Tiger Woods finishes strong but fails to gain ground on Saturday at Torrey Pines

ERIN, Wis. — Remember last year, when Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson played a round for the ages, trading birdies and spectacular shots until Stenson finally came away with the Open Championship title? The U.S. Open won’t be like that. First off, barring a long rain delay on Thursday, Mickelson will be absent, attending his daughter’s high school graduation in California. And though Erin Hills, at first glance, may look like the sort of British links course that Mickelson and Stenson tore up last summer, Stenson will be the first to tell you it most certainly isn’t. “Golf at the U.S. Open has always been a bit harder than at the Open or any of the other ones,” Stenson said. So true. In the closing round at Royal Troon, Mickelson and Stenson combined for 14 birdies, an eagle and 19 pars, and Stenson won by three shots with a closing score of 20-under par. A few weeks later, at the PGA Championship, Jimmy Walker made a key birdie on No. 17 to outlast Jason Day, who, playing one hole ahead, kept pressure on Walker by making eagle on 18. Walker shot 14 under to win by one. And at this year’s first major, the Masters, Sergio Garcia beat Justin Rose in a playoff to close out a riveting day of golf. Garcia and Rose tied at 9 under in regulation. The last two U.S. Opens, meanwhile, have been most notable for Dustin Johnson’s three-putt on the 18th green at a baked-out Chambers Bay, then Johnson’s three-shot win last year at Oakmont despite a scoring/rules dust-up that left him playing the final seven holes without knowing the exact size of his lead. Over the last five years, the average winning score of the other three majors has been 12.2 shots below par. At the U.S. Open over the same period: 3.1 under. “The U.S. Open, you normally play on golf courses that are tricked up just to the limits, sometimes over the limits and sometimes just underneath,” Stenson said. Much has been made about the creation of Erin Hills, built on a 650-acre tract of Wisconsin farmland that was, according to USGA executive director Mike Davis, simply screaming to have a golf course built on it. It was developed specifically with the idea of hosting a U.S. Open. It’s huge, the longest U.S. Open course ever, at more than 7,741 yards (with room to make it even longer). Some fairways are almost wide enough to land a Boeing 767 airliner. “You could fit 2 fairways at Winged Foot into the No. 10 fairway here,” Davis said. But when the USGA gives, it almost always finds other places to take away. Already this week, some players were complaining about the depth and stickiness of the rough . That tall, hay-like grass lingering just outside those massive fairways? It’s fescue, but not all of it is the typically wispy stuff you see on the edges of Open Championship courses. The mist floating into the vegetation from the irrigation systems at Erin Hills has made some of it healthier than expected. Meanwhile, author Ron Whitten, who helped design the course, said among his proudest achievements are the bunkers, most of which don’t have flat lies and aren’t nearly as well-manicured or maintained as what these players face on a weekly basis. There are 138 of them covering what will be the first par-72 test at a U.S. Open since Pebble Beach in 1992. “I’m surprised more players aren’t complaining about the bunkers,” Whitten said. The USGA will look at the forecast and try to set up holes to dampen, not exacerbate, the effect of wind that can blow as hard as 30 mph. Davis said it blew that hard last Saturday, and conditions were so extreme that play likely would’ve been suspended had the tournament been going on because balls on the greens wouldn’t stay still. “We try to make the course exacting,” Davis said. “If it’s too exacting, we’ll be back here in the media center” to explain why. It wouldn’t be the U.S. Open without some chance of that happening. It’s why Stenson is easing into a week at this monster of a major course, where it’s expected to be humid with temperatures in the 80s most of the week. His hay fever is bugging him, too. He played 18 on Monday and will go only nine holes Tuesday and Wednesday. The key to the week for him, and anyone in the 156-player field: “Patience and pars.” “It’s certainly a tiring week,” Stenson said. “But it’s all worth it if you stand there with the trophy on Sunday.”

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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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TORONTO — Wyndham Clark closed with an unlikely par save Friday to take a one-stroke lead over defending champion Rory McIlroy and four other players into the weekend in the RBC Canadian Open. After bogeying Nos. 15 and 16 in windy conditions at St. George’s, Clark got up-and-down from about 50 feet from a semi-plugged lie on the downslope in a greenside bunker on the par-4 18th. He was 7 under after an even-par 70. “Really had no chance,” Clark said. “And I would love to say I was trying to do what I did, but I was trying to punt a little bit out to the right and somehow how when I came into the ball it like plopped up to the left and landed in the rough and trickled down to 4 feet. It was definitely the best save I’ve had of the year. It was pretty awesome.” McIlroy (68) was tied with Matt Fitzpatrick (70), Alex Smalley (67), Keith Mitchell (67) and Jim Knous (67). McIlroy had to wait three years to defend his 2019 title because of the COVID-19 pandemic that canceled golf’s fourth-oldest championship the last two years. “Challenging,” McIlroy said. “I think the only thing this golf course needs for it to feel a little more major like is just a bit of length. I think that’s the only thing that’s missing. The rough is very penal, the greens are tricky, the wind’s up, it’s drying out a little bit because of the wind. All of a sudden you’ve got a pretty testing golf course.” Fitzpatrick closed double bogey-birdie-bogey-bogey-bogey. “Just a poor finish,” Fitzpatrick said.” Just didn’t hole the putts I needed to on the last three. Just pathetic. Yeah, just pathetic finish really with the putter.” Clark birdied the par-14th to reach 9 under, then bogeyed the next two. On the par-5 15, he drove into the right fairway bunker and saved bogey with a 10-footer. On the par-3 16th, he missed a 7 1/2-foot par try after hitting short and right into a bunker. “Honestly, I played really well,” Clark said. “It was tough out there. It was windy, there was some tough pin placements. You guys have seen, these greens are very tough and you get into some tough spots where you have to be defensive even from 10, 15 feet.” Clark opened with a 63 on Thursday after rallying Monday in a 36-hole U.S. Open qualifier to get into the field next week at The Country Club outside Boston. Masters champion Scottie Scheffler was 4 under after a 67. Aaron Cockerill and Nick Taylor were the top Canadians, tied for 21st at 2 under. Cockerill, making his PGA TOUR debut, shot a 68. Taylor had a 70. “First PGA TOUR event and I’m in a decent position going into the weekend,” Cockerill said. “Kind of where I want to be and see if we can throw a low one on the board tomorrow and see what happens.” PGA Championship winner Justin Thomas also was 2 under after his second 69.

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