Finau wins Northern Trust in playoff
JERSEY CITY, N.J. – Tony Finau has a few sayings he lives by, one of which is goals are dreams with a deadline.
Down to the final three events in the FedEx Cup playoffs, his deadline was looming to win a tournament in the PGA Tour’s 2020-21 “super season” of 50 events and to make sure that he showed U.S. Ryder Cup captain Steve Stricker that he was deserving of a spot on the 12-man team.
On a Monday finish thanks to Hurricane Henri, Finau hunted down World No. 1 Jon Rahm by shooting 6-under 65 at Liberty National and defeated Cameron Smith in a sudden-death playoff with a par on the first extra hole to win the Northern Trust for his first victory on the PGA Tour since 2016.
Finau, who trailed Rahm and Smith by two strokes entering the final round, birdied two of the first four holes to grab a share of the lead, but he failed to escape a greenside bunker from a plugged lie at the par-5 eighth and made bogey to drop two strokes behind Rahm.
But on an episode of his podcast, “Let’s Get It,” which he hosts with his swing instructor, Boyd Summerhays, Finau explained how he kept his poise and delivered in the clutch. “What are three things we never do?” Finau said to Summerhays rhetorically. “We don’t panic, we don’t panic and we don’t panic.”
Finau played a five-hole stretch beginning at No. 12 in 5 under, including a 3-foot eagle putt at 13, to catapult past Rahm.
The momentum of the tournament was stalled by Hurricane Henri, which dumped nine inches of rain on the course in 36 hours. It took a Herculean effort to get the course playable, with final-round tee times delayed four hours. Early starters played in drizzling rain, but sunshine would poke through the battleship-grey clouds by the time the leaders teed off.