Rose runs away with Indonesian Masters title

After three months of a COVID-19 hiatus, the PGA TOUR returned last week for the hotly contested Charles Schwab Challenge. A stellar leaderboard kept us riveted to live golf all weekend before a wild finish saw Daniel Berger prevail in a playoff over Collin Morikawa. Welcome BACK to the Monday Finish where if somehow you weren’t glued to the screen all week like we were … well here are some things you may have missed. THREE KEYS TO SUCCESS 1. Perspective. Daniel Berger grew up as the son of a top level tennis player turned Davis Cup and Olympic tennis coach, but that doesn’t automatically spell success. But being around professionals from a young age gave Berger a great appreciation of how to make it to the top. For Berger, making the PGA TOUR and winning was expected. Sure it was cool, but at the end of the day… that’s what he was there to do. Berger made the decision to be a professional athlete before he knew exactly what sport that would be in! He even admitted he used to not really love golf, it just turned out to be the sport he was best at. And yep, he’s pretty good. He won back-to-back FedEx St. Jude Classics (2016, 2017) before it was turned into a World Golf Championships event and was on his way. Then he hurt his wrist and the injury curtailed everything. A young man who knew nothing but practice, practice, practice and play could not do this anymore. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say, and for Berger it was true. As the months dragged on he started to worry he might never be fully fit and be able to compete to his usual standards. But finally as 2020 rolled around things were looking up. His perspective changed when he returned to competition and was trending very nicely with a T9-T5-T4 run going before the COVID-19 enforced break. What’s another three months right? He vowed to make sure he made each week count and not take anything for granted anymore. So as the stacked leaderboard was getting dissected pre final round and his name wasn’t the main focus. “I just kept telling myself, why not me today?â€� Berger said. Why not indeed. Read more on his victory here. 2. Approach – Precision on approach has long been a key factor at Colonial Country Club and it continued with Berger outperforming the field by +1.362 strokes per round this week. He ranked fifth in the field in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green on his way to hitting 77.8% of Greens in Regulation (T4). That was over 10% more than the field average (67.45%) and he had the fifth closest proximity to the hole average at 26-feet, 1 inch, a good 5-feet, 10 inches closer than the field average (31-feet, 11 inches). 3. Putting – Berger made a field leading 16 putts from over 10-feet for the week, a career best for him in a single tournament. He was deadly from 10-15 feet where he made 10 from 14 for a PGA TOUR season high 71.4% (minimum 10 attempts). Berger ranks third in make percentage among players who’ve faced at least 50 putts from that distance over the entire season and he is the only player to make 10 or more putts from 10-15 feet in one week…, a feat he’s now done twice having also done so at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas. For more numbers to know, click here. OBSERVATIONS New normal. It was nearly three months between a ball being hit in a full-field PGA TOUR event thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and took a lot of work from countless people to enable the TOUR’s Return to Golf, albeit under new guidelines. The endeavor went extremely well. Social distancing was in the forefront of the mind and while things are certainly different without on-site fans, there was still plenty of excitement. We can be pretty confident the next four events, before we start seeing some fans in the crowds and the guidelines shift slightly again, can also be a success. Read more about how it all went down here and here. Putting is hard, crowd or not. Pressure doesn’t need thousands of eyeballs piercing at a player to rear its head. Coming down the stretch at Colonial countless players had chances to make their mark on the title only to see their hopes dashed on the greens. Jordan Spieth had a four-putt earlier in the week and offered the simple explanation of having picked up all his close range putts during the three month break from competition. Maybe Xander Schauffele and Collin Morikawa had done the same. Schauffele had a horrible horseshoe lip out on the penultimate hole from close range and Morikawa lipped out in sudden death from close also to hand the trophy to Berger. Morikawa had missed from 6-feet to win on the 72nd hole. Others missed from makeable range to join the playoff. Get the full run down here. Old school course creates cool contest. Colonial is an old-school course where bombing away can help, but not necessarily be the difference. You can play short and precise and do well and you can wail away and still survive if you are a little off. This helped give us a leaderboard of all types. Bryson DeChambeau, Gary Woodland and Rory McIlroy used power, Collin Morikawa, Justin Rose, Jordan Spieth and co used precision. Early in the week 58-year-old Tom Lehman started hot… anyone can play decent on this track. We might get something similar this coming week in Hilton Head. HV3 always an MVP. Harold Varner III doesn’t ask to be a role model. He just is one. As one of the few African Americans on the PGA TOUR, Varner III became the point person for talk on racial and social injustice issues weighing heavy on the nation at this time. Varner III was strong in his views but as always even stronger in his actions. For those of us lucky to spend considerable time with him the facts are always clear – he’s a champion human who always tries to make others around him smile and feel important. The fact he led at the halfway point this week and went close to a breakthrough win was cool to see. And he will win sooner rather than later. Read more about the TOUR’S response to social change here. QUOTEBOARD “It’s tough out here. It’s cutthroat, and the best players in the world every week are showing up. I worked my butt off the last year to be in this position, and I’m just glad it all paid off.â€� – Daniel Berger “Definitely progress,â€� – Jordan Spieth who notched his third top-10 this season as he looks for first win since 2017. WYNDHAM REWARDS The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is a season-long competition that offers a $10 million bonus for the 10 golfers who end the regular season at the Wyndham Championship inside the top 10 in FedExCup points. The player atop the standings will earn $2 million, with varying payoffs for the others through $500,000 for the 10th place finisher. Sungjae Im continues to hold the top spot this week, in fact second place Justin Thomas and third Rory McIlroy also hold their spots. Patrick Reed’s T7 at Colonial helped him vault from sixth to fourth sending Brendon Todd and Webb Simpson down a slot each. Xander Schauffele finds himself inside the top 10, jumping from 12th, with his T3 finish while tournament winner Daniel Berger is now just outside the mark in 11th, up from 45th. Other significant movers this week in the FedExCup Justin Rose from 205th to 123rd, Jason Kokrak from 116th to 69th, Collin Morikawa from 41st to 18th and Jordan Spieth from 110th to 88th. Here’s how the standings look heading into this week’s RBC Heritage. SOCIAL SNAPSHOT

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Bud Cauley ... If the Safeway Open was a 54-hole affair in each of the last three years, he probably would have shoved his way into the Power Rankings. However, since 2017, he's finished T7, T46 and T44 after entering those final rounds positioned T3, T15 and T9, respectively. Part of the reason for the fades is the challenge of the course and the conditions, part of it is proof of how hard it is for any touring professional to put four rounds together, and yet another part of it is the learning curve on how to win a PGA TOUR event for the first time. This is his 184th TOUR start as a pro. Class is out for him at Silverado, so all he needs to do is put his skills back to work and trust in why he's had so many close calls. Polished off the regular season with a T15 at Sedgefield where a closing 65 was his lowest final-round aggregate on TOUR in over six years. Doc Redman ... With one season as a PGA TOUR member under his belt, and a successful one at that (71st in the FedExCup), his star continues to rise. Only 22 years of age, he lived amongst the most consistently strong ball-strikers in 2019-20, ranking T13 in fairways hit, ninth in total driving and 12th in greens in regulation. His putting was at TOUR average, so he profiles as a talent who should contend in shootouts. That's not the setup at Silverado where he missed the cut in his debut a year ago, but with a T3 at Sedgefield highlighting four top 25s since play resumed, he won't have to dig deep to connect with the feels of good form. Carlos Ortiz ... Embarks on his fifth season as a PGA TOUR member after finishing 51st in the FedExCup with a T25 at the BMW Championship. While impressive, it was his lowest ranking after he logged a T4 at the Sanderson Farms Championship in his second start. The following week, he finished T40 at Silverado to improve his record to 4-for-4, albeit sans a top 30. His scoring average in 16 rounds here is 70.94. Accentuates an average game off the tee and into targets with masterful touch around greens. With his knowledge of the undulations and the confidence of another solid season behind him, he projects to record a personal best this week. Vincent Whaley ... No longer a rookie, but he was one of four among his outgoing class who competed in the Korn Ferry Tour's Lincoln Land Championship presented by LRS last week. He beat them all with a T17 after opening with a 63. (He placed T3 in the same event on the same track last year.) When he cut his teeth on the KFT in 2019, the Georgia Tech product was the sum-is-greater-than-hits-parts guy at 13th in the all-around with nothing specific about his game standing out. A bonus is that he finished T13 in par-5 scoring. A year later and little has changed analytically despite the absence of experience at this level. Now he's benefited by cycling through familiar venues. That includes Silverado where he missed the cut despite birdies (and no bogeys) on half of the par 5s that he played. Joohyung (Tom) Kim ... It's impossible to overlook what he's already achieved abroad. He first attracted serious attention with a T4 in Singapore in January. That yielded an exemption into the 2020 Open Championship that eventually was canceled. He won thrice internationally in 2019, and did so again in the KPGA this past July. That was in advance of his PGA TOUR debut at the PGA Championship where he missed the cut. Currently leading the KPGA in scoring average, sixth on the Asian Tour's Order of Merit and 111th in the Official World Golf Ranking (after climbing to a career-best 92nd two months ago). Oh yeah, he turned 18 in June. NOTE: Sleeper is a relative term, so Rob uses unofficial criteria to determine who qualifies. Each of the following usually is determined to be ineligible for this weekly staple: Winners of the tournament on the current host course; winners in the same season; recent major champions; top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking; recent participants of team competitions.

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