2022 Waste Management Phoenix Open: Top 10 power rankings

Sam Burns is one of those upward trending players who you have to take their tournament histories with a grain of salt.

Burns was an elite collegiate player at LSU and got his PGA Tour card fairly quickly. With that said, he didn’t exactly light it up right away.

After a few years grinding away, Burns has taken off. He’s proven to be one of the game’s best and has a great chance to represent the red, white, and blue later in the year at the Presidents Cup.

Some early results weren’t great, though, like at the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Burns missed the cut in 2019 and 2020.

He began to figure things out around TPC Scottsdale in 2021. Burns fired 64-68-73-68 to post T-22nd. Normally a strong ball-striker, he battled through a tough week in that sense by ranking first in the field in strokes gained putting (10.891).

That was illustrative of his ability to start strong but not close.

Burns is now finishing off tournaments like a vet.

He turned the corner last spring when he won the Valspar Championship. Burns added to his trophy case in the fall by winning the Sanderson Farms Championship.

The Sanderson win is one of four top-10s in seven starts since. A missed cut in his last start at the Farmers Insurance Open was his first MC since June.

The 25-year-old ranks ninth on the PGA Tour this season in SG tee to green (1.413) and ninth in SG total (1.528). He’s still in the positive in putting, but that’s been his weakness of late. Fortunately, he’s proven he can roll it well on the Stadium course’s TifEagle Bermuda greens.

Bermuda is familiar to a southeastern American player like him.