FINAU A MAJOR FACTOR
SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — Tony Finau may not win the PGA Championship.
It doesn’t matter. Learn how to pronounce the PGA Tour rookie’s name. FeeNow. As in phenom.
He is playing in just his second major, having tied for 14th at the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay. For now, it’s a learning experience, as for much of the day, he was right in the middle of things, making the turn in 32, the best front nine of any of the leaders.
Finau had the chance to get to 13-under but missed a short putt on the par-5 16th hole, and it put him off his game. He bogeyed the final two holes for a round of 69 that moved him to 10-under and within five shots of leader Jason Day.
“I feel like if I just drop that putt on 18, I’m still in the thick of it,” he said. “I’m five back and that’s, for me, that’s still in contention. So, we’ll see what we can do tomorrow. I feel good about what I did today, it was a rough finish, but I hung in there and was pretty confident with what I’m doing.”
He should be. A second cousin of Milwaukee Bucks forward Jabari Parker, the 25-year-old could be the best athlete on the PGA Tour, a title usually reserved for Dustin Johnson. As a high school senior, he averaged 11 rebounds a game to lead his team into the state tournament, and during the Byron Nelson Classic, where he finished 10th, he and Johnson went at it one-on-one and were slam dunking on each other.
At 6-foot-4, Finau stands out on the golf course. He has an incredibly fast turn, which allows him to hit the ball incredible distances. In fact, the only thing more incredible about Finau is his story.
The first PGA Tour member with Tongan and American Samoan heritage, Finau grew up in the high-crime, low-income Rose Park neighborhood of Salt Lake City, where he learned the game at a par-3 course called Jordan River.
He won the Junior World Golf Championship at age 13 in 2002 and was good enough to qualify for a PGA Tour event at age 17, turned pro the week of his high school graduation and finished second on Golf Channel’s “Big Break Disney.” Just when Finau’s career seemed ready to take off, his mother, Ravena was killed in a car crash on I-80 in Nevada.
“One of my main support groups was gone,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune. “I had to step back and say, ‘Is this something I need to pursue?’ ”
Stress led to a stomach ulcer, but Finau soon made $44,000 with a pair of victories on the National Pro Golf Tour. After getting married (he and his wife Alayna have two children), Finau made it onto the Web.Com Tour and earned his PGA Tour card after finishing eighth on the 2014 money list.
Finau finished in the top 15 in is first three PGA Tour starts and topped $600,000 in earnings in five weeks. He had arrived after seven years of struggling.
“I don’t know if I’d change anything,” Finau said, “because I don’t think I’d be the player or the person I am now, without the things that I’ve gone through.” Two things he doesn’t need to change are his golf swing and his temperament. The moment never seemed to be that big for him.
Even after he pulled his approach shot into the dunes left of the par-3 17th and was unable to get his first shot out, he collected himself. He pretty much sprinted to where his ball was, got it onto the green and poured a 15-footer into the cup to save bogey.
The brutish 18th hole was tough.
“I thought I hit a really good shot. It was a really good number for my pitching wedge. It was 148 cover and 55 hole, which is right where I hit my wedge, about 140, 149,” he said. “So a little helping wind, I hit a really good shot and unfortunately it landed on the upslope instead of a foot and a half further and it bounces down pretty close to the hole. So you’re going to get good bounces and bad bounces, you’ve just got to deal with it and I wasn’t able to get that up-and-down.”
For the ups and downs he’s had, Finau is doing pretty well.