Travelers Championship: Top 10 power rankings at TPC River Highlands

He’s not a young gun. He’s not boisterous, flashy or in the headlines. He’s just really, really good.

Webb Simpson put on a master class Sunday, carding a bogey-free 64 with five birdies in his final six holes to emerge from a packed leaderboard.

The 34-year-old beat the previous RBC Heritage tournament record score by two shots, firing 65-65-68-64 (-22) to win by one over Abraham Ancer.

Harbour Town was the ideal setup for a short hitter like Simpson. He hung back at 283 yards average driving, but racked up 67.86% fairways, 73.61% greens in regulation and was second in the field with a per-round average of 1.651 strokes gained putting.

“We took a lot of new notes this year, especially around the green, and I hit different clubs off the tee because the fairways are softer,” Simpson was quoted by ASAP Sports. ”So I don’t know if my course knowledge helped as much as just being in contention lately a few times and kind of enjoying that and kind of knowing my body and how far shots are going to go and controlling my breathing. That was what I was thankfully leaning on those last few holes.”

The father of five who won on Father’s Day now seeks his first win at the Travelers Championship. Simpson skipped last year, but he’s played Hartford seven times with two top-10s and two more top-30s to show for it.

It can be tricky picking the previous week’s winner to replicate his success. With that said, Simpson is as consistent as they come.

A missed cut two weeks ago at Colonial was a blip in what’s otherwise been a tremendous 2019-2020 season. The Wake Forest grad won the Phoenix Open in February, was runner up at the RSM Classic last fall and has two more top-10s in just eight starts.

Approach play is important at the Travelers, and Simpson is 10th in SG approach (.836) and ninth in fairway proximity (29’4”).

TPC River Highlands is another short course that looks to play right into Simpson’s hands.