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OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. – Max Homa has company as the course record holder at Olympia Fields Country Club.
Sam Burns matched Homa’s 62 of a day earlier, making four birdies on each side en route to a bogey-free round.
“I didn’t want to tie him, I wanted to beat him,” Burns said. “But I’ll take it.”
Burns had only made six birdies through his first 36 holes of the BMW Championship and shot 71-70 to trail by 11 and teed off early on Moving Day. At the midway point, he was projected to be one of two players to be bounced out of the top 30 and go from Atlanta bound to booking a one-way ticket home on Sunday. Before the round, he told caddie Travis Perkins and his team, “I just want to come out here and play a confident round of golf, whether that’s 72 or whatever it was today. I just want to go out there and play with confidence, play free, and see what happens.”
That strategy worked like a charm on Saturday as Burns made birdie on the first hole, went back-to-back at Nos. 4 and 5 and peeled off four more in a five-hole stretch starting at the ninth. His favorite of the bunch? Holing a sand shot at the par-3 13th from the front-right greenside bunker.
“It was pretty easy,” he said. “It was on the up slope. Had enough green, a little back into the wind. Just had to clip it, and I did.”
Burns’s rise up the leaderboard has him projected to be No. 18 in the FedEx Cup and on his way to the Tour Championship next week in Atlanta. But Burns said he isn’t too concerned about that.
“If I make it, great. If I don’t, I get to go home and be home an extra week,” he said. “Whatever happens, I know the Lord has already planned it out, and I can be good with whatever happens.”
But making the U.S. Ryder Cup team is another story.
“I want nothing more,” he said.