Looking at the leaderboard heading into the final round of the Charles Schawb Sunday, its looking to be a good one. With 20 guys within 5 shots of Xander’s lead, it’s really anyone’s tournament. The great thing about what we’re seeing with the leaderboard at its current status is there are a lot of names the PGA fans are not used to seeing at the top and it’s an interesting time to see it happening coming out of the COVID break. With all the talk of a new normal, is this a new normal in golf? Not sure, however, it’s great to see guys like Collin Marikawa, Corey Conners, J.T. Poston, and Branden Grace in contention, but they are certainly going to have their handsfull to outdo A LOT of big names in the mix floating within a few shots of Schauffele’s one stroke lead.
One of the big questions coming into the week was the 91 days off the players had from any competitive tournament golf, which I think the question has been answered that it hasn’t had much of an effect. in fact, I would argue it may have been a blessing in disguise, especially for Jordan Speith, who my counterpart Steve so eloquently wrote on his resurgence yesterday. The kid is back, end of story.
Below are the tee times for the Sunday pairings with the guys that have a legit shot at the win. Granted, I wouldn’t completely rule out the slew of guys at 7 under seeing as there have been some sporadic, RIDICULOUSLY low scores that have been posted this week, but the 7 under squad guys are going to have to put on a clinic to make a run.
11:30 a.m.: Bubba Watson (8-under), Charles Howell III (7-under)
11:40 a.m.: Sungjae Im (8-under), Mark Hubbard (8-under)
11:50 a.m.: Cameron Champ (8-under), Jason Kokrak (8-under)
12 p.m.: J.T. Poston (9-under), Chesson Hadley (8-under)
12:10 p.m.: Rory McIlroy (10-under), Bryson DeChambeau (10-under)
12:20 p.m.: Corey Conners (10-under), Justin Rose (10-under)
12:30 p.m.: Patrick Reed (10-under), Abraham Ancer (10-under)
12:40 p.m.: Daniel Berger (11-under), Harold Varner III (11-under)
12:50 p.m.: Collin Morikawa (12-under), Jordan Spieth (12-under)
1 p.m.: Justin Thomas (12-under), Branden Grace (12-under)
1:10 p.m.: Xander Schauffele (13-under), Gary Woodland (12-under)
I don’t know about you but some of those names are getting me pumped! Real competition is finally back and this one should come down to the wire. Honestly, we couldn’t have asked for much more.
I called it in my post on Wednesday before the tournament that I had Dechambeau taking home the trophy, and I have to stick to that at this point. Bryson has been dropping BOMBS all week and it’s not unreasonable to see him have a day tomorrow and post a low round, 64 maybe?
