Pressure all around the FedExCup Playoffs bubble

Daniel Berger used to think he didn’t really love golf… he just happened to be really good at it. But the two-time PGA TOUR winner has upgraded his love of the game over the last 18 months after a persistent injury took him away from the little white-dimpled ball he took for granted. Berger falls into the classic category of “You don’t know how much you love something till it’s gone.� Coming off a sixth-place finish at the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock, where he was part of the 54-hole lead, Berger was hitting a shot at the Travelers Championship when he felt some discomfort in the index finger on his right hand. It lingered. Berger battled through the pain and suited up for six more events that season and even forged top-15 finishes in the PGA Championship and THE NORTHERN TRUST. But the discomfort was stopping him doing his usual preparations and forced him to pull out of the BMW Championship before it began, ending his FedExCup run. The pain was now giving him issues down to the wrist. Inflammation meant only one thing could be done. Rest. RELATED:  What you need to know for The American Express | Power Rankings “I just couldn’t practice. I’d get to a golf tournament and hit just 50 golf balls the whole week and I just didn’t feel like I could do the preparation to where I would feel ready to go,� Berger explained. “At home I couldn’t go hit 500 balls if I wanted to. I never was able to do the things that in the past I was able to do.� Initially, a rest didn’t sound so bad to a young man who had been around elite athletes his whole life and had been working his tail off to become one himself since before he can remember. Berger’s father Jay played top-level tennis, winning three ATP singles titles and getting as high as seventh in the world. He played in the Davis Cup for the United States and then moved to coaching, working with the U.S. Davis Cup and Olympic tennis teams and also was a director of tennis for the USTA. Amongst this environment, young Daniel Berger thrived. “I knew since I was a young boy I would be a professional athlete. I just didn’t know what sport yet,� Berger said. His father, and Berger himself, are believers in the 10,000-hour rule. That being you need to get to 10,000 hours of dedicated practice in something to master it. So Berger’s life has been about putting in the work, and then doing more. So the idea of a break was something of a novelty. Maybe he could enjoy some down time and a more “normal� life for a while. The 2015 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year was excited about getting in the water on his boat and doing other recreational activities that wouldn’t hamper his injury. And he did have fun … until he started to miss his previous way of life. “In the beginning I thought it was amazing. I got to do other things,� Berger said. “But the reality is my whole life all I’ve ever known is hit balls, go to a golf tournament, compete … and suddenly you are unable to do those things you are so passionate about and it sucks. “I have always been a firm believer of the harder you work the better you perform and prior to that I had never had a time in my career where I wasn’t able to do the things I felt like I needed to do. That was the most frustrating part. You know what you need to accomplish but physically you are unable to do that and it just eats you up.� The frustration and annoyance got the better of the 26-year-old. And he came back to competition in 2019 despite things not being 100%. A runner-up finish at the Puerto Rico Open in late February gave him a bit of false confidence that he could battle through things a little. But the entire season he couldn’t quite trust things and his practice time remained well down on his usual standards. He fell to 131st in the FedExCup without a top-10 after Puerto Rico and missed the FedExCup Playoffs. Now though, Berger says he is 100%. The last few months he has returned his practice to the hours he is accustomed to. And in his five starts this season Berger has three top-25 finishes to be currently 79th in the FedExCup. The results might not yet show significant improvement, but Berger knows his ball-striking is returning toward its best. At the Sony Open last week, he was 10th in the field in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and 11th in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green. And he had his first positive mark of the season in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green. “I have put a lot of work in that I wasn’t able to do before. And that has already been the big difference in the five events I have played this season. I just need to continue to put the work in,� he said prior to The American Express this week in California. “It’s been a blessing to come back and do what I love. I used to always say I never really liked golf; I was just good at it. But when you take some time off, I realized I really like golf a lot. My main goal now is to put myself in contention to win. It is tough out here, so you’ve got to continue to get better. I feel like this offseason I did a lot of good things and I am hitting the ball way better than I have in a long time.� Berger is trying to get those feelings from the 2015, 2016 and 2017 seasons where he was Rookie of the Year and won back-to-back FedEx St. Jude Classics. He’s even reverted to the old TaylorMade irons he used coming through the ranks and says it helps him “just feel more like me.� As one of the famed Class of 2011, Berger has also drawn motivation from what Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth have already achieved in the game, knowing he’s always been able to compete on their level. It makes the idea of winning a FedExCup and major championships even more attainable. And watching the recent Presidents Cup on television – two years after he secured the clinching point for the U.S. Team at Liberty National – also put a fire in his belly. “I watched every single shot … and I never watch golf. But I love team sports and I love rooting for anything that’s American,� Berger said. “It is disappointing not to be there but obviously I didn’t deserve to be. To see those guys go out there and play the way they did was impressive and it is certainly motivating. “There are a lot of young guys making a name for themselves and I think you will see 10 or 15 guys playing on the teams for the next 10 or 15 years just like you saw with the Phil’s and Tiger’s. I want to be part of that.� Now that he’s back fit and healthy, there’s a good chance he will be.

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LAS VEGAS — Robert Streb went from making putts to wondering if he would ever miss Thursday in THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT. It led to his best start to any tournament and his lowest score on the PGA TOUR. RELATED: Leaderboard | Adam Scott’s new Titleist irons ‘one of one’ And on this day at The Summit Club, his 11-under 61 was only good for a one-shot lead. A world-class field lit up a very pretty and mostly defenseless golf course overlooking the Las Vegas Strip. The result was the lowest average score — 68.95 — for the opening round on the PGA TOUR all year. Streb had 10 birdies and an eagle and led by one shot over Keith Mitchell, who had more birdies than pars in matching his low round with a 62. Harry Higgs was at 64, while the group at 65 included Sergio Garcia and Viktor Hovland. Such scoring in ideal conditions was what players were expecting on this Tom Fazio desert course, and Streb wasted little time proving it. He started with a pair of 6-foot birdie putts and followed with a 12-footer for eagle. When he walked off the par-5 sixth hole after a long two-putt for birdie, he already was 7-under par. “I’ve never had a start like that, so it was kind of fun,” Streb said. “I was trying to stay in the moment the best I can, and I don’t know. You just feel like you can start aiming at stuff. Things seemed to be going my way.” Streb broke by two shots his previous low score on the PGA TOUR, one of those 63s in the PGA Championship at rain-soaked Baltusrol in 2016. But while low scores were plentiful — 25 players at 67 or lower — so was trouble if anything left the emerald green fairways. Consider how it must have felt for Justin Rose. Two holes into the tournament, he already was 10 shots behind. Rose came up short of the par-3 second green into a native area of mostly rocks and some sand. He tried to play it and the ball ricocheted off a stone wall into a desert bush. His only option was to take a penalty drop — but where? Going back on a line with the hole, he found a fairly sparse area only to duff it toward the wall and more rocks. After another penalty drop, he got up-and-down for a quadruple-bogey 7. It’s not as though Rose was alone in his travails. Dustin Johnson, trying to avoid only his second winless year in his 14 years on the PGA TOUR, tried to drive the 12th green and wound up in the desert. He took a drop 50 yards behind him in a lot for the next mansion and made double bogey. He made his only birdie on the back nine at the par-5 closing hole for a 74. Justin Thomas was off to a slow start and then went into reverse when he tried to play out of the desert and kept banging it off the rocks. One shot went 25 feet. Another went 30 yards into a lie so bad he had to take a penalty. Plus, his wedge had a gouge in the face, and a rules official had to fetch a replacement from his car. Thomas birdied his last three holes for a 69. Rory McIlroy was making his move until going into the desert, clanging it off rocks that led to a penalty drop and making triple bogey. He had to settle for a 68. “It’s one of those courses where if you just keep it in play, it’s obviously very scorable,” McIlroy said. “But you hit a couple just offline and you get a bad break or a little unlucky, you can make a big number and I did that on 17. But the other 17 holes were good.” All 18 holes were good for Mitchell, at least at The Summit Club. He missed the cut last week down the road at the TPC Summerlin and then spent five days working harder than most visitors to Las Vegas, and it helped that putting coach Ramon Bescansa was in town. Mitchell made a 15-foot birdie putt on the par-5 third and was on his way. He followed with two more birdies from about that range and never let up. “When that went in with good speed, I felt like I had a chance today,” he said. Good putting goes a long way on any course. Keeping it on the grass on a course built in the desert also helps. “If you hit the fairways, you have good chances. It’s that simple,” Mitchell said. “Because if you miss the fairways, the desert is a big penalty. It just depends on luck after that. … If you get out of position out here it can bite you.” Defending champion Jason Kokrak probably wished he was back at Shadow Creek. He opened with a 77. This is the second straight year the CJ Cup has moved from South Korea to Las Vegas because of the pandemic.

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