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SALT LAKE CITY — After Friday’s second round at the BMW Championship, Utah native Tony Finau hypothesized that a sub-par number — really, any finish below par — could win the tournament, or at least finish in contention.
He wasn’t far off — in guess nor in finish.
Finau shot 65 Sunday at Olympia Fields Country Club in Illinois to finish fifth and qualify for next week’s Tour Championship.
The West High product carded six birdies with just one bogey to shoot the second-lowest round of the final day, trailing only Jon Rahm’s 64.
“The golf course is playing that way,” Finau told a reporter Friday afternoon. “If it rains tonight, I think that could change things a little bit, but even with rain, this golf course is a beast. If you finish under par this week, you’re probably going to win this tournament.”
Rahm survived a 19th-hole playoff with Dustin Johnson with a 66-foot birdie putt on the par-4, 498-yard 18th hole. Rahm’s 64 was the lowest round of the week on a course where only five players finished under par.
"I knew how good DJ has been playing. I was expecting nothing else," Rahm told the Associated Press. "I was fully confident it was going to come into a playoff and hoping to win it. Never did I think I would make another 50-, 60-footer, a couple of breaks in there, to end up winning it."
The fifth-place finish bumped Finau up to No. 29 in the FedEx Cup standings. His sub-par performance kept him inside the top 30, automatically qualifying for next week’s Tour Championship.
The Tour Championship starts next Friday and runs through Monday at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. Finau will start at 2-under-par, eight shots behind leader Johnson as he seeks to better his career-high finish of seventh place in the event from both 2017 and 2019.
