Win probabilities: THE NORTHERN TRUST

NAPA, Calif. — Justin Lower weathered the wind and birdied the 18th hole Saturday to take a one-shot lead into the final round of the season-opening Fortinet Championship. Lower shot a 3-under 69 to get to 13 under at Silverado Resort & Spa, with his fifth birdie of the round giving him his first career 54-hole lead in his 29th start on the PGA TOUR. He’s looking for his first TOUR victory. Defending champion Max Homa and Danny Willett were a shot back after even-par 72s. Byeong Hun An had a 71 to get to 11 under. While several players who went out early in the day posted low scores in good playing conditions, the course got much harder late in the day when the wind picked up to wreak havoc on the players. Willett took several minutes on the eighth green clearing off blowing leaves just before making a birdie putt that put him briefly in the lead at 13 under. Workers with leaf blowers came out on the next hole to keep the green clean but Willett made a double-bogey 7 after his approach shot flew past the green. There were few birdie chances available with players happy with pars late in the day. That led to a very condensed leaderboard with eight players within three shots of the lead headed into Sunday. An moved into a one-shot lead when he hit a solid tee shot on the par-3 15th came and then made a birdie from about 6 feet to get to 13 under. But he gave it back and more with a double bogey in the par-5 16th when his second shot got caught near the root of a tree. That opened the door for Lower, who put his second shot on the par-5 18th just off the green and then made the short birdie putt. It’s been quite a few weeks for Lower, who appeared to lose his TOUR card after three-putting the final hole of the Wyndham Championship for a bogey when he only needed a par to remain in he top 125. Lower found his way back into the top 125 and is taking advantage of it in the first tournament of the new season. Conditions aren’t expected to be much better in the final round, which has already been altered by an ominous forecast with rain and wind. The leaders will tee off several hours earlier than scheduled with the final round featuring threesomes off split tees. Davis Thompson and Harrison Endycott shot the low rounds of the day with 65s that left Harrison in a four-way tie for fifth place with Paul Haley II, Matt Kuchar and Adam Svensson. Endycott was a stroke behind in a four-way tie for ninth. Endycott the first player out on the course and played as a single in his first career tournament make the cut with a birdie on the the final hole of the second round. He overcame a broken driver early in that round and was happy to have all of his clubs available Saturday. “Definitely helps when you’ve got a driver in the bag after yesterday’s shenanigans with the cracked driver face,” he said. “This golf course is tough hitting 3-wood everywhere. So it was nice to get freed up, played some good golf today.” Haley, who had gone 3,315 days between appearances on the TOUR from the 2013 Wyndham Championship and the start of this tournament, was tied with Thompson in the group at 10 under after a 66.

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Separating Factor One way of measuring a player’s ability to assemble rounds that separate him or her from the competition is to look at the percentage of the time he gains a large amount of strokes against the field in one specific discipline. For example, players gain a full stroke or more over the field with their approach shots about 27% of the time overall. Collin Morikawa, however, does that 55% of the time. Morikawa is the PGA TOUR leader in Strokes Gained: Approach over the last two seasons, at 1.13 per round. Zalatoris has flashed the ability to separate himself from the field via his approach play over the last two seasons. He gains more than one stroke with his approach play in 41.7% of his rounds since the beginning of last season, the fifth-highest rate on TOUR in that span. Zalatoris has gained three or more strokes on the field with his approach play in 9.2% of his rounds – that is more than three times the TOUR average (3.0%) over the last 2 seasons. Long Iron Advantage The best players in the world are able to make marginal gains over the field in myriad ways. One of the key places where Zalatoris makes those gains is on long approach shots, where he is consistently better than the competition. Over the last two seasons, Zalatoris is ranked 11th on the PGA TOUR in average proximity on approach shots outside 200 yards. Will’s average of 46 feet, 7 inches from that range may not seem overwhelming on the surface, but consider this: that’s more than 6 feet better than the PGA TOUR average. From 175-200 yards away, he’s more than 2 feet better than the TOUR average over the last two seasons. Breaking it down to shots from 200-225 yards out, he’s 4 feet, 5 inches better than the average. These add up over the course of a tournament, especially at a place like Bay Hill Club & Lodge, a venue that has yielded more approaches from outside 200 yards than any other PGA TOUR venue over the last 5 seasons. Due for a Breakthrough? The PGA TOUR has seen a wave of first-time winners early in 2022. Four of the last five winners on TOUR have been first-timers, the first time we have seen that happen since the fall of 2017. This is the first calendar year in which there were four first-time winners before March 1st since all the way back in 2002. It’s not unprecedented for a first-time winner to emerge from the traditionally strong fields at Bay Hill, as both Matt Every (2014) and Tyrrell Hatton (2020) have claimed their maiden PGA TOUR titles at this tournament in recent years. With underlying metrics that predict big-time success, that breakthrough win could come this week for Zalatoris. Last April, casual sports fans were introduced in grand fashion to wiry Will Zalatoris. Zalatoris had all phases of his game clicking in his Masters debut: he ranked fourth in the field that week in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, second in greens in regulation (73.6%) and fifth in Strokes Gained: Putting. His solo runner-up finish was the best by a player in his Masters debut since Dan Pohl in 1982. But golf fans in the know had been attuned to Zalatoris’ ascent for some time. In each of his first five Korn Ferry Tour starts after the pandemic hiatus, Zalatoris finished T6 or better. In the extended 2020-21 Korn Ferry Tour season, Zalatoris ranked first in scoring average, ball striking and the all-around ranking. A T6 at the U.S. Open in the fall of 2020 further cemented Zalatoris’ status as a name on the rise. Zalatoris played his way off the Korn Ferry Tour months earlier than anticipated and propelled himself to the Arnold Palmer Award, given to the TOUR’s top rookie, in 2021. Just how good has Zalatoris been in his young pro career, and why has he exceled? Twenty First Group dove into the numbers. Elite Ball Striker There are 177 players with 50 or more rounds measured by PGA TOUR ShotLink since the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot began. Among that group, Zalatoris has generated some of the most impressive and consistent tee-to-green statistics. He ranks fourth in Strokes Gained: Approach, trailing only Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Paul Casey. He’s fifth in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, narrowly behind reigning FedExCup champion Patrick Cantlay in that statistic. He’s sixth in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking in that span, a statistic that isolates performance off the tee and on approach shots. When narrowing the focus to just this season, the numbers are even more impressive. Zalatoris leads the TOUR in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green (1.93) and Strokes Gained: Approach (1.22) per round. He’s currently ninth in greens in regulation (74.6%) and has more than doubled his amount of Strokes Gained: Around the Green per round so far this season compared to last. Improvement on the greens could elevate Zalatoris into superstardom: so far this season, he’s making below the TOUR average on putts from 4-8 feet, inside 10 feet and from 10-15 feet.

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