For a guy who supposedly couldn’t win, Tony Finau is winning everything now.
With a dominant performance in claiming the Rocket Mortgage Classic by five strokes, one week after his victory in the 3M Championship, Finau did more than become the first player this year to win consecutive PGA Tour events. It pushed Finau toward the top of the list of favorites as the FedEx Cup playoffs sit just one week away (he is in seventh place).
“All I wanted to do this week was show I’m a winner and a champion, and I think I did that.”
Tony Finau
Playing his last nine competitive rounds in 49-under par and missing just six greens in 72 holes at Detroit Country Club, Finau is on a roll at just the right time.
A week earlier, Finau benefited from Scott Piercy’s final-round meltdown to win despite not being entirely satisfied with how he played. Finau left nothing to chance in Detroit.
“I was quite disappointed with my finish last week,” Finau said. “All I wanted to do this week was show I’m a winner and a champion, and I think I did that.”
The Finau narrative had become familiar – one victory, then more than five years before his second win, at the Northern Trust last summer.
Now, Finau has doubled his victory total in two weeks, playing near-flawless golf last week.
“The work has been relentless,” Finau said. “To get rewarded for it, you never know in this game. Keep your head up, one foot after the other, and good things can happen.
While Finau has won the trophies, Patrick Cantlay – who tied for second with Taylor Pendrith and Cameron Young – is quietly building another outstanding season.
In his last nine starts, Cantlay has a shared victory with Xander Schauffele in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, two seconds, a T3, a T4 and a T8.
“I’ve been playing well all year, so I've just got to get hot with the putter and see if I can get up near contention the last three weeks and I should be in a good spot,” Cantlay said.
The same goes for Cameron Young, the likely rookie of the year, who has finished second five times and third twice this season, putting him ninth entering the FedEx Cup playoffs (he’s not playing the Wyndham Championship).
“I'd be lying if I said it was easy to just watch other people win,” Young said. “Obviously, today Tony beat us all by a lot, but it's not fun being that close that often and not having one.
“Some of them, I've been closer than others, obviously. I've lost by one a couple times and lost by four, five a couple times. All in all, I think it's a great thing. It proves that I can at least put myself there. Yeah, I think overall it's a good thing, but definitely a little frustrating not to have won one yet.”
Ron Green Jr.