WGC Mexico: Report cards for ten of the top PGA TOUR stars
By Bill Felber
For polar opposite reasons, these two players this weekend demonstrated the great breadth of potential movement – and therefore the unpredictability – of the PGA Tour.
On Saturday, Thomas shot 74 to fall 16 strokes out of touch with the leader, Johnson. Reed shot 64 shoot up within seven of the leader, and earn a berth alongside him in the final grouping.
On Sunday, Thomas shot the 62 Reed needed to make a run at the title. Reed, meanwhile, shot the 73 Thomas had been nursing most of the week. That’s a 12-stroke swing in one direction offset by a 9-stroke swing in the other. How?
The answer, obviously, lies in much in the unpredictability of human nature as anything else. But if we can’t explain such swings, we can at least quantify them.
First to Thomas. In the third round he offset four birdies with three bogeys and two doubles. At the par 3 seventh, he left his tee shot short, fluffed his approach, pitched on within six feet but missed the bogey putt. At the 14th, he 4-putted from 50 feet. There’s moré, but we’ll spare you the gore.
Fast-forward to Sunday, when he drove the first green and birdied, nearly drove the second green and birdied, then dropped a 38-footer for a birdie at the third. That complemented a string of six birdies – five in succession – on the back nine.
Thomas’s change was mostly about putting. In the third round he spotted the field nearly five putting strokes. In the final round he beat the field by 3.1 putting strokes.
Reed’s overnight must have been much less restful. On Saturday he combined six birdies – including the final three holes – with a pair of eagles that helped him survive three bogeys and jump into contention.
The fact that the third round only featured seven pars might have been an omen that anything could happen on Sunday. It did. Reed made three bogeys plus a double at nine when he went bunker-to-bunker on the short par 4.