Monday Finish: Paul Casey getting better with age

On a brutally hard day for scoring at the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook Resort & Golf Club, Paul Casey manages a 1-over 72 for a one-stroke victory over surging Louis Oosthuizen (69) and Jason Kokrak (71). Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Casey became the first player to successfully defend his title on TOUR this season as he moved from 16th all the way to 4th in the FedExCup. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Casey getting better with age. At 41, Casey feels like he might just now be coming into his own. Who can argue? Casey, who said he’s getting older but better, picked up his third career PGA TOUR title in his 250th start. But it was his second in as many years at the Copperhead Course. The one-year gap was a big departure from the nine years between his first (2009 Houston Open) and second victories. Casey, whose resume lists back-to-back English Amateur titles, is the first to successfully defend a Valspar Championship title, the first player to successfully defend a title of any kind since Brooks Koepka at the 2018 U.S. Open, and the third player to win the Valspar multiple times, joining K.J. Choi (2002, 2006) and Retief Goosen (2003, ’09).    2. You had to crush the 5s at Copperhead. Casey did, playing them in 15 under. (He won at 8 under.) You had to feast on the 5s because the par 4s took a heavy toll. Louis Oosthuizen (69, T2) bogeyed the par-4 16th hole both Saturday and Sunday, and missed a playoff with Casey by one. Sergio Garcia (73, T54) was having a good round until he made a 9 on 16, the hardest hole on Saturday (4.300) and Sunday (4.414). The par-4 third was the toughest on Thursday (4.271) and Friday (4.406). 3. Oosthuizen is figuring out the Valspar. The sweet-swinging South African, whose lone TOUR win is the 2010 Open Championship, missed three straight cuts at the Copperhead from 2013-’15. It’s been all good since then: a T7 in 2016, T16 in 2018, and T2 this time around. He had the best weekend (66-69) but had left himself too far back after the opening two rounds. 4. Im is playing up to expectations. South Korea’s Sungjae Im was the first player to lead the money list from start to finish on the Web.com Tour last season, when he was Player of the Year. Big things were expected of him. He has not disappointed. Im fired a final-round 70 to finish T4, his second top-five showing in his last three starts (T3/Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard). He moved up 13 spots to 17th in the FedExCup, and with a victory could move ahead of winners Cameron Champ, Adam Long and Martin Trainer in the Rookie of the Year race. 5. Johnson will shrug this off. Playing in the final group, Dustin Johnson (T6) was the favorite, or so said Casey, afterward. Alas, the favorite didn’t make a birdie and struggled to a 3-over 74. That ended his streak of rounds in the 60s at 14, which was the longest active streak on TOUR and the longest of his career. It was also the first time in over two years he has failed to make a single birdie. But Johnson shrugged it off, insisting he didn’t play that bad. (The Copperhead Course was a brute all week, but especially in the final round.) Why the optimism? First, Johnson had missed the cut in his two previous starts at the Valspar (2008, 2010). The T6 was better, and gives him five top-10 finishes in his last six starts, most notably his 20th win at the World Golf Championships-Mexico Championship last month. And he now heads to the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play Championship, which he won in 2017. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Casey dominated the par 5s. His 15-under total on those holes, where he made birdie or better 14 times in 16 chances (87.5 percent) was easily the best in the field. Nick Taylor (75, T24), Jon Rahm (68, T6) and Sungjae Im (70, T4) were second best with 10-under totals. It was by far the best performance on the par 5s at the Valspar since 2000, and the best of Casey’s career. 2.The winner led the field in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green (+2.810), which marked the TOUR-leading eighth time Casey has led in that category since the start of the 2014-’15 season. Justin Thomas is next best, having done it seven times in that span. Five players have done it six times. 3. Dustin Johnson’s 74 (T6) marked the first time he has failed to birdie a single hole since the 2017 WGC-HSBC Champions, where he lost a six-shot lead. It was the first time in 31 starts worldwide that he’d not made a single red number on the scorecard. 4. After yielding just five bogey-free rounds Thursday through Saturday, the Copperhead Course gave up none in the final round. The course played nearly a full shot tougher than it had the day before, and the 72.143 stroke average was highest of the week. Casey became the second player this season, and first since Rickie Fowler at the Waste Management Phoenix Open (74), to win with an over-par score in the final round. 5. This marked the third straight week for a European winner on the PGA TOUR, after Rory McIlroy at THE PLAYERS Championship and Francesco Molinari at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. It’s the first such streak since 2010, when Justin Rose (Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide), Lee Westwood (WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational) and Graeme McDowell (U.S. Open) won in consecutive weeks. WYNDHAM REWARDS The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is in its first season and adds another layer of excitement to the FedExCup Regular Season. The top 10 players at the end of the FedExCup Regular Season will earn bonus payouts from the Wyndham Rewards Top 10. There were no changes at the top after the Valspar Championship, with the top three players holding their positions. There was, however, a big mover: In successfully defending his title at the Copperhead Course, Paul Casey moved from 16th to 4th.

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