Three teams enter Sunday with share of lead at QBE Shootout

PARAMUS, N.J. — Bryson DeChambeau completed the first stage of his mission by winning THE NORTHERN TRUST. The next one is up to Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk. Staked to a four-shot lead, DeChambeau never let anyone closer than two shots, ended the threat with consecutive birdies and closed with a 2-under 69 for a four-shot victory over Tony Finau on Sunday in the FedExCup Playoffs opener. DeChambeau won for the second time this year, both times against some of the strongest fields. He moved to the top of the FedExCup standings and was all but assured of being one of the top five seeds at the TOUR Championship who have a clear shot at the $10 million bonus. Also on his mind is playing for no money at all at the Ryder Cup. DeChambeau narrowly missed earning one of the eight automatic spots for the U.S. team when he missed the cut at the PGA Championship. Furyk makes three of his four captain’s picks a week from Tuesday, and it will be tough to ignore a 24-year-old Californian with victories at the Memorial and a FedExCup Playoff event. He moves to No. 12 in the world. “To be able to hold the lead and keep the lead for the whole time … was great,” DeChambeau said. “If I can keep playing the way I am, I think I can do great things.” He didn’t need to be great at Ridgewood Country Club. DeChambeau, who stayed on the practice range until it was dark Saturday night, came out firing with two straight birdies to stretch the lead to six shots. His only mistakes were a pair of three-putt bogeys on the front nine, the second one at No. 9 that reduced his lead to two shots over Aaron Wise. But not for long. Wise’s threat ended with a bogey on No. 16, about the time DeChambeau got up-and-down from just short of the reachable par-4 12th for birdie. No one got any closer the rest of the way. Finau also made a strong statement about a captain’s pick. Furyk invited Finau to join a small group of Americans who played Le Golf Nacional the weekend before The Open Championship. He was playing with Furyk at the PGA Championship when Finau tied a tournament record with 10 birdies in the second round. And while he stared five shots back on a course where the greens were as firm as they have been all week, Finau closed with a 68 to finish alone in second. Finau cracked the top 20 in the world for the first time in his career. “If I’m in the conversation, this doesn’t hurt my chances, I don’t believe,” Finau said. “I had a solid week all around. My game feels good and I feel confident. Whatever his decision is, I’ll be ready to play.” Billy Horschel (68) and Cameron Smith (69) tied for third. Ryan Palmer also felt like a winner. He came into the FedExCup Playoffs at No. 100 — the top 100 advance to the second stage next week at the TPC Boston — and Palmer delivered a 65 on Sunday highlighted by a wedge he holed for eagle on the par-5 third hole. He tied for fifth, along with Wise (67) and Adam Scott (69), and moved all the way to No. 50, all but assuring a spot in the third playoff event outside Philadelphia. Dustin Johnson’s only consolation was four birdies over the final four holes for a 68 that enabled him to stay No. 1 in the world over U.S. Open and PGA champion Brooks Koepka by a narrow margin. Tiger Woods, coming off a runner-up finish at the PGA Championship, never got anything going. He closed with a 70 and tied for 40th, 14 shots out of the lead. “I’m sure you guys are used to seeing me win five times a year or more,” Woods said. “It’s not that easy to win out here. What you’re seeing is that I’m close, and just one shot here, one shot there per day, flips momentum.” Nick Watney was among six players who moved from outside the top 100 to advance to the Dell Technologies Championship, which starts Friday. The others were Scott Stallings, Jhonattan Vegas, Bronson Burgoon, Brian Stuard and Danny Lee. DeChambeau now has three victories in the 13 months, and he has spent plenty of practice rounds with Woods. “He’s very fiery,” Woods said. “We all know he’s extremely intelligent, but his heart, he gives it everything he has and is always trying to get better. He’s a tough kid. He’s been through a lot in his life, and he’s worked hard to get to where he’s at.”

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Already named one of captain Jim Furyk’s vice captains for the Ryder Cup, Tiger Woods is hoping to add duties inside the ropes.

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St. George’s Golf and Country Club has long been known as one of Canada’s finest golf courses. It comes as no surprise the RBC Canadian Open will return to the club after it hosted the country’s national championship in 2010 – and after a couple of delays, the return is finally happening. The COVID-19 pandemic stopped the PGA TOUR from being played at St. George’s in 2020 and 2021, but the PGA TOUR is now set to make its return to Canada at the Stanley Thompson gem, which first opened in 1929. St. George’s is going to play very different than it did in 2010 after a handful of changes and capital improvements in recent years, but it is no less spectacular. “I’ll keep it simple for you,” said Ian Andrew, a noted Canadian architect who has worked with the team at St. George’s since 2013. “I think it’s the best course in Canada.” 1. NEW GREENS, NEW BUNKERS The club contacted Andrew in 2013 as it had planned to rebuild its greens “in the future.” However, Mother Nature had other plans. Toronto suffered through a terrible storm that winter and the club lost most of the turf on its greens. Thankfully the club was prepared. It had already begun its planning effort for the inevitable putting-surface work, but things were just accelerated. Each of the greens – which are now bentgrass – were redesigned in 2014 to reflect the original 1929 designs from Thompson. They reopened in 2015. Each bunker was also redone a few years later, along with some aspects of the third and 18th holes. Fairways on Nos. 5 and 9 were also rebuilt. Mark Teskey, a longtime member and RBC Canadian Open tournament chair, said the real advantage pivoting to bentgrass was that it would survive poor conditions a lot better. “If you’re looking just at the Canadian Open, they’ll come out of the winter much better, so there will be fabulous playing conditions for early June,” he explained. The bunkers were all redone using the Better Billy Bunker Method, a way of construction with a layer of gravel underneath the sand – so rainwater goes right through the sand to the drainage system. “You could argue that was in preparation for the Canadian Open,” said Andrew, “but even if there were no Canadian Open, the members would have done that anyway.” Andrew also “tinkered with” a few specific areas – the front-left bunker on the par-4 14th, a left-side bunker on the par-3 13th, a few of the bunkers on the par-5 11th, and each of the bunkers on the iconic par-3 third. 2. A RETURN TO TORONTO This will be the sixth time St. George’s has hosted the RBC Canadian Open, with the first coming in 1933. Thompson had worked with the Canadian Pacific Railway on two of its other hotel-adjacent courses in Western Canada and, being from Toronto, he was the architect of choice for St. George’s – which was to be associated with the Royal York hotel in downtown Toronto. “It is one of those show places which is hard to describe, but one which everybody who visits Toronto should see,” wrote B.L. Anderson, chief executive officer of the then-Royal Canadian Golf Association, in 1929. Joe Kirkwood of Australia won the inaugural Canadian Open contested at the course, while Dutch Harrison (1949), Art Wall (1960), Bob Charles (1968) and Carl Pettersson (2010) would go on to become champions at St. George’s. The near 40-year gap between Canadian Opens at the course can be attributed to Oakville’s Glen Abbey Golf Club opening in the late 1970s. Jack Nicklaus’ first solo design became the de facto home of the Canadian Open and hosted the TOUR 30 times. Hamilton Golf and Country Club (about an hour from downtown Toronto), Royal Montreal (in Montreal), and Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club (Vancouver) have also played host in recent years. Oakdale Golf and Country Club, about seven miles from St. George’s, will host its first Canadian Open next year (and in 2026). The event is back at Hamilton in 2024. “We all, through this COVID-19 pandemic, dreamt of days where normalcy came back and these guys would play St. George’s,” said Teskey. “Hopefully there’s an overall pride that everyone stuck with it … we’re ready to bring the world here.” St. George’s has also hosted the CP Women’s Open on the LPGA Tour five times, most recently in 1984 (won by Juli Inkster), and the 1963 Ontario Open won by Moe Norman in a duel with eight-time PGA TOUR winner George Knudson. 3. PREPARING FOR THE U.S. OPEN With the Canadian Open now sitting the week prior to the U.S. Open, expect some of the conditioning to reflect The Country Club at Brookline. The greens will run to about 12.5 on the Stimpmeter and the newly constructed putting surfaces now have five areas for hole locations. The green speeds in 2010 were a little slower, admitted Teskey, because the greens had too much slope before the changes. Things will be much faster this time around, and the rough is set to be thick and penal. “St. George’s is a tight property (but) the fairways are wide for a national event like this,” said Ian McQueen, the club’s superintendent. “To protect the golf course, the rough needs to be thicker than a standard TOUR event.” 4. SWEET 6-0 The last time the Canadian Open was contested at St. George’s, the course record, which had stood for decades, was broken by eventual winner Pettersson. He shot a third-round 60 after making the cut on the number and narrowly missed a putt for 59 on his final hole. Could another low round be recorded in 2022? Perhaps. Rory McIlroy fired a tidy 61 in his final round at Hamilton in 2019 and was threatening 59 all day. McQueen, whose turf team will double in size from 43 to 90 workers during tournament week, said St. George’s is a second-shot golf course. “Off the tee it’s pretty forgiving, but the greens are dynamic and small and surrounded by bunkers and thick rough,” he explained. “A good long game is going to do well here.” In a 1932 article in Canadian Magazine, Golf and Sports Illustrated writer Baxter Dobell said Thompson “took full advantage of the natural contours and wooded valleys to make every hole of exceptional golfing character.” Despite the course approaching 100 years old, the no-flat-lies challenge will continue for 2022 – if not become accentuated. “There are, architecturally, no half-measures to (St. George’s). It’s really strong, and it’s strong throughout,” said Andrew. “I thought Thompson made tremendous use of the land. You play up valleys, you play across valleys, you play diagonally along valleys. The valleys keep coming into play. “You’ve got some tremendous holes by embracing some unusual spots on the property.” 5. AN ALTERNATE PRACTICE AREA It’s not unusual for TOUR pros to be shuttled from the driving range to their first tee (it happens each year at Pebble Beach, for example), but using the practice facility at a different golf course altogether is a different story. While St. George’s will be the host golf course, the tournament practice area will be at nearby Islington Golf Club – just down the street. Players will tee off on Nos. 1 and 9 (versus 10) at St. George’s due to efficiencies with the drop-off of the seven-minute shuttle ride. The first and second holes at Islington will be used as the driving range during tournament week, while the seventh hole and second green will make up the short-game area. En-Joie Golf Club (host of the DICK’S Sporting Goods Open on PGA TOUR Champions) is the only other TOUR-sanctioned course where an off-site range is used. “We’ve got a great relationship, and I know we’re really happy to partner with them for this event,” said Phil Kavanaugh, head golf professional at Islington.

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