“I’ve never thrown a baseball until yesterday,” he admitted Monday.
Two days before tackling the North Course at Olympia Fields, Justin Rose tried his hand at a new sport.
In town with 49 other PGA Tour players for the BMW Championship, Rose took a detour on Tuesday, heading about 35 miles north to Wrigley Field to take in the Chicago Cubs home game against the cross-town rival White Sox.
Sporting a No. 99 jersey, Rose was seen cruising through the stadium, taking photos with fans before reaching the field. He even went down below to meet some of the Cubs players before taking a practice throw on a practice round.
The Englishman admitted the sport was something entirely new.
“I’ve never thrown a baseball until yesterday,” he admitted.
He handled whatever nerves he had, then threw a decent ball to the Cubs mascot, who was appropriately wearing a BMW caddie bib.
Brian Harman got mad when an article referred to Lucas Glover as a “journeyman.”
Brian Harman and his wife were in tears watching Lucas Glover claim his recent victory at the Wyndham Championship.
“I know what it means to Lucas. I know what it means to his kids,” explained Harman at this week’s BMW Championship. “You saw his daughter is there and she’s just crying her eyes out. It was just a beautiful scene.”
“It’s hard for me to put into words how proud and impressed I am with Lucas Glover,” he said, “just because of what he’s been through.”
Glover had been dealing with the yips while putting for the better part of a decade and at times would lose all feeling over a 10-inch putt. He then switched to a long putter with a split-handed grip and has now won the last two PGA Tour events at the Wyndham and last week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship.
“It’s been unbelievable. I saw a thing from Data Golf a couple days ago where I think he’s like the ninth best ball striker in the ShotLink era from like 2004,” said Rory McIlroy, Glover’s playing partner for the first two rounds. “We know he’s got the tools from tee to green. It was just a matter of him trying to figure out how to get the ball in the hole, and using this long putter, he’s certainly started to figure it out.”
“I remember when I first moved down to St. Simons, we’d go out and we’d play golf, and it was long before I had a Tour card and I was like, ‘I don’t know how I’m ever going to beat this guy,’” remembered Harman. “He was so good. He’s got such good hands. He was putting it so great. So he goes through that, and like I said, to come out the other side is just unreal.
“I think all of us — we all struggle from time to time,” said Harman, “and Lucas with the putter, he struggled. It’s like — he was talking about putting left-handed.”
The 43-year-old has solidified his spot in next week’s Tour Championship and is now a contender for a Ryder Cup captain’s pick. For that reason, Harman wants fans, and especially golf media, to put a little respect on Harman’s name.
“Lucas — read an article the other day that made me very angry. It called Lucas Glover a journeyman. It said journeyman Lucas Glover, and I thought, what a ridiculous thing to say,” said Harman. “This guy has made I don’t know how many Tour Championships, won the U.S. Open. He’s won six or seven times now. Lucas Glover is a world-beater.”
Glover has made the Tour Championship 10 times, won the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black, and yes, has six total wins on Tour. And no, that article did not run on Golfweek.
“To go through what he went through with his putter and to come out the other side, I think about like Andy Dufresne, crawling through the river and coming out clean the other side,” said Harman. “I’m so proud of him, I’m so happy for him.”
“It’s great to see. He’s a great guy,” added McIlroy. “You’re not going to find one person out on Tour that has a bad thing to say about Lucas. I think everyone has been happy to see him play so well.”
Matt Kuchar owns the distinction of being the only player to qualify for the playoffs every year since 2007.
GREENSBORO, N.C. — And then there was one.
Matt Kuchar now owns the distinction of being the only player to qualify for the playoffs in each season since the inception of the FedEx Cup in 2007.
Kuchar finished T-39 at the Wyndham Championship on Sunday and enters the playoffs, which begin next week in Memphis, at No. 60 in the season-long point standings.
This season, only the top 70 in the FedEx Cup standings qualify for the first playoff event, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, down from 125 (2009-2022), which made it much tougher.
After plenty of drama, only one player, tournament winner Lucas Glover advanced to the playoffs and Austin Eckroat, who entered the week at No. 70 but missed the cut, got knocked out.
It might be small consolation after making bogey on his final three holes to lose the lead and finish T-2, but Russell Henley, along with Harris English, who finished T-35, became the 26th and 27th players to cross the $5 million mark in earnings this season during the FedEx Cup regular-season finale.
Glover banked $1.368 million from the total purse of $7.6 million.
Scotte Scheffler, who took the week off, still leads the money list with a single-season record of $19,138,342, the highest single-season mark of all time. The top five on the money list behind him — Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Wyndham Clark and Viktor Hovland — have all earned more than $10 million to date.
Here’s a closer look at how much each player earned this week for four days of work at Sedgefield Country Club.
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Justin Thomas’s pursuit of a spot in the 2023 FedEx Cup Playoffs came down to the wire at the Wyndham Championship on Sunday. He was out, he was in, he was out again and then he nearly holed a walk-off birdie pitch but it wasn’t to be. Ben Griffin, who missed the cut this week hung on to the final spot and Thomas was the odd man out at No. 71, just nine points behind.
“I made the best out of every situation that I had. And just, I mean, fought as hard as I possibly could,” Thomas said after his round but before he learned he was officially eliminated. “That’s kind of what I’ve done my whole life, my whole career and I didn’t want to stop here.”
Thomas, who entered the week at No. 79 in the season-long points standings, shot a final-round 2-under 68 at Sedgefield Country Club to finish T-12.
Thomas had qualified for the playoffs, which begin next week with the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, in each of his first eight seasons, winning the title in 2017, and finishing in the top 10 in the final standings in five of the last six seasons.
With only the top 70 advancing to the playoffs instead of 125 as in previous seasons, Thomas did everything he could to extend his season, including adding the 3M Open to his schedule last week and making his first appearance in the Wyndham since 2016. While Thomas ended up 71st, he said he gained a lot from the experience.
“I feel like I’m back to me again,” he said. “Personally, I think this was harder today than trying to win a golf tournament.”
Thomas bounced back from an opening-round 70, which dropped him to 81st in the standings, with rounds of 65-66 and entered the final round projected to finish No. 72. On Sunday, he drained a 39-foot birdie putt at No. 6, but then strung together eight straight pars, including missing an 8-foot birdie putt at 14.
Just when his chances were starting to look bleak, he took advantage of the par-5 15th, splitting the fairway with a 332-yard bomb. Walking to his ball, he turned to his caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay and said, “It sure is nice to play the hole for the first time all week from the fairway.”
Thomas made the most of it, drilling a 7-iron from 214 yards to 15 feet and his downhill eagle putt trickled in. Thomas clenched his right fist and pointed to the sky. It lifted him to No. 70 in the standings. But one hole later, he made a bogey that would prove costly. The wind switched directions on him when he hit 9-iron at the par-3 16th and his ball ballooned in the air. He hit a poor chip from short of the green and missed a 30-foot par putt. At first, it didn’t hurt his position; that is until Adam Svensson made a birdie at 15 to vault ahead of Thomas in the tournament and steal some valuable points.
Thomas scrambled for par at 17 but tugged his tee shot at 18 left and into the trees. From a lie in pine straw and with a tree forcing him to hit a low hooking 8-iron, he contorted his body in a whirlybird motion reminiscent of Tiger Woods escaping trouble over the years. It was a remarkable shot, stopping 34 feet short of the flag.
Justin Thomas plays a shot on the 18th hole during the final round of the 2023 Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina. (Photo: Logan Whitton/Getty Images)
Thomas weighed his options: using his 56-degree wedge he determined to be the conservative play to make an up-and-down par but he elected to trap a 60-degree to try to make it, knowing that a birdie would lock up a playoff spot. His ball bounced three times and kissed the flagstick, coming to rest a foot from the hole. He put his hands on his head and fell to the ground in disbelief, knowing that he was that close to punching his ticket to Memphis in dramatic fashion.
“It would have been a lot more incredible if it would have gone in,” Thomas said.
Shortly after Thomas tapped in, play was suspended for more than 2 hours and so started Thomas’s waiting game to see if he could get any help. He recalled that in 2015 he was told his spot was secure to earn a berth in the Tour Championship but then players still on the course made birdies and he was bumped to No. 32. He knew he was going to need help, which he didn’t get, but he was proud of the fact that he’d done his part.
“I played the best I could and I fought as hard as I could and shot the lowest I possibly could,” he said.
Charley Hoffman made an albatross on the par-5 15th hole Sunday during the final round of the 2023 Wyndham Championship.
After a 343-yard drive, Hoffman holed out his second shot from 198 yards over water to a back-right pin at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Hoffman was even par on his round after a bogey, a double bogey and three birdies. The double-circled 2 got him to 3 under and into a tie for 11th. The four-time winner on Tour has a season-best finish of T-14 at the WM Phoenix Open this season.
🚨 ALBATROSS! 🚨@Hoffman_Charley makes a 2 on the 546-yard par-5 15th.
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Back in May, Justin Thomas was asked what he missed most while doing a dairy- and gluten-free diet.
“I want a pizza like you can’t imagine,” he said during a press conference at the Wells Fargo Championship. “Like, I would do some really messed up things for a pizza just doused in ranch.”
Well, Thomas wrapped up his six months of eating dairy-free and celebrated last week after returning from England and the British Open by eating not one, not two, but three gluten-free pizzas while in Blaine, Minnesot, for the 3M Championship.
“It was my first pizza since January and I could’ve cried,” he said on Saturday at the Wyndham Championship.
Asked if he thinks the diet has helped him improve his energy levels, he said, “I mean this is my fourth week in a row, obviously I missed two of the cuts, but it’s been a lot of travel and I feel pretty good.”
Props to Thomas for sacrificing one of his favorite guilty pleasures to chase greatness. While he hasn’t won this year and has endured the biggest slump of his career, he’s shown he’s willing to leave no stone unturned. He noted he still has a few more months to complete his quest to spend a full year without eating gluten.
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Pressure does funny things to golfers.
Just look at the players battling to earn a spot in the FedEx Cup Playoffs at this week’s regular season finale at the Wyndham Championship. With only the top 70 moving on to Memphis, Nos. 68 Ben Griffin and “Bubble Boy” Austin Eckroat missed the cut on Friday as did Ben Taylor, Garrick Higgo, K.H. Lee, David Lingmerth, the four players who entered the week Nos. 71-74.
Meanwhile, 54-hole co-leaders Lucas Glover and Billy Horschel have zoomed from No. 112 to No. 50 and No. 116 to No. 53, respectively.
But for a true sense of how the pressure is ratcheted up at Sedgefield Country Club, here’s what two-time major champion and former world No. 1 Justin Thomas had to say.
“It’s a lot harder than trying to win a golf tournament in my opinion. I think when you’re trying to win a tournament you’re there and if you don’t win it’s a bummer, but you still had a great week kind of thing,” he said. “If I just don’t get it done for what I need to get done this week, then it sucks and my year’s over.”
Thomas entered the week at No. 79 in the season-long standings, but after shooting 66 on Saturday to improve to T-11, he’s projected to finish 72nd, 19 points out of a playoff berth. He’ll need to go low again on Sunday. Even if the 54-hole co-leaders finish 1-2, Thomas could still get in with a T-7. Data Golf gives him a 30 percent chance of making the playoffs.
But to hear Thomas tell it, that isn’t even the biggest reason he’s feeling a different brand of nerves this week.
“I want to make the Ryder Cup team so bad. I mean, it’s so important to me. I mean, I legitimately would rather make the Ryder Cup than the Playoffs, which is really, really messed up to say, but it’s just the truth,” he said.“But because of that, I think that’s why I played so poorly the last month and a half or two months. Like it’s just I’m putting so much pressure on myself to play well, it’s very similar to what happened to me in 2016.”
Thomas also addressed how he will approach Sunday’s round.
“The only way I feel I would change strategy would be in a situation where I needed to birdie the last two holes or I needed to birdie 18 or something. The hope is to go play really well tomorrow and see how close to the lead we can get, and if I do that, then should be fine,” he said. “It’s very similar to Q-School. I didn’t go into the final stage of Q-School trying to finish 45th, I went there trying to win a golf tournament. If I just came up short, then it was going to be plenty to qualify. It’s a very different but somewhat similar situation here.”
With one round to go on the Tour’s 47-event regular season, here’s what the projected standings look like from Nos. 65-80:
Everything you need to know for the final round at Sedgefield Country Club.
It’s now or never for players to make their final push for the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
The third round of the 2023 Wyndham Championship is complete at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Billy Horschel and Lucas Glover are out front at 18 under. Glover shot 8-under 62 on Saturday while Horschel had a 7-under 63.
However, players like Justin Thomas, Adam Scott, Shane Lowry and others have to finish strong to find their way into the field next week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind in Memphis. Horschel and Glover need a solo second or better to get into the playoffs.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s everything you need to know ahead of the final round of the 2023 Wyndham Championship. All times Eastern.
Tee times
Tee time
Players
7:45 a.m.
Jim Herman
7:50 a.m.
Wesley Bryan, Matt NeSmith
8 a.m.
Carson Young, Richy Werenski
8:10 a.m.
Carl Yuan, Taylor Moore
8:20 a.m.
Doug Ghim, Joel Dahmen
8:30 a.m.
Trey Mullinax, Michael Gligic
8:40 a.m.
Harris English, Scott Piercy
8:50 a.m.
Nicholas Lindheim, Adam Schenk
9 a.m.
David Lipsky, Dylan Wu
9:10 a.m.
Nate Lashley, Zecheng Dou
9:20 a.m.
Shane Lowry, Matt Kuchar
9:35 a.m.
J.J. Spaun, Brandt Snedeker
9:45 a.m.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Max McGreevy
9:55 a.m.
Martin Laird, Si Woo Kim
10:05 a.m.
Vincent Norrman, Alex Noren
10:15 a.m.
C.T. Pan, Andrew Putnam
10:25 a.m.
Tyler Duncan, Brandon Wu
10:35 a.m.
Matt Wallace, Kelly Kraft
10:45 a.m.
Adam Scott, Greyson Sigg
10:55 a.m.
Ryan Brehm, Scott Stallings
11:05 a.m.
Luke Donald, Sam Ryder
11:15 a.m.
Webb Simpson, Peter Kuest
11:30 a.m.
Gary Woodland, Austin Smotherman
11:40 a.m.
Chez Reavie, Matti Schmid
11:50 a.m.
Ludvig Aberg, Sam Bennett
12 p.m.
Davis Thompson, Troy Merritt
12:10 p.m.
Sam Burns, Nicolai Hojgaard
12:20 p.m.
Robert Streb, Chesson Hadley
12:30 p.m.
Sungjae Im, Cam Davis
12:40 p.m.
Andrew Novak, Charley Hoffman
12:50 p.m.
Nick Hardy, Justin Thomas
1 p.m.
Thomas Detry, Kyle Westmoreland
1:15 p.m.
Brendon Todd, Adam Svensson
1:25 p.m.
Eric Cole, J.T. Poston
1:35 p.m.
Stephan Jaeger, Michael Kim
1:45 p.m.
Russell Henley, Byeong Hun An
1:55 p.m.
Lucas Glover, Billy Horschel
How to watch
You can watch Golf Channel for free on fuboTV. ESPN+ is the exclusive home for PGA Tour Live streaming. All times Eastern.
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Justin Thomas sought relief after he fanned his tee shot 30 yards to the right on the ninth hole at Sedgefield Country Club and it landed underneath a tree. But a PGA Tour rules official denied the request for a free drop at the Wyndham Championship on Saturday.
Thomas called for a referee to determine whether a scoreboard was in his line of sight. Out came Tour official Pete Lis, who heard his plea and concluded that from his lie behind a tree a scoreboard wasn’t on his intended line of play.
“I feel like you’re not understanding what I’m saying,” Thomas said. “I’ve had it multiple times where a grandstand is in my way and don’t get relief.”
“It’s not on your line of play right now,” Lis said. “You wouldn’t because you can’t get the ball to finish on the line with hole.”
Thomas accepted the decision and punched out from the pine straw and made one of his two bogeys in a round of 66 that lifted him into a tie for 11th as he battles to make the FedEx Cup Playoffs. It was a classic example of a player trying to use the Rules of Golf to their advantage. Thomas was wise to ask.
“You get rulings sometimes where you almost feel bad that it’s happening, and I truly felt like that was going to be one of those scenarios. It’s just weird. It was between me and the hole, and I just had situations before where stuff like that’s happened. It’s not necessarily in your way, but because it’s between you, you get relief,” he explained. “It was just because the tree was there. It was one of those things like you kind of have your tail tucked between your legs asking for relief because it would only happen in a situation like this. But at the same time, I’m always going to ask because you never know, I could have gotten a drop and would have been able to hit on the green. So worth a shot.”
One day earlier, Thomas was granted a ruling in his favor that allowed both he and Adam Scott, who was playing in the same group, to drop in the fairway rather than the rough after they drove into the water on the eighth hole.
“I think drops get abused a decent bit and we’re not those guys, but we just wanted to – we needed to make sure that it was done correctly because that’s not – that wasn’t in the nature of it, we just wanted to make sure all was OK,” he said on Friday.
