Rocket Mortgage Classic reminds how fast things can change

Nate Lashley knew his life was about to change. He just didn’t know how much. “It was a little bit of a blur for me,” he said Tuesday. It played out in high-def for everybody watching at home, the unheralded Lashley’s surprising six-shot win at the inaugural Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club last year. He was the last man in the field, ranked 353rd in the world, and no one else stood a chance. “Probably the job security,” he said of the biggest way his life changed, “and then getting into any tournament I can play, make any schedule pretty much that you want outside of a couple majors and some World Golf Championships.” Seven weeks and eight events remain before the start of the FedExCup Playoffs, and some, like Rickie Fowler (108th in the current standings) and Jason Day (96) come to Detroit needing to make a move. In just over two months the TOUR Championship will crown the FedExCup champion over Labor Day weekend. Should they be worried? Nah. Lashley is Exhibit A for how fast everything can change in golf, but then so are six of the seven players who have been No. 1 in the FedExCup this season and will play in Detroit. They hail from Chile (Joaquin Niemann, the first No. 1 of this season, for one week) and Colombia (Sebastián Muñoz, the second, for three weeks); South Korea (Sungjae Im, two weeks) and America (Lanto Griffin, Brendon Todd and current leader Webb Simpson). Start with Simpson, who has five top-10 finishes – including two wins – in seven starts this season. Last season he posted three runner-up finishes but no victories on the way to finishing 16th in the FedExCup. This season he’s turning those close calls into wins. “Justin Rose is kind of my inspiration,” he said after winning the RBC Heritage two weeks ago. “He seems like he’s always there every week. He works hard at his craft, and I just thought, you know, I have good weeks. I make it to the TOUR Championship. I’ve won a few times. But I really have a desire to be in that top 10 or 15 guys in the world ranking all the time and have chances to win, not just twice a year, but as many times as I can.” Most of the others who held down FedExCup No. 1 before him this season have their own stories of transformation. In many cases, they are rags-to-riches stories. “I’m trying to convince my family and my agent to let me buy something nice,” Joaquin Niemann said after winning A Military Tribute at the Greenbrier last September. He had been languishing outside the top 150 as of May 2019, but now he was FedExCup No. 1. Muñoz is the only player who has been in the top 10 for all 23 weeks of the season. He took the top spot after winning the Sanderson Farms Championship. “I just kept smiling to myself, reminding me, Oh, yeah, (the Sentry Tournament of Champions in) Hawaii is around the corner,” Muñoz said. “Oh, yeah, Masters. Like, Oh, yeah, I got job security for a couple years. It’s just like smile, then smile again.” Griffin, who assumed FedExCup pole position after he won the Houston Open, also sounded like a kid at Christmas when asked later about how his life had changed. Of course, that was partly because it was Christmas – or at least the Sentry Tournament of Champions. “So we got Mom the car around Christmas,” he said at Kapalua. “I wanted it to be a surprise, so she came down to my sister’s house, we did Christmas there, and we had it out in the back of her house with a bow on it, so she was — she loved it. She’s texted me four or five times since then, ‘I still can’t believe I have a Subaru.’ So that’s cool.” Todd was the next No. 1, and maybe the least likely. Currently down to FedExCup No. 6, he’s still up 201 spots compared to his position through week 23 last season. And he was 2,043rd in the Official World Golf Ranking in 2018 before embarking on a total reclamation of his game. On Sunday, Todd contended for his third TOUR victory this season (Bermuda Championship, Mayakoba Golf Classic) at the Travelers Championship before a freak bad round (75, T11). The Honda Classic winner Im was FedExCup No. 1 for the three month break necessitated by the pandemic. “There is a little bit of added pressure being the FedExCup leader and coming back to competitive play,” he said at the Charles Schwab Challenge, where he finished T10. He’s dropped off since then, with a MC at the RBC Heritage and T58 at the Travelers, but would anyone be surprised if he turned it around at the Rocket Mortgage? Jordan Spieth (59th in 2013) was the lowest ranked player with seven weeks left in the regular season to finish in the FedExCup top 10 (he finished eighth). As he knows all too well, as do Todd, Lashley and many others at the Rocket Mortgage, in golf it can all change in a flash.

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