There are some PGA Tour players who prefer to not look at a leaderboard during their round. Then there’s Cam Davis, who spent most of his 2023 season eschewing a peek at the FedEx Cup standings.

At least he did so until it mattered. Which was, well, recently.

Davis is one of two players (along with Hideki Matsuyama) who played his way into the BMW Championship, the second leg of the three-tournament FedEx Cup Playoffs, arriving at Olympia Fields Country Club in 45th place in the FedEx Cup standings. The Australian native knew exactly what he had to do last week at the FedEx St Jude Championship, coming up with a nervy T-6 finish at TPC Southwind, his third straight top-10, after he entered the week 62nd.

When he missed the cut at last month’s Genesis Scottish Open and then didn’t get into the Open Championship as the first alternate, he was outside the top 70 needed to advance to the playoffs. Then Davis turned in a T-10 at the 3M Open and T-7 at the Wyndham Championship. It was gut-check time, and it turned out his gut was OK. Apparently, it’s a pattern with him.

“I feel like when it is kind of a do-or-die situation, some of the inhibitor actually is taken off in my brain,” Davis said. “I’ve got free rein. The only way I’m going to succeed is if I make a really committed swing and not just go for broke but definitely play without fear of making a mistake.”

Davis, 28, who played in the 2015 US Amateur at Olympia Fields, had his sights set on making the top 50 since the tour announced in March that reaching that status will exempt players into the more lucrative $20 million signature events in 2024. Oddly, he spent most of the year intent on not tracking his progress. Who needs that headache? Not Davis.

“I feel like it’s an extra element that up until the end of the year, I feel like it hurts more than helps knowing [where he stood],” he said. “Even if you win early in the year, you still need to play a lot of great golf to maintain your standing and keep improving, and I feel like anything extra on top of just the things you can control and the things you’re trying to do week in and week out to play well is just not really needed as something to clutter up the mind.

“I’ve played with it on the back of my mind the first couple of seasons I was out here, and I don’t feel like it really helped me at all,” he added. “It just created more pressure each week. I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where I’m starting to figure out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to what I think about.”

That’s not to say he didn’t have a sense of how he was faring. He began the year with a strange illness that contributed to him missing five straight cuts starting at The American Express. “A really great way to start the year, no confidence whatsoever,” he said.

He ended the poor run with a T-6 at the Players and then finished T-4 at the PGA Championship at Oak Hill, his best effort ever in a major. Those were the high points. But Davis, ranked 49th in the world, still didn’t keep track of his progress until the final push.

The approach has been a success. Another top-10 and the one-time tour winner will have a chance to advance again to next week’s Tour Championship for the top 30 in the points standings. The perks for that distinction include a Masters berth and a two-year PGA Tour exemption.

“This year a lot of the time was kind of spent stressing about whether or not I was going to make it to the playoffs or keep my card or how was it going to be at the end of the season,” Davis admitted. “To kind of turn it around and really finish strong like this is really satisfying because I’ve pulled myself out of some pretty deep holes this year.”

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By Alex Myers
The BMW Championship feeling more like a U.S. Open was the overarching theme of the week, but Olympia Fields played particularly tough for Tiger Woods.

Needing a top-five finish to extend his PGA Tour season in the penultimate FedEx Cup Playoffs event, Woods wound up T-51 and never got on track at the Chicago-area course. Actually, he never even broke par in four rounds, a rarity during his legendary career.

How rare was it? The PGA Tour noted it’s just the fifth time that Woods has shot four-over-par rounds in the same event, and only the second time in a non-major tournament. That only other non-major? Just over a decade ago at the 2010 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

Of course, the circumstances in 2010 were much different. Woods was still finding his way back following his 2009 scandal and he finished tied for 78th with someone named Michael Jonzon in the 80-man field.

“I need to hit the ball better, I need to chip better, I need to putt better and I need to score better,” Woods said following that performance at Firestone. The three other times he recorded four over-par scores came at the 2003 PGA Championship (Oak Hill), the 1999 Open Championship (Carnoustie), and the 1998 U.S. Open (Olympic Club).

Woods beat 14 players at Olympia Fields this week, including Marc Leishman by 19 shots, while acknowledging the difficulty of finding a ryhthm during a season interrupted by a global pandemic. And the 15-time major champ didn’t seem too upset about getting two weeks off before taking on another difficult course in Winged Foot for the 2020 U.S. Open.

“I didn’t play as well as I wanted to the first couple days,” Woods told reporters following the final round. “Today was nice. I hit the ball really well and made only a couple putts, but today was more indicative of how I want to play in a couple weeks.”

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By Daniel Rapaport
OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. — Dustin Johnson made a double-breaking 43-footer for birdie, over a ridge, on the 72nd hole of the BMW Championship, to get into a playoff. The 50-or-so people gathered around the 18th green went nuts. So did Twitter. It was the signature moment of a delightfully brutal week at Olympia Fields.

That is, until Jon Rahm said Hold my Cerveza.

“I made an unbelievable putt,” Johnson said. “And then Jon made an even more ridiculous putt on top of me.”

Rahm holed a 66-footer for birdie on the first playoff hole—66 feet!—to win the BMW and deny Johnson of back-to-back victories in the first two FedEx Cup Playoff events. Joaquin Niemann and Hideki Matusyama finished two back in a tie for third.

For Rahm, it’s his second victory since the post-COVID restart and the fifth of the 25-year-old’s PGA Tour career.

And Rahm won it despite an epic mental blunder on Saturday, when he picked up his ball on the green before marking it and was penalized a stroke. He still managed to shoot 66, tied for the lowest score of the third round, and closed on Sunday with a six-under 64, the lowest score anyone shot all week on this U.S. Open-ready course.

Rahm’s winning total of four-under 276 ties the highest on tour this season. Only five players finished the week under par; Rahm played his final 37 holes in 11 under. The preposterously good weekend allowed him to claw his way to the top of a leader board after sitting at six-over-par, seven strokes off the lead through 36 holes.

“After Friday, I went to the range and figured some things out, just got comfortable,” Rahm said. I knew it wasn’t far away. Slowly got better each day. Figured it out, came out on Saturday and played really good golf, and just kept it going today.”

Rahm’s making a bit of a habit of this—winning tournaments despite spotting the rest of the field a shot or two. In July, when he won the Memorial to (briefly) reach World No. 1, he was docked two strokes on Sunday for accidentally moving his ball as he set his wedge onto the grass. Rahm holed that chip for birdie, but the record books show a bogey. That penalty soiled an electric moment, although it did not cost him the victory.

There was no ruining this one, either. Rahm let out a primaeval yell as his ball kissed the flagstick and drop in the cup. It was a starkly different reaction than Johnson’s understated fist-pump and simple raised finger when his ball also caressed that blessed flagstick and dropped 15 minutes earlier. Both players then drove golf carts—both feet pressed pedal-to-the-medal, both caddies in the passenger seat, all four mouths wired shut—back to the 18th tee for a mano-y-mano showdown between the No. 1 and No. 2 players in the world. (By the way: Johnson’s solo-second finish keeps him in the top spot. For now.)

Andy Lyons
When Dustin Johnson made a 43-foot birdie on the 72nd hole to force a playoff, it looked like the World No. 1 had regained all the momentum.

Rahm played first, sending a high cut on a draw-friendly hole into juicy rough down the right. No angle at all to a front-right pin. DJ played next and pulled his into the trees. With the light fading quickly, he couldn’t tell where it ended up. So when he saw one ball in the centre of the fairway, he assumed it was Rahm’s. A marshal gave him the good news.

“Oh, that’s me? It’s nice.”

Nice indeed. Johnson played his approach into the fat part of the green, a slight pull, but nothing to complain about with his opponent in the rough. Rahm muscled one onto the very back-left portion of the green, miles away from that front-right pin, a ridge between him and the jackpot.

“I don’t have a set method that you can just teach,” Rahm said of his approach to reading a putt like that. “I’m a feel player. I grew up on golf courses with a lot of slope, so putts with slope is something I enjoy, I like, and I’m comfortable reading and putting. It felt right in my alley.”

Still, he had no delusions about actually making the thing.

“My hope was to get myself somewhat of a doable uphill putt, somewhere hopefully within three feet. But that was extremely difficult, so three to six feet. I was just kind of hoping to give myself that type of chance. Obviously still wanted to put on a good roll, but my focus was solely on speed so I could give myself the best chance.”

The pace was perfect. The ball crawled to the top of that ridge, and Rahm raced to get behind it, trying to see how the ball broke around the hole in preparation for his comebacker.

Only there was no comebacker.

Keyur Khamar
Rahm couldn’t contain his joy after the turn of events in the playoff.

The putt capped a dramatic comeback, and one that seemed destined to come up short as his ball soared toward the water hazard right of the 15th fairway—the one place you can’t hit it on that hole.

But the golf gods owed him one. Granted, Rahm can’t blame anyone for his ball-marking blunder. But as far as penalties go, that was a rather innocuous one. No funny business intended. He took the one-shot penalty and moved on. So when his ball ricocheted off trees back into safety, the word karma sprang to mind. Rahm would go on to make birdie, then made a 30-footer for birdie on 16 that no one will remember.

The 66-footer, though, will be impossible to forget. That is, if he can ever wrap his around it.

“I still can’t believe what just happened.”

Join the club.

The post Big shot Jon strikes again as Rahm wins the BMW after holing another epic, can-you-believe-it putt appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By E. Michael Johnson
Jon Rahm is known for letting his temper get the best of him. At the BMW Championship, however, the Spaniard stayed calm after a major mental mistake and brushed off a 43-foot bomb by Dustin Johnson on the final hole with a 66-footer of his own on the first playoff hole to win the BMW Championship for an unlikely come-from-behind victory.

Rahm said he was “proud of being able to maintain my composure” after inexplicably lifting his ball on the fifth green during Saturday’s third round without marking it, resulting in a one-shot penalty—something hard to do considering he uses a poker chip as a ball marker. Instead of blowing a gasket, however, Rahm moved on and went on a remarkable run, making nine birdies against no bogeys after the gaffe. Standing six over par after 38 holes, Rahm played the final 34 in 10 under par. Impressive on a course where four under par was the winning score for 72 holes.

Just as he did at the Memorial at Muirfield Village Golf Club, Rahm won the BMW by performing well in virtually every aspect of the game. Rahm ranked sixth in strokes gained/off-the-tee; ninth in strokes gained/approach-the-green; 13th in strokes gained/around-the-green and sixth in strokes gained/tee-to-green. He was T-18 in driving accuracy, fifth in driving distance at 331.2 yards and fourth in greens in regulation. He also was sixth in strokes gained/putting, picking up nearly four strokes on the field on the greens. With the win Rahm rose to No. 2 on the FedEx Cup standings heading into next week’s Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.

Rahm uses TaylorMade’s SIM driver with an Aldila Tour Green 75 TX shaft, with the adjustable weight on the sole moved toward the toe. Rahm always has favoured drivers with weight toward the toe as it allows him to more easily produce his preferred fade off the tee.

Rahm also hit 17 of 18 greens in the final round with his TaylorMade P750 irons. Rahm has used the P750 model for several years but weakened the lofts on them after the COVID-19-related break because he was hitting his irons further and wanted to better control the trajectory and angle of descent. For the week Rahm was T-2 in greens in regulation.

Although Rahm used a red-coloured Spider Tour mallet for a few years, he switched earlier this year to the company’s white-coloured Spider Tour Chalk, which he used to hole several big putts during a final-round 64, including a 30-footer for birdie on the long par-3 16th and the monster putt in overtime that proved to be the difference. Rahm also made a ball change earlier this year as well, switching from TaylorMade’s TP5x into the TP5 for more spin and control with his wedges.

Better control with his irons. Better control with his wedges. And over the final 31 holes he showed more control in another critical area as well.

What Jon Rahm had in the bag at The Memorial:

Ball: TaylorMade TP5
Driver: TaylorMade SIM (Aldila Tour Green 75 TX), 10.5 degrees
3-wood: TaylorMade SIM, 15 degrees
5-wood: TaylorMade SIM, 19 degrees
Irons (4-PW): TaylorMade P750
Wedges: TaylorMade Milled Grind Hi-Toe (52 degrees); TaylorMade MG2 (56, 60 degrees)
Putter: TaylorMade Spider X Chalk

The post The clubs Jon Rahm used to win the 2020 BMW Championship appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Stephen Hennessey
It’s been a rarity to find Rory McIlroy near the top of the leader board since the PGA Tour restart. But the four-time major champion owns a share of the 36-hole lead at the 2020 BMW Championship.

McIlroy has made seven starts since the tour’s resumption in June and doesn’t have a top-10 finish, which is the longest the Ulsterman has gone without a top 10 since a stretch from the end of the 2017 season and the start of the 2018 campaign.

Where McIlroy has struggled recently has been his putting (though a rare off week with his driver was the reason for a T-65 finish at The Northern Trust). But Rory has actually gained strokes on the greens through 36 holes at Olympia Fields, even as he switched putters before Friday’s second round. He went from a TaylorMade TP Soto blade to the same TaylorMade Spider X Copper mallet he used in all four of his wins in 2019, including the WGC-HSBC Championship in the fall part of the 2019-’20 season.

After his second-round 69, McIlroy was asked about the equipment change, and had an honest answer that may have included the dreaded ‘y’ word.

Rory explains putter switch. “I yipped one on 13 (on Thursday). And that was basically it.”

— Will Gray (@WillGrayGC) August 28, 2020

McIlroy went on to elaborate a little more, and clarified that, maybe he didn’t truly yip his putt on the 13th hole yesterday.

“It wasn’t a yip, but it was a tentative, very—just not a good stroke, and sometimes with the blade I get a little indecisive or a little unsure of my aim and then during the stroke—especially you get one of these little slippy left-to-righters; at the last minute, don’t miss it right, and then you put the right hand into it.

“I actually putted OK after that and holed some good ones coming in, but I just didn’t feel comfortable, so going back to something that I’ve putted well with. And I’ve had [the mallet] here with—I’ve traveled with it the last few weeks. Obviously the blade went back in the bag last week, but I still had the Spider with me, but I just thought after yesterday and how dicey the greens are, something where you’re just a little more sure over it is better.”

Andy Lyons
Rory McIlroy putts during a practice round (using his blade putter) before the 2020 BMW Championship at Olympia Fields Country Club.

The 31-year-old is still ranked only 38th in the field through two rounds in strokes gained/putting, per FantasyNational.com, but he looked a little more confident Friday on these difficult greens at Olympia Fields.

It’s scary to think what would happen if McIlroy really figures out his putting stroke. Though we’ve seen that version of the four-time major winner before, and we know the dominance he’s capable of. Maybe we’re on the verge of seeing it from him for the first time since the tour’s return.

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