Monday Finish: Horschel grinds out win at AT&T Byron Nelson

Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Horschel, who’d gone dormant since winning the 2014 FedExCup, notched his fourth PGA TOUR victory to remind everyone how good he is when the putts are falling. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. There’s nothing like watching your ball fall in the hole to beat back the golfing blues. At the suggestion of his coach Todd Anderson, a slumping Horschel put a new PXG putter in the bag for the Byron. The change paid off handsomely as he made 453 feet, 9 inches of putts for the week, including a 60-footer at the 14th hole Sunday. That was the second best putting performance of his career (2014 BMW Championship, 498’8’’). He also ranked first in Strokes Gained: Putting at TPC Four Seasons Resort, becoming the first TOUR winner to lead that stat since Russell Henley at the Shell Houston Open. “I putted beautifully all week,â€� said Horschel, who moved from 71st to 15th in the FedExCup standings, and from 76th to 44th in the Official World Golf Ranking, giving him an automatic berth in the U.S. Open at Erin Hills next month. As for his bomb on 14, he said it was an unexpected bonus after three-putting the previous two holes. “I’m thinking to myself, man just get it close, I don’t want to 3-putt again.â€� 2. Golf psychology continues to make perfect sense, and no sense at all. Horschel’s four straight missed cuts meant he was coming off the worst stretch of golf since his rookie year in 2011, when he missed five straight. By his own admission, he landed in Dallas with “nothingâ€� in terms of momentum. What’s more, he’d never warmed to TPC Four Seasons while missing the cut there in his only two Byron starts, in 2011 and 2012. None of that mattered. What mattered was something his caddie Josh Cassell said to Horschel while he was shooting a second-round 76 to miss the cut at THE PLAYERS Championship the previous week. As Horschel’s paraphrased it, Cassell said, “You know what, we’re going to go next week to Dallas, to the Byron Nelson, and we’re going to win.â€� What did the caddie see? How did he know? Meanwhile, Day’s resurgence was almost predictable. Although it had been a year since his last victory, at the 2016 PLAYERS, and he came into the week at 106th in the FedExCup race, his poor play had coincided with his mother Dening’s lung cancer. With the recent upswing in her health—she’s back working in Australia—Jason’s game figured to bounce back accordingly. It did. Day’s playoff loss, while disappointing, moved him up to 39th in the FedExCup race. He also reclaimed his No. 3 spot in the Official World Golf Ranking, ahead of Hideki Matsuyama.      3. The also-rans are often just as interesting as the winners, and sometimes they’re even more so. That’s the premise of Neil Steinberg’s highly entertaining 1994 book, “Complete & Utter Failure: A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres & Total Flops.â€� And for the second straight week, we saw that simple truth play out on TOUR. First, we got Ian Poulter’s wild-and-wooly bogey from the trees on the 72nd hole at THE PLAYERS. Then, on Sunday, we saw James Hahn come to 18 needing an eagle to elbow his way into the playoff. Impossible? Nah. From 121 yards, Hahn hit a wedge and watched along with everyone else as the ball hit by the flagstick, spun back and caught part of the hole but spun out to four feet away. He made the birdie putt to shoot 71 and finish alone in third place, a shot out of the playoff. Even after Horschel’s long birdie putt on 14, and Day’s chip-in at 15, Hahn’s lip out from long range was unforgettable. And kudos to CBS for its cutaway to the hands-over-heads reaction of Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo in the booth—a nice touch that mirrored how the rest of us looked.    4. Boring golf is winning golf. Still. Nowhere was that more evident than the par-5 16th hole, where Hahn missed right off the tee and Day missed left. Horschel, meanwhile, split the fairway and hit a stock 5-iron onto the green, leading to a routine, two-putt birdie to move him into a tie for the lead with Day. “I knew the stuff I was doing at home was the right stuff,â€� said Horschel, who has long been known as one of the game’s premier ball-strikers. “I knew the stuff I was doing in early weeks of tournaments was the right stuff. I just had to keep believing in it and keep believing that, you know, in tournament golf that I’ve done this stuff I needed to do that week to play well. And sometimes I just didn’t have that belief I needed.â€� Afterward, Day was left to rue not just his missed four-foot par try in sudden death, but also his failure to birdie 16, where he “basically three-puttedâ€� from the left fringe. 5. Jordan Spieth will remember this tournament as a wake-up call. Yes, he shot an out-of-left-field 75 (including a quadruple-bogey 9 on 16) to miss the cut at the Byron for the first time. And yes, it was a particularly painful result at TPC Four Seasons, where Spieth watched the TOUR pros as a boy, and where he finished T16 at a 16-year-old in 2010. “It didn’t need to happen,â€� he said, sounding like he was in shock.   But sometimes athletes find the most unlikely places to pivot. Just ask Horschel, who said he found something in his swing while missing the cut at THE PLAYERS. This week Spieth heads just down the road to the DEAN & DELUCA Invitational, where he says the course (Colonial) fits his game better and where he is in fact the defending champion. Spieth has a history of turning negatives into positives—think of his defiant back-to-back birdies after he four-putted the par-3 eighth hole at the 2015 Open Championship at St. Andrews. Don’t be surprised to see another bounce-back this week.   FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Horschel’s short-game stats coming into the Byron were not very good, which was yet one more reason why his performance at TPC Four Seasons was such a shocker.   Coming into the tournament, he was a middling 127th in Scrambling, 193rd in Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green, and 113th in Strokes Gained: Putting. Whether it was his new putter, his newfound peace, or something else, Horschel transformed at the Byron: T7 in Scrambling, ninth in SG: Around-the-Green, and first in SG: Putting. Who was that guy? 2. The winner was not only better on the greens, he got there with greater ease, too. Unafraid to hit driver off the tee, Horschel ranked T6 in driving distance (305 yards per pop) and T17 in driving accuracy (57.14 percent). He was also T5 in Greens in Regulation (70.83%). Day laid back off the tee to rank 17th in driving distance (298.9) and T12 in driving accuracy (58.93%), but was well back at T32 in Greens in Regulation (63.89%). Over time, those differences, especially the GIR differential, tend to add up. 3. The 20-somethings have fallen back. Golfers under 30 got off to a hot start this season, and they got a boost from 21-year-old Si Woo Kim’s victory at THE PLAYERS. They account for 16 tournament victories in total. That said, the 30-somethings are staging a modest rally, having won or jointly won (in the case of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans) four times in the last five weeks. Thanks to Horschel, 30, outlasting Day, 29, they account for 10 victories and seem to be catching up. The 40-somethings, by the way, account for three Ws so far this season.     4 TPC Four Seasons held up well and played tough in its final year as host. The cut was at 2 over for the second straight week on TOUR, but it was only the fifth over-par cut in 43 tournaments so far this season. How hard was it? FedExCup leader Dustin Johnson made nine bogeys while shooting weekend rounds of 71-69 to finish T13. “It’s sad that it’s leaving,â€� Horschel said, “because I was never a fan of this course, but came here and now I am and I won and I don’t want to leave (laughter).â€� 5. Okay, maybe putting isn’t everything. As much as we like to point to Strokes Gained: Putting to explain tournament results, it’s not always that simple. Case in point: Although he led the field in SG: Putting for the week, Horschel took an untidy 32 putts Sunday. He made up for it by hitting 10 of 14 fairways and 14 of 18 greens in regulation, his best of the week in both categories. Meanwhile, with 100 putts at the Byron, Patrick Reed became just the fifth player this season to take 100 or fewer for the week. He tied for 20th. Of the five players to keep their total putts at 100 or fewer, only one has won the tournament: Wesley Bryan at the RBC Heritage. Figure that one out. TOP THREE VIDEOS

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