Wells Fargo Notebook: Rodgers plays his way closer to PGA Tour membership

Patrick Rodgers couldn’t have done much more with the sponsor exemption he received from Wells Fargo Championship tournament organizers.

Though he didn’t win Sunday, the 22-year-old former Stanford star who tied Tiger Woods’ school record of 11 collegiate wins set himself up for a career of success on the PGA Tour.

Rodgers shot a 4-under-par 68 in the final round that included seven birdies and an eagle at Quail Hollow Club and tied Webb Simpson for second at 14-under 274, seven strokes behind winner Rory McIlroy.

A 3-over finish with a double bogey on the par-3 17th hole following a shot into the water and bogey on the par-4 18th after a drive into the creek to the left of the fairway kept Rodgers from earning enough FedExCup points to earn 2015 Special Temporary Membership on the tour.

But the tie for second leaves him 10 points shy of earning the membership, which would allow him to accept unlimited sponsor exemptions for the remainder of the season in his attempt to earn full status next year. Players finishing in the top 57 this week earned at least 15 points.

“If I just keep playing good golf all that will take care of itself,” Rodgers said. “It was awesome [Sunday]. It was a lot of fun being out there, pushing Rory a little bit. I tried to come into this week with a lot of confidence. I feel like my game can compete out here and I’m going the really carry that with me for the next few events.”

Rodgers is playing the next three weeks. He has a sponsor exemption to play in next week’s Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial, gets into the AT&T Byron Nelson based on his top-10 finish Sunday, and has a sponsor exemption into the Memorial Tournament.

“I’m really excited about the next three weeks now,” said the Indiana native who is sponsored by the Indianapolis Colts and has a blue horseshoe on his golf bag. “Hopefully I’ll make the most of those opportunities and reassess going forward.”

Rodgers began the final round tied for fourth and eight shots behind McIlroy at 10 under. He made a couple early bogeys on holes 3 and 4 but countered them with four birdies on the front nine to reach 12 under. He eagled the par-5 10th with a 290-yard downhill approach to 20 feet and followed it up with birdies on holes 11, 14 and 15 to get to 17 under and within four shots of McIlroy’s lead before his tough finish.

“That’s a tough stretch to finish it off, especially in a new situation for me,” Rodgers said. “I’m really happy with the way I played today, really happy with the way I handled the situation. I felt really comfortable out there.”

He was paired Sunday with tour rookie Justin Thomas, his roommate at a house in Jupiter, Fla., that they rent. “It was huge. All of a sudden it doesn’t feel like a tournament, feels like we’re out at The Bear’s Club having some fun,” Rodgers said. “He’s a guy I grew up playing golf against. It’s pretty cool for us to be in this position and living our dream out here on the PGA Tour.”

The Wells Fargo was the sixth PGA Tour event for the winner of the 2014 Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus awards. He missed his first two cuts and finished between 37th and 56th in his last three events.

“It just reassures how he felt and how we all felt about him,” Thomas said. “He’s really good and doesn’t tee it up in an event not thinking he can’t win. I think he showed that this week. I expected the same out of him.”

Fast learners

Two things in particular have made young PGA Tour pros believe they can win immediately.

One is they have watched other young players, some who they know and have previously competed against, win and compete almost immediately.

The other is many of the players move to areas where other touring pros live and join clubs, such as The Bear’s Club in Jupiter, Fla., where several other established PGA Tour pros play and practice, and they become accustomed to being around them.

“I just watched Jordan Spieth win the Masters and make it look pretty easy,” Rodgers said. “That gives me a ton of confidence, and then Justin Thomas, my roommate, seen him towards the final group every week. I play with him everyday now at the Bear’s Club. Definitely young guys I feel like are really ready to come out here and win. I feel no different. I feel really prepared. That’s why I turned professional.”

Thomas said he plays money games with basketball legend Michael Jordan in addition to playing with, practicing and being around several other Bear’s Club members who are among the game’s established stars including McIlroy, Luke Donald and Ernie Els.

“It’s been big for me because being my rookie year I didn’t really play with many big guys and I’ve played with Camilo [Villegas] a pretty good amount, I’ve played with Luke before, going out there and playing with MJ, stuff like that,” Thomas said. “Like last week playing with Graeme [McDowell] or playing with Sergio [Garcia] I really wasn’t too nervous. I was more nervous about the situation I was in than the guys I was playing with.

“When I think about last year, if I’m playing with Sergio I’d think, ‘Wow, I’m playing with Sergio today. This is going to be big. I want to impress him, I don’t want to embarrass myself.’ I think that for me has been big.”

Cut to the chase

Rickie Fowler’s impressive and dramatic win Sunday at The Players Championship has involved him more in the conversation of the game’s top young players in their 20s, joining the likes the duo ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in the world: McIlroy, who turned 26 on May 5, and Spieth, 21.

Patrick Reed, 24, shouldn’t be lost in that conversation.

Reed has four wins in the past 21 months, including a World Golf Championship event. That’s more wins than Spieth and Fowler, 26, combined in the same time frame.

Reed was asked this week what they all have in common.

”We’re all kind of cut throat,” Reed said. “If we’re beating the field we’re trying to go even lower. That’s how I’ve always been. … Some of the younger guys don’t seem to have any fear and they’re always trying to go lower.”

McIlroy dissented with the verbiage Reed used.

“I don’t know if I agree with Patrick that we’re all ‘cut throat’ and I would simply say that we’re all not afraid to go out there and win,” McIlroy said. “I would agree that the last few years we have all started playing a lot more aggressively than the guys in the past used to, and I feel like … the younger players today are being more aggressive in their approach to the game and it’s resulting in more birdies and so on.

“Then you look at the way Rickie played those last few holes and he clearly showed he wasn’t afraid, hitting driver and hitting it straight at the pin.”

What’s most impressive to McIlroy is that many of the game’s top young players have already made a habit of winning. McIlroy has 11 PGA Tour victories, including four majors and the 2010 and ’15 Wells Fargo Championship, as well as an additional six European Tour wins.

“I think the amazing thing about this group of players is that we’ve come on tour and we’ve been ready to win from the start,” McIlroy said. “A lot of guys have come out here and it hasn’t taken them long to learn how to win. … The potential is there. We could be fighting it out for tournaments for the next 15-20 years. It should be fun.”

Wise decision

Until April, McIlroy had no intentions of playing in this year’s Wells Fargo.

The one-time date change that pushed the tournament two weeks later into May placed it in the middle of a World Golf Championship event and The Players Championship before it, and two European events McIlroy committed to play after it.

He reconsidered after he realized he was outside the top 100 in FedExCup points following the Masters due largely to inactivity on the PGA Tour.

“It was never on my schedule,” McIlroy said. “… I said, ‘I need to play a little bit more, and I feel like I’m playing well.’ So it’s been on my mind sort of since then that I wanted to play here.”

Teacher aids rise

Aiken resident Kevin Kisner has gone from a player struggling to retain his playing privileges on the PGA Tour to one who has become a regular threat to win.

He credits work he has done with swing coach John Tillery for much of his success. Tillery is the teaching pro at Lane Creek Golf Club in Athens, Ga., who also instructs PGA Tour members Scott Brown, Lucas Glover and Roberto Castro.

The biggest improvement has been ball-striking, according to Kisner, who played at Georgia.

“I was over 100th [in the ball-striking statistic] the first three years on tour,” Kisner said. “We started a year and a half ago. He hasn’t changed my game plan. We worked probably on the same things for six months, still working on it today and hopefully we’re just scratching the surface of where we can go and if we keep improving on this, this scale, I think we’ve got great things ahead of us.”

Kisner told Tillery to help him improve his driving and just get him to Sundays in contention, and they’ve worked on things in Kisner’s swing with a driver to keep him from getting steep and help him add distance.

In the past five weeks, Kisner birdied the final hole of regulation and first playoff hole in a playoff loss to Jim Furyk at the RBC Heritage, and birdied two of his final three holes of regulation before losing in a playoff to Rickie Fowler at The Players Championship.

Kisner said his competitiveness and self-belief likely came from his father, who was a talented baseball and football athlete in high school and received college offers to play football but chose to attend N.C. State and get an engineering degree.

“That’s kind of how I was raised,” Kisner said. “My dad was always an athlete, competitor. I grew up playing a lot of golf with kids and all we wanted to do is beat each other. If you want to beat somebody you had to learn how to do it and just every level I’ve won and that’s what I love to be in that situation is to – I want the pressure, I want to feel it and I feel like I can perform when I have the pressure on me.”

Kisner tied for 38th this week at 4-under 284.

Reed pond-hopping

McIlroy is among the players traveling this week to England for the BMW PGA Championship and will travel to Ireland the following week for the Irish Open.

Another player joining him on the journey might be surprising to some. Reed, a Texan and Augusta State alumnus, has the same schedule.

Reed has joined the European Tour and will maintain a dual membership on the PGA Tour.

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” Reed said. “I’ve wanted to play around the world, just to see how my game is for all the different types of golf courses and see how my game holds up.”

In order to maintain European Tour membership Reed needs to play in 13 events per year. Eight of those are covered with the four majors and four WGC events. That leaves five events and he’ll cover two of those in the next two weeks.

Reed has had a small taste of the European Tour. He played in the 2011 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and 2014 Volvo World Match Play Championship last October.

This story was originally published May 17, 2015 at 8:20 PM with the headline "Wells Fargo Notebook: Rodgers plays his way closer to PGA Tour membership."