How many golfers have engendered more excitement about this upcoming year than Tony Finau? The list is not long, especially following Finau’s victory at the Houston Open over the weekend where he defeated Tyson Alexander by four to cash his third win in his last seven PGA Tour starts.

This is not the level success many envisioned Finau enjoying this year. Finau finished T19 at the small field Tournament of Champions in January but didn’t notch a single top 25 until the Mexico Open the first week in May where he finished T2. Since then, he’s been on the tear of his career, at least in terms of victories.

“Yeah, this is definitely the most all parts of my game have been clicking, but I would say I’ve played a lot of good golf for a while,” said Finau after his win in Houston. “I didn’t have a lot of wins to show for it, but I’ve pieced together a game, and that’s what you have to do out here. You know, with my experience, again as I alluded to, trying to be more of a precision player, because I don’t lack speed, so learning how to drive it in the fairway, working on my wedge game, working on my putter, those are all things that I worked extremely hard on.

“And I feel like I’ve been a very solid player for a long time, but it’s exciting for me that I’m getting better, and that’s all I can ask of myself is try and get better in the areas that I really need to. And then remember why you are where you are. I think I don’t go too far away from the DNA of my game, and how I see the game and I think I’m kind of bearing the fruits of how I see the game now and I’m able to hit the shots that I can see, which is pretty cool.”

Including that Mexico Open, Finau has seven top-five finishes in 15 starts, including three of his five career PGA Tour victories. It runs deeper than that; with an improved short game, Finau is one of just eight golfers who has been averaging over 2.0 strokes gained per round — top-five level in the world — since June 1, and he’s closer to No. 1 than he is to No. 8.

• Rory McIlroy: 3.0 SG/round
• Tony Finau: 2.6
• Patrick Cantlay: 2.4
• Xander Schauffele: 2.4
• Jon Rahm: 2.4
• Dustin Johnson: 2.3
• Will Zalatoris: 2.2
• Daniel Berger: 2.0

This is where the excitement comes in. McIlroy is obviously playing at a top-tier level, but Finau is not that far behind. Whether he can sustain that into a new year that begins with some monster tournaments and includes four majors in seven months remains to be seen, but it’s clear that Finau has kicked it into another gear.

“I’ve always felt like I’ve been very mentally strong,” said Finau on Sunday. “Sometimes I feel like once my game matches up to my mental attitude, I feel like I can be a great player. I feel like I’ve been a good player, showed some brilliance in spurts, but being consistent, to be consistently great takes a full game both mental and physical, and I feel like, honestly, my physical game is starting to match up to my mental. I’ve always been tough, I’ve always been strong mentally. Having a game that matches that is, I think, a great combination and I’m starting to see that with myself.”

Statistically, Finau is over-performing in all four major categories compared to his career averages. That is seemingly unsustainable, though none of them are that far beyond his baseline. Are we looking at a player making the leap into another category altogether, or simply a stretch of hot golf that will bolster the Wikipedia page?

There’s a difference, though, in winning 3M and Houston Opens and doing it at Riviera and the Memorial. Will this recent mini-jump be enough to push Finau over the top at some of the elevated events (or even majors) in 2023?

The answers to those questions will go a long way in determining whether the excitement surrounding the No. 12 player in the world going into 2023 is justified. Though Finau has thrived at major championships in the past (10 top 10s in 26 starts), he has yet to truly contend late on a Sunday. Even more perplexing is the fact that he’s never risen past the No. 9 spot in the Official World Golf Rankings — but that seems like it’s going to happen over the next year.

The First Cut podcast crew is back to bring you their recap of the Cadence Bank Houston Open. Follow & listen to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

If you made me list the players I’m most excited about watching and evaluating in 2023, McIlroy, Finau, Rahm, Jordan Spieth and (perhaps in an upset) Matthew Fitzpatrick are probably a personal top five. They all encapsulate the crossroads of intrigue, upside, talent and pieces of the unknown in ways most other players, at least at this juncture, do not.

Finau could go winless in 2023 or he could win two majors and become the PGA Tour Player of the Year. His long-term history and recent performance meld to create maybe the widest spectrum of outcomes of any player in the world right now.

One thing is for sure, though: Finau is playing with a refreshed belief — he said on Sunday that winning creates a confidence that is “contagious” — in himself and his game. His ceiling is high because his gifts are off the charts. He figured out how that can translate to wins in 2022. With that year and this history under his belt, what will he figure out in 2023 and beyond?

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Jon Rahm arrives at this week’s CJ Cup in South Carolina riding a subtle wave of momentum. Two weeks removed from his runaway victory at the Open de España on the DP World Tour, the Spaniard will make his 2022-23 PGA Tour season debut alongside some of the best players in the world.

By all accounts, Rahm’s prior campaign was a disappointment in relation to his standards. Collecting only one PGA Tour win last season, the man who began the 2022 calendar year atop the golf world saw his name drop outside the top five of the Official World Golf Rankings by the time the season had concluded — something that hasn’t happened in three years.

“After finishing what hasn’t been my best PGA Tour season, even though it was still pretty good to go to Wentworth, have the Sunday and then follow it up by playing good in Spain and having a very, very meaningful win,” Rahm said. “Hopefully, I can keep that good play going and translate those wins to the PGA Tour, which I’ve done in the past. I’ve played great in the fall on the European Tour in the past and I’ve translated it to the PGA Tour.”

The parallels to three years ago are already present. In 2019, Rahm finished runner-up at the BMW PGA Championship and parlayed his success at Wentworth into victories not only at the Open de España but later the DP World Tour Championship. The 27-year-old has already replicated two-thirds of this stretch, and has returned to No. 5 in the world as a result.

Perhaps the similarities won’t end there and this is only the beginning for Rahm, as it was in the 2019-20 season, and another climb to world No. 1 is in the cards. However, if he is to accomplish such a feat and leapfrog a bevy of the game’s elite that includes Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy (who has a chance of his own to ascend to world No. 1 this week), he will need one club and one club in particular to continue to cooperate: the putter.

Rahm’s turnaround on the greens has been as gradual as it has been sudden after experiencing a valley in performance during the early parts of 2022. Visibly angry on the golf course, this discourse wouldn’t stop in between the ropes as Rahm was peppered with questions regarding his putting woes for most of the spring. Eventually, as all greats do, he leveled out and rattled off 10 positive putting performances in his last 12 starts. It wasn’t until the BMW Championship in the FedEx Cup Playoffs, however, that he was able to find a different gear.

“Honestly, it’s a little setup thing, it’s very small. And a lot of it with putting is confidence. When you see a lot of putts not go in, a lot of putts burn the edge, which is what happened earlier in the year. It’s not like I wasn’t close, I just saw a lot of lip-outs and a lot of close calls,” said Rahm. “Confidence can go down a little bit. But I think it was at BMW [Championship] where after 27 holes I saw three putts go in and confidence went right back up, and for the next few events I played amazing.”

Amazing may actually be an understatement. In Rahm’s last 15 rounds worldwide, he has averaged +1.61 strokes gained putting. For reference, that is nearly double what the PGA Tour’s top putter, Lucas Herbert, averaged last season. While this run of quality on the greens is simply unsustainable, if a semblance of this form was to be combined with the ball-striking for which Rahm is known, an all-time season would be the result.

“My ball-striking is so good that my putting’s never going to be really that high up there statistically. And if it were, if I kept this ball-striking level and my short game and putting was top 20 on the PGA Tour, well, we’d be looking at a season where I’m winning eight times and that’s just very hard to do.”

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