After trees at Detroit Golf Club were uprooted late on Sunday by gusts of 70 to 80 mph, the Rocket Mortgage Classic will go as planned. Detroit is a model of resiliency, but there remained enough debris to keep cleanup workers working with their woodchippers and chainsaws until Tuesday.
Resilience, however, has recently been in high demand.
Billy Horschel had a score of 84 in the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday’s opening round, but two weeks later, he qualified for the U.S. Open. At the U.S. Open, Justin Thomas fired a second-round 81 and almost missed the cut, but he shot a third-round 62 at the Travelers Championship (T9).
Sports are watched by fans for a variety of reasons, including to be reminded of the words of Winston Churchill, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Or the saying from Muhammad Ali, “You lose if you stay down; you don’t lose if you get knocked down.” Another example is the quote from Tony Finau, “They say a winner is just a loser that just kept on trying, and that’s me.”
Naturally, Finau said those things last summer at the Rocket Mortgage. His words were infused with such reality that you could feel them land. He had just played a final-round 67 for a tournament-record 26-under-par total and a five-shot triumph. This was his second win in two weeks (3M Open) and third in twelve months.
He has again returned to the Motor City.
“The game is enjoyable. I haven’t scored as well as I would have liked over the past few weeks, but the year has been that kind of year.” Finau commented as he got ready to defend his championship for the first time on the same golf course where he had won the year prior.
He used to appear to be in the lead at all times but never win; now he’s less in the lead but wins when he comes close.
“The story involved almost two careers.” he said.
The fact that Detroit Golf Club’s membership is so diversified and how Chase Johnson overcame adversity to win by three shots (67-68) at THE JOHN SHIPPEN National Invitational presented by Rocket Mortgage over the weekend would interest Finau.
Johnson qualified for the Rocket Mortgage Classic with the victory. Johnson, 27, finished in second place at the 2020 TPC Colorado Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour after shooting a final-round 63, but his career took an unexpected turn.
After Colorado, he failed to make the cut in 16 out of the next 17 attempts, including nine of his subsequent nine starts. By the end of the 2020 campaign, he had lost his card.
“I believe I missed six by two and ten cuts by one. You just need to practice patience at that point. When I was out there, I discovered that I was still quite raw. Like, I could will the ball into the hole, but during that downtime over the past year and a half, I got my body in shape, learned a lot of things, and learned how to own my swing.” Johnson said.
Rickie Fowler, who congratulated Johnson on winning THE JOHN SHIPPEN, is one of Johnson’s heroes. Fowler is familiar with resiliency. The last U.S. Open’s co-leader after 54 holes may be about to claim his first victory in his return season after posting seven top-10 finishes and 14 top-25s in 19 outings.
After finishing in a tie for fifth place at Los Angeles Country Club with a discouraging final-round score of 75, all Fowler managed to do was shoot a career-low 60 in the third round of the Travelers, which led to a T13 finish for the weekend.
“Naturally disappointed, I tried to salvage what I could on Sunday but just didn’t feel like it. A lot of that was kind put behind me as I saw my daughter and wife after playing the 18th hole.” Fowler stated after dismissing his U.S. Open failure with pyrotechnics six days later.
Thomas, a close friend of his who just recently managed to get into the top 70 in the FedExCup rankings, has also recently displayed steely grit by improving on his “embarrassing” 73-81 performance at the U.S. Open with a top -10 finish at the Travelers.
“For a time now, I’ve felt very close. Simply put, I have gotten absolutely nothing in return. Moreover, you never know. My emphasis and outlook on the year are about to change somewhat totally once I play one more round tomorrow.” Thomas said.
Resilience has this kind of thinking. With “RELENTLESS” tattooed on his right wrist and supporter of the Stonecutter’s Credo, which the late Los Angeles Lakers player Kobe Bryant hung outside his locker, Max Homa is another example of resiliency who works in the field at Rocket Mortgage.
It reads in part, “Yet at the 101st blow (the rock) will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
Finau once had a winless streak of more than five years, but earlier this year at the Texas Children’s Houston Open and Mexico Open at Vidanta, he won his fifth and sixth PGA TOUR championships. He finished unimpressively T45 at the Travelers Championship and T32 at the U.S. Open before entering this year’s Rocket Mortgage at seventh in the FedExCup.
He is 101st in Strokes Gained because he hasn’t made many putts on the greens. However, he doesn’t appear as if he is ready to give up.
“Since I used to play on bentgrass, I’ll feel at ease on this golf course. The best way I can phrase it is that I hope to see them enter this week. Shooters shoot, and I’ll keep shooting too.” said Finau, whose return to Detroit has resulted in both a sandwich and a bobblehead bearing his likeness.
