This wasn’t the first time Rory McIlroy has tossed a club.
We’ve all wanted to chuck a club after hitting a lousy shot, and many people have given in to temptation and heaved one down the fairway. It feels good, even if you know you shouldn’t have done it as you walk to wherever the club landed and retrieve it.
Rory McIlroy has tossed a couple in his career, including his 3-wood after hitting his tee shot on the ninth hole at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, New Jersey, during a Monday finish at the Northern Trust. After hitting his tee shot with the TaylorMade SIM2 Max 213 yards, a shot that failed to reach the fairway and left McIlroy still 269 yards to the hole, Rory flung the club into the trees on the right side of the teeing ground.
Typically, there would be fans, volunteers and scores of other people nearby to grab the club, but after the remains of Hurricane Henri soaked Liberty National on Sunday and forced a Monday finish, only a handful of people would have been around McIlroy as the club got chucked.
So, for five days, the club’s whereabouts remained a mystery until, as Alan Bastable reports for Golf.com, it was discovered early last Sunday morning by Michael Bongiovanni, a grounds-crew member at Liberty National.
Several people searched the area around the ninth tee in the days after the tournament, looking for the club. According to the club’s general manager, Lee Smith, it was discovered in an area where people had been searching, but the club was likely blown down to a more visible spot from a higher branch in the trees by a storm on Saturday evening.
Smith and his fellow Liberty National staffers are working on finding a spot where the 15-degree SIM2 Max fitted with a Mitsubishi Tensei CK 80 TX shaft and a Golf Pride New Decade Multicompound grip can be displayed.
“We’re going to do everything we can to keep it out of a case while also securing it,” Smith said. “We’d like people to be able to touch and feel it, because it really has taken on a life of its own.”
UK-based musician Sam Harrop cleverly parodies PGA Tour life, but Tony Finau’s victory at Northern Trust forces a rewrite at the piano.
Tony Finau flipped the script at the PGA Tour’s Northern Trust on Monday, beating Cameron Smith in a playoff to end a victory drought that had lasted 1,975 days since his first win at the 2016 Puerto Rico Open. In that span, Finau had 40 top-10 finishes on Tour, causing himself and his fans to ponder when he might win again.
One of those golf fans was UK-based musician Sam Harrop, who previously had reworked the lyrics to REO Speedwagon’s “I Can’t Fight this Feeling” into “When Will Tony Finau Win Again.”
If you don’t follow Harrop on social media and YouTube, you should. Sitting at a piano, Harrop has parodied a handful of famous songs to reflect life on Tour. Bryson DeChambeau versus Brooks Koepka? Got that one. Bryson versus science? Covered that too. Harrop’s new lyrics are typically spot on and sometimes biting.
Such was the case when he asked if Finau would win again. And now that Finau has ended the winless streak, Harrop made good on Finau’s request to rewrite his lyrics whenever that second victory did come along. Check it out.
I couldn't be happier for @tonyfinaugolf getting the win. I knew it was only a matter of time, and there will be many more!
Tony asked for a remix of *that* song when he did win again, so who am I to deny such a request?
“It could have been a lot worse than it’s been; I can tell you that.”
OWINGS MILLS, Md. – From becoming a father for the first time to being the first from his homeland of Spain to win the U.S. Open, from overcoming two bouts with COVID-19 to getting through Hurricane Henri, this year has been anything but ordinary for Jon Rahm.
“I’m not going to lie; I’m looking for just a normal tournament week at this point,” Rahm said Tuesday ahead of his preparations for the BMW Championship at Caves Valley Golf Club. “Just one week where it’s just uneventful. Golf aside, uneventful. We don’t have hurricanes, COVID or anything related like that.”
It’s not that Rahm, 26, wants someone to start playing violins in sympathy. The world No. 1 is forever grateful for the riches in his life and in his bank account that have piled up, and he knows the world has and continues to suffer from an infectious disease that took hold in 2020.
But the first eight months of 2021 would have taken down lesser men. Good thing Rahm is built like a brickhouse with a mentality to match.
“Luckily I can say there’s a lot more positives than negatives,” he said. “There were some moments that could have taken me down that, if anything, lifted me up and pushed me towards greater things.
“You know, the overall condition that the world is in with COVID, I can be very glad that nobody in my direct family has had any problems and that hasn’t been a stress, when I know a lot of people have been suffering. And even in my case, right, when I got it, nobody around me got it and everybody is healthy.
“It could have been a lot worse than it’s been; I can tell you that.”
For instance, Rahm, after being told he had COVID just after putting the finishing touches to his third round in the Memorial where he held the 54-hole lead by six shots, might not have recovered in time to win the U.S. Open 15 days later.
And he could have wallowed in sorrow for weeks after another positive COVID test knocked him out of the Tokyo Summer Games a month later.
But considering his year, he’s on the rebound again this week at Caves Valley. His latest drama-filled week ended Monday when he squandered a two-shot lead with four to play in the Northern Trust at Liberty National Golf Club in storm ravaged New Jersey. Hurricane Henri postponed the final round to Monday and Rahm looked well on his way to victory before bogeys on the 15th and the 18th, coupled by his inability to birdie the drivable 16th, dropped him to third place, a shot out of the playoff between eventual winner Tony Finau and Cameron Smith.
Finau also overtook Rahm for the points lead in the FedEx Cup.
Rahm said Monday he didn’t have much time to digest what happened after he finished playing, especially after seeing his son, Kepa. But he’ll get around to it. Looking at the overall picture, Rahm is in a good place. A great place. And one of his goals this week is to defend a PGA Tour title for the first time.
This will his fourth attempt to successfully defend. Following his maiden PGA Tour victory in the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open, he finished in a tie for 29th in 2018. After winning the 2018 CareerBuilder Challenge, he was sixth in 2019. And then there was the Memorial this year, where he was six clear with 18 to play after winning Jack Nicklaus’ annual bash in 2020.
Last year at Olympia Fields south of Chicago, he curled in a 66-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole to defeat Dustin Johnson in the BMW Championship.
Thus, he’s motivated and knows he’s playing well.
“I’m confident,” he said. “To be fair, I’m still a little thinking about what I could have done better already yesterday, right; it’s still very fresh. Just think about and analyze what I did, what my thought process was in each moment and what I could have done better and what I did really well.
“I feel like I played better than my score was showing, and at the end just a couple of bad swings really cost me. There’s a lot more positives to take out of it than negatives to be fair. There’s a lot of good things I did last week, and hopefully I can keep those going on, and again, what is life if not a process of learning from one’s mistakes.”
First and second place each earned more than $1 million at Liberty National.
It pays to play well on the PGA Tour, folks. Just ask this week’s winner, Tony Finau, who earned his second win Sunday, claiming the 2021 Northern Trust at Liberty National in Jersey City, New Jersey.
It’s Finau’s first win in more than five years. He shot 67-64-68-65-264 to finish regulation at 20 under, tied with Cameron Smith.
Finau then won on the first playoff hole with a par after Smith went out-of-bounds with his tee shot. Finau will take home $1,710,000, while Smith earned $1,035,500 for his runnerup finish. Jon Rahm, who led or co-led after the first three rounds, finished solo third, good for $655,500.
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Tony Finau ended a five-year winless streak on the PGA Tour, winning the 2021 Northern Trust in a playoff.
The Northern Trust was pushed to a Monday finish. So why not have a playoff to extend the action further?
Tony Finau and Cameron Smith each finished 72 holes at 20 under to extend the first leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs beyond regulation and into the dinner hour at Liberty National in Jersey City, New Jersey.
But on the first playoff hole, after Finau teed of first, Smith hit out-of-bounds right, effectively ending the extra golf before everyone could walk off the tee box. Finau then hit a 5-iron onto the green, high-fived his caddie and cruised on in from there.
He started the week with but one PGA Tour victory. It came more than five years ago in the 2016 Puerto Rico Open. He has gone a overly discussed 1,975 days and 143 starts since then, amassing 11 top-3 finishes along the way.
But that streak is over. Finau is now 2-3 in playoffs and he vaults to the No. 1 spot in the FedEx Cup standings.
On Saturday afternoon, the PGA Tour moved the final round back to Monday. By 7 p.m. ET that night, nine inches of rain fell on Liberty National. On Monday, the tee times were pushed back three times before finally starting at 11:30 a.m. ET. The final round was contested without any fans on site.
That’s how much rainfall drenched Liberty National, site of the Northern Trust, since 7 p.m. ET on Saturday.
“Bad news is we had three times the amount of flood precipitation that was forecasted but the good news is we didn’t have the wind,” said PGA Tour rules official John Mutch. “So we didn’t have the damage on the structures or trees or anything like that.”
All that rain has left the grounds crew with plenty of work to do to prep the course. Tee times, originally scheduled to begin at 7:30 ET, have been pushed back four hours.
“Now we are just pushing water. The bunkers have all been repaired. The maintenance staff has done an incredible job. They have worked through the night as has all the ops team and everyone else,” said Mutch. “So we plan to start at 11:30 today. It’s going to continue to dry. Fairways are remarkably good for nine inches of rain but obviously it is wet.”
As a result, the final round of the first leg of the FedEx Cup will be played under preferred lies.
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“These fairways are all sand capped so that’s helped us a lot. This golf course is built on sand. It’s a links style course, right on the Hudson, so it does drain well,” Mutch said. “Also what hurt us a little bit is we had high tide this morning and a full moon last night. So it all kind of works together.”
Mutch also confirmed that the course can’t take on any more water.
“We have definitely reached field capacity. But as the tide goes out, so will the ponds drain, and right now the forecast is pretty good for next four to six hours. We have some chance of something hitting us tonight, some embedded cells. I’m being optimistic and hoping that that doesn’t happen,” he said. “If it does happen, the meteorologist thinks we can get up to an inch. But after that from that point on, we don’t have any predicted rain.”
Another band of storms could roll through beginning around 3 p.m., but by 7 o’clock the Tour’s meteorologist predicts the storm will have headed east of the course. Regardless of the fact, the plan is to play on until 72 holes is completed, even if that means returning to finish on Tuesday, per a modification in the tournament rules that was rubber-stamped by PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan.
“Yesterday evening we had a call, and because of the importance of the FedExCup and how these tournaments are linked to each other, one to the next and then to the next and finally to East Lake, it’s paramount in his view, and our view, that we play 72 holes. And that we do everything in our power to get 72 holes in,” Mutch said. “Like I said, we have a good forecast for Tuesday, and if we don’t get hit by anything tonight, we’ll have it done tonight.”
The Tour hopes to finish the Northern Trust on Monday, and has a plan if weather intervenes.
JERSEY CITY, N.J. – The PGA Tour isn’t far from the bright lights of Broadway this week, and so as the saying goes, the show must go on.
The final round of the Northern Trust at Liberty National Golf Club was postponed until Monday due to Henri, which flipped back and forth from Tropical Storm to category 1 Hurricane status before making landfall on Sunday near Rhode Island and bringing heavy rain and 40-mile-an-hour winds as it weakened.
Central Park in Manhattan was doused with record rainfall and many New Jersey residents are without power, but the Tour officials hope to complete play on Monday despite a forecast that calls for another “drenching rain.”
Tee times were released late Sunday afternoon with players being sent off both nines in threesomes. The first tee time of the day is set for 7:30 a.m. ET, though veteran Tour pro Lee Westwood isn’t so sure that will be doable.
We’re supposed to be starting at 7.30 tomorrow morning. I’ll be shocked if that happens! @TheNTGolf@PGATOUR BTW… that’s the Hudson River not the 18th fairway! 💦💦💦 pic.twitter.com/xj8MwCAtva
PGA Tour rules official John Mutch expressed a more sunny outlook despite the flash flood warnings in the area.
“Really good for 5 inches of rain,” Mutch told ESPN of Liberty National, which was built on a landfill and has a SubAir system beneath the greens. “They were working on the bunkers when I was there. There’s not a whole lot of standing water. I was pleased. I’ve seen a lot worse.”
When the third round ended, Smith had caught Rahm at 16-under 197 with a course-record 60. South Africa’s van Rooyen shot 62 to trail by one stroke in third. He’s one of five players projected to move into the top 70 of the FedEx Cup point standings and advance to the BMW Championship, which begins Thursday in Baltimore. Should he fail to be on the right side of the cutline, he’s slated to head to Switzerland for the Omega European Masters.
The forecast is dicey, with continued rain through Sunday night and into Monday. If less than half the field tees off for the final round, the tournament could be shortened to 54 holes and a sudden-death playoff between Rahm and Smith, who both missed birdie putts at 18, would determine a victor. That scenario has happened in the past such as when Tiger Woods won the 1997 Tournament of Champions and Phil Mickelson edged Gary Nicklaus at the 2005 BellSouth Classic.
It slipped by without much fanfare – other than a few tweets – but Harry Higgs set a PGA Tour single-round record on Thursday.
JERSEY CITY, N.J. – On this rare day of rest on the PGA Tour, let’s take a moment to revisit a record that was set during Thursday’s first round of the Northern Trust at Liberty National.
It slipped by without much fanfare – other than a few tweets – but since the tournament’s final round was postponed until Monday, let’s reflect on the Strokes Gain: Around the Green record set by the one, the only Harry Higgs.
It was Paul Tesori, caddie for Webb Simpson, who brought attention to Higgs’ heroics from off the green. He tweeted to stats guru Justin Ray asking if gaining 5.92 strokes on the field Around the Green was a record and Ray responded in the affirmative.
So, what got into Harry on Thursday? “I don’t know but I’m going to try to figure it out so he can do it more often,” his brother Alex said.
Adam Scott played in the same threesome with Higgs and a day later still marveled at the black magic act he had witnessed. “He had one of those days where they all go in,” Scott said. “The world is revolving perfectly for you when things like that happen.”
Indeed, they were. Higgs holed three putts from off the green and chipped in for par on another occasion. The fun started happening for Higgs at the 13th, his fourth hole of the day, after he missed the par-5 with his second shot. Using a putter from 50 feet, he holed out for eagle.
“The first one that he putted in from way off the green hit Wyndham’s (Clark’s) coin like 30 feet from the hole, hopped up and still went in,” said Scott.
Of having Clark’s coin on his line, Higgs said, “It was in a perfect spot. Figured I didn’t need him to move it since I was off the green.”
From there, Higgs made run-of-the mills birdies at Nos. 16 and 6 that was offset by a string of three bogeys beginning at 17.
After hitting his tee shot in the water at the fifth, Higgs chipped in with his 60-degree wedge to save par from 34 feet left of the green. Then his TaylorMade Spider putter, which he’s used since playing the 2018 Korn Ferry Tour, took over. First, he made a bomb at the seventh for birdie.
“To call a 79-footer easy is a little aggressive but it broke right and went back to the left and so if you hit it the right speed it’ll just auto correct,” he said.
It may go down as an obscure record but Higgs wiped Patrick Reed’s name from the ShotLink record books (+5.84 in the third round of the 2017 U.S. Open) and etched his own in its place in memorable fashion. Higgs came up 80 feet short of the green at the ninth, his last hole of the day, with his approach to the par 4. No problem: by this point, Higgs was feeling it.
“If that’s as close as you’re going to get to the hole, you might as well try to hole them,” he said.
And so he drained another bomb.
“That was a bonus,” he said of his uphill, walk-off putt to close out a wild way to 2-shoot 2-under 69. “I told myself I have to think like I’m going to hit it off the green to get it all the way there.”
Here’s the thing: Scott said it’s “scary” to think what his strokes gained would’ve been if Higgs hadn’t half-chunked a chip at 17 and failed to chip on to the green from the tall stuff on 18.
“It should’ve, could’ve been even better,” Higgs conceded. “But that’s the story of this lovely game we play.”
Jon Rahm decided not to leave anything out there at Liberty National and now shares the 54-hole lead with Cameron Smith.
JERSEY CITY, N.J. – Jon Rahm treated the third round of the Northern Trust as if it were Sunday. Only this time he couldn’t birdie the last two holes in dramatic fashion as he did in winning the U.S. Open in June.
“My plan was to birdie 17 and 18 and take the lead just in case we didn’t play any more golf. It wouldn’t be the first time at this tournament,” he said, referring to 2011 when a Hurricane forced tournament officials to call the FedEx Cup playoff event after 54 holes.
Rahm took care of the first half of his plan, making a short birdie at 17 to tie clubhouse leader Cameron Smith at 16 under, but failed to convert his 12-foot birdie putt at the last, signing for 4-under 67, and as a result will sleep on a share of the 54-hole lead.
Rahm was warming up alongside his caddie, Adam Hayes, to play in Saturday’s final group of the first leg of the FedEx Cup when he was notified that the final round had been postponed to Monday.
“Adam and I thought about it, and (agreed) ‘Let’s just play today like there’s no more golf. Let’s try to end it up on top as if it was a Sunday just in case, because you never know, right,’ ” he recalled.
Rahm, who fired an opening-round 63 and followed it up with a second straight bogey-free round, a 67, on Friday, was cruising along – still bogey-free for the tournament – with five birdies in his first 11 holes to vault one stroke ahead of the 28-year-old Aussie Smith, who missed a 12-foot putt at 18 to shoot 59. Smith’s course-record propelled him to a 54-hole total of 16-under 197.
Rahm lost the lead not once but twice on his way to the clubhouse. On the first occasion, he struck a 4-iron from 244 yards at the par-5 13th that landed in the water fronting the green.
“There was no doubt in his mind that it cleared the penalty area,” Rahm said. “That 4-iron was flushed, absolutely flushed. I started walking out there, well, that’s on the green. I saw Adam wasn’t and looked up and it was a little higher than I expected it and seems like the wind might have picked up a little bit. It looked like about this short from covering, so it’s one of those things that happen in golf.”
Rahm made double bogey to drop back to 15 under, rescued a par from a brutal lie in the rough at 14 and swung for the fences at the difficult 15th, launching his tee shot 354 yards to set up a short birdie and regain a share of the lead with Smith, who said he expected he’d be a couple strokes behind by the end of the day.
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Rahm tugged his tee shot attempting to drive the 16th green and caught a difficult lie in the left rough. He tried to hit a flop shot but caught a flier that scooted into the water that lines the right side of the green.
“Never in my mind did I think that ball was going to be somewhat of a flyer,” he explained. “That’s why I went as aggressive as I did. Had I thought that was a possibility I would have probably tried to run it up and be a little bit more cautious, but you know, just right or wrong, looking at it, I didn’t believe it was going to happen.”
The bogey dropped him one stroke back, but Rahm bounced back by sticking his approach at 17 to 3 feet and making the birdie that knotted him with Smith at day’s end.
“The whole day was a little weird knowing that tomorrow there would be no golf,” he said.
Smith wasn’t the only player to go low on Saturday. Erik van Rooyen climbed into solo third with a 9-under 62, a score matched by Shane Lowry (T-6) and Corey Conners (T-9) before him.
First-round co-leader Justin Thomas is two back after a 67 and tied for fourth with Tony Finau, who said he planned to bring his putter to his hotel room for some practice on Sunday.
“I need to have a talk with it,” he said. “It needs to wake up.”
Rahm wasn’t sure what his day off would consist of but he’s not bothering to bring his clubs with him.
“God, no. I said it as a joke, I guess I could meet Adam at Chelsea Piers and do Top Golf,” he said. “I feel in my case I could do more wrong than good.”
Added Rahm: “If COVID quarantine has taught us anything, it’s what to do the whole day cooped up in a room.”