Sebastian

Cappelen

The Texas A&M has been quietly trending, carding 11.4 more birdies than the field average over his last 10 rounds played in stroke-play events. Then he teamed up with Tony Finau last week and they found themselves right in the mix at the Zurich Classic, heading into Sunday. They faded on Sunday to settle for T17 but a strong result nonetheless. Gamers should be ready to reinvest when he tees it up again but remove him from all weekly lineups for this week’s Valspar.

Hubbard and Cappelen made it look easy today as they started on the back nine and bagged five birdies before the turn, all from inside of eight feet. They did provide some putting highlights on their way into the clubhouse, with the next three birdies all knocked home from outside of nine feet. They ended their day with an 11-footer to save par, providing some momentum heading into lunch. How did this pairing come to fruition? “We’ve been good friends for a while now coming off the Korn Ferry the same year, and our wives are great friends, so we spend a lot of time together on the road. It was pretty natural to partner up for this event.” They will look to lean on that friendship dynamic all week and next up is the alternate-shot format for round two.

Woodland is still trying to snap out of his prolonged slump and that task will have to wait a little longer as he now enters the self-isolation protocol. He is just 5-for-11 on the season and currently ranks 169th in the FedExCup race. Woodland was arriving with an 8-for-8 record that included a trio of top 10s at the Honda so it’s unfortunate to see him have to miss this one.

The 29-year-old Dane fired the low round at the South Course on Thursday, the tougher of the two courses. It put him in good position to run away from the field if he took care of business on the North Course today. Instead, he was half a shot worse than the field with his 1-under 71 (70.43 field average right now). He couldn’t get the putter to cooperate today as he took 30 swipes with the flat stick. Cappelen settled for par on three of the four par 5s. It wasn’t his best performance today but he will still enter the weekend in a career-best position of T3 (previous best thru 36 holes of a PGA TOUR event was a T12 at the 2014 Sanderson Farms). On a positive note, he will now head back to the South Course which is where he carded his opening 66, and can better utilize his distance off the tee.

The 29-year-old is one of the longest hitters on TOUR so it makes some sense that he’d fare well on the longest course on TOUR. The Dane’s low score was orchestrated by a red-hot putter. Cappelen rolled home seven putts from outside of 10 feet with two coming from outside 21 feet (also converted from 15 feet from just off the green). That was good for 5.7 strokes gained putting at the time he walked off the course, three shots better than his previous-best measured round on TOUR (+2.7 SGP in R1 of 2014 Sanderson Farms). That previous best putting round also resulted in a first-round lead. It happened to come in his PGA TOUR debut and he’d go on to finish T35 that week. He is currently the only golfer posted inside the top 10 to have started on the South Course today.

This was the Dane’s 10th career event, eighth of the season, and first top 25, brushing aside a previous-best T35 at the inaugural opposite-field Bermuda Championship three starts ago. For the week, he carded rounds of 67-70, career-low 64 (LQ) and 68, and totaled two eagles and 21 birdies against six bogeys. In the finale, the Arkansas product conjured six (of 14) fairways and 12 greens in regulation, losing strokes off-the-tee (-0.074) and on approach (-0.375), but gained 0.729 around-the-green. He squared a lone bogey-4 at 13 (3-putt from 75'1"), outpaced by five birdies on the bounce at 7-11. The 29-year-old recorded 1.667 putts per GIR and 2.158 SG: Putting, converting four scoring tries from between 10 and 26 feet.

The University of Arkansas product made his PGA TOUR debut at the 2014-15 Sanderson Farms Championship and opened with a 7-under 65 to grab the first-round lead. He faded to T35 by week’s end but a great debut, nonetheless. The Dane has made just two starts on the PGA TOUR since then (MC at 2015 U.S. Open and T64 at last week’s Greenbrier). Honing his craft on the Korn Ferry Tour, he won the REX Hospital Open in June and also finished runner-up two weeks later in Wichita. The 29-year-old should feel comfortable this week, returning to the sight of his 2014 first-round lead.

The 26-year-old is making his 43rd career start on the Web.com Tour, entering the week with a 7-for-11 record on the season. The University of Arkansas product split nine (of 14) fairways but parlayed that into just 10 greens. It was a good thing he brought his short game to Peek’n Peak Resort, because he needed to get up-and-down eight times in order to maintain a blemish-free card. The Dane currently ranks 41st on the money list with seven events remaining in the regular season, after this week’s inaugural LECOM Health Challenge.

Cappelen rocketed out of the gates on Thursday with a blemish-free round and kept his foot on the gas today, circling eight birdies, carding just two bogeys in the process. He split 10 fairways en route to 15 greens. After a heart-breaking 26th-place finish on the final 2014 money list ranking, the 26-year-old is trying to get back into that same position and go at least one better to earn his PGA TOUR card.