Lucas

Herbert

The Aussie finished just 153rd in the FedExCup standings this season but on the bright side, is still exempt through next season thanks to his win at the 2022 Butterfield Bermuda Championship. Playing without the stress of securing a card, Herbert opened with a 10-birdie effort at Silverado Resort. A hot putter was the catalyst, leading the field with 5.36 strokes gained. This round matches his previous best on Tour (R4/2022 ZOZO Championship). It’s also his first time posting a first-round lead on the PGA Tour (previous best R1 position being T7 at the 2022 PGA Championship).

Last year at the Irish Open, the 26-year-old Australian captured his second career DPWT title in wire-to-wire fashion, opening with a 64 and following up with three more subpar rounds to beat Rikard Karlberg by three strokes. “I will never forget that feeling of looking down at the trophy and seeing my name alongside some of the greats of the game,” he said. “It started an amazing period for me, and I now feel ready to kick on to achieve even more success.” On the season, Herbert has made just one DPWT start that wasn’t a major or a WGC event, finishing T-18 at the Dubai Desert Classic in January. He’s made 16 starts on the PGA Tour, making eight cuts with two top 10s including a win at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, where he finished at 15-under 269, one better than Danny Lee and Patrick Reed. This week marks Herbert’s fourth start in the Irish Open, where he’s never missed the cut and finished T-7 in 2020.

The Aussie, a first-time member (not a rookie), is making his fourth appearance, missing the cut two tries ago and posting T71 in the other two, including last year at Kiawah Island. Today’s 68, which tied for the second-best lap in the more difficult afternoon session, featured six birdies against three bogeys, losing 0.719 strokes off-the-tee but gaining 1.378 on approach, 1.369 around, and 2.805 on-the-green. Afterward (link below): “I feel kind of comfortable here. This reminds me of some golf back home on the Sand Belt, Peninsula Kingswood for the guys in Australia listening.” Overall, the one-time TOUR winner (2022 Bermuda) has contested eight majors, missed four cuts, and his best finish is a T31 at the 2021 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. “I’ve played enough of these major championships now where I feel like I know what it is that I need to do to play well. I haven’t been able to play the way I would have liked in the majors I’ve played so far, but feel like I’ve got more of an understanding...”

The Aussie made quick work of 18-seed Tony Finau yesterday and kept his foot on the gas today with group favorite, Xander Schauffele. “I played a lot of amateur golf with Xander and I feel like he’s obviously had a quicker rise than I did to the PGA TOUR and to that top 10 in the world, but I felt like back seven or eight years ago we probably had similar games and I feel like I’m getting somewhere near where he is. So I didn’t feel super out of place playing against him.” Today’s round wouldn’t have impressed in stroke play (3 bogeys and a double) but he applied plenty of hole-by-hole pressure as he lead after six holes compared to four for Schauffele. Herbert is now in the driver’s seat heading into day three but he will need to get the job done against 56-seed Takumi Kanaya (1-1-0) who won his match against Tony Finau today. The latter has no chance of advancing but the other three still have a shot, depending on how things go tomorrow.

The 26-year-old Aussie got off to a strong start with birdies at 1 and 5 with three pars in between. Finau chipped away at that lead with back-to-back holes won but then Finau faded with three bogeys over a five-hole stretch and Herbert took advantage. While this may be Herbert’s match play debut as a pro, he is not too far removed from his amateur playing days, “Yeah, we played a lot of match play in Australia growing up, whether it be playing golf in Melbourne for Commonwealth or whether it was amateur events where we were getting into match play format or we played interstate series games, as well. We did play a lot of match play as juniors. It’s just quite a different format.” Next up for Herbert is a Thursday showdown with 7-seed Xander Schauffele (1-0-0). The winner of that match will be in control of Group 7.

The 26-year-old Australian told media he’s come a long way since this time last year, where he played in his first “regular” Tour event (that wasn’t a major or WGC event) at the Honda Classic and finished T-46. Just 10 starts – and one year – later, Herbert is a PGA Tour winner after his triumph in October at the Bermuda Championship. “I feel like I’ve probably come a long way mentally from last year around this time,” said Herbert, a two-time winner on the DP World Tour. “I think I’ve probably got the mentality sorted a little bit more and probably physically a little bit more. … I still think I’d like to be sitting here in two years’ time, in five years’ time, saying that I’ve come a long way since I played my first Players here in 2022, as well.” Herbert said he wasn’t surprised by his top 10 last week at Bay Hill, despite missing two cuts in two starts prior (Phoenix, Honda), and said the experience was a confidence booster: “To have low round of the day, to play the way I did, to obviously climb that leaderboard gives me a lot of self-confidence and it sort of just – I felt like it was probably nearly a bit of a next step in my golfing journey was to play some really high-level golf at a big quality event with a tough golf course and a good field.”

The Aussie was one of 28 first-timers this week at the API and was the only top-10 finisher, courtesy of a Sunday 68 that was 7.481 strokes better than the field average in R4. It’s his second top 10 in 25 career TOUR events and second of the season, joining his maiden TOUR victory at the Bermuda Championship five starts ago. The first-time member (not a rookie) carded laps of 73-71-74-68 and heads off to this coming week’s PLAYERS Championship for his tourney debut. For the proceedings, he tallied one eagle, a 52'1" bomb at the par-5 16th today, and 13 birdies versus 13 bogeys, and ranked T1 with no doubles or worse, which is quite notable considering the difficult scoring environment. The 26-year-old, who checked in off two straight missed cuts, ranked 63rd in SG: Off-the-Tee (-1.609) and 66th in SG: Approach (-2.548), but 2nd in SG: Around (5.864) and 1st in SG: Putting (8.470), including a whopping 4.737 SGP on Sunday. See link below to post-round comments.

The 26-year-old Herbert, No. 44 in the OWGR, finished 37th of 38 players in his most recent start at the winners-only Sentry Tournament of Champions at Kapalua, and he’ll look for a better performance at Emirates GC, where he’s never missed the cut and finished T-7 in 2019 and T-22 last year. In 2020, the Aussie finished regulation tied with South Africa’s Christiaan Bezuidenhout at 9-under 279 and broke through for the victory with a birdie on the second hole of sudden death. Since then, he collected a second DPWT title, winning the 2021 Irish Open and finding success on the PGA Tour, where he won the Butterfield Bermuda Championship for his first Tour victory. Herbert made four starts in the Tour’s fall series, missing cuts in his three other starts (Fortinet, Sanderson Farms and Mayakoba). He was a WD ahead of the Sony Open in Hawaii earlier this month.

The Aussie played last week on Maui and finished 37th (of 38) at Kapalua. Herbert lost 6.6 strokes off-the-tee for the week and another 7.6 strokes on approach. It was easily the worst ball-striking display we’ve seen from him, at least in a PGA TOUR event. The 26-year-old was either nursing an injury or just lost with his swing at the moment. Either could explain his pre-tourney WD this week. With a win already on his PGA TOUR resume, gamers should keep a close eye on his form when he returns to action.

The 26-year-old Australian was also among several players making news Monday when he was added to the field for the controversial Saudi International, which also got a new title sponsor – the Public Investment Fund, which is Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Also joining the field are Patrick Reed, who’s played in each Saudi International since its debut in 2019, last year’s runner-up Tony Finau, and first-timers Matthew Wolff, Cameron Smith and Marc Leishman. The event, set for Feb. 3-6 as part of the Asian Tour, runs the same week as the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Herbert has made two previous starts at the Saudi International, missing the cut in 2021 and finishing T-27 in 2020. Herbert, who earned his first invitation to this year’s 2022 Masters, missed the cut in his last Tour start at the Mayakoba but did manage a T-21 in November in last professional start worldwide, at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai. Last season, Herbert made seven cuts in 11 starts on Tour as a non-member, and also played on the DP World Tour, where he was a wire-to-wire winner at the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open for his second career title on that tour.