Daniel Berger is Clear Choice for PGA Tour Rookie of the Year

Sep 19, 2015; Lake Forest, IL, USA; PGA golfer Daniel Berger during Saturday’s third round of the BMW Championship at Conway Farms Golf Club. Mandatory Credit: Thomas J. Russo-USA TODAY Sports

During Sunday’s final round of the BMW Championship at Conway Farms, all eyes were on Jason Day. The Aussie closed the week with a 69 to cruise to a six-stroke victory, his fifth of the season. That gives him exactly one more than Jordan Spieth and should set up some spirited arguments over which one deserves Player of the Year.

Day wasn’t the only one to help his case for winning a major award, however–Daniel Berger, 22, took a big step towards challenging for Rookie of the Year honors. Playing with Day in the final group, the Florida native matched the new world No. 1 with a 69 to finish in solo second and punch his ticket to the Tour Championship at East Lake.

It’s no secret that the PGA Tour’s 2015-16 rookie class has been one of the best in recent memory. A total of nine first-year players qualified for the FedEx Cup playoffs, and two others would have joined them if the postseason allowed non-members to participate. Justin Thomas, Tony Finau and Zac Blair all played well enough to make it to the BMW and finish in the FedEx Cup’s top 70.

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Berger, however, was the only one to make it all the way to East Lake for the season’s final stage.

The son of retired tennis pro Jay, Berger developed his golf game on a variety of courses in the Jupiter, Florida area. A standout at Florida State University, he tied for second at the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championships as a sophomore in 2013 just weeks before turning pro. Armed with Web.com Tour status for the 2014 season, Berger made the most of it, reeling off a pair of top threes and finishing in the top 25 on the regular season money list. After a single season, his PGA Tour card for 2015 was secure.

Berger has wasted little time in making an impact on the PGA Tour.

Faced with the tall task of making it on the world’s top golf circuit after less than two years as a pro, Berger has wasted little time making an impact. After notching a pair of top 10s and two other top 25s in his first ten starts, he enjoyed a career-changing week at his hometown event, the Honda Classic. Despite poor conditions in the final round, Berger fired off a tournament-low 64 to come back from nine strokes behind and force a sudden death playoff with Ireland’s Padraig Harrington. Going up against the 43-year-old three-time major champion, who hadn’t contended on the PGA Tour in years, Berger whiffed in his opportunity to win when he hit his ball into the water on 17.

Still, that performance took care of his eligibility–for both the rest of the season and beyond. With a solo second to his name, Berger rose to the top of the reshuffle for Web.com Tour graduates, and the finish basically guaranteed him a spot in the top 125 on the money list. Since then, he’s added five top 15s, the recent BMW runner-up among them. The only knock against Berger is probably a mid-summer stretch over which he missed seven cuts in eight starts–a normal result of playing a heavy schedule on unfamiliar courses. In all, he’s proven to be the toast of this year’s rookie class and is the clear-cut choice for the PGA Tour Rookie of the Year award.

Naturally, there are those who will disagree–especially when we’re talking about a group of rookies that has so much talent. Automatically, a large faction of golf fans will support Canada’s Nick Taylor for the award. Taylor notched just two top 25s this season, but one of those was a win at last fall’s Sanderson Farms Championship, a low-wattage event that’s played opposite the WGC-HSBC Champions. Despite the overall mediocrity of his season and the poor quality of his win, he should draw heavy support from around the game. After all, the point of golf is to win tournaments, and Taylor is the only rookie who can claim to have done that in 2014-15.

Others will assert that Americans Tony Finau or Justin Thomas deserve the honors. Both players racked up some solid finishes this season and have bright futures ahead of them, but neither one tasted true contention this season. While they were laboring for backdoor top 10s or top 25s, Berger managed to get much closer on multiple occasions.

Of course, Berger has an opportunity to end all Rookie of the Year speculation–all he has to do is emerge victorious at this week’s Tour Championship at East Lake, in which he and 29 of his top peers will make a run at the FedEx Cup and the $10 million bonus that comes with it. For a PGA Tour rookie, that might sound like a tall order, but for Berger, defying our expectations would be business as usual.

Next: Jason Day Runs Away with the BMW Championship

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