So, really, why do we care about Tiger?

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After slow and steady improvement but a failure to play his best on Sundays, Kevin Tway comes up huge with five closing birdies, three in a sudden-death playoff, to break through for his first PGA TOUR victory at the Safeway Open at Silverado Resort & Spa. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Tway made like his famous dad, Bob, who watched with tears in his eyes at home in Oklahoma. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. The father-son thing doesn’t always work out. Golf is hard, playing it at this level is beyond hard, and being the son of a famous golf pro can be downright daunting. The name (and high expectations) follows you everywhere, and Bob Tway was more accomplished than most, his eight victories on TOUR including the 1986 PGA Championship at Inverness, where he holed out from a bunker to win. Still, Kevin persevered, turning his DNA into a positive. “He knows my swing so well,� Kevin said of his dad. “He can watch on the telecast or he can look at ShotLink and he knows what kind of tendencies I have, where I’m aiming, why I hit that one left. We talk after every round about each shot and what I was feeling and what I wasn’t feeling.� 2. The big number at Safeway was 10, but not how we anticipated. Brandt Snedeker, who took a four-shot lead into the back nine, was vying for the 10th TOUR win of his career. He didn’t get it, faltering with a back-nine 39 to open the door for Tway, who stormed through it with his birdie-birdie finish in regulation and three straight birdies in the playoff. Still, we got a historic 10 at the Safeway: Kevin’s victory made the Tways the 10th father-son duo to win on TOUR. “Well, it just shows it’s very difficult to do,� Bob said. “People always ask the kids, ‘Is it hard to play with a father who has played on TOUR?’ I think when they’re young, I think it is. I think there are expectations that other people have, and I think you feel it. “But I think overall, and I think Kevin would even admit, that overall it’s a good thing,� Bob continued. “There’s a lot of knowledge that can be passed (on).� 3. Moore distinguished himself. The five-time TOUR winner hung tough with a birdie on the last hole of regulation, plus two more on the first two holes of the playoff (also the par-5 18th). He just couldn’t match winner Tway’s birdie on the third extra hole, the par-4 10th. “I’m going to be honest,� Moore said, “I didn’t even expect to be in this position.� Finishing 40 minutes ahead of the last threesome, Moore carded a 67 and then hung around to watch as Snedeker hit a tree and bogeyed the par-4 17th, then failed to birdie the easy 18th. On the first playoff hole, Moore got up and down from behind the 18th green, sinking a testy short putt for birdie to extend the playoff with Tway. (Snedeker had bowed out with a par.) And Moore nearly eagled the second playoff hole, also 18, his long putt coming up just short. “I was proud of how I played,� Moore said, “and hitting good shots in the moment.� 4. Snedeker will have to regroup. This was a stunning result, considering Snedeker was four ahead at the turn. His three bogeys on holes 10-12 gave everyone else hope, and while it seemed he had steadied himself with a birdie at the par-5 16th hole, he got out of position and hit a tree on 17, leading to a costly bogey. Knowing he needed to birdie 18 to win, and fighting a left miss that had plagued him for much of the back nine, Snedeker blocked his drive right, into a fairway bunker. Then he made matters worse as he accidentally laid up into the right rough with his second shot. “I tried like hell to get out of it,� Snedeker said of his left miss, “and kind of kept doing it, kept doing it, and it stinks when that happens. That’s why you practice and play so much, put yourself in position to see how it holds up. Today it didn’t hold up. That’s disappointing. “It will be a long night and a long trip to Malaysia,� he added, “but Thursday next week, another opportunity to come out here and try to fix what I did wrong.� 5. Couples was the feel-good story of the week. Fred Couples finally accepted a sponsor’s exemption to play the Safeway, and was happy he did as the week was full of highlights. He loved the course, celebrated his 59th birthday, and shot a second-round 65 in the company of pals Snedeker and Patrick Cantlay to make the 500th cut of his PGA TOUR career. It was all so much fun he’s thinking of coming back next year. “I’d love to come back,� said Couples, who earlier had said this would be his final non-major TOUR start. There’s just something about Napa. FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Tway was 19th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, 22nd in SG: Approach-the-Green, 7th in SG: Around-the-Green, and 18th in SG: Putting. For the week, Tway was one of three players to go a combined 8-under on holes 16-18 in regulation. This marked the best week of Tway’s career in Scrambling, as he saved par 80 percent (16/20) of the time he missed the green. His previous bests were: 76 percent (19/25) at the 2018 Corales Puntacana Resort Championship, 75 percent (18/24) at the Valero Texas Open. 2. Ryan Moore’s playoff record fell to 2-3, but he has five TOUR wins and has been remarkably consistent. This marked his fourth top-10 finish in six Safeway starts, and he is coming off a 71st place finish in the FedExCup, the 12th straight season in which he’s advanced to at least the second Playoffs event. 3. Snedeker’s playoff record fell to 2-2 as he recorded his eighth runner-up finish on TOUR. He led the field with 23 birdies, with Troy Merritt (T4) finishing second with 22. Snedeker was aiming to win back-to-back Regular Season tournaments (Wyndham Championship). 4. Luke List (T4) played his final five holes in 4-under (birdie, par, birdie, par, eagle) to close with a 5-under 67. In 123 TOUR starts, he also owns two runner-up finishes (2017 Sanderson Farms Championship, 2018 The Honda Classic) and two thirds (2017 Houston Open, 2018 RBC Heritage). 5. Aaron Baddeley (69, T4) was trying to become the first Monday qualifier to win since Arjun Atwal at the 2010 Wyndham Championship. With the top-10 finish, Baddeley earned a spot in the field at the Sanderson Farms Championship, Oct. 25-28.

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DUBLIN, Ohio — Among the lessons Collin Morikawa took away from missing his first cut as a pro was that his reliable cut shot had left him. He found at it Muirfield Village, and suddenly looks as though he’ll be tough to catch at the Workday Charity Open. Morikawa ran off four straight birdies after making the turn Friday, finished with another birdie and shot 6-under 66 to build a four-shot lead over Sam Burns (66) in the storm-delayed tournament. RELATED: Full leaderboard | | How to give Muirfield a second identity His 13-under 131 was one shot off the 36-hole course record set by Jason Dufner in 2017 at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide. The Workday Charity Open, which replaces the canceled John Deere Classic for this year only, has been set up a little easier than it will be for the Memorial next week, with slightly slower greens and rough that isn’t quite as high or thick. Morikawa is still playing a different brand of golf than anyone else. Through two rounds, he has 15 birdies and an eagle. His four bogeys have come from silly mistakes that are bound to happen. Ian Poulter, back at Muirfield Village for the first time since 2009 because of a reconfigured schedule brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, had a 69 and joined Chase Seiffert (69) at 7-under 137. The second round had a pair of 75-minute delays because of the rumbling thunder and lightning that seems to appear whenever the PGA TOUR is at Muirfield Village. “Who knows who’s going to take it deep today?” Morikawa said. “Whether I have the lead or not, I’ve got to go into the weekend feeling like I’ve got to make the same amount of birdies I have the past two days. I feel like there’s a lot of birdies out there for me especially, the way I’ve been hitting it.” Morikawa, who turned pro just over a year ago after graduating from Cal, is making his debut at the course Jack Nicklaus built, and perhaps it’s no coincidence that Nicklaus was famous for hitting a cut. “I had heard from a lot of people before, this course was going to suit a left-to-right shot, anyway,” Morikawa said. “Obviously, Jack hit that, and I think it does. But I’ve been able to leave myself some really good numbers into approach shots. I’ve been keeping myself in the fairway for the most part, and that obviously helps.” Among those playing in the afternoon, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka first had to worry about making the cut after sluggish starts. Koepka started at 2 over. Rahm was at even par. Phil Mickelson had another exciting day, minus the meltdown at the end of his round. He opened by chipping in for birdie and making a 12-foot eagle putt. With the tee moved forward on the 14th hole, the par 4 guarded by a pond right of the green, he hit driver to 10 feet and had to settle for birdie. And right before the first batch of storms arrived, Mickelson felt the wind shift and get stronger, so he took driver on the par-5 fifth and whaled away over the trees and just inside backyard fences. It settled in the rough, but it left him only 114 yards away and a pitching wedge to the green. The speed of the greens fooled him, and he repeatedly left putts short. Even so, he managed to post a reasonable number. Jordan Spieth wasn’t as fortunate. He took double bogey on his 17th hole, the par-3 eighth, and was likely to miss the cut. Morikawa had made 22 cuts in a row to start his pro career, a streak that ended two weeks ago at the Travelers Championship. That was three short of the streak Tiger Woods put together when he turned pro. But the 23-year-old Californian was more interested in low scores than simply getting in four rounds and a pay check. “At the end of the day, you’re out there to win tournaments,” he said. “If you miss the cut, make it by whatever, you just want to learn from each week. And like I said, I learned a lot from those two days missing the cut than I have in a lot of events so far when I’ve been finishing whatever.” This one caused him to take a closer look at what was lacking in his game, instead of being reasonably content with a solid finish. “I think sometimes when something really doesn’t go your way, like missing a cut, it just stands out a little more,” he said. Somewhere along the way, he couldn’t rely on his cut shot, allowing him to aim some 6 yards left of his target and fade it toward the pin, no matter where it was located. It was after his practice round Wednesday that he figured out what was missing, and he went back to an old drill of sticking his glove under his left arm. It’s a rotational drill, and it paid off. He had to wait until the storms to see if anyone could catch him, with the second round not likely to end until Saturday.

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