Weekly Recap: Burns Notice

There certainly was a faction in the golf world that felt Sam Burns should've been a Ryder Cup captain's pick, a young, fiery 20-something rising rapidly in the world rankings. He surely was in the conversation and, even though we don't know, maybe even the dreaded 13th guy, the last man cut.

The Americans won very easily, of course, so from that perspective it didn't matter. But it surely did for Burns, who on Sunday made a preemptive strike to qualify for the 2023 team in Italy by winning the Sanderson Farms Championship for his second title of the year.

Burns, 25, the top player in the field in terms of world ranking at 25th, rallied on the back nine for a two-stroke win over Nick Watney, who used to be a pretty big deal himself, and Cameron Young, who is not even in the top four of Camerons on the PGA Tour.

Burns is now up to a career-high 18th in the OWGR, which is just behind five actual Ryder Cuppers: No. 17, Tyrrell Hatton, No. 16 Daniel Berger, No. 15 Rory McIlroy, No. 14 Viktor Hovland and No. 13 Jordan Spieth. Before the 2023 Ryder Cup comes the Presidents Cup next fall, and Burns just jumped from 12th to seventh in those point standings -- ahead of Spieth, Xander Schauffele, Tony Finau and Brooks Koepka, to name a few.

This victory was just the latest progression in a remarkable 2021 for Burns, who began the year ranked 154th. He largely kicked away what would've been his first PGA Tour title in February at the Genesis Invitational, but came back about two months later to win the Valspar. He was runner-up next time out at the Byron Nelson, then again after coming thisclose to capturing the WGC-FedEx. And now he's added a second win to go along with the two runners-up.

It would be convenient but unfair to say that Burns should've won because he was the top golfer in a mediocre Sanderson Field. Heck, many of the guys who finished right behind him on the leaderboard have such little stature they would need name tags for us to identify them, as you will see.

But with a 144-man field, there is no sure thing, and Burns showed the mark of a champion and a closer by taking control on the back nine on Sunday, amassing four birdies before a meaningless bogey on 18 kept it from becoming a near-rout. He ranked first in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, second in Approach and first in greens in regulation. That's a combination capable of winning many golf tournaments, even before you get on the green. Burns did not have a good putting week, but he ranked an elite ninth in SG; Putting last season.

So if you lump all those together -- Off-the-Tee, Approach, GIR, putting -- you aren't looking at the No. 18 golfer in the world.

You could very well soon be looking at a top-10 golfer in the world.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Nick Watney
Watney used to be a big deal, a five-time PGA Tour winner ranked as high as ninth in the world. To illustrate that, he was ranked 50th in all-time earnings at the end of last season. Which was pretty convenient for him because that's the only reason he has a card now, using a one-time money exemption for being in the top-50. His tie for second landed him 245 FedEx Cup points and, with the 29 he got at the Fortinet, is almost where he needs to be to play next year. Pat Perez, the No. 125 golfer in 2019, the last non-pandemic-affected season, totaled 376 points. Watney led the field in Strokes Gained:  Putting and made almost 500 feet worth of putts. So maybe this result needs an asterisk. On the other hand, the 40-year-old may be experiencing a bit of a renaissance. He missed 13 straight cuts to start 2021 but now has made six of his past seven. A really great story could be brewing. Watney jumped from 660th to 303rd in the OWGR.

Cameron Young
Just what the PGA Tour needs – another Cameron. We kid, we kid. Young tied for second, which was his best finish ever on the Tour considering it was only his fifth event and he missed the other four cuts, including at the Fortinet. He's only 24 and won twice on the Korn Ferry Tour last season. He's a bomber, averaging 327 off the tee at the Country Club of Jackson. It's always dangerous to get too excited about fall-season results, especially from newcomers. But Young is now up to a career-best 114th in the OWGR, higher than many more well-known guys. Young's top-10 earned him a spot in this week's Shriners, where we will get another read on him.

Henrik Norlander
The former Augusta State teammate of Patrick Reed is a good example of a golfer who turns just a few weeks out of the year into a recurring PGA Tour card and the bulk of his earnings. Norlander finished fourth in last year's Sanderson Farms and second at Torrey Pines to accumulate more than half of the FedEx Cup points he accrued all season. Now he has another tie for fourth this week, which will go a long way toward getting him in the playoffs again with another one or two good weeks. Of course, it's impossible to predict when those weeks will come, though consecutive top-5s in this tournament provide a bit more info for Norlander.

Andrew Landry
Like Norlander, Landry is another Tour guy who turns a few good weeks a year into a pretty good living. Or even less than a few. Landry tied for fourth at the Sanderson, only his second top-25 in almost two years, since winning the Amex in January 2019. That victory means Landry doesn't have to sweat to keep his card even for next season, no matter what happens the rest of 2021-22. As someone who ranked outside the top-100 in every strokes-gained category last season, it's quite possible Landry won't have another top-10 the rest of the way.

Hayden Buckley
Buckley, who tied for fourth, is another Korn Ferry newcomer. He's 25 and this was only his fifth PGA Tour start. He got his card with top-10s in two of the three KF playoff events that included some familiar PGA Tour names, so he's been on a bit of a heater lately. Again, he's a KF grad and this is the fall season, so proceed with caution. Buckley is not even in the top 200 of the OWGR; his great week moved him to 201st.

Trey Mullinax
Mullinax completes the quartet of fourth-place finishers. He was on the KF Tour the past two seasons but was on the big tour for three years before that. So he has far more experience than some of the others. In fact, this was Mullinax's fifth career top-10 in only 84 starts, which is not bad. Still, it's unlikely he will do it again anytime soon.

Sahith Theegala
The rookie was bidding to almost go wire-to-wire but fell apart on the back-nine on Sunday to tie for eighth. Of course, if Theegala knew at the beginning of the week that he would finish in the top-10, he'd have been thrilled. He got his card with a pair of top-6s in the Korn Ferry playoffs and this was only his 26th PGA start. We'll get see him again this week at the Shriners thanks to this top-10. With the pedigree of being a great college golfer at Pepperdine and still only 23 years old, this likely was not a flash-in the-pan result.

Seth Reeves
Who? Yet another KF grad, Reeves is a bit older than many of the others, now 30 years old. He had a PGA Tour card a few years ago but couldn't hold on with only two top-25s. But one of them was a tie for seventh at the 2018 Sanderson, and now has another top-10 with this T8. It was enough to get him into the field for this week's Shriners.

C.T. Pan
Pan tied for 11th, continuing a run that began with winning the bronze medal in that seven-man playoff at the Olympics. And then he tied for sixth last week at the Fortinet. Pan is a bit more accomplished than some of the former Korn Ferry players listed above, but it's likely he too is benefitting from the lesser fields of the fall season. He's ranked 123rd.

Grant Hirschman
Hirschman is another KF guy, but unlike the others in this field, he's still there. Ranked in the 700s of the OWGR coming in, he was a Monday qualifier and made the most of it with a tie for 17th. It was only his second PGA Tour event and first in three years. He also made the cut in his first, the 2018 FedEx St. Jude Classic. The experience of the past week surely will be invaluable for the 26-year-old Hirschman, but who knows when we'll see him again. For what it's worth, he moved up to 643rd in the world rankings.

Taylor Moore
Moore was our sleeper pick in the preseason RotoWire Sleepers and Busts article, so we're trying to keep track of him. After missing the cut badly at the Fortinet, Moore tied for 17th at the Sanderson. The Korn Ferry grad will be back in action this week at the Shriners, and we'll be watching.

Sergio Garcia
It was entirely predictable that Garcia would miss the cut with this tournament beginning just four days after the completion of the Ryder Cup. It was honorable that he came back to defend his title, when he almost assuredly otherwise would've taken a pass. Even though it was only the Sanderson, the field is too hard when you're not at your best. Don't even count this one against Sergio.

Gary Woodland
A terrible year for Woodland was not contained to last season. He missed the cut on Friday in his first event of 2021-22, and he's now speeding toward falling outside the top 100 ofo the OWGR. In fact, he's exactly 100th. Woodland began the year ranked 39th, which wasn't all that great, and the 2019 U.S. Open now seems so very long ago for the 37-year-old.

Lucas Herbert and Aaron Rai
Some highly ranked internationals made their way onto the PGA Tour via the Korn Ferry playoffs, and we're keeping an eye on them. Both Herbert, the 51st-ranked Australian, and Rai, the 96th-ranked Englishman, have now missed the cut in each of the first two events, beginning with the season-open Fortinet two weeks ago. We've so often seen quality internationals struggle to make the transition to the best tour in golf, but it's too soon to write off these two. Herbert had a top-20 at the Memorial last season and Rai did likewise at the WGC-Workday.

European Tour

Danny Willett won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on his 34th birthday, a win that will move the former Masters champion to the brink of returning to the top-100 (102nd). But we were more interested in three Ryder Cuppers who traveled a long way just a week after Europe's bad loss at Whistling Straits. Tyrrell Hatton tied for second, Shane Lowry for fourth and Tommy Fleetwood for seventh. Impressive, for sure, but only to a point because Euro fields are so weak, and this one was even weaker than the Sanderson. European captain Padraig Harrington also played, but he missed the 54-hole cut. But good for him to get right back on the horse. Further, Harrington now will cross the Atlantic again to make his Champions Tour debut this week. At 174th in the OWGR, he's far from the lowest-ranked golfer in this article.