Jon Rahm leads the list of links specialists

NORTON, Mass. - Measure his golf in any fashion that suits your fancy, but it is difficult to think that you would start with any word beyond ‘consistent' when it comes to praising Justin Thomas. Brilliantly consistent, to tell the truth, and you can peel back impressive layers to find the way in which he captured the Wyndham Rewards Top 10 for being the top-ranked player in the FedExCup standings at the end of the regular season. A quick look at Thomas' accomplishments this season: * The only three-time winner thus far in 2019-20, Thomas has prevailed in each of the three phases to this season - the C.J. CUP @ NINE BRIDGES in South Korea in the fall; the Sentry Tournament of Champions on Maui in January; and the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational after the three-month break necessitated by the pandemic. * He has finished in the top 10 in nine of his 15 starts, and in the 12 tournaments in which he went 72 holes, Thomas finished outside the top 18 just once, that being a T-37 at the PGA Championship two weeks ago. * Thomas has missed just three cuts this season and only seven since 2017-18. You would have to go back four seasons to the last time he missed consecutive cuts. (Oh, and he followed those three straight by winning the PGA Championship two tournaments later.) Given this penchant for consistency, Thomas is thrilled that it parlayed into the top spot in the Wyndham Rewards, as he had come up short in that regular-season quest in recent years. He was 17th in last year's Wyndham Rewards Top 10, missing out on his piece of the inaugural bonus pool. He answered by taking home the top prize this year. Again, though, Thomas' remarkable consistency has shined in the FedExCup Playoffs to allow him to make up ground. In 11 FedExCup Playoffs events over the last three seasons, Thomas has two wins and seven top-10s. Only twice has he sat outside the Top 5 in FedExCup Playoffs points after those 11 tournaments. That he was able to overcome the small hole he had dug for himself to rally and win the 2016-17 FedExCup is a special memory, but Thomas is taking great pride in this newest achievement - winning the Wyndham Rewards - and putting everyone in pursuit of him. "It's great coming into the start of the Playoffs No. 1," he said Tuesday in advance of THE NORTHERN TRUST at TPC Boston. "Some people might argue that you want to be chasing, but personally, I like my chances a lot more the further up I am." Yes, he knows those words could raise eyebrows and get folks to recall last year's TOUR Championship. Thomas, having started the Playoffs at 17th in the standings, had roared into No. 1, thanks to a share of 12th at THE NORTHERN TRUST and a win at the BMW Championship. He had everyone chasing him, which is what he liked; but he also started the final FedExCup tournament with a two-stroke lead, which unsettled him. "I mean, it was weird," said Thomas of the first year of the Starting Strokes format that was instituted to reward players for their FedExCup standing. As the leader, Thomas was 10 under before hitting a shot, two ahead of the player who was second in the standings (Patrick Cantlay). Those in third, fourth, and fifth position started 7, 6, and 5 under, respectively, and onward down to players ranked 26th to 30th who started at even par. Thomas concedes he didn't handle the new landscape very well. "Nobody in golf can say that they have ever teed it up on Thursday with a two-shot lead and leading the entire field, so I didn't know how to react - and nobody really would." Which isn't to say that Thomas doesn't want to maintain his No. 1 spot into the TOUR Championship in two weeks, because he most certainly does. It's called experience. "I do know that if I get to that spot once (with a two-shot lead) I tee it up on Thursday in Atlanta, I will have a little bit better idea how to handle it," said Thomas. "I didn't go about it the right way, (but) if I put myself in that position again, I'll handle it a lot better." When he opened with an even-par 70, Thomas was still at 10 under, but tied by Xander Schauffele and Brooks Koepka, who had shot 64 and 67, respectively. By 36 holes, Thomas was 12 under and one behind Koepka, and through 54 he was 11 under and tied for fourth. Rory McIlroy closed with 66 to finish at 18 under and win the FedExCup by four over Schauffele, with Thomas and Koepka tied for third, five back. So, the format might have left a sour taste in his mouth, but Thomas would love another crack at it. He's taken a huge first step by winning his first Wyndham Rewards and given that he's now triumphed 13 times in 148 PGA TOUR starts as a pro, he's also got his colleagues' attention. "Like always, it's very, very hard to compare anyone to Tiger. You could say it's unfair," said Adam Scott, who demonstrated his diplomatic touch, because the truth is, you are foolhardy and reckless to compare anyone to Woods. But from where Scott sits, Thomas is the guy who presents an intriguing picture. After all, at 27 Thomas has already won a major, two WGCs, two FedExCup Playoffs events, on FedExCup and tournaments in South Korea and Malaysia. "Justin Thomas, when his name is on the leaderboard, he seems like a very good closer. I know he's had a couple close calls, but that's what happens when you're up there all the time. You lose a couple, but he's winning a lot." The Wyndham Rewards is the latest to his trophy case. A second FedExCup is next in his sight.

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NAPA, Calif. – Michael Kim and Max Homa, who will play together along with Cameron Champ in the first and second rounds of the Fortinet Championship at Silverado Resort & Spa, sometimes regard their college years with a pinch of nostalgia. The Cal teammates hit fairways, made birdies. It was a simpler time. They roomed together on the road, and when Kim, who moved to America from Korea when he was 12, spoke to his parents on the phone, Homa couldn’t catch a word of it. At other times, though, Kim would slow it way down as he dictated simple Korean phrases into his phone. “He’s going to be so mad I’m telling people this,” Homa said with a grin. “… He starts recording something on his phone and it would be like me saying like – ‘I drove my car to the store’ in Korean. I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I’m in this Korean 101 class that I’m not supposed to know, I’m not supposed to be fluent in this.’” Ah, the college years. But what followed for Homa and Kim was no laughing matter. Each made it to the TOUR only to fall apart in his mid-20s, lose his TOUR card, and slog through a bewildering odyssey in the golfing wilderness. The game, once so simple, got complicated. Homa missed 15 cuts in 2015, played on the Korn Ferry Tour in ’16, and missed 15 cuts again in ’17, when he dropped to 244th in the FedExCup. “He’s way too good a player to lose his card,” Rory McIlroy said of Homa at the Wells Fargo Championship in May. True enough. Homa, the defending champion at the Fortinet, is still in the afterglow of a career-best two-win season and fifth-place finish in the FedExCup. Last week U.S. Presidents Cup Captain Davis Love III named him among his six picks to help round out the team that will take on the Internationals at Quail Hollow Club next week. Now it’s Kim’s turn to come back. He parted ways with longtime swing coach James Oh to go with John Tillery just three weeks before the 2018 John Deere Classic, which he then won by eight shots. It was a happy day, with Kim having shot 27 under to lap the field, but when asked in his press conference afterward about the recent coaching change he burst into tears. “You feel like you’ve gone to war with a guy for years,” Kim said Wednesday, “and I started seeing (Oh) when I was 15, and he’s the one who had really helped me get on TOUR. That was three weeks after I had told him, and it felt like 90 percent of the work we had done for that win was with James, and maybe the last 10 percent was with J.T., but it was going to be looked at as J.T. came in and fixed everything. I felt bad that people were going to look at it that way.” What’s more, as Kim sat there before the press, the trophy won and a life goal realized, he harbored a bizarre secret: Other than that one week at TPC Deere Run, he wasn’t playing well. “I was still struggling even that year,” he said. “I wasn’t playing great, I just got hot at the perfect moment and the stars aligned for me. I got caught up in the trendy thing in the golf swing and tried to quote, unquote take the hands out of it. Growing up, a lot of my feel was in my hands. Tiger Woods talks about his hands. I lost that.” Kim’s freefall was dizzying. He made it to the weekend just once in two years, at one point missing 25 consecutive cuts. He fell outside the top 1,000 in the world. By abandoning the right-to-left tee shot that found fairways and allowed for the fullest expression of his above-average wedges and short game, he became utterly, hopelessly lost. “It might have been a technical thing at first, but I think it became a mental thing,” said Michael Weaver, a Cal teammate who briefly played on the Korn Ferry Tour. “I was a fill-in caddie for him at the 3M Open in 2019, and he played with Smylie Kaufman and Austin Cook, and I felt bad for Austin because Smylie and Michael were hitting it all over the place.” Kaufman is now a golf broadcaster, and for a time it was anything but certain Kim would make his way out of the williwags. He parted with Tillery and tried his luck with various other coaches, including George Gankas, but nothing stuck. His friends tried to buck up his spirits, telling him they still believed in him even as the cuts piled up. “Every time I asked him, ‘Where are you playing next?’ I was prepared to hear, ‘I might not play for a while,’” Weaver said. “You work so hard to build up your confidence and then it all goes badly and you’re like, I used to be good at this and now I suck. I wouldn’t fault anyone for shutting it down; it’s a natural reaction to not being able to find your way out.” Kim saw flashes of form, but they could vanish even as he made the turn. “I was really dejected because on the front nine you have that hope,” he said, “and then it’s a crash all over again.” He got a slight reprieve from Covid, the pandemic extending his status a year and saving him from a return to Korn Ferry Tour Q School. After Monday-qualifying for the Fortinet last year, he tapped Weaver to caddie for him again. “He hit it in the condos on one,” Weaver said. It looked like the same old stuff, but just a few weeks earlier Kim had begun working with was Sean Foley, who diagnosed the problem: Kim had gotten away from his swing DNA and what made him great in the first place. “Sean said, ‘We needed to get you swinging a little more like you did as a kid, with similar feels and tweaks here and there,’” Kim said, “and that’s how we started. We were still making the transition last year. It was all very new.” Slowly, methodically, Kim clawed his way back. He started the 2022 Korn Ferry Tour season with a pair of missed cuts, but a T15 at The Panama Championship in February provided hope. He texted Foley: This was going to work. Kim racked up 12 top-25 finishes in 25 starts to regain his PGA TOUR card. He also shared the first-round lead at the Puerto Rico Open (T16) and finished seventh at the Barbasol Championship. Today, he feels like he has a new lease on life. “I mean obviously it would be great if I went to see Sean first,” he said. “I’ve come to believe it’s more about your fit with your instructor and does his swing philosophy fit with what you have.” Without the last four years, though, he added, he might not be the same player he is today. “I don’t think I’d be as excited and have a fresh perspective on playing the PGA TOUR,” he said. “You go through the ups and downs and you appreciate it more.” Homa could say the same. His eyes got a little teary Wednesday as he talked about the journey from his very first PGA TOUR start to making his first U.S. Presidents Cup Team, and the ups and downs along the way. For the two Cal Bears who will reunite at Silverado, the struggle makes it all the sweeter.

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Webb Simpson earned his sixth PGA TOUR victory at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Here’s a look inside his bag. RELATED: Final leaderboard Driver: Titleist TS3 (10.5 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Tensei Blue AV 65 TX 3-wood: Titleist TS2 (15 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Tensei CK Blue 70 TX 5-wood: Titleist 913Fd (18 degrees) Shaft: UST Mamiya VTS 86 TX Hybrid 1: Titleist 913Hd (21 degrees) Shaft: Graphite Design Tour AD DI 105 X Hybrid 2: Titleist 913Hd (23.5 degrees) Shaft: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 Irons: Titleist 620 MB (5-PW) Shaft: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 Wedges: Titleist Vokey Design Raw SM7 (54), Titleist Vokey Design Prototype (60 degrees) Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400 Putter: Odyssey Tank Cruiser V-Line Ball: Titleist Pro V1 Grips: Golf Pride Tour Velvet

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