Sunday was no fun day at Southwind

On the PGA Tour or at your local club, Sunday can be an especially challenging day.

They’re not called the Sunday pins for no reason. Add a bit of wind to a TPC-quality layout and you get what the field got at the EGC-FedEx Sunday: an awakening brute.

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The best 65 players on Tour fought their way around TPC Southwind in an average of 71 strokes Sunday. That was 2.5 strokes higher than Thursday, three strokes higher than Friday and two strokes higher than Saturday.

The tougher conditions – and particularly an afternoon wind that kicked up just as the tournament leaders were clawing their way around the back nine – did a major shuffle on the standings.

Not one of the top 10 players who came to the first tee Sunday beat their Saturday scores. Nine – Paul Casey being the lone exception – suffered through their worst day of the week. The average final round damage among the top 10 players through three rounds:  5.6 strokes.

You want to know how Hideki Matsuyama and Sam Burns, both of whom began play more than an hour before the leaders, shot 63 and 64 and survived to a playoff? Most of it, obviously, was skill. But part was timing. By the time conditions really got challenging, they were both in the clubhouse.

Perhaps nobody had it tougher on Sunday than Bryson DeChambeau. He began play at 194, two strokes behind Harris English, and was still in touch with the leader when they made the turn.

But DeChambeau drove into the water at the par 4 10th and made bogey. Into a challenging wind at the 162-yard par 3 11th  — with the pin tucked on a narrow peninsula of green wedged between two arms of water and sand — he airmailed a wedge. It landed on a downslope over the green and kicked into the pond. A pitch into a trap set up a double bogey six.

He closed with the kind of 41 you or I might have turned in the same Sunday at our local club: five pars, three bogeys, a double and two lost balls.

From Thursday through Saturday, DeChambeau had averaged about +2 strokes gained tee to green. On Sunday, he was -3.6 strokes gained, a 5.6-stroke swing in the span of 24 hours.

Third-round leader Harris English could feel DeChambeau’s pain, and then some. English shot a comfortable 33 on the front to hold a two-stroke lead. But at the same 11th, he under-estimated the wind’s impact and came up short into the pond.

The double bogey that resulted still left English with a lead. But it disappeared three holes later when he mangled a pushed approach at the 195 yard par 3 14th. That ball, too, found water, leading to another double bogey.

English’s problems with Sunday were almost as bad as DeChambeau’s. Between Thursday and Saturday, he averaged +2.5 strokes gained tee to green. On Sunday, that number pivoted to -2.3.

Cameron Smith began Sunday tied with DeChambeau for second, two behind English. But a back nine 37, capped by a disastrous double bogey at the 18th, finished his day at 72. That was Smith’s worst round of the week by five strokes.

Between Thursday and Saturday, Smith played Southwind in an average of 2 strokes gained on the field tee to green. On Sunday, he was -2 strokes gained tee to green.

In fairness to the course, Smith did have himself in part to blame. Burying his tee shot in tree jail on the final hole, and needing a par to make the playoff, he gambled on a full shot off a bare lie through the forest to a green protected by water. The forest said ‘no way,’ shooting Smith’s ball out of bounds. Poorer but hopefully wiser for the experience, he chipped out and made a double.

Abraham Ancer, who eventually won the three-way playoff with Matsuyama and Burns, handled the conditions as well as any of the late starters.

Playing just in front of DeChambeau and English, Ancer got through the back nine in one-under on his way to a closing 68. That was still about 2.7 strokes worse than his Thursday-Saturday average. But it was better than any of the other leaders and – most importantly – it was accomplished at the cost of only one bogey.