Valspar Championship

This year, as he returned to Copperhead as defending champion, Burns remarked that the triple bogey was perhaps one of the best things to happen in his career.

The competition recognizes and awards the most elite in golf. The Corales Puntacana Championship also takes place this week from the Domincan Republic’s Corales Golf Course. Each of the past winners at the Corales Puntacana Resort and Club Championship – including both from when the event was played on the Korn Ferry Tour – are back for another crack at the trophy in paradise. Twins Rasmus and Nicolai Hojgaard tee it up together for the first time on TOUR, becoming the second set of twins to play a TOUR event. The remaining players will be picked randomly to fill out the bracket. He finished T12, failed to secure PGA TOUR Special Temporary Membership and returned to the Korn Ferry Tour. This year, as he returned to Copperhead as defending champion, Burns remarked that the triple bogey was perhaps one of the best things to happen in his career. A humble, hungry Burns returned to the Korn Ferry Tour, earned his TOUR card through the 2018 Regular Season, and began a steady ascent toward the game’s elite.

Sam Burns withdrew from the Dell Match Play on Monday, one day after becoming a back-to-back winner at the Valspar Championship.

The winner of each group after round-robin play advances to the knockout stage. Three players moved into the top 64 from their performances last week -- Shaun Norris and Dean Burmester in South Africa, Stewart Cink at Innisbrook -- but are not eligible. The 64-man field at Austin Country Club will be missing four golfers from the top 12 in the world ranking.

The win for Burns is his second in a row at this tournament and it was as thrilling a closing act as the PGA Tour has had all season. Burns was flawless for 16 ...

The most impressive part of his showing at Innisbrook was that he finished second in tee to green to J. T. He shot three 67s and a 71 on Friday that ended up being the difference between where he finished and truly getting into contention on Sunday afternoon. Look at it this way: If Thomas doesn't bogey the par-5 11th, which he birdied every other day this week, he's in a playoff with Burns and Riley with a shot for his first win since the 2021 Players Championship. He'll win soon if he keeps hitting it like this, and all the evidence we have of his career is that he's going to continue hitting it like this. T39. Dustin Johnson (-5): After D. J. started strong with a 67 on Thursday, I was excited about his trajectory after that stunning 63 at TPC Sawgrass on Monday at The Players Championship. However, he played the next 54 in just 1 under and fell down the leaderboard to a T39 finish. The good news if you're a D.J. fan is that it was his putter that let him down a bit at Innisbrook, and that's something that he can easily bounce back from next week. It was about his closing putt and how, in the last year, he's gone from perhaps the best player on the PGA Tour without a win to a genuine star, even if he's not yet a household name. After making a triple (on a par 5!) on the front nine on Sunday, he clawed his way back into the mix and made a preposterous birdie on the nearly-200-yard par-3 17th just to get into the playoff. But Burns buried it and unleashed a "we're going to see this at the Ryder Cup at some point in the near future" fist pump on his caddie for his third victory in the last 12 months. T2. Justin Thomas (-16): J. T. led the field in strokes gained from tee to green on the week and had his chances on Sunday. However, he ended the week with his sixth top 10 in his last eight starts instead of his first victory in just over a year. He made multiple par putts between 9-12 feet to keep the momentum running downhill and birdied the holes he was supposed to birdie all while playing with Justin Thomas in the second to last group on the course, just in front of Matthew NeSmith and Riley. On the 17th, he made a mistake when he left his bunker shot short of the green and blew his chip 9 feet past the hole. His fight was nearly as good as swing, and his pedigree tells me we'll be seeing plenty of both in the near and distant future on the PGA Tour. Riley birdied that same hole just after him to knot things up at 17 under and both made par at the last to go to a playoff. A pair of 25-year-olds from SEC schools -- Burns from LSU, Riley from Alabama) --one already a star, the other headed in that direction.

Sam Burns is a PGA Tour winner again at the Valspar Championship, this time with a lot more stress and plenty of emotion.

"A lot of time on Sunday if you plot your way around, make a bunch of pars, throw in a few birdies, a lot of times it works well. So happy." I didn't make a lot of mistakes.