For three former Utah State Amateur champions, it was a great way to start the PGA Tour’s season-ending FedEx Playoffs. Among them, Zac Blair, Daniel Summerhays and Tony Finau earned just under $750,000 and each made significant jumps in the FedEx standings.
Blair and Summerhays each fired a final-round 66 Sunday at Plainfield CC in Edison, New Jersey, which put Blair in a tie for fourth place with British Open champion Zach Johnson, while Summerhays finished in a tie for sixth place. Finau, who was tied for the lead after the first round, shot a final-round 70 to finish in a tie for 16th place.
The high finishes put each of the Utah golfers into this week’s Deutsche Bank Championship near Boston, where the top 100 golfers in the FedEx standings after this week advance and are in great position for the following week’s tournament at the BMW Championship near Chicago where the top 70 advance.
Blair’s fine finish vaulted him from 106th place to 45th in the standings while Summerhays went from No. 66 to No. 40. Finau was already in great shape before The Barclays, in 39th place, and he improved to 32nd. Now each of them has sights set on making the season-ending Tour Championship in Atlanta, which features the top 30 golfers after the BMW tournament.
Blair, an Ogden native who played for BYU, got better each day of the tournament, starting with a 69 Thursday and followed that up with a 68 on Friday, a 67 on Saturday and a 66 on Sunday. In his final round, he made four birdies and two bogeys on the front nine, before coming back with two birdies on the back nine. He earned the largest paycheck of his career — $363,000.
Summerhays, who lives in Fruit Heights and also played at BYU, started slow with a bogey on the front nine to go with eight pars, but he sank birdies at 11 and 12, and made eagle at 16 before finishing with a birdie at No. 18. Summerhays went home with $276,375.
Finau played well, except for the two par-5s on the back nine, where he made a double-bogey 7 and a bogey 6. He earned $127,875.
Summerhays won the State Amateur in 2000 and 2001. Finau won in 2006 and Blair won in 2009.