– Daniel Berger already knows what he has to do to bring this venture of his at the Arnold Palmer Invitational to a successful conclusion, in search of his fifth victory on the PGA Tour and his first in more than five years, since he won at Pebble Beach in 2021. “The recipe is simple: hit a lot of fairways and a lot of greens. If you achieve that it will be hard for the others to catch you,” he said. And he added: “I have to play as if I started the round at par and wasn’t playing against others. Play against the course and against yourself. You control what you can control. And it’s not like I’ve done it a million times, so I can’t tell you exactly how I’ll feel, but I know what I have to do, and if I do those things, it will be a good week”. Excellent recipe to make the formidable five-shot lead with which he starts today hold up.
– Berger is even more of a player than he might seem at first glance. He comes off a serious injury, having broken a finger last year, and an even more serious back injury in 2022, but you don’t need a magnifying glass to notice that in the last decade, barring very brief intervals, he has been a regular inside the world top 50. Those are big words within reach of very few players. Also big is the fact that he found a spot on the US Ryder team in 2021, in which he played three matches and won two. Moreover, last year, which wasn’t especially brilliant for the Florida player, he was one of the few who made the cut in all four majors.
– Berger, además, es de la cosecha de 1993. Something happened that year for so many golf stars to be born. Take note: Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith or Wyndham Clark, to name only the major winners, because in reality the list is longer. To give the reader an idea: in the entire history of golf there has only been one year in which more major winners were born. It was 1957, the crop of our beloved Seve Ballesteros. That year also saw the birth of another seven major winners: Nick Faldo, Nick Price, Payne Stewart, Bernhard Langer, Mark O’Meara, Jeff Sluman and Wayne Grady.
Okay, the year of birth may be nothing more than a coincidence, but just in case let’s reserve deep respect for the ’93 crop. It’s a seal of quality. And competitiveness.
– It looks like today, Saturday, it may rain a bit over Bay Hill from around four in the afternoon (local time), with still a few groups on the course. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain too much, neither this afternoon in Orlando nor overnight, so we can feel and live the contest and conclusion of this big tournament on slippery greens… Yesterday several players were already saying: “you rest the putter on the green and it doesn’t hold, it slides”
– Sahith Theegala has a US Open profile we didn’t know. It’s not a question of whether he’ll win one or not, but rather that he enjoys the main characteristics of his country’s Open. His words yesterday leave no doubt: “This place is always so pure… I definitely see them letting (the greens) dry out this weekend. It’s not that they aren’t already firm, they’re quite firm already. You’re looking for bounce on every approach, even with the wedge. So, yes, it’s part of the reason I love this place: it’s an absolute bloodbath.” He calls it that literally: a bloodbath. In any case, Bay Hill also has that element of fairness that makes it even more captivating: rare is the day when a seeded, lucid and accurate player doesn’t achieve a great result. It was, for example, the case of Theegala in the second round, with a 67 and a bogey-free card. The big question is whether Sahith will stick to the same line if he falls prey to the clutches of Bay Hill’s greens… You can bet he will, as he seems a very natural and coherent sort of guy.
– Where does that leave the Numbers 1 and 2 in the world this week? Scheffler and Rory are certainly two of the fundamental ingredients in the stew being cooked today in the house of King Palmer. They always are, but today they’ll need to sound the alarm to really give themselves a chance on Sunday. And these guys don’t throw in the towel that easily…
