Monday Finish: Wise continues youth movement on PGA TOUR

In pursuit of his first PGA TOUR victory, 21-year-old Aaron Wise weathers a 4-hour rain delay, pulls away at the turn, and fires a final-round 65 to capture the AT&T Byron Nelson. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Wise outplayed fellow 54-hole co-leader Marc Leishman to salt away a comfortable three-stroke victory at Trinity Forest, his audacious 23-under total making him the seventh first-time winner this season. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1 With the 20-somethings already in command of the FedExCup (Justin Thomas), and having won the last four majors, Aaron Wise, 21, stamped himself for greatness. Not that we didn’t see him coming. He was the 2016 individual NCAA champion when he also helped his Oregon Ducks to the team title, and becomes just the second player, after Mackenzie Hughes, to win on the PGA TOUR after having won on the Web.com Tour and the Mackenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada. Now he has his sights set on being in the top 30 at season’s end. “I haven’t had time to reassess my goals, but moving up to 18 on the FedExCup is incredible,� Wise said. “Not many rookies have made it to the TOUR Championship.� That may be so, but last year rookie Xander Schauffele won it on the way to top rookie honors. A good omen for the latest AT&T Byron Nelson winner? 2 This was just the 26th start of Wise’s TOUR career, and he’s the first rookie to win the Byron since Keegan Bradley in 2011. Also, at 21 years, 10 months and 29 days old, he’s the youngest Byron winner since Tiger Woods (21 years, 4 months, 18 days) in 1997. Oh, and Wise is also the youngest winner on TOUR this season, and the youngest overall since Si Woo Kim (21 years, 10 months, 16 days) captured THE PLAYERS Championship a year ago. Only once on Sunday did Wise show his youthful inexperience. “Back nine,� he said, “my caddie kind of calmed me down. Like, ‘Dude, you got to focus on these shots, we’ve got some big shots coming up. We’ll finish before dark, don’t worry about that.’ Kind of calmed me back down.� The details on Wise’s rapid rise: He has played eight straight rounds under par, finishing T2 and first at the Wells Fargo Championship and AT&T Byron Nelson, respectively, to rack up 745 FedExCup points and jump from 105th to 18th in the standings. He’s also up to 66th in the Official World Golf Ranking. The top 60 after the FedEx St. Jude Classic get into the U.S. Open. 3 Runner-up Marc Leishman notched his sixth top-10 finish and his second runner-up (P2, THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES) this season, but after an opening-round 61 he was hoping for more. Culprit: the putter. “He hit the ball incredible,� Wise said. “I knew he would have a ton of looks. He did. Unfortunately, he didn’t make all the putts and I was able to edge him out.� Leishman, who jumped from 33rd to 14th in the FedExCup, led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting for the week (+2.226) but struggled, relatively speaking, on Sunday (.085). 4 With Trinity Forest all but defenseless, several players enjoyed career-low performances. Keith Mitchell (T3) shot a career-low, 8-under 63 in the final round. J.J. Spaun (T3) also shot 63 and came one shot shy of tying his career-low round on TOUR (8-under 62, R3, 2017 RSM Classic). Not to be outdone, Branden Grace (T3) fired a final-round 62 to match his career low and the lowest-ever round in a major, which he shot at The Open Championship last summer. “Feels like a breath of fresh air coming to something different,� Grace said of first-year Byron host Trinity Forest. “Really is nice. I really enjoyed the golf course, I enjoyed how it played.� 5 Despite the low scores, Trinity Forest’s big greens could be vexing. Adam Scott (65, T9), who moved up to 61st in the world and barely missed automatically qualifying for the upcoming U.S. Open (top 60 on May 21 and June 11), said he had trouble reading the breaks. Ditto for Jordan Spieth, who is a Trinity member but still didn’t make much while finishing T21 at the Byron. Both now head to one of their favorite TOUR stops in the Fort Worth Invitational. Scott won the tournament in 2014, while Spieth, a runner-up in 2015 and 2017, won it in 2016. “I don’t struggle reading the greens at Colonial,� Spieth said. FIVE INSIGHTS 1 Wise hit the longest drive of the week, a 402-yard blast at the ninth hole Saturday, ranked first in Greens in Regulation (91.67 percent), and recorded the highest GIR percentage by a winner on TOUR since 1997. He is the first this season, and the first since Dustin Johnson last year (THE NORTHERN TRUST), to rank either first or second in both Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee (Wise was second) and Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green (first) en route to victory. 2 Five players have a win and a runner-up in consecutive starts this season: Wise; Justin Thomas (won The Honda Classic, P2 at World Golf Championship-Mexico Championship); Jason Day (won Farmers Insurance Open, T2 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am); Jon Rahm (2nd Sentry Tournament of Champions, won CareerBuilder Challenge); and Dustin Johnson (T2 WGC-HSBC Champions, won Sentry Tournament of Champions). Wise, 56th in the FedExCup, is the only one of the five players who is not currently in the top 10 in the standings. 3 With the wind mostly down, Trinity Forest was a pushover. There were 12 bogey-free rounds Sunday, with the course softened by rain, and Branden Grace shot 62 on his 30th birthday. Wise’s 23-under total was the third-lowest total in relation to par this season, behind only the CIMB Classic and Sentry Tournament of Champions, where 24-under won. 4 Wise moved up a healthy 38 spots to 18th in the FedExCup, but was outdone, in a way, by Parker McLachlin. His T26 finish at Trinity moved him from 242nd to 203rd, up 39 spots. 5 Only one player, Jimmy Walker, recorded top-10 finishes at both the AT&T Byron Nelson (T6) and the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (T8). Walker, who was coming off a T2 at THE PLAYERS, is clearly back from his Lyme Disease, and he’s dialed in. 

Click here to read the full article…