Safeway Open Recap: Tway Grabs First PGA Win

You don't see Old Tom Morris in the news much these days. But there he was, the winner of four Open Championships back in the '60s – the 1860s, that is – getting a shoutout as Kevin Tway was trying to win the season-opening Safeway Open on Sunday.

You see, Tway had a chance to become part of the 10th father-son tandem to win on the PGA Tour, joining his dad, Bob Tway, whose eight career victories included the miracle 1986 PGA Championship (Google: "Oy, Greg Norman not again").

Kevin Tway did in fact win on the third playoff hole over the far more accomplished Ryan Moore, and the even more accomplished Brandt Snedeker, who bowed out on the first extra hole. This was the 91st PGA Tour event of 30-year-old Tway's career, and he really had never even been in position to win before. So sealing the deal in your first opportunity is no small feat.

For most of the day, there was little indication that Tway would win, or that anyone would except Snedeker, who was seeking to close the deal for the second time in less than two months. And that may have helped. Tway went to No. 17 at 1-over on the day. He birdied the last two, while Snedeker was bogeying four holes on the inward nine. So perhaps Tway never felt any pressure.

But he surely did in the playoff, yet he birdied all three of the extra holes, finishing the tournament with five straight.

Tway excels in no one area of his golf game, though last season he was particularly poor in strokes gained: around the green, ranking 113th. For the week at Silverado, he was seventh. If you can make even marginal improvements in your one big weakness, real gains could and should follow. We'll see whether this was a one-week deal for Tway, who did show flashes the past two seasons.

Tway was a fantasy "tweener" last season, someone who had three top-10s and six top-25s but also many poor finishes among his 31 starts. Actually, that's like a lot of guys. Only now Tway has a win.

With most of the father-son winners, it was the father who had the better career. And that surely will be the case with the Tways, too. The younger Tway will also have a hard time catching some of the sons, including Old Tom Morris' boy, Young Tom Morris, who equaled dear old Dad with four Open Championships.

(For anyone wondering how those Open Championships could be PGA Tour events long before the PGA Tour even existed, all the Open Championships retroactively are given such status.)

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Ryan Moore
After recording the three best seasons of his career with a win every year from 2014 to '16, Moore took slight steps back the past two years. Maybe a couple of years ago he would've been able to close out a winless golfer in a playoff. But this time the winless golfer won. Moore barely finished in the top-60 in points the past two seasons, and that sounds about right once again.

Brandt Snedeker
Snedeker really gagged away what would've been his second win in seven weeks and 10th lifetime. It seems sort of right that it happened. Not that we want anything bad to happen to Snedeker, but he doesn't seem a good enough player anymore to be winning that often. He's clearly recovered from his injury and could contend for the Tour Championship, but at age 37 that's as far as we see him going.

Aaron Baddeley
Baddeley has earned more than $20 million in his career but suffered the ignominy of not only missing the top-125 last season but also coming up short in the Web.com Tour finals. So the 37-year-old Aussie is playing under the Past Champions category and originally wasn't in the field this week. He swallowed his pride and attempted to Monday qualify. Not only did Baddeley qualify but he wound up tied for fourth, just missing the playoff by a stroke. That's his best result in more than two years and puts him more than a quarter of the way toward making the top-125 this season (based on the point totals from the past two seasons).

Sungjae Im
Sometimes we believe the hype, sometimes we don't. But there surely was hype for Im, the 20-year-old South Korean who won the Web.com regular season to secure his card. He was part of the four-way tie for fourth in only his third PGA Tour event. In his second over the summer, he tied for 42nd at the PGA Championship. So we would say, believe the hype.

Jim Knous
The margins in professional golf are so slim, the difference between success and failure sometimes minuscule. Knous had toiled in the sport's minor leagues for years, playing only two PGA Tour events despite being 28 years old. Last month, he got the 50th and final Tour berth via the Web.com finals. On Sunday, Knous tied for 10th to win more than $150,000, not all that far from his career earnings. With the top-10, Knous also qualified for the CJ Cup at Nine Bridges in South Korea in two weeks, and now he has the plane fare to get there. We're not advocating Knous as a good fantasy option, but he was a helluva story in his first week on Tour.

Bill Haas
While Knous is a great story without much fantasy value, Haas is a great story with perhaps a good deal of fantasy value. The 36-year-old, coming off a season that was lost largely because he was a passenger in a fatal car accident back in February, tied for 10th at Silverado. At his age, Haas likely won't return to the top-20 player he once was, but he surely could return to the top-75 in the OWGR. After beginning the week at 151st, Haas is off to a good start.

Hunter Mahan
Continuing with good stories, Mahan tied for 17th after regaining his card in the Web finals. That was his best showing in a regular Tour event (not opposite-field) since his T13 at last year's Safeway. The former top-five player didn't do much the rest of the season, and that surely could happen again, but this seems a little different. Mahan has been playing better for a few months now. Stay tuned; he could be a sleeper.

Phil Mickelson
Mickelson also tied for 17th, something we'd didn't think remotely possible coming off the rigors of the Ryder Cup. But he did lose steam on the weekend, after beginning the third round in the final grouping. It's hard to fully gauge Mickelson's game – or anyone's, really – in a lesser field at the start of the season.

Bud Cauley
Back to the good stories. Cauley's season came to an abrupt end in June after he suffered serious injuries in a car accident. This was his first event back, and he tied for 46th, unfortunately tumbling down the leaderboard on Sunday after a final-round 4-over 76. The 28-year-old was amid perhaps his finest season, and this finish indicates he is healthy and should be a valid fantasy consideration, especially because he'll have a very favorable price tag most weeks.

Brendan Steele
The chances of Steele winning a third straight title at Silverado were remote even if he had been playing at the top of his game. But he had been awful for most of 2018, without so much as a top-20 since early March. Predictably, Steele tied for 53rd on the week, and we need to see more, a lot more, before considering Steele for our lineups.

Denny McCarthy
McCarthy surely was a fantasy darling after winning the Web.com finals. And, while we expect a much better season for McCarthy than he had in his rookie campaign on the PGA Tour, a $9,700 price tag on DraftKings was absurd. McCarthy missed the cut. By a lot. Everybody stand down.