Leaderboard: What’s happening at the BMW Championship

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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Mandy Snedeker had just dropped her two children, Lily and Austin, off at school near their home in Nashville. Her husband, Brandt, was in Greensboro, North Carolina, playing in the Wyndham Championship. He was in one of the morning’s featured groups, paired with Billy Horschel and Hideki Matsuyama, so she could follow the PGA TOUR Live coverage of his round as she ran errands. “And then all of a sudden, I don’t know what hole it was, but they started mentioning that there was a chance that he could shoot 59,â€� Mandy recalls. “I kind of went, errrk, pulled over in a parking lot, and watched the rest of it.â€� Mandy sat in that parking lot for a good hour on that Thursday morning a year ago, watching the final four holes or so on her cell phone. So, she saw the 20-footer he made on the Sedgefield’s ninth hole, his last of the day, to become just the ninth player in PGA TOUR history to shoot a 59. “Oh, my gosh, I screamed and just went crazy,â€� Mandy says. And then her telephone started virtually blowing up with text messages. In relatively short order, she had probably 40 or 50; her husband’s phone pinged with roughly double that amount – all meaningful in their own way. “We have a lot of friends that are in the music industry … and obviously are huge golfers,â€� Mandy says. “So, they were all texting me. I thought that was cool. “I don’t know if I have anyone that (stood out); it was just so many at one time I couldn’t believe it because I wasn’t sure if everybody knew. It was a Thursday, Thursday morning. So, I was texting people all morning. Brandt shot 59. Brandt shot 59. It was crazy.â€� Of course, her first text was to Brandt. He was whisked away to interviews after he signed his scorecard but called as soon as he could. “He was so excited,â€� Mandy recalls. “You know, golf, it’s crazy. It’s like up and down and he hadn’t been playing that great. But out of nowhere he shoots 59. So, it’s just how the sport rolls.â€� Then came the hard part. At least for Brandt. Take that four-stroke lead he had accrued with the 59, play three more rounds and try to win a golf tournament.  “Fifty‑nine was such a cool moment and such a great place, has such a great place in my memory and the history of the game obviously, but doing it on Thursday when you’ve got three more days to deal with, A, all the questions, B, all the kind of attention you draw on yourself, and then most importantly, the expectations you have on yourself,â€� Brandt says.  “You have a … four‑shot lead after the first day, play that kind of round of golf, you can’t really think of anything other than messing it up from there, to be honest with you. So, it’s hard to kind of deal with that, try to get over it and make sure you get back into what made you successful that first day.â€� The internal pressure was one thing. After all, Brandt had already won eight times on the PGA TOUR. But the 2018 Wyndham Championship was the first time his kids, who were 7 and 5 years old at the time, really understood what was going on. “The second he (shot 59) it was, Dad are you going to win the tournament? Dad are you winning?â€� Mandy recalls with a smile. “We flew in Saturday; we go upstairs to the player dining. Dad, are you leading still? Dad are you leading? Are you going to win? I was like, oh my goodness. Stop. “So, we had joked if he can win with that pressure of the kids constantly reminding him, you know, he’s got it. He’s got it.â€� Steve Holmes, who is chairman of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts and Wyndham Destinations, had sent a private jet to Nashville to pick up Mandy and the kids. Wyndham has sponsored Brandt since shortly after he won the 2007 tournament at Sedgefield, which was his first PGA TOUR victory. Holmes was the one who presented Brandt with the Sam Snead Cup that year. “It just so happened he was coming up to New York for the first playoff event right afterwards and he offered me a ride up on his plane,â€� Brandt remembers. “And so, I hop on the plane. We celebrated and talked and just kind of grew from there and Steve’s one of the best human beings in the world. Spending that little time with them on a plane, I realized what a quality guy he was and what they stood for. “Just always have been very fortunate in my career, surround myself with really good people and make sure I have the right partnerships and it all started with him and them because they are a bunch of great people and do stuff the right way.â€� So, Brandt wasn’t at all surprised that Holmes flew Mandy and the kids in for what turned out to be another Sunday celebration with Lily and Austin racing onto the 18th green to jump into their dad’s arms. “They’ve been dear friends of ours for a long time,â€� Mandy says. “That’s what made it so special, too. It’s not just shooting the 59 … it was just like a storybook book setting. I mean, with it being Wyndham and his sponsor and just all the years that we’ve been with them and stuff. “So yeah, it was really special.â€�

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