Gavin Cooney

of the defending champ to know that okay I'll go off the tee but I'll lay up to the right spot and there I'll get up and down for par and par is fine I will move on and I'll find the shot somewhere else because I can trust myself around this course to pick off the scores when they're in front of me rather than getting anxious and chasing after them and this is his mantra all week keep swinging

now obviously he swung he swung left for most of Saturday he played really poorly on Saturday and maybe it was more of a kind of aversion to the mean because that opening I mean once he raced a 12 under across Thursday Friday like that's an absurd score based off how he was hitting the ball like again he was I think he was second last in driving accuracy for the whole of the field on Friday night the only guy behind him

finished DFL, Davis Riley.

So there was a kind of an element of reverting to the mean on Saturday.

And I think that was maybe the difference on Sunday as well, that he hit some bad shots again, made some poor errors, as he always does, but that he didn't allow to get away from it.

It wasn't, he realized that any emotion around here is no longer terminal.

Because I have to say, I had abandoned all hope on the 6th, I have to say.

I was watching, so he went left, that left miss came back into play on the par 3-4.

I was standing down right behind him as he hit that chip up to the hole.

And from my angle on it, I thought it was right beside the hole.

Now, in fairness, someone in the grandstand told me it had gone six or seven feet.

So it was actually a tricky putt back.

But I had given him that putt and I went down to get a good perch on five to see a bit of Shane Lowry and then see Rory coming down that same fairway and then got to the giant scoreboard on the fifth.

And the manual operator was updating, was bringing the newsflash, kind of Walter Cronkite style, that Rory has double bogeyed four and I think heavens above.

And he walks down five and he doesn't walk down five.

He lopes down five with his shoulders slumped.

He's looking at the ground.

The body language stinks.

Then he goes to the back of six.

At least he doesn't go left on that.