Sleeper picks: Safeway Open

Patrick Rodgers … Ever since the Stanford product first broke onto the scene with Special Temporary Membership in 2014-15, he’s been a regular at the tournament nearest his Cardinal stomping grounds. It’s been a mixed bag at Silverado, but the prize was a T6 in his second appearance in what was his first with official membership in the fall of 2015. Coincidentally, he’s coming off a mixed bag of a third full season on the PGA TOUR that concluded with a DNP in the FedExCup Playoffs because he attended a wedding in Scotland. The Safeway is his first action since a T24 at the Wyndham Championship. Completed last season at ninth in strokes gained: putting and eighth in conversion percentage inside 10 feet. Kevin Tway … If he can roll what he put on display in the second half of 2017-18 into the fall, we’ll be talking about a special start en route to what might be a breakout season. The 30-year-old recorded three top 10s and another trio of top 25s in his last 10 starts before the FedExCup Playoffs in which he survived the first two cuts to finish 24-for-31 and T17 in par-5 scoring. He’s also made the cut in both prior trips to Silverado where his muscle off the tee has paid dividends. Harold Varner III … Back for redemption after plummeting 48 spots to T59 with a closing 81 a year ago, but he walked off a T15 in 2016 with a 65. His aggressive tee-to-green tendency slots him inside the top third on TOUR in distance of all drives, greens in regulation and par-5 scoring. A terrific July triggered a third straight trip to the FedExCup Playoffs and he’s arrived at Silverado with a modest consecutive cuts made streak of six. Sungjae Im … Nearly three full years younger than fellow South Korean native Si Woo Kim, the 20-year-old Im has elevated expectations to an absurd level given his youth. Currently 97th in the Official World Golf Ranking, he’s immediately ahead of Ted Potter, Jr., who won at Pebble Beach earlier this year, and fellow Web.com Tour graduate Cameron Davis, who recorded two third-place finishes in the Finals and prevailed at the 2017 Australian Open. Im authored his own phenomenal script with two wins and three seconds on the Web.com Tour in 2018. So wide was his margin in earnings (finishing at $156,832 over runner-up Kramer Hickok), he sat out the Web.com Tour Championship. Prior to that, he may have set a precedent for a Web.com Tour player by qualifying for the PGA Championship via the OWGR before gaining entry into any non-major. Indeed, this week’s Safeway will mark his PGA TOUR debut in a non-major. He sacrifices distance off the tee for accuracy, but still finished T5 in par-5 scoring on the Web. Tyler McCumber … You think Francesco Molinari has been on fire over the last few months? If McCumber keeps it up, people are going to be referring to 10-time PGA TOUR winner, Mark McCumber, as Tyler’s dad instead of the reverse. The 27-year-old won three times on the Mackenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada this summer and paced the circuit in both scoring and earnings. Since 2013 when the PGA TOUR took management control, notable season leaders of the Order of Merit have included Mackenzie Hughes (2013), Joel Dahmen (2014), J.J. Spaun (2015) and 2018-19 PGA TOUR rookie Kramer Hickok (2017). With his first two titles, McCumber also became the first Mackenzie Tour player in history to win consecutive tournaments. And it’s not like it came out of nowhere. He’s also a three-time winner on the PGA TOUR Latinoamérica.

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