Inside Car-Nasty, the unforgiving Open course

Just four weeks and six events are left in the regular season, and the race for the top 125 qualifiers for the FedExCup Playoffs is changing dramatically every week. Each week for the rest of the 2017-18 season, PGATOUR.COM will provide an update on the various moves being made in the FedExCup standings. Winners’ Moves Francesco Molinari, winner of The Open Championship, earned 600 points for his first major title and moved from 27th to 7th in the standings. Merritt, who earned 300 points for capturing the Barbasol Championship in a Monday finish, moved from 131st to 65th. (Only a year ago he had to return to the Web.com Tour Finals after finishing 151st.) Each has won the Quicken Loans National, Molinari this season and Merritt in 2015. Top 125 Watch The top 125 players in the standings after the Wyndham Championship (Aug. 19) advance to the FedExCup Playoffs. Here are the players who moved in and out last week at the John Deere. MOVING IN Troy Merritt. Won his second TOUR title to move from 131st to 65th. MOVING OUT Corey Conners. Missed the cut at Barbasol to move from 123 to 126. Biggest Movers The five players at The Open and the Barbasol Championship who made the biggest moves in the FedExCup standings. Looking ahead • Dustin Johnson, the headliner at this week’s RBC Canadian Open, remains No. 1 after The Open, where seven players had a mathematical shot at overtaking him. Bubba Watson, who was passed by Justin Rose at Carnoustie and falls into the fourth spot, is the other big headliner at Glen Abbey and the only three-time winner on the PGA TOUR this season. • Five of the last six RBC Canadian Open champions have advanced all the way to the season-ending TOUR Championship at East Lake. Jhonattan Vegas, the two-time defending champion at the RBC, who would become the first to threepeat on TOUR since Steve Stricker at the John Deere Classic (2009 to 2011), has slipped to 121st in the FedExCup. • Four former FedExCup champions are in the field at Glen Abbey: Billy Horschel (2014), Brandt Snedeker (’12), Bill Haas (’11) and Jim Furyk (’10). • Francesco Molinari, who has never made the TOUR Championship, was 123rd before the Quicken Loans National. With a win, a T2, and a win in his last three starts, he’s 7th. • William McGirt was the Bubble Boy at 125, but with a T12 at the Barbasol is up to 121. Tyrone Van Aswegen, who missed the cut at the Barbasol, slipped from 122nd into the 125th spot.

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PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — Tom Lewis and Harris English made the most of their sponsor exemptions on Thursday at The Honda Classic. Related: Leaderboard | Koepka starts Honda with 74 Lewis and English each shot 4-under 66 at PGA National, sharing the lead after the opening round. Lee Westwood — also in the field thanks to a sponsor exemption — was a shot back with Zach Johnson, J.T. Poston, Brian Stuard and Cameron Tringale. “I didn’t hit it my best, but I knew it was going to be one of those rounds you’re going to have to grind it out,â€� said English, a two-time winner on the PGA TOUR in 2013, but winless since. “It’s windy out there, you’re going to have a lot of cross-winds, and it played really tough. My short game was on point, and I made some really good putts.â€� Sometimes, no putt was required: English holed out from about 25 yards on the par-4 11th, catching a great lie after a drop because his second shot came to rest on a sprinkler head. “That was as good as I can do,â€� English said. It was a rare easy-looking shot at PGA National. The average score was just a smidge below 2 over, on a day where wind gusts often topped 20 mph. “It’s just live and survive, basically,â€� said Matthew NeSmith, who had a hole-in-one on the par-3 fifth. Westwood hit 11 of 14 fairways and was thoroughly pleased with how the day went. “Everybody should play like that,” Westwood said. “Everybody who’s out here is in a privileged position with nothing to lose. We should all be having fun. But at the age of nearly 47 it seems even easier. I don’t play anywhere I don’t want to play. I just play great tournaments and the ones I want to play in, and I set my own schedule, and it’s just great fun.” Lewis made his splashy entrance into golf headlines in 2011, when the then-amateur Englishman was a surprise co-leader after the opening round of The Open Championship. He played that opening round with Tom Watson, the five-time Open winner who happens to be Lewis’ namesake and his father’s favorite player.  Not much has gone right since. “I struggled for a while, and then I think really things got so low that you couldn’t get any lower,â€� Lewis said. “So it was like, ‘Well, only good things can happen now.’â€� Good things happened in bunches Thursday, when Lewis had a bogey-free round. “It can just happen,â€� Lewis said, a few minutes before he sat in relative anonymity inside the resort’s hotel lobby and had lunch while fans walked by mostly oblivious to the fact that they were passing a co-leader. “Just one shot, one putt at the right time or good break and then all of a sudden it can snowball. I need to take a lot of belief from today.â€� Plenty of others weren’t as chipper as Lewis and English were when their days at PGA National were over. Brooks Koepka, in his hometown tournament, made a triple bogey and a double bogey in a four-hole span on the front side on his way to a 74. “Didn’t feel like I played that bad,” Koepka said. Defending champion Keith Mitchell finished birdie-birdie and still shot 75. Rickie Fowler, who won The Honda Classic in 2017 and tied for second with Koepka last year, made one birdie all day and shot 76. “It’s a fine line,â€� Fowler said. “Just got it going in the wrong direction.â€� That happens at PGA National. Only 22 of the 144 players broke par.

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THOMASTOWN, Ireland (AP) — Adrian Meronk became Poland’s first winner on the DP World Tour Sunday with a superb closing stretch at Mount Juliet for a 6-under 66 and a three-shot victory in the Horizon Irish Open. Meronk was one shot behind Ryan Fox of New Zealand with four holes remaining when he went birdie-birdie-eagle to give himself room for error on the tough closing hole. He made par and walked off the 18th green soaked in a champagne celebration. “It’s such a relief,” Meronk said. “After coming quite close a couple of times, to finally open the door it’s just a dream come true.” Fox closed with a 64, and he feared a bogey on the final hole might cost him in the end. Meronk played so well over the closing stretch that it didn’t matter. Meronk, who finished at 20-under 268, Fox and Thriston Lawrence (67) already were exempt for the British Open. The three spots available from the Irish Open went to American John Catlin, David Law of Scotland and Fabrizio Zanotti of Paraguay. They all finished on 273. Meronk, who played college golf at East Tennessee State, will be the first Polish player in the Open Championship at St. Andrews in two weeks. That’s a label he knows well. He already was the first Pole in the U.S. Open last year at Torrey Pines, and the first to even earn a DP World Tour card. And now he’s the first winner, the best title of all. He had finished two shots behind in Qatar and Catalunya this year, and a month ago missed the Dutch Open playoff by one shot. Meronk made sure there was no tight finish in Ireland. His big run started with a 25-foot birdie putt that broke sharply to the left on the 15th hole to tie Fox for the lead. From the left rough on the 16th, he hit gap wedge to 18 feet for birdie to take the lead. The clincher came at the par-5 17th when his second shot was just short of the green, leaving an uphill putt from 25 feet that made for eagle and a three-shot advantage. He finished strong with a 7-iron to the middle of the green and two putts for par. He was sprayed with a bottle of champagne and then took a drink before raising it to the gallery. “When I hit the green on 18 is the moment I realized, ‘That’s it.’ I’m just super happy,” he said.

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