Tom Kim (-18) holds firm at the top of the Travelers Championship leaderboard after the third round. Tomorrow he will start with a one-stroke lead over Askhay Bhatia (-17) and, of course, Scottie Scheffler (-17), the devourer of ‘designated tournaments’ (if he wins tomorrow he will claim his fourth victory in these tournaments, or in other words, he will have won half). An relentless devourer, as defined by Rory McIlroy, who has regained his hunger and is once again levitating on these God’s fields.
The TPC River Highlands course was overwhelmed today, with hardly any wind to lend a hand and with tender and vulnerable greens, after receiving so much water (today the game was suspended for almost three hours due to another storm). Only eleven competitors have played at par or over par and more than a third of the total have signed cards of 65 or fewer strokes, with the 59 of Cameron Young (-13) as the spearhead. The same leader needed a 65 to barely stay at the top and, in short, tomorrow’s winning score could well exceed the -23 with which Keegan Bradley won last year and set a new tournament scoring record.
But anyone would dare to predict anything, knowing perfectly well that any of these guys tomorrow could approach Young’s 59 again and make things very difficult or even impossible for the rest. Just in case, if one intends to bet, it would be better to err on the side of caution and do it in favor of Scheffler, who else.
The world’s Number One signed a rather silly bogey on hole 14 and, as this week the bogeys weigh double, it even seemed that he was going to be slightly left behind and with too much work to do for Sunday. Not at all. The Texan regrouped with himself as only he knows how to do and ended with a partial of four under for the last four holes, which could have been better, since the manual birdies on holes 15, 16 and 17 were followed by a shot from the street on 18 that was about to take the ball to the bottom of the cup (it was a finger away). “With the 14th bogey I felt like I was putting myself out of the tournament, so it was great to recover and finish as I did,” he said after handing in the card.
This guy is insatiable: right now he leads the season’s earnings list, only missing, but he doubles the next one on the table (he already accumulates more than 24 million, for the twelve and a bit of Schauffele); and if he wins tomorrow maybe we should start asking ourselves if he would be able to close the exercise around forty million in earnings, an amount that would represent a third of the total that Tiger Woods has pocketed in his entire career… Watch out, just in one year. The world and golf are definitely crazy.
These exuberant accounts must have Scheffler delighted, no doubt, although the ones that really turn him on are these others: if I make a birdie on hole 15, why not do it also on 16 and 17 and 18?
The challenge that Tom Kim has ahead is tricky, playing tomorrow in the star match alongside an unpredictable guy like Bhatia and alongside Scheffler (he goes out three by three and the star match will do it at a very early time compared to the usual, starting at 17.15 hours on the Peninsula). In the immediately preceding match, moreover, Schauffele, Im and Morikawa will go, so we have two of the three Grand winners of the year in dispute. Only DeChambeau is missing, although Kim, tomorrow, will not miss him. He has enough with what he has.
