Resilience takes center stage at Rocket Mortgage Classic

The Rocket Mortgage Classic will go on as scheduled after 70-80 mph winds toppled trees at Detroit Golf Club late Sunday. There was enough debris to keep cleanup crews busy with their woodchippers and chainsaws into Tuesday, but Detroit is a bastion of resilience.

Then again, resilience has been on a heater of late.

Billy Horschel shot 84 in the first round of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday but made the cut at the U.S. Open two weeks later. Justin Thomas shot a second-round 81 to miss the cut by a mile at the U.S. Open but carded a third-round 62 at the Travelers Championship (T9).

We watch sports for many reasons, among them to be reminded of the Winston Churchill chestnut, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Or the Muhammad Ali quote, “You don’t lose if you get knocked down; you lose if you stay down.” Or the Tony Finau line, “They say a winner is just a loser that just kept on trying, and that’s me to a T.”

Finau, of course, spoke those words at the Rocket Mortgage last summer. He’d shot a final-round 67 for a tournament-record 26-under-par total and a five-shot victory – his second win in two weeks (3M Open) and third in 12 months – and his words were suffused with such truth you could feel them land.

Now he’s back in the Motor City.

“The game feels good,” Finau said as he prepared for his first title defense on the same golf course where he won the year before. “I haven't scored over the last couple weeks the way I wanted, but it's been that kind of year.”

While he used to be in contention seemingly all the time but never win, he added, now he’s in contention less but wins when he gets close. “It’s been the tale of almost two careers,” he said.

Finau likes that Detroit Golf Club has such a diverse membership, and he salutes resilience, so he’d like the story of Chase Johnson, who authored a three-shot victory (67-68) at THE JOHN SHIPPEN National Invitational presented by Rocket Mortgage over the weekend. With the win, Johnson earned a spot in the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

Although Johnson, 27, shot a final-round 63 for a runner-up finish at the Korn Ferry Tour’s 2020 TPC Colorado Championship at Heron Lakes, his career took a crazy detour. After Colorado, he missed the cut in nine of his next nine starts and 16 of the next 17 times that he teed it up. He lost his card at the end of the 2020 season.

“I’m pretty sure I missed 10 cuts by one and six by two,” Johnson said. “At that point you just have to stay patient. I realized that I was still kind of raw when I was out there. Like, I could will the ball in the hole, but over this last year and a half during that off time, got the body right, figured out a lot of things and learned how to own my swing.”

One of Johnson’s heroes is Rickie Fowler, who congratulated Johnson on winning THE JOHN SHIPPEN. Fowler, too, knows from resilience. The 54-hole co-leader at the recent U.S. Open, who has yet to win in this, his comeback season, may be on the cusp of doing so after seven top-10 finishes and 14 top-25s in 19 starts.

All Fowler did after his disappointing final-round 75 and tie for fifth at Los Angeles Country Club was fire a career-low 60 in the third round of the Travelers on the way to a T13 finish over the weekend.

“Obviously bummed, but really just didn't have it on Sunday and really just tried to salvage what I could,” Fowler said after shrugging off his U.S. Open dud with fireworks six days later. “After then after seeing my daughter and wife coming off the 18th, a lot of that was kind of behind me.”

His pal Thomas, who only recently snuck into the top 70 in the FedExCup standings, has also shown a steely resolve of late, rebounding from his “embarrassing” 73-81 at the U.S. Open with a top-10 finish at the Travelers.

“I’ve felt very close for a while,” Thomas said. “Just have had literally nothing to show for it. And you never know. I’m one round away tomorrow from kind of completely changing my focus and outlook on the year.”

Such is the mentality of resilience. Max Homa, another picture of resilience who is also in the field at the Rocket Mortgage, has "RELENTLESS" tattooed on his right wrist and is a proponent of the Stonecutter’s Credo, which the late Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant hung by his locker. It reads in part, “Yet at the 101st blow (the rock) will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

Finau once endured a five-plus-year win drought but captured his fifth and sixth PGA TOUR titles earlier this season at the Texas Children’s Houston Open and Mexico Open at Vidanta. He comes into this year’s Rocket Mortgage at eighth in the FedExCup after a ho-hum T45 at the Travelers Championship and T32 at the U.S. Open.

He hasn’t made much on the greens – he’s 101st in Strokes Gained: Putting – but isn’t giving up.

“I grew up playing on bentgrass so this is a golf course that I will be comfortable putting on,” said Finau, whose return to Detroit has featured not only a bobblehead in his likeness but also a sandwich named after him. “Hopefully I see them go in early this week, but that's the best way I can put it. Shooters shoot and I'll continue to shoot.”

Churchill couldn’t have said it any better.