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Nate Lashley knew his life was about to change. He just didn’t know how much. “It was a little bit of a blur for me,” he said Tuesday. It played out in high-def for everybody watching at home, the unheralded Lashley’s surprising six-shot win at the inaugural Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club last year. He was the last man in the field, ranked 353rd in the world, and no one else stood a chance. “Probably the job security,” he said of the biggest way his life changed, “and then getting into any tournament I can play, make any schedule pretty much that you want outside of a couple majors and some World Golf Championships.” Seven weeks and eight events remain before the start of the FedExCup Playoffs, and some, like Rickie Fowler (108th in the current standings) and Jason Day (96) come to Detroit needing to make a move. In just over two months the TOUR Championship will crown the FedExCup champion over Labor Day weekend. Should they be worried? Nah. Lashley is Exhibit A for how fast everything can change in golf, but then so are six of the seven players who have been No. 1 in the FedExCup this season and will play in Detroit. They hail from Chile (Joaquin Niemann, the first No. 1 of this season, for one week) and Colombia (Sebastián Muñoz, the second, for three weeks); South Korea (Sungjae Im, two weeks) and America (Lanto Griffin, Brendon Todd and current leader Webb Simpson). Start with Simpson, who has five top-10 finishes – including two wins – in seven starts this season. Last season he posted three runner-up finishes but no victories on the way to finishing 16th in the FedExCup. This season he’s turning those close calls into wins. “Justin Rose is kind of my inspiration,” he said after winning the RBC Heritage two weeks ago. “He seems like he’s always there every week. He works hard at his craft, and I just thought, you know, I have good weeks. I make it to the TOUR Championship. I’ve won a few times. But I really have a desire to be in that top 10 or 15 guys in the world ranking all the time and have chances to win, not just twice a year, but as many times as I can.” Most of the others who held down FedExCup No. 1 before him this season have their own stories of transformation. In many cases, they are rags-to-riches stories. “I’m trying to convince my family and my agent to let me buy something nice,” Joaquin Niemann said after winning A Military Tribute at the Greenbrier last September. He had been languishing outside the top 150 as of May 2019, but now he was FedExCup No. 1. Muñoz is the only player who has been in the top 10 for all 23 weeks of the season. He took the top spot after winning the Sanderson Farms Championship. “I just kept smiling to myself, reminding me, Oh, yeah, (the Sentry Tournament of Champions in) Hawaii is around the corner,” Muñoz said. “Oh, yeah, Masters. Like, Oh, yeah, I got job security for a couple years. It’s just like smile, then smile again.” Griffin, who assumed FedExCup pole position after he won the Houston Open, also sounded like a kid at Christmas when asked later about how his life had changed. Of course, that was partly because it was Christmas – or at least the Sentry Tournament of Champions. “So we got Mom the car around Christmas,” he said at Kapalua. “I wanted it to be a surprise, so she came down to my sister’s house, we did Christmas there, and we had it out in the back of her house with a bow on it, so she was — she loved it. She’s texted me four or five times since then, ‘I still can’t believe I have a Subaru.’ So that’s cool.” Todd was the next No. 1, and maybe the least likely. Currently down to FedExCup No. 6, he’s still up 201 spots compared to his position through week 23 last season. And he was 2,043rd in the Official World Golf Ranking in 2018 before embarking on a total reclamation of his game. On Sunday, Todd contended for his third TOUR victory this season (Bermuda Championship, Mayakoba Golf Classic) at the Travelers Championship before a freak bad round (75, T11). The Honda Classic winner Im was FedExCup No. 1 for the three month break necessitated by the pandemic. “There is a little bit of added pressure being the FedExCup leader and coming back to competitive play,” he said at the Charles Schwab Challenge, where he finished T10. He’s dropped off since then, with a MC at the RBC Heritage and T58 at the Travelers, but would anyone be surprised if he turned it around at the Rocket Mortgage? Jordan Spieth (59th in 2013) was the lowest ranked player with seven weeks left in the regular season to finish in the FedExCup top 10 (he finished eighth). As he knows all too well, as do Todd, Lashley and many others at the Rocket Mortgage, in golf it can all change in a flash.
Nicklaus: Tiger faces ‘very hard’ return to golf
In the final round of the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama birdies the last three holes for a sizzling 61 and a dominant five-stroke victory over runner-up Zach Johnson. Meanwhile, Chris Stroud racks up 20 points in the final round to cop his first PGA TOUR win at the Stableford-scoring Barracuda Championship. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Matsuyama, 25, ties the course record at Firestone South for his third win this season; and Stroud, 35, collects his first TOUR win in 290 starts. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Matsuyama is on the way to becoming Japan’s first truly global star. Nine countries were represented in the top 12 on the Bridgestone leaderboard, but Matsuyama’s clubs spoke loudest and Japan was on top. After starting the day three shots back, he made eagle at the par-5 second hole and kept going from there, hitting the afterburners to assure his third win this season and fifth overall in the 100th TOUR start of his career. He extended his lead as the Japanese player with the most wins on TOUR, a record he already held over Shigeki Maruyama (three). 2. The FedExCup may require math, but Matsuyama knows all too well that it requires something else, too: at least one more trophy. “In order to win the FedExCup, you have to win one of the playoff tournaments,â€� said Matsuyama, who moved from third to first in the FedExCup points standings with the victory in Ohio. “And hopefully I can do that and keep the momentum going.â€� It would be tough to have any more momentum than he currently has; his 61 marked the best final-round performance by a winner in the history of the WGCs—by three shots. 3. Although there have now been 25 wins (in 39 events) by a player in his 20s on TOUR this season, Rory McIlroy, 28, has accounted for none of them. Still, McIlroy, who tied for fifth, did not sound terribly despondent after notching his sixth top-10 this season. “I thought I saw some improvements in my game from when I got here on Wednesday,â€� he said. “Thought my wedge play got a little bit better as the week went on. Putted pretty well, even when I missed putts out there, they were scaring the hole, so that was good. Drove the ball well.â€� Yeah, you could say that. McIlroy hit 52 of 56 tee shots over 300 yards and led the field in driving distance (343.9). The reigning FedExCup champion moved up 10 spots in the standings to 43rd; is playing one of his favorite courses in Quail Hollow at the PGA Championship this week; and knows there’s still plenty of time to find his A game as he breaks in a new caddie. 4. Chris Stroud’s father was right. Stroud got a call from Dad saying the Barracuda’s Stableford format—two points for birdies; minus one for bogeys—might reward him for all the birdies he’d been making. It did. Stroud, who returned to his counter-balanced long putter, racked up 20 points in a wild final round that included nine birdies, an eagle and three bogeys. He not only got that elusive first win after prevailing in a three-man playoff, he earned a spot in this week’s PGA and, more importantly, collected 300 FedExCup points to move up to 76th in the standings. “Huge,â€� Stroud said of his big move. “I think coming into this week I was sitting at 142. And we’re all nervous coming in, because we know getting the top 125 is huge.â€� 5. Rookie Richy Werenski, 25, was disappointed after failing to secure his TOUR card for next season. Still, he was encouraged to make it all the way into a sudden-death playoff despite not having his best stuff. What’s more, he moved to 122nd in the FedExCup, so at least he’s inside the cutoff line with just two weeks remaining before the first playoff event, THE NORTHERN TRUST at Glen Oaks Club in Old Westbury, N.Y., Aug. 24-27. “Lately I feel like I’m playing pretty good,â€� said Werenski, a Massachusetts native who went to Georgia Tech. “It’s only a matter of time I’m back in this position.â€� FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Matsuyama ranked first in strokes gained: tee-to-green in the final round, with a career-best 6.582. It was also the best final-round performance by a winner on TOUR this season, besting Kevin Chappell at the Valero Texas Open (6.355), Jason Dufner at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide (5.659), and Jon Rahm at the Farmers Insurance Open (5.168). 2. While he was dominant from tee to green, Matsuyama also made massive strides in his putting. Year to date, he is just 167th in Strokes Gained: Putting (-.306) and 194th in putts made from outside 10 feet (46/375, 12.27%). At the Bridgestone, though, he ranked a much-improved 15th in SG: Putting (.759) and T16 in putting from over 10 feet (9/42, 21.43%). 3. With his runner-up finish, Zach Johnson moved up from 40th to 28th on the U.S. Presidents Cup points list. That’s still a far cry from the top 10, but he’s got the putter rolling again. He was first in SG: Putting (2.258) and third in putting from outside 10 feet (13/46, 28.26 %) at Firestone. 4. Charley Hoffman (third place, six back), who fired a final-round 66 at Firestone, has broken par in 22 of his last 24 rounds dating to the first round of the U.S. Open. He was third in sg: putting (1.617) at the Bridgestone, and moved from 12th to 11th in the FedExCup. He is one of just three players to get at least as far as the BMW Championship for all 10 years of the playoffs. 5. Thomas Pieters (71, solo fourth, eight back) notched his fourth top-five finish in 16 starts this season. As a Special Temporary Member, he is eligible for unlimited sponsor exemptions the rest of the season as he tries to earn his TOUR card for 2017-’18. He was T3 in greens in regulation (72.22%) and fourth in proximity to the hole (26’ 11’’) at the Bridgestone. TOP 3 VIDEOS 1. Charley Hoffman is on TOUR to win and he let us know on Sunday. 2. David Hearn hit a gem of a tee shot in Sunday’s final round of the Barracuda Championship. 3. Poetry in motion.
