oosthuizen was lurking, even though it took him seven holes to make a birdie. And then the potential for any drama was sucked out to sea. Oosthuizen, coming off a birdie to get within three, had to lay up out of the thick grass on the 13th and then sent his third shot right of the flag and into the water, making double bogey. Just like that, Mickelson was up by five and headed toward the inward holes, the wind at his back on the way home with what seemed like the entire state of South Carolina at his side.

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How it works: Each week, our experts from PGATOUR.COM will make their selections in PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf. Each lineup consists of four starters and two bench players that can be rotated after each round. Adding to the challenge is that every golfer can be used only three times per each of four Segments. The first fantasy golf game to utilize live ShotLink data, PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf allows you to see scores update live during competition. Aside from the experts below, Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton breaks down the field at this year’s THE NORTHERN TRUST in his edition of the Power Rankings. For more fantasy, check out Rookie Ranking, Qualifiers and Reshuffle. THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN OUR EXPERTS? The PGA TOUR Experts league is once again open to the public. You can play our free fantasy game and see how you measure up against our experts below. Joining the league is simple. Just click here to sign up or log in. Once you create your team, click the “Leagues” tab and search for “PGA TOUR Experts.” After that? Pick your players and start talking smack. Want to represent the fans against our experts? SEASON SEGMENT

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