Mito Pereira takes a three-shot lead Sunday at the PGA Championship. But he has yet to win a PGA Tour event.
Michael Madrid/USA Today
TULSA, Okla. — This is true about the 104 PGA Championship. If Frankie Valli had shown up, the tournament would have experienced all four seasons.
Friday’s high temperatures in the low 90s gave way to overnight rain, Saturday morning drizzle and frigid conditions in the mid-50s that had fans bundled up and Rickie Fowler wearing oversized gloves. you typically see on the Green Bay Packers bench in January.
You know what else is certain about this PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club, which has reminded us how good it really is?
Not a thing. This PGA Championship is absolutely wild, crazy and unpredictable. (I knew you’d say that. So scratch unpredictable.)
Exhibit A: A boy from Chile you’ve never heard of, Mito Pereira, is your leader. Pleasure! (Nice to meet you!) Either he’s a 54-hole fluke or a future star. (Go for the latter. This guy loves to tee off and play aggressive. He could have retired on Saturday, but after four mid-round bogeys, he birdied three of the last six and made a crucial save.) on the 16. Pass the strong chili bracelet, please.)
Appendix 2: A former US amateur champion from England you probably don’t remember who never won on the PGA Tour, Matt Fitzpatrick finished birdie-birdie to materialize seemingly out of nowhere and jump into second place. He and Pereira are the only players to shoot under par in all three rounds. For love, old friend, lovely.
Test III: Will Zalatoris, a former Masters runner-up who seems to succeed only in major championships, is at it again despite a five-bogey day that knocked him out of the lead but left him two behind. He is tougher than Naugahyde. The guy who holed it all out on the greens Friday saw his repaired putt come off the front end, but he made it. Z-Man could very well become The Man.
Exhibit than?: First-round leader Rory McIlroy, seemingly back in full flight, faded like an old soldier for the second round in a row. Most of Saturday’s roaring didn’t go to Rors… Justin Thomas, who looked like the man to beat after his stellar 67 in the windy second round, racked up six bogeys, including an unforgivable one on the attainable par-5 13 and he dropped seven shots back. . The former PGA champion isn’t out for the count yet, but heck, he was on the ropes all day…Stewart Cink celebrated his 49th birthday and charged a 1 over par 71, that’s right, a 71 was charging. this warped third round, into a tie in the seventh…Two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson trailed home with four bogeys in the nine as bunkers kept jumping in front of his ball…Cameron Young, a A former Wake Forest University star who is also relatively unknown, he made his way into the mix by driving the green at the par 4 17th hole and draining a long eagle putt to slide into fourth place. He hit a 4-wood from 297 yards, in case he wants to feel inferior… Max Homa, who won the recent Wells Fargo Championship, cracked the top 10. He can probably get details on the stars twitter account from him.
You get the picture. If you were watching the PGA Championship at home, it was hard to tell which part was the golf broadcast and which part was the insurance commercial of the battered guy who plays Mayhem and pushes his stationary bike through a glass patio door. It seems that Southern Hills is winning the war. This is how great championships should be.
“It’s just as important to win the attitude contest as it is to win the driving, iron, chipping and putting contests,” Cink said.
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Wild and crazy? What kind of coincidence gets wilder and crazier than Cink again in contention in Southern Hills? He nearly missed at the 2001 US Open here when he missed a short putt of 18 inches or less that, it turned out, would have gotten him into a Monday playoff.
“This feels like a comfortable place to play, but I have a memory, it’s missing a short putt on the last hole,” said Cink, who won his only major title when he beat Tom Watson at the 2009 British Open at Turnberry. “It took me a while to get over it and it’s almost 20 years down the road. It’s a distant memory now and luckily I got that monkey off me.”
Sunday’s final will focus on Pereira. He’s 27, played college golf for a year at Texas Tech, won three Korn Ferry Tour events to earn a battlefield promotion to the PGA Tour, and was part of that wild multiplayer playoff (which included Rory McIlroy and Collin Morikawa) for the Olympic bronze medal eventually won by CT Pan from Taiwan.
Pereira is from Santiago, Chile, where PGA Tour winner Joaquín Niemann is also from. Chile has about 50 golf courses and a few thousand recreational players, but has two players in the top 25 at this PGA. Niemann is 23 years old. What are the odds that Chile will produce two world-class players…and possibly a PGA champion?
The most impressive thing Pereira did was move third-round leader Zalatoris into the lead right away, hang on to him despite a mid-round slip, and then finish strong. He shot 69 after opening 68-64 and is three shots ahead of Fitzpatrick.
“I was playing really well and all of a sudden I had four bogeys in five holes,” Pereira said. “It was a difficult place to be at the moment. But I just found myself. I was very happy with how I finished, the birdie on the 18th was a bonus. I am happy to be in this position.”
Let’s review the old leader victory meter. Pereira (-9), 0 wins on the PGA Tour. Fitzpatrick (-6), 0 PGA Tour wins but 7 DP World Tour wins. Zalatoris (-6), 0 wins. Young (-5), 0 wins. Abraham Ancer (-4), 1 win. Seamus Power (-3), 1 win.
There are six shots between Pereira and sixth place and only two wins. Of course, Cink, Thomas and Watson are seven behind and former US Open champion Webb Simpson is eight behind. Eight might seem like a lot, but if Pereira blows up, Simpson is just five shots out of second.
Predicting this PGA Final is like a beginner at a board game playing Clue. You can’t rule anyone out. (Except Professor Plum. All he does is read and smoke his pipe, not the lead pipe, in the library.)
Zalatoris is in the mix until the end. “I’ll stay on my game, I know I’m playing very good golf,” he said. “I have nothing to lose tomorrow. Mito played an amazing round today. You could argue that he was just as good as JT’s (Justin Thomas) 67 yesterday morning. You have to go out and get it, everyone has to go out and earn it.”
Southern Hills will make sure of that. His ordeal means the winner, whoever they are, will have to do like Frankie Valli and… walk like a man.
Reference-www.si.com