Meet The 50 newest PGA TOUR members

When the regular season resumes next month in Hawaii, nearly 20 percent of the schedule will already be in the books. Though it’s not impossible to overcome a slow (or restful) fall, the pre-Maui portion of the schedule offers a tremendous opportunity for players to get an early leg up in the FedExCup standings. Over the last three seasons, 44% of players to qualify for the TOUR Championship in Atlanta were inside the top 30 of the FedExCup standings at the end of the fall portion of that season’s schedule. This season, we have already seen a player make eight consecutive birdies (Nick Hardy), a pair of successful title defenses (Max Homa and Rory McIlroy) and six different players hit all 18 greens in regulation in a round. With a hefty chunk of the schedule already played, let’s hand out some hardware for the best performances of the fall on the PGA TOUR. Best player of the fall: Seamus Power With nine events this fall won by nine different players, this was a close race with several worthy contenders under consideration. How about Keegan Bradley? The current season money leader picked up his fifth career PGA TOUR victory at the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP. In three starts he did not record a single round over par, giving him the third-best scoring average among players with at least ten rounds played. After years of battling on the greens, he currently finds himself in the top 20 on TOUR this season in Strokes Gained: Putting per round. His current streak of 216 straight holes without a three-putt is the longest active run on TOUR. Rory McIlroy won the only tournament he teed it up in – it’s tough to beat that. Or what about Mackenzie Hughes? The Canadian took the Sanderson Farms Championship in a playoff and is currently third in the FedExCup standings. He’s been buoyed by the shortest clubs in his bag, ranking in the top 20 this season in both Strokes Gained: Around the Green and Strokes Gained: Putting. The honor goes to Power, though, who will carry the FedExCup standings lead into 2023. His closing run to the fall – win, T-3, T-5 – saw him beaten by a grand sum of six players across three events. In those tournaments, he shot under par in all 12 rounds, accumulating a combined score to par of -52. The 35-year-old Irishman is up to 28th in the Official World Golf Ranking this week, his best-ever position. Power has never previously qualified for the TOUR Championship, but the numbers say that will change in 2023: each of the last nine players to finish the calendar year leading the FedExCup standings had enough points to make it to East Lake later that season. Power’s story isn’t the only one worthy of sharing, though. So, we’ve elected to make a distinction between the best overall performer of the fall and the breakout star. Breakout player of the fall: Tom Kim The breaking-out, as it was, inarguably started in the closing weeks of the 2021-22 PGA TOUR season, when Kim won the Wyndham Championship by five strokes. But its crescendo wasn’t hit until the new season arrived in September: first, with a stirring performance at Quail Hollow for the International Presidents Cup team, then a few weeks later in Las Vegas, when Kim held off Patrick Cantlay for win number two. The age-related superlatives tied to Kim’s quick success are lofty. At just 20 years, 3 months and 18 days old, Kim became the youngest two-time winner on the PGA TOUR in 90 years. Since World War II, only Kim and Tiger Woods have won more than once on the PGA TOUR before their 21st birthday. Kim backed up his win in Nevada with a T-25 at the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP and a tie for eleventh at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina. Of the 167 players with 10 or more rounds so far this season, Kim’s scoring average of 68.55 is the best on TOUR. He’ll enter January ranked in the top 10 in Strokes Gained: Approach (5th), Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green (6th) and scrambling percentage (9th). Best round: Adam Svensson, final round 64 to win The RSM Classic Entering the last official PGA TOUR round of 2022, Adam Svensson was amongst a logjam of 16 players at or within three shots of the lead at Sea Island. The 28-year-old Canadian was unflappable in the final round, missing only one green in regulation and racking up 4.24 Strokes Gained: Putting on his way to a closing 64 and his first PGA TOUR victory. Svensson’s 64 capped off one of the most remarkable closing 54-hole performances in recent PGA TOUR history. His closing three-round total of 190 (64-62-64) has only been bettered twice all time, and only once since 1960. After starting his week with a round of 73, Svensson sat in a tie for 108th place entering the second round. Over the last 40 years, only seven players have had a worse first-round position in any PGA TOUR event and still gone on to win. In terms of Strokes Gained: Total, Taylor Montgomery’s closing 62 at THE CJ CUP in South Carolina takes top honors, as he beat the field average that day by a whopping 8.73 shots. With that Sunday surge only pushing Montgomery into a tie for 13th place, though, we’ll give the nod to Svensson’s career-changing Sunday in Georgia. Speaking of Montgomery… Rookie of the fall: Taylor Montgomery A year after finishing as the first man outside of the top-25 cutoff for PGA TOUR cards in both the Korn Ferry Tour regular season and finals, Taylor Montgomery is making the most of a career-vaulting opportunity. In seven starts this fall, Montgomery has six top-20 finishes – most of any player on TOUR. He’s 11th in the early FedExCup standings, best of any rookie. He’s also tied for most birdies-or-better made this season, with 135. Keep an eye on Montgomery as we inch closer to spring. Craziest finish: Homa chip-in, Willett 3-putt ends Fortinet Championship Danny Willett held a one-shot advantage standing in the 72nd fairway at the Fortinet Championship in September. When he hit a stellar approach shot to 3 feet, 7 inches away – and Max Homa left his approach short of the green – the tournament looked all but over. What happened next was one of the least statistically probable finishes the TOUR has seen in ages. Incredibly, Homa would chip in for his birdie – his only hole out from off the green for the entire week. No problem for Willett, right? Over the previous two PGA TOUR seasons, Willett had made 97.1 percent of his putts inside five feet. And even if he missed his short birdie attempt, surely a tap-in par would follow, and send Danny and Max to a playoff. Of the 73 players to make the cut that week in Napa, 72 of them did not have a single three-putt inside five feet for the tournament. Willett’s three-putt on the last hole was the only one. How unlikely is it for a PGA TOUR player to three-putt from inside five feet? Over the last three seasons – a span of more than 101,000 attempts from that range – a three-putt happened just once in every 761 attempts.

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Spieth manages way into hunt for second win of ’17

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Collin Morikawa got a big stroke of fortune at the DP World Tour Championship. Rory McIlroy felt he got no luck at all. The drama in the second round of the European Tour’s season-ending event was reserved for the final hour at Jumeirah Golf Estates on Friday — and the tournament’s two headline players were at the center of it. Morikawa, looking to become the first American to win the Race to Dubai title, pushed his tee shot at the par-3 17th hole and shouted, “Get in the bunker.” The ball, instead, bounced on a downslope in the rough and headed toward water, only for it to hit a hazard post and stay dry. An up-and-down for par followed by a final-hole birdie saw The Open champion shoot a second straight 4-under 68, leaving him three shots off the lead and in a strong position to finish the season as European No. 1. “Those are the kind of breaks you need heading into the weekend,” Morikawa said. McIlroy, the first-round leader after an opening 65, reached the 18th tee with a one-stroke advantage despite hitting only five of 13 fairways to that point. He drove left into a bunker and his third shot kicked left short of the green and dribbled into the water. A double-bogey 7 completed a round of 70 which saw him fall out of the lead, held jointly by Shane Lowry (65), John Catlin (65) and Sam Horsfield (66) on 10 under par. “That part of the fairway where the ball was, was just sort of thatchy and came up spinny into the wind,” McIlroy said. “I hit a good golf shot and felt like I didn’t deserve to be in the water.” McIlroy will play with Morikawa in the third round as he goes in search of back-to-back wins following victory at THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT on the PGA TOUR last month. Morikawa doesn’t need a win to have a successful week in Dubai. He came into the tournament ranked No. 1 in the Race to Dubai standings, narrowly ahead of compatriot Billy Horschel, who is only even par after rounds of 74 and 70. Horschel needs to win or hope Morikawa finishes well down the 52-man field to jump into first place. Neither of those scenarios look likely. Only four other players — Tyrrell Hatton, Min Woo Lee, Paul Casey and Matt Fitzpatrick — can overhaul Morikawa but they would also need a win on the Earth Course. Casey and Fitzpatrick are best placed to launch a weekend move, having shot rounds of 69 to be 5 under overall and five strokes off the lead. Like McIlroy, Morikawa struggled off the tee and said he didn’t hit his irons well, a rare occurrence for a player many regard as the best iron player on the PGA TOUR. He birdied four of his first seven holes — starting by chipping in from just off the green at No. 1 — but was a picture of frustration after making five straight pars around the turn and then missing a 10-foot putt for par at No. 13 to drop four shots off the lead. Two of his best shots of the day came in the final two holes, his pitch to nine feet from near the water at No. 17 helping him save par before his third shot at the par-5 last settled inside three feet. “Wasn’t hitting (the same) quality of golf shots,” Morikawa said, comparing his second round to his first, “but was able to make some birdies and kind of minimize the bogeys.” McIlroy retained his lead throughout his front nine, but found himself one back from Lowry, Catlin and Horsfield after missing a 6-foot par putt at No. 10. He responded by chipping in from the fringe at the 11th hole and went back into the lead by rolling in a birdie putt from 16 feet at No. 16. Everything went wrong down the last, though, after choosing to take driver — a club he struggled with all day. “It wasn’t the greatest way to finish and I was just sort of holding it together most of the day,” he said. “It would have been nice to finish off a bit better but still right in the golf tournament.” Lowry had a bogey-free round that really caught fire in the back nine with three birdies and a chip-in eagle in a five-hole span from No. 11. The 2019 Open champion will go out in the last group with Catlin, the 129th-ranked American. “It’s two more days left and then the end of a long year and a half,” Lowry said. “I’m looking forward to giving everything and leaving it on the course this weekend.”

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