No, the 10 Tiger Woods posted on Augusta's 12th hole is not highest ever

IRVING, Texas – What’s it like when one of the world’s top golfers gets his groove back? It probably looks a lot like Jason Day on Saturday at the AT&T Byron Nelson. Five consecutive birdies. A 60-foot birdie putt. Accuracy off the tee and even more so into the greens. And finally, a 7-under 63 to move into contention for another win at TPC Four Seasons Las Colinas. He’ll start Sunday’s final round at 10 under, two strokes behind leader James Hahn. “Finally today,� Day said. “… Everything was kind of clicking.� It’s been awhile. Day’s 63 is his lowest score in more than a year, ever since he opened with a 63 en route to winning the THE PLAYERS Championship in 2016 – which just happens to be the last time he won on the PGA TOUR. Day called Saturday’s 63 his best round since the PGA Championship last July, when he shot four rounds in the 60s – including a second-round 65 – to finish solo second to Jimmy Walker. “Quite a long time ago,� Day noted. Since then, he suffered a back injury that forced him to withdraw from the final two FedExCup Playoffs event. Then at the start of this year, his mother was diagnosed with lung cancer that at one point was considered terminal. Day brought her from Australia to the United States for further tests and surgery, and now the prognosis is much better. No surprise that his golf life had taken a back seat to his real life. Day entered this week without a top-20 finish in his last six starts and had fallen to 106th in FedExCup points. But he’s on the upswing now. Making his first start at the AT&T Byron Nelson since 2013, Day has posted three rounds in the 60s. At one point on Saturday, he shared the lead before dropping off the pace with his only bogey of the day, at the par-4 14th. He bounced back with a birdie at the par-5 16th – his eagle putt from 13 feet came up one rotation short – and then the monster 60-foot birdie putt at the par-3 17th that produced the loudest roar of the day. He knew it was good even before the ball found the bottom of the cup. “Obviously wasn’t the greatest iron from the tee,� said Day, currently ranked No. 4 in the world. “I was trying to hit a cut 8-iron in there and double-crossed it and obviously went long and left. … The biggest thing for me is to read the putt like it’s going to go in the hole, play like you have the putt. “Halfway down the slope I had my hands up. … It’s really cool to hear the crowds roar like that again because it’s been awhile.� Perhaps it’s fate that he’s found his game again this week. His first TOUR win came at TPC Four Seasons Resort in 2010, and now Day has a chance to give the course a proper send-off before Trinity Forest becomes the new venue next year. “I feel a lot more things are in balance now with regards to what happened earlier in the year, just kind of fighting myself,� Day said. “Finally I think things are starting to click back for me. “I’m starting to work harder and the desire to get back to No. 1 in the world is obviously coming back to me. This is a good step in the right direction. I just need to stay calm because obviously one more round to go.�

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The sun and sand (or is it the rain, fog and wind) of the West Coast Swing is behind us and now the PGA TOUR heads east for the Florida Swing, which this year is a month-long sojourn. With THE PLAYERS Championship sitting right among it, it is also the beginning of the Season of Championships that sees TPC Sawgrass take center stage in March before April's Masters, May's PGA Championship, June's U.S. Open, July's Open Championship and August/September's FedExCup Playoffs. Not to mention Olympic competition slated for July 29-Aug 1. Starting this week at the World Golf Championships-Workday Championship at The Concession in Bradenton, the TOUR then hops to the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard in Orlando, followed by THE PLAYERS in Ponte Vedra Beach before finishing up at The Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens. (The Valspar Championship in Palm Harbor comes April 29-May 2 this season). It is a critical phase of the FedExCup schedule that can make or break a player’s push for either TOUR Championship chances or even just FedExCup Playoffs hopes. We've decided to bust out the crystal ball and make some bold predictions for the Florida Swing. (As a sidenote, here are the 10 Bold Predictions from the start of this season if you want to check our progress.) 1. Tony Finau will leave the swing a winner. Depending on who you talk to, this take is either not bold at all or ridiculously bold. Finau has 21 (!) top-5 finishes on TOUR since the start of the 2017-18 season without winning, so glass half-full tells you he is likely to be in contention at some point in Florida and is trending toward finally grasping that elusive second TOUR win. Glass half-empty says his playoff loss at The Genesis Invitational was just another example in a long line of proof that says he can't close the deal. Also working against Finau is the fact an American hasn't won in Florida since Keith Mitchell won The Honda Classic in 2019. Five wins in a row have been non-American (Tyrrell Hatton, Sungjae Im, Paul Casey, Rory McIlroy and Francesco Molinari). But we believe in Tony. He will win something in the next month. 2. At least one player will play EVERY round in Florida at par or better. The gurus at our ShotLink team point out that Matt Kuchar has the second-longest active streak of rounds par or better in Florida of any player in the last eight years (since 2013). In this time frame, Kuchar has played his last nine rounds in Florida at par or better. The man in front of him won’t play during the next month - 82-time winner Tiger Woods. He remains in recovery from a single-car accident and a fifth back surgery, but sat at 18 rounds at par or better in Florida. We are prepared to say someone will come out of this year's swing having played somewhere between 4 and 16 rounds at par or better in a row! 3. Tommy Fleetwood will continue his mojo in the Sunshine State and add to his top-5 tally. Fleetwood joins McIlroy and Im with four top-5 finishes in Florida since the start of the 2016-17 TOUR season - the most of any players in that span. Of course, the Englishman is the only one of those three not to win. In his five PGA TOUR starts this season, Fleetwood has just one top 20 to his name and sits 157th in the FedExCup, BUT of course that is skewed by the fact he hasn't played in the U.S. since November at The RSM Classic. In his last four starts on the European Tour, he has been no worse than T26 and has two top 10s. Since 2016-17, Fleetwood and Luke List have each made seven eagles in Florida, tied for the most. In the same time period Fleetwood is the most under par of any player on TOUR at 43-under par. 4. A course-record 62 will be posted at THE PLAYERS, with Hideki Matsuyama either being the one to do it, or he will get close by replicating his phantom 63 from a year ago. If the golf gods have any sense of fairness, Matsuyama will break out of a recent slump with a scintillating 10-under 62 to open THE PLAYERS Championship - adding his name to the record books of the storied championship. A year ago, Matsuyama equaled the TPC Sawgrass record with a 63 only for the COVID-19 pandemic to hit and force the cancellation of the event - scrubbing his achievement from history. 5. Rory McIlroy will earn more than 900 FedExCup points in the Florida Swing alone, possibly as many as 1000! Only two players have been able to notch more than 1,000 FedExCup points in Florida during the last five seasons: McIlroy (1,434), Paul Casey (1,189). The record for points gained just in Florida in a single season in that time frame goes to Webb Simpson's 783 from his PLAYERS winning season of 2018. With the WGC back in Florida this season, we think McIlroy can smash that mark out of the park. McIlroy has been inside the top five of the leaderboard after 12 rounds in the state of Florida, most of any player in the last four seasons. The winner’s share of FedExCup points are 600 at THE PLAYERS, 550 at the WGC and Arnold Palmer Invitational and 500 at The Honda Classic. Getting specific, we say he will be runner-up at the WGC, winner at THE PLAYERS, and a top 10 elsewhere to get it done. 6. There will be two aces at TPC Sawgrass, at least one of which will be on the 17th, AND we'll also be treated to an albatross. We lost THE PLAYERS last season to the pandemic so it's time for the excitement at TPC Sawgrass to be ratcheted up a notch. TPC Sawgrass has seen 31 aces at THE PLAYERS in the past with the third hole seeing four and the eighth hole yielding six. The 13th is the most prolific with 12 and the Island Green 17th has nine. Getting two in the tournament shouldn't be too much to ask - after all there were three of them in 2019! Three of the last five were on the 17th - Will Wilcox (2016), Sergio Garcia (2017) and Ryan Moore (2019). But how about an albatross? Well THE PLAYERS has only given up five of those in the past. They've all come on par 5s (one on the second, two on the 11th and two on the 16th), the last of which was Harris English in 2019 on the 11th. But now we can hope for the elusive hole-in-one on a par-4 with the drivable 12th hole. Brace yourself - it's coming. And when it lands it will be just the second par-4 ace in TOUR history, breaking a 20-year drought.

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Will awkward finish push tour to change quicker?

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