MAMARONECK, N.Y. (AP) — The Latest from the final round of the U.S. Open, golf’s second major of the year (all times EDT):
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KAPALUA, Hawaii — Jon Rahm began the bold new year on the PGA TOUR by coming from seven shots behind to win the Sentry Tournament of Champions on Sunday with plenty of help from Collin Morikawa. Rahm was six shots behind on the 13th hole at Kapalua when he ran off three straight birdies and a 12-foot eagle putt, and his final birdie gave him a 10-under 63. Morikawa had gone 67 holes without a bogey on the Plantation Course when it all fell apart with his wedges and his putter, the two areas that had carried him to a six-shot lead at the start of the day. From 25 yards short of the 14th green, he blasted out of a bunker and over the green. He muffed a wedge from a tight lie with the grain of grass into him on the par-5 15th. His wedge to the 16th didn’t go far enough and rolled some 60 feet back into the fairway. Morikawa looked to be in a state of shock as he walked down the 17th fairway, leading by as many as seven shots during the final round and suddenly finding himself two shots behind and running out of hope. He wound up tying a PGA TOUR record for losing the largest 54-hole lead at six shots. Seven other players have done that, most recently Dustin Johnson in the fall of 2017 at the HSBC Champions in Shanghai. Rahm finished at 27-under 265 to win by two shots over Morikawa, who birdied the 18th hole — his first birdie since No. 6 — to close with a 72. It was the second such collapse by Morikawa in a little more than a year. He closed out 2021 at the Hero World Challenge and had a five-shot lead with a chance to reach No. 1 in the world with a victory. He shot 76 and finished fifth. Masters champion Scottie Scheffler had a chance to return to No. 1 this week if he finished in a two-way tie for third or better. He had to settle for a 70 and tied for seventh. It was a small measure of redemption for Rahm, who last year finished at 33-under par at Kapalua which was a PGA TOUR record that lasted only a few seconds. Cameron Smith finished at 34 under to win by one. Rahm now is 60 under in his last two appearances at Kapalua. The victory was his ninth on the PGA TOUR and 17th worldwide, and assured he will be back on Maui to start 2024. Rahm now has won three times in his last six starts worldwide — he won in Spain and Dubai late last year — and he goes home with $4.2 million. Rahm won $2.7 million from the $15 million purse at Kapalua, the first of the elevated events on the PGA TOUR schedule. He also gets 25 percent of his Player Impact Program bonus money — he finished No. 5 in the PIP for $6 million. The Spaniard now has won in each of his seven full years on the PGA TOUR. Tom Hoge had a 64 and tied for third with Max Homa (66). Hoge headed for the airport to go to Los Angeles to watch his school, TCU, playing for the national championship against Georgia. Hoge then will go back to Hawaii for the Sony Open.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — First, there was the hole-in-one during the Par 3 Contest. It was the 12th of his young golfing life and certainly the biggest, considering it happened on the hallowed grounds of Augusta National. Certainly a great reason to celebrate. Then there was the jog down the tee box, the 180-degree turn to see his family, then the dislocated left ankle when he misstepped while backpedaling, followed by his instinctive reaction to reach down and pop the ankle back in place (“I saw where it was and I knew where it needed to be,” he explained). If you’ve seen the video, it probably made you cringe. If you haven’t seen it … well, it’s not for the faint-hearted. Then there was the pain and uncertainty, a restless night in bed with his foot iced and elevated. It was the eve of his first Masters start, but instead of green jacket dreams, he tossed and turned, worried simply about his playing status. Would he have to WD? Had he suffered any major damage? Then there was the 6 a.m. wake-up call, followed by the 7 a.m. MRI, then the 8 a.m. results. His doctor had good news: A couple of torn ligaments but nothing major. Cleared to play if he didn’t mind the pain. No worries — this was a guy who grew up fire-knife dancing, which his mother taught him as a nod to their Samoan heritage. A high ankle sprain wasn’t going to keep him from the first tee. With an early afternoon tee time, he arrived at the range well in advance, testing the heavily taped ankle against the powerful swings that makes him one of the PGA TOUR’s longest hitters. He couldn’t put full weight on his left foot on some shots, so he made some on-the fly adjustments. Yet could he hold up on a course that’s deceptively hilly? Eighteen holes later, he had his answer: A 4-under 68 and a share of second place in his Masters debut. Oh, and one last thing — a visit to Butler Cabin to tell his story on national TV. This was 24 hours in the life of Tony Finau. “Nothing short of a miracle,” he said. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised — beware of the wounded animal and all that. Finau acknowledged that worrying about his ankle alleviated any pressure he might have felt about making his Masters debut. It helped narrow his focus, despite all the gallery members who innocently kept the topic front and center by asking about his health and wishing him good luck. “Mind over matter,” Finau said. “I felt like I did a pretty good job of making the pressure because I had to worry about my foot. … I was able to stay in the moment.” We also shouldn’t be surprised because Finau, ranked eighth in the FedExCup standings and 34th in the world, is one of the TOUR’s bright young stars. His length off the tee and improving short game makes him a threat at any time. Consider the key element of Thursday’s six-birdie, two-bogey round: his putter. He led the 87-man field in strokes gained: putting, gaining 5.199 strokes on the field. In fact, he was 1.5 strokes better on the greens than Jordan Spieth, who shot a 66 to lead Finau and Matt Kuchar by two strokes. “Honestly, I’m not really surprised,” Finau said. “I like the golf course and my foot started to feel better the more I played. And you know, my story’s quite crazy and I’m sure most of you guys knows it by now. “I feel like my back’s been up against the wall my whole life, so something like this is just another part of the story, I guess. But to sit up here and say I’m surprised? Not really.” His backstory may be new for anybody who only watches the Masters, but for golf fans, it’s a familiar and heartwarming one. Growing up in humble surroundings in Utah, the first PGA TOUR player of Tongan and American Samoan descent. Four brothers and two sisters — and a desire to grow his own big family. He and his wife Alayna have four children. Hard worker. Good guy. PGA TOUR winner. One paragraph doesn’t do it justice. But perhaps the fire-knife dancing does help explain how Finau so successfully dealt with the pain Thursday. “I started doing fire-knife dancing when I was four,” he said. “If you catch it on the wrong side of the stick, you burn your hands. It’s kind of a hook and a knife on top of it. So you could also cut yourself — and I did a lot of that as a kid. … “I look at myself as a pretty mentally tough person, and I think I showed that today in my round — just able to put my head down and just play.” It helps that he’s also one of the most athletically gifted players on TOUR, perhaps on the same level as Dustin Johnson. Ironic that it was just a year ago that DJ also suffered a pre-tournament injury when he slipped on some stairs and injured his back, forcing him to withdraw. Finau was spared the same fate Thursday morning, but he did learn a lesson about how to celebrate — and more important, how not to celebrate. “A pretty embarrassing moment,” he said. “I feel like I’m a good athlete and to see myself kind of roll an ankle on an easy little backpedal wasn’t really athletic. “It’s kind of blown up on social media and I’ve seen the video replay over in my head millions of times overnight. It is what it is. Embarrassing moment but scary moment at the same time.” Finau said it will be the last time he celebrates in that manner. It’s doubtful, however, that this will be the last time he’s in contention at Augusta National. Just imagine what he can do on two good ankles.
When it was decided that THE PLAYERS Championship would be canceled after one round last year, it guaranteed that THE PLAYERS Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass wouldn't prevail for once. Indeed, Pete Dye's menacing track at the PGA TOUR's headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, cannot be defeated. Regardless of score, it is survived. Although professional golf is an individual sport, success at TPC Sawgrass must be measured solely in relation to the competition, for the pursuit for perfection is more futile here than anywhere else. As of Monday, an expanded gathering of 154 golfers is poised to demonstrate how Dye's design does not discriminate. For detail on the special construct of the field, what TPC Sawgrass has in store and more, scroll past the extended ranking of projected contenders. RELATED: The First Look | Inside the Field POWER RANKINGS: THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP Max Homa, Patrick Reed, Tyrrell Hatton, Patrick Cantlay and Joaquin Niemann will be among the notable reviewed in Tuesday's Fantasy Insider. The traditional build of 144 golfers for THE PLAYERS is heavier by 10 since it recently was decided by membership to include the top 125 in the 2019-20 FedExCup standings. It's an annual criterion for entry, but it had been replaced by a special points list that ran from the beginning of the 2019-20 season through the World Golf Championships-Workday Championship at The Concession and the Puerto Rico Open on Feb. 28. Both criteria have been used to grant access, but the 10 who qualified only via the top 125 in the 2019-20 FedExCup are considered add-ons, so if any withdraws, he will not be replaced. (They are listed under "Top 125 on the 2019-2020 FedExCup Points List in Inside the Field.) As the 2019 champion, Rory McIlroy is the most recent winner of the tournament. As such, he's next up to attempt to become the first to successfully defend at TPC Sawgrass. This is the 39th edition of THE PLAYERS on the course. While he's winless since the WGC-HSBC Champions 16 months ago, his form is sufficiently encouraging that he'll have a reasonable go at consecutive titles; that is, if you subscribe to conventional thinking. Consider that of the last 10 defending champions, 2018 winner Webb Simpson is the only to finish with as strong as a top 55. He placed T16 in 2019. That there hasn't been a golfer to go back-to-back at TPC Sawgrass helps legitimize the fairness of the test. It's a stock par 72 and all 7,189 yards have been overseeded. The primary rough is lush and trimmed to two-and-a-half inches, while the TifEagle bermuda greens should reach 13 feet on the Stimpmeter. In its return to March after a dozen years in May, it averaged 71.513 in 2019. McIlroy's pace of 16-under 272 was consistent with history. Because of the omnipresence of the risk-reward component, experience defines most champions of this tournament. McIlroy contributed to that narrative as having appeared nine times before capturing the title. Since Tiger Woods won for the second time in 2013 - he first won it in 2001, so he's the only winner in both March and May - Martin Kaymer, Rickie Fowler and Jason Day each needed exactly five trips before connecting. Si Woo Kim surprised in his second appearance in 2017, but Simpson had eight starts under his belt before his victory. Ball-striking is the other weapon that most winners possess. On cue, McIlroy ranked second in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, T3 in greens in regulation, 11th in proximity to the hole and first in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green en route to the title. He also led the field in par-3 scoring. In contradiction to so many editions of THE PLAYERS in March, outstanding weather is forecast all week. Passing clouds won't prevent daytime highs from climbing into the low 70s throughout. The primary challenge will be a persistent easterly breeze, but only gusts scare golfers of this field's caliber, most sincerely at the famous penultimate target. Fair conditions in general can influence an urgency to score, so the likelihood of taking risk rises, and that makes for a more compelling viewing experience. Speaking of which, Every Shot Live has returned for the TOUR's flagship event. As its name implies, every stroke by every golfer will be on camera and with visual enhancement such as tracing of tee balls. As a reminder, if a winner isn't determined in regulation, a three-hole playoff consisting of aggregate scores on holes 16, 17 and 18 will be used to settle the score. If still knotted after that, a traditional hole-by-hole playoff beginning at the 17th and alternating with the 18th will be used. Last and very much not least, the prize fund is a record $15 million of which $2.7 million is reserved for the champion. He also will receive 600 FedExCup points and a five-year membership exemption. ROB BOLTON'S SCHEDULE PGATOUR.COM's Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous angles. Look for his following contributions as scheduled. MONDAY: Power Rankings TUESDAY*: Sleepers, Fantasy Insider SUNDAY: Qualifiers, Reshuffle, Medical Extensions, Rookie Watch * – Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM's Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.
