For the second consecutive week, a 47-year-old Englishman with a flair for wonderful wines and long irons will take down a 27-year-old child who has a row series in his living room and talk about golf as it is. nuclear physics. It’s the biggest, dumbest sport in the world.
Lee Westwood raised the roof by a 68 on Saturday to open a two-stroke lead over Bryson DeChambeau, who will turn up in the final round of the 2021 Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass on Sunday. They were also paired last week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where DeChambeau Westwood slammed a stroke, as the last two.
Let’s see how the two played Saturday and what is in store for a wild Sunday finish in the biggest PGA tournament of the year. Westwood (9/2) is, according to William Hill Sportsbook, the nail-biter above DeChambeau (5/2), but we’ll first look at who else can catch the two Sunday afternoons.
1. Lee Westwood (-13): Westwood struggled for the second day in a row (at TPC Sawgrass!). After opening with nine straight presses, he saved his best for last. With three birdies in his first seven holes on the back nine, Westwood steps to the famous par-3 17th and hits a shot against the back plate outside the hole. But it never came down again. So he stretched the 25-foot for birdie and doubled his lead over Bryson before turning to the sparse crowd at number 17 and lifting the roof. What a world.
The best thing about this week (and last) is that it feels like the person who is most surprised and delighted by his performance and the show he is delivering is Westwood himself. A win on Sunday would be the biggest of an incredible career. He will hope the lineup at TPC Sawgrass is a bookend of what players saw Thursday. Fast, tough and a score averages well above track mark.
2. Bryson DeChambeau (-11): The Big Golfer caught up with a 15-footer on the final hole to save the par that highlighted his best day of the week. He proves time and time again this week that he is not just the one-trick pony that everyone assumes. While he got most of his shots off the tea, he only got 18% of it this week with the big stick. It is absolutely frightening that his best performances come on traditionally the most difficult golf courses, on which he – like Westwood – will also hope on Sunday.
T3. Doug Ghim, Justin Thomas (-10): TPC Sawgrass almost always delivers a massive Moving Day score, and this year’s edition belongs to Justin Thomas. JT started hot with birdies at his first four, and ended his day with maybe the shot of the tournament at no. 16 when he hit a 204-yard shot to 7 inches. He closed 3-4 and had two holes to tie the course record of 63.
“I like Saturdays around this place,” Thomas told Golf Channel after his tour. “It’s such a fun track to play because you can do something like that. You can get hot, and if you make the cut, you can get it going.”
It will be difficult to back up that 64 on Sunday, although JT is more capable than most and also could not sum up the outcome solely with a hot putter. If the driver cooperates again in the final on Sunday, he has enough firepower to catch Bryson and probably Westwood as well if there are big mistakes.
T5. Paul Casey, Jon Rahm, Brian Harman (-9): These three were a combined 13 under on Saturday, although Casey and Rahm were the ones to win on Sunday for a back-to-back win. Casey put it barely better than field average, but Rahm has more firepower. It is not so hard to see that he would put 66 in bad circumstances and shoot down the leaders. On Saturday, he shot 67 and felt only one of the four par 5s. He will be a fun early rabbit that the leaders can behold.
T8. Chris Kirk, Sergio Garcia, Matthew Fitzpatrick (-8): On the other hand, this trio shot just 2 down on Saturday, and all three were quite disappointing on the easiest day of the event. Kirk is second in the standings, just Ghim in strokes he to green (and both were terrible with the putter). This group is almost certainly too far back to catch Westwood or DeChambeau – especially with their endurance – and it will take the round of a career to achieve victory.