The First Look: 3M Open

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Jim Herman had planned to get in his rental car on Sunday night and start driving down 1-95 toward his home in Florida. Herman had about 10 hours and 70-odd miles ahead of him. If he made it halfway and grabbed some sleep, he figured he could make it home Monday in time to see the kids get back from school. RELATED: Final leaderboard | The clubs Herman used to win | FedExCup standings "It was just going to be dad again and try to figure out this thing, figure out this game of golf, try to get my head right and start back up at Safeway," Herman said, thinking ahead to what he expected to be a three-week break before the PGA TOUR's 2020-21 season began. Even the best-laid plans have a way of changing, though. And Herman's did - in a big way - when he fired a 63 on Sunday to beat Billy Horschel at the Wyndham Championship and grab the Sam Snead Cup. So, instead of driving to Palm City, Florida, to see his wife Carolyn and their kids Abigail and Andrew, Herman will head to TPC Boston for the FedExCup Playoffs opener at THE NORTHERN TRUST. "My son’s probably not going to be too happy about that, but he’ll forgive me since I’m bringing home the trophy," Herman said with a smile. Herman's victory, one that even he called "out of the blue," enabled him to jump from No. 192 to 54th in the FedExCup and make the Playoffs for only the fourth time in his career. It was the largest move in the regular season finale since 2009, eclipsing the 110-point surge when Davis Love III won at Sedgefield in 2015. "Yeah, the FedExCup was definitely off the radar," Herman said. In some ways, so was Herman, a three-time winner who nonetheless has spent the bulk of his career living on the fringes of the PGA TOUR. The 42-year-old has only had 10 top-10 finishes in 195 starts on TOUR - but defied the odds by turning three of those into victories. The first, which Herman termed "life-changing," came at the 2016 Houston Open when he beat Henrik Stenson by one and Dustin Johnson by two. The second, which was "redemptive," he said, came a year ago at the Barbasol Championship, ending a dismal string of 16 missed cuts in his previous 19 starts. "Last summer was just a little validating, overcoming some injuries and just, you know, getting old," Herman said. "You get old pretty quick out here with the young guys. They make you feel inadequate off the tee and especially long irons. You know, it’s mentally frustrating. "To overcome it all and get here for a third time is pretty amazing." And making the win at Sedgefield even more satisfying was Herman's performance on the weekend. To even get to play the final two rounds at Sedgefield, Herman had to fight on the back nine Friday. When he bogeyed the 14th hole he actually had dropped outside the cutline but clutch birdies on his next three holes landed him Saturday's opening tee time. He shot a stellar bogey-free 61 on Saturday, one of two rounds of 9 under that the Donald Ross gem relinquished that day. He then came from four shots back and held off some of the TOUR's best in Horschel, the 2014 FedExCup winner, and former Wyndham and PLAYERS champs, Si Woo Kim and Webb Simpson, to name a few, with a final-round 63. Not bad for a guy who has now used a different putting stroke in each of his wins - the claw at Houston, a conventional grip at Barbasol and cross-handed at the Wyndham where he went back to one of his old Bettinardi putters. "I was thinking about doing it on Sunday at PGA," Herman reported. "I had it with me, a different model, and was going to do it, but I didn’t. I just stuck with what I was doing, conventional, at Harding Park. "But I got here, and these greens are so perfect, you’ve got to be able to start the ball where you’re looking with the correct speed, and cross-handed just gets the ball rolling a little bit better for me at the moment and just went with it." The decision proved to be an inspired one. Among the many keys on Sunday was the 59-footer Herman holed for eagle at the fifth hole. In all, he made 157 feet of putts in the final round and 444 for the week. He ranked first in greens in regulation and among the top five in Strokes Gained: Putting, Approach-the-Green, Off-the-Tee and Tee-to-Green. So, while we may not have seen the win coming, Herman's performance was solid at Sedgefield. Forget about the 27 missed cuts in his last 40 starts. He played with confidence and conviction in a victory he called "very satisfying" and should allow himself to savor. "I guess whenever you win, you never really truly expect it," Herman said. "I mean, there’s the guys at the top, they’re expected to win every week and they should expect that, they’re that good. You know, we’re all really darn good out here, but the mental game, it beats you down. … "I really don’t know that yet other than it’s very, very satisfying to, you know, be in the mix after yesterday’s round, put myself in a position to be near the lead and then come from behind and go low on a Sunday to get a win. "You watch it on TV, I watch that on TV all the time watching the guys and now to be able to do it is pretty amazing."

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THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Patrick Cantlay rallied from four shots behind and got far enough ahead that Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas couldn’t quite catch him Sunday in the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP @ SHERWOOD. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Winner’s Bag: Patrick Cantlay Cantlay closed with a 7-under 65 for a one-shot victory, the third of his career, and first in his home state of California. All three required making up a deficit of three shots or more. As much as Cantlay celebrated a victory he felt was overdue, Rahm and Thomas were left to rue their mistakes. Rahm took the lead with a birdie on the par-5 11th, only to drop shots on each of the next two holes, including the par-5 13th. The Spaniard had a chance to force a playoff, but narrowly missed from 15 feet on the par-3 17th and from 20 feet on the final hole. He shot 68. Thomas, who started the round with a one-shot lead, had to scramble for par on the last two par 5s, and hit into hazards on consecutive holes down the stretch. His tee shot to a front pin on the par-3 15th plugged into thick grass, and Thomas did remarkably well to hack out to 30 feet and make bogey. Cantlay, in the group ahead of Thomas and Rahm, bungled the par-5 16th by missing the green from 114 yards and making only his second bogey of the round, and the tournament. That reduced his lead to two shots. Thomas drilled a drive and was in perfect position with a 4-iron. But he sent that out to the right, trying to avoid a shot left of the green, and it bounced off a tree and into the creek. After the penalty drop, he had to play a marvelous pitch-and-run off hard pan to get up-and-down for par. But he needed birdies, and that didn’t come for Thomas until he needed to hole out from the 18th fairway for eagle. His approach landed 4 feet next to the hole. The birdie gave him a 69. Cantlay has no weakness in his game except for the victory tally. He’d gone more than a year since his last victory, when he rallied from three behind at Muirfield Village to win the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide. His other win was in Las Vegas in 2017 when he came from four shots back and won in a playoff. At a tournament with low scoring, he had no choice but to produce his best of the week. Cantlay opened with four birdies in six holes to get in the mix, and he surged into the lead with four birdies in a five-hole stretch on the back nine. The final birdie was the toughest, a 7-iron he hit at three-quarter speed that landed right next to the hole and rolled out to 10 feet for his third straight birdie. Thomas and Rahm provided some help on the par-5 13th. Thomas went from thick rough to more thick rough and still had 189 yards for his third shot, and he ended up making a tough par save from the collection area behind the green. Rahm was in the fairway and in range, but he came up well short into a bunker, left that short of the green and missed an 8-foot par. No one else was within four shots of Cantlay. The other show at Sherwood was on the opposite side of the course with Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson playing together in the final round with no fans. Woods closed with a 74 and still beat Mickelson by four shots. Mickelson, coming off a victory last week on the PGA TOUR Champions, had five 6s on his card. Both finished out of the top 70 against a 78-man field.

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HONOLULU — Matt Kuchar overcame three early bogeys that cost him the lead with flawless golf and two key birdies on the back nine to close with a 4-under 66 and win the Sony Open in Hawaii for his second PGA TOUR title this season. It wasn’t as easy as his four-shot victory over Andrew Putnam might indicate. Having made only one bogey through 54 holes to build a two-shot lead, Kuchar had three bogeys in his opening five holes Sunday and fell one shot behind Putnam, and he had to make a 10-foot birdie putt at the turn to avoid falling two shots behind. Kuchar caught him with an aggressive pitch up the slope on the par-4 10th hole. They remained tied with five holes to play when Putnam made bogey from a deep bunker left of the 14th green, and Kuchar made a pair of 12-foot birdie putts on the next two holes to seize control. Just like that, his lead was three shots, making for a pleasant walk up the par-5 18th. Kuchar became the first multiple winner on the PGA TOUR this season, having ended a drought of more than four years when he captured the Mayakoba Classic in Mexico last November. It was only the second time in his career Kuchar has won twice in the same season. He won the Match Play Championship and the Memorial in 2013. Now, he has the meat of the season in front of him. “I want to see how great this year can be,” Kuchar said. He finished at 22-under 258, the third-lowest total in Waialae history behind the PGA TOUR record of 253 by Justin Thomas in 2017 and Jimmy Walker’s 72-hole score of 257 when he won in 2015. Putnam, who won his first PGA TOUR title last summer at the Barracuda Championship, didn’t blink until that approach into the bunker that led to his lone bogey, and he couldn’t make enough putts to stay close to Kuchar the rest of the way. He closed with a 68 and moved into the top 50 in the world for the first time in his career. Corey Conners of Canada, who got into the field through a Monday qualifier, had a 64-64 weekend and was among four players who tied for third, though none had a serious chance of challenging what amounted to a two-player race at the top. Even so, the performance was big for Conner, who narrowly missed a full PGA TOUR card last year. Along with his runner-up finish in the Sanderson Farms Championship last fall, he has nearly as many FedExCup points as last year when he finished at No. 130. Marc Leishman (64), Hudson Swafford (64) and Chez Reavie (67) also finished in a tie for third. Davis Love III, who first played the Sony Open in 1986, missed by one shot matching the lowest 72-hole score of his career. His 64-65 weekend gave him a tie for seventh, and he now heads off to Singapore with hopes of earning a spot in The Open Championship. But this day ultimately belonged to Kuchar, who won for the ninth time in his career. He ended the 2018 season earlier than he wanted, failing to reach the TOUR Championship for the first time since 2009 and ending his streak of playing on eight straight teams in the Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup. He won again in Mexico in a Sunday much tighter than he would have preferred, and had a few nervous moments at the start at Waialae. He went long of the second green, leading to bogey. The other two were sloppy — a three-putt across the back of the fourth green, and a wedge into No. 5 that he was begging to get down as soon as it left his club. It hopped into the back bunker, and he missed an 8-foot par putt to lose the lead. From there, however, Kuchar had a birdie chance on the final 13 holes. Kuchar and Putnam were in a bunker short of the green on the par-5 ninth. Putnam went first and it rolled out to 2 inches for birdie. Kuchar came out weakly, but made the 10-foot birdie putt. They traded birdies on the 12th and 13th, and Kuchar took over from there. “It was so uncharacteristic of me,” Kuchar said, referring to his three-putt and bad wedge on No. 5. “But I kept plugging along, and I knew good things were going to happen. … To win two out of three is crazy to comprehend.”

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