Top 20 Players to Watch in 2019: No. 11 Tony Finau

Tony Finau’s rise to stardom on the PGA TOUR isn’t something that was preordained from the moment he could pick up a golf club. But that’s what makes it much more interesting to watch – as well as giving him a nearly limitless potential in 2019.

Tony Finau enjoyed a 2018 season that was a breakthrough success – and that’s not just another pun about his celebratory injury at the Masters Par-3 Contest.

No, he wasn’t able to earn his second PGA TOUR victory, but by virtually any other metric, it was the best year of his career to date. For starters, Finau was essentially one of the PGA TOUR’s top candidates in the “Iron Man” division. He made 28 starts, a mark that was bested by only a handful of players on TOUR, none of whom matched his consistently high level of output. That alone deserves a huge amount of respect.

Finau set the tone for his 2018 campaign early, getting out of the gates with a runner-up finish at the Safeway Open. That was one of a pair of top-two finishes (Finau finished T2 at the Genesis Open) and five total top-25s before the end of February.

The Salt Lake City native is famously an alumnus of Golf Channel’s “Big Break” reality series, and he almost had just that when he made his way to Augusta National for his first Masters Tournament. As I touched on earlier (and as though you could forget if you saw it), Finau made a hole-in-one in the Par-3 Contest, and celebrated in a most-un-Augusta manner.

Kidding aside, though, when Finau came down awkwardly on his left ankle, it appeared that his first Masters was over before it even got started. Certainly there was no way he’d be able to come back from THAT less than 24 hours later, much less play that course for four straight days in any real condition. But play he did, and he did it better than anybody would have predicted, finishing tied for tenth place.

As if that wasn’t enough, he went out and put up top-ten finishes in both the U.S. Open and the Open Championship. At Shinnecock Hills, he held a share of the lead at the 54-hole mark, and at Carnoustie, Finau was just one off the lead after the first round, before three straight rounds of level par settled him into a tie for ninth.

Finau ended the 2018 season with over $5.5 million in prize money, and a spot on his first Ryder Cup team. That’s the type of success that gets addictive, and from what I’m seeing recently, he’s not going to just rest on his laurels, fat and happy with what he just did.

Finau has three starts under his belt already in the new season, with a near-miss playoff loss to Xander Schauffele at the WGC-HSBC Champions an early highlight. But he’s also putting in a ton of swing work, which is surprising for a guy coming off a career season. That’s a bit disconcerting, if I’m being honest, but Tony Finau is a world-class athlete, and if he thinks making these adjustments is going to make him a better, more consistent player…well, who am I to disagree? We’ll get a chance to find out how that’s working out again very soon.

I’ve never been one for the “hot take”, but this is what I’m expecting out of Tony Finau in 2019: he will contend late on Sunday in at least one major championship (look for him at the Masters again), and he will win at least twice this season. Why? He didn’t have a single bit of this career handed to him along the way, and that type of work ethic is almost always rewarded in the end.

Well, this isn’t the end, but it might be the start of something even bigger.