Takeaways from BMW Championship
MEDINAH, Ill. – Justin Thomas was nervous driving to Medinah on Sunday with a six-shot lead. Nobody wants to shrink like Greg Norman did at the 1996 Masters.
Thomas scrolled through some texts wishing him luck. That didn’t help. After arriving at Medinah, he came upon well-wishers who offered him unsolicited advice: Talk to your caddie, stay relaxed, keep talking.
Thomas offered thanks but acknowledged later what he was really thinking: “I’ll be OK as long as you stop talking.”
Thomas’ lead shrank to two after 10 holes, but the Louisville, Ky., native played beautifully down the stretch. He birdied half of his remaining holes to finish at 25 under par, three better than a charging Patrick Cantlay.
Thomas, 26, not only won the BMW Championship, pocketing $1.665 million for his 10th tour victory. By rising to first on the Fedex Cup points list, he opens the Tour Championship with a two-shot lead, at 10 under par. (Cantlay opens at 8 under. Brooks Koepka, 7 under.)
“I can 1,000 percent say I’ve never slept on a Wednesday lead,” Thomas said to laughs in the media center. “I will try to win the tournament as if everybody starts at zero.” Here are some takeaways from the week:
Medinah yielded crazy-low scores.
Hale Irwin shot 8 under to win the 1990 U.S. Open at Medinah. Tiger Woods finished 11 under in winning the 1999 PGA Championship and 18 under in 2006. See a trend? Of course. The more pertinent question: Does it matter?
Conditions were perfect for scoring: Rain slowed the greens and effectively widened the fairways. And most holes were played with barely a breeze. Medinah has a Subair system to suck moisture from the greens, but it’s not as elaborate as the one at Augusta National. Perhaps the PGA Tour could have gone to extremes to speed the greens, but what would that have accomplished?
Some Medinah members might be perturbed that the course record fell twice – Hideki Matsuyama
shot 63 (twice, actually) and Thomas fired a 61 that featured a hole-out from 180 yards. But as one Western Golf Association official put it: The tour never wants to make the golf course the story. It makes the players the story. The USGA has taken the opposite approach at some U.S. Opens and gotten roasted for it.
Give Cantlay some props. The super-serious Californian shot 65 on Sunday despite bogeying No. 1. He showed some guts on No. 15 by choosing a driver and taking a line close to the pond short and right of the green. He executed the shot perfectly but missed the 19-foot eagle try.
“Patrick put a lot of heat on me,” Thomas said.
Phil Mickelson entertained ... but mostly on social media.
The storm that tore through the western suburbs
yielded a lightning strike at Mickelson’s hotel in Itasca. Nearly a dozen fire trucks arrived and the hotel had to be evacuated. Mickelson scurried from his room without the tools of his trade.
“I may miss my tee time because I am without clubs and clothes,” he tweeted.
Asked if he was thinking he should have grabbed his clubs on the way out, Lefty replied: “No, I was thinking I’d be (home in) San Diego a little earlier than expected.”
Mickelson got an assist from some Emergency Medical Technicians and made his tee time with 2030 minutes to spare.
“Turns out my clubs acted as a fire retardant,” he joked on Twitter.
Mickelson finished tied for 48th but said of the tournament and Medinah: “It was electric. I love it here.”