The Travelers Championship delivered low scores, as expected from the only PGA Tour tournament staged in the Northeast, to golf fans on a day that seemed like two due to a three-hour and ten-minute rain delay.
The 74 men who made the cut in the third round of the U.S. Open last week carded 167 birdies; but, last Saturday, the 70 players in the field recorded 347 birdies.
Cameron Young made a lot of noise before to the storms by becoming the 12th player to record a 59 in a PGA Tour tournament. He began by going 5 under through his first four holes on way to a front-nine 28, then birdied 13, eagled the par-4 15th, and smashed a 9-iron to five feet to set up a last birdie on the 17th hole. He was playing in almost windless conditions on a course softened by rain that fell Friday evening.
You would assume that Young would be in the lead after shooting 66 in the second round, but Keegan Bradley won the Travelers Championship at 23 under last year.
Major winners and a number of up-and-coming talent who are vying for the $3.6 million prize for winning this prestigious event easily defeated Young’s 13 under total.
Tom Kim, who was in the lead after the first and second rounds, had birdies on the fifth, sixth, eighth, and eleventh holes to go to 16 under after recording his first bogey of the week on the fourth hole on Saturday. As night fell on the course, Kim added two more birdies on the back nine to shoot 65 and lead by one going into Sunday.
“There were definitely a lot of birdies out there because the wind kind of died down after the delay, so the greens and fairways were really soft and there’s no wind,” Kim remarked. “I wasn’t too concerned about the leaderboards, but in those kinds of soft conditions, it’s definitely manageable, and I think I played well enough to have a decent round today.”
Kim is attempting to become the first Travelers Championship champion since Jordan Spieth in 2017 and the 12th overall.
The PGA Tour made the decision on Saturday to divide players into three groups rather of two, with the first group starting at 6:50 a.m. ET, due to the forecast of more storms over TPC River Highlands on Sunday afternoon. At the Travelers Championship, it is hoped that play will end by 4 p.m. ET.
At eighteen under, Kim will play in the last group on Sunday. He is matched with world No. 1 and the winner of the Masters, Akshay Bhatia, who scored 64 on Saturday. Kim will start at 17 under, one stroke behind Bhatia and Scheffler on Sunday.
“It’s kind of my first time playing in that many, in front of that many people, so I was pretty nervous stepping on that first tee today,” Bhatia said on Saturday night. It was just amazing. It was amazing, but (the fans were) 90% Scottie and 10% me, which is okay.
Scheffler seems to have had a good time, too.
In pairs, you might sometimes feed off each other in the wrong or right directions. We were giving each other advice on how to say things correctly today, especially toward the finish, according to Scheffler. “It’s always beneficial.”
When asked if he thought it would be difficult to break away from the packed leaderboard on Sunday due to the low scores and soft conditions, Scheffler replied, “It really depends on the weather.” Depending on if we get more rain overnight, I believe I noticed that the winds will pick up a little bit.
There will be several variables involved, but I’ll see how the course is going when I wake up tomorrow and take it from there.
The winner of the Travelers Championship two years prior, Xander Schauffele, quietly opened this year’s competition with two 65s. He added birdies at holes two, three, six, and nine. He then made three more on the back nine before bogeying hole eighteen to finish with a 64. He is under sixteen.
The Olympic gold medallist from Tokyo is aware that circling several of his scores on Sunday will be necessary if he hopes to compete.
“It seems like you’re going to need to keep your head down more than ever,” he remarked. “To stay in my lane has kind of been my credo for a while, and I think that will still be the case tomorrow. It’s possible to feel far behind after parring the first two or three holes on this golf course, but you may catch up at any time.
Sunday’s starting positions for Collin Morikawa and Sungjae Im are 16 and 16, respectively, while Shane Lowry, Justin Thomas, and Tony Finau will start the final round at 14 under.
