Freeside Wins & Defends In Style At Sony With Rare 1-2-3 Finish

In what can only be described as uncanny foresight Freeside Links dismantled the field in Sunday's final round with the play from his squad who ended up giving Freeside the rare trifecta finish and a the league's first successful title defense since he did it at the Masters in 2019. Garnering scoring and bonus points from Kevin Na, Chris Kirk and Brendan Steele Freeside boosted himself up the leaderboard with a 1st, 2nd & 3rd finish and snatched an early season win, marking the 10th win of his Hall-of-Fame-pace career. 

With this win Freeside is now the tied-4th all time winningest team in league history, 7th all-time Top 3 finisher (24) and 12th all-time Top 10 finisher (62). He shares the all-time record for single season wins with 4 (doing it twice both in 2015 and 2017) and is the all-time winningest majors champion with 4 (3 of them are green jackets). Congrats on another win Freeside Links.

2nd Place

It seemed like Grandpa Levs might get his first win since his dominant Summer Segment win just last year in which he won the PGA Championship. But it slipped through his fingers in the final hour as the sun set on Waialae and he came up short of the mark. Still, a second week Top 3 finish is a solid start to his season and his 18th Top 3 all-time (tied 10th). 

3rd Place

If there was any doubt that 2nd year veteran Smooth Greens was a flash in the pan then cast those doubts aside as the Greens are running Smooth for this savvy sophmore. Contending for the W up until the final moments on Sunday Smooth Greens cemented his claim to a robust season start as he's now 2-for-2 with consecutive Top 10s. Not a bad opening couple weeks considering he only had 1 Top 3 all of last season which just so happened to be a win - his only, so far. 

Notables

Coming in 4th place is the young hot shot Reed's Rule Book - fresh off a rookie season and a 6th place finish that left him wanting more. While his boy Niemann played wonderfully and did much of the heavy lifting for Reed's over the weekend it was more a sad contrast of the state of his (our) own game(s) following a forgettable performance on two of Tampa's finest(?) venues. Reed's collects his first Top 10 of 2021 and 10th of his career. 

Tying Reed's for 4th is the fellow second-year veteran No 3 Putts Ever. And he did just that last week at Sony as his 3-putt avoidance was right on target as he scooped up an early season Top 10 and sets his site on starting a trend this week at The American Express. No 3 Putts Ever isn't looking back on his rookie season with fond memories as he was only able to card 3 Top 10s and so his first Top 10 of 2021 coming in week 2 is a good way to start the new season fresh. 

Staking his claim to 6th and his first Top 10 of 2021 is the commish himselve Halve Ouimet. Coming off a moderately down year for the 8th year veteran where he carded 8 Top 10s but only 3 of them were Top 3s and 1 was a (shared) win. A new season and an early Top 10 is just the ticket to turn that trend around. 

The 7th place finisher is 7th year veteran Kikakee Tees. The Tees is hoping to buck last year's trend of plenty of Top 10s and 3s but not wins - his last victory coming at the 2019 Open Championship. He hasn't finished outside the Top 5 overall since 2016 so he's defending a pretty hefty reputation in 2021. 

Sugar Hill jumps into his first Top 10 of the year with an 8th place finish at Sony and is on a good pace early on to outpace his mark last year where he carded 10 Tops and 2 Top 3s. Earnings-wise he's (pretty much) got nowhere to go but up as he'll just need to win one title in order to beat his $10 take from 2020. 

The 2020 season runner-up - GreenJacket - collected his first Top 10 at the Sony last week and will have a tough battle this year if he hopes to match or somehow best his 2020 performance. He did come up well short of his desired tournament win total which was a single 1. However, the Jacket has proven himself to be an adept drafter and is looking to add some cash to the coffers. 

Coming in hand-in-hand for 10th place finish last week was DaHoff and Tourball - both veterans of the game and both no what it takes to last through this marathon season. DaHoffa has several big accolades under his belt including 7 career wins and 72 career Top 10s (T8 all-time). For Tournall he is one of 2 players through 2 touranments that is a perfect 2-for-2 in Top 10s. It's a robust start to 2021 for him as he'll look to add to his 63 career Top 10s and 6 career victories. 

THIS WEEK the Tour heads for the mainland and sunny California as The American Express takes center stage at PGA West in La Quinta - a classic desert track with memories abounding. Perhaps none bigger than ByeBye Birdie's first career win here last year as she christened her rookie season in style just 3 weeks into the year. With a short Winter Segment of only 9 weeks this year the strategy will have to be adjusted accordingly as it's a slightly quicker pace than the usual 10-12.