Jim

Knous

The Colorado School of Mines alum is no stranger to playing golf in the mountains and that altitude experience paid off on day one. He split 10-of-14 fairways but more impressively, landed 16 GIR. He entered the week just 172nd on TOUR in GIR Percentage. Playing on conditional status this season, he’s landed just 15 starts and earned a payday in even of those with the highlight being a T11 at the Fortinet Championship where he held a share of the 54-hole lead. He finds himself just 184th in the FedExCup race so he could really use a big finish in the mountains this week.

Historically, this opposite-field event sports a field of 132 players, but with the first-time co-sanction alongside the DP World Tour, the field size was increased to 156. Based on the fog delay this morning, and the potential of severe thunderstorms later today (rain chance 80%), it will prove challenging to get everyone around by day’s end. With sunset showing at 9:03pm and last light at 9:33pm, there is a chance, albeit slight (and there can be no further delays), that the cut can be made late Friday. The groups to monitor are the currently scheduled 4:22 pm’s off 1 and 10 tee, which includes tourney debutant and World No. 745 Jim Knous (1-tee start), who arrived 180th in the FedExCup standings and was T52 after a 3-under 69 in R1 (5 birdies, 1 double bogey-6).

The Colorado School of Mines alum, playing the remainder of the season on conditional status, checked in 197th in the FedExCup standings and will be in the third-to-last threesome on Sunday with Austin Cook and Sebastian Munoz. While he dropped on the board today, he’s still chalked up three sub-70s (67-67-69), and another one tomorrow would be just what the doctored ordered, having mustered just one career top 10 in 36 events so far, a T10 at the 2019 Safeway Open during his rookie campaign. The 32-year-old, who has yet to play in a major championship, could add one to his resume at week’s end, as the top-2 finishers in the top 8 and ties not already exempt, gain entry into the 150th Open Championship (July 14-17). At the three-quarter pole, he’s tallied 15 birdies against eight bogeys, three versus two on Saturday, and ranks 19th SG: Tee-to-Green (5.802), lowlighted by a 0.076 TTG today, and 14th SG: Putting (3.730), carving out a 0.324 SGP in R3.

In his second start this season, a T57 at Bermuda back in October, the Colorado native and resident failed to meet the terms of a medical extension out of the Reshuffle category, but along with a T11 at the season-opening Fortinet (as a 54-hole co-leader), maintained conditional status by 1.484 FedExCup points. Starts have been hard to come by, this is just his 11th of the campaign, and arrived off six consecutive missed cuts, two of those on the Korn Ferry Tour, including last week, but he’s kicked on swimmingly this week with a pair of 67s. The 32-year-old, who will be in the third-to-last pairing on Saturday with Matt Fitzpatrick, is eyeing a second top 10 on TOUR in 37 career events, first since a T10 on debut at the 2019 Fortinet (Safeway) during his rookie campaign in his first start as a member. At halftime, he’s tallied 12 birdies against six bogeys, five versus two today, and ranks 9th SG: Tee-to-Green (5.726) and 13th SG: Putting (3.406), highlighted by a 3.260 SGP in R2. See link below to post-round comments.

The Colorado School of Mines product has missed the cut in three straight starts but will look to get back on track as he readies for TPC Craig Ranch. Knous finished his medical extension earlier this year and is now playing on conditional status. Starts are not the easiest to come by, but it’s better than the alternative of no status which he cleared by just a few FedExCup points. As of now, he sits just inside of the top 200 in the FedExCup race so he could really use a big finish or two before the season ends. Knous ranks outside of the top 150 in strokes gained off-the-tee as well as approach but he’s top 25 in both short-game categories.

Watney is 9-for-19 on the season but sits inside of the top 85 in the FedExCup race, largely thanks to a runner-up finish at the Sanderson Farms Championship in the fall. More recently, he’s missed the cut in four straight events. Gamers should remove him from all weekly lineups and probably take the wait-and-see approach before considering a reinvestment in any format.

The 39-year-old Stroud would have made his sixth start at Torrey Pines, where has made three cuts with a best finish of T-49 in 2008. Stroud is playing on a medical extension -- he did not play in calendar year 2021 due to a back injury -- and has 19 events this season to earn 441 FedExCup points to keep his card. He’s made five starts in the new season (four in the fall series) and has missed four cuts including last week at the American Express. He’s seen one payday, finishing T-35 at the Houston Open. Knous will make his third start at the Farmers, where he missed the cut last year and finished T-29 in 2019.

The 31-year-old Knous entered the week needing 3.516 points (a solo 67th finish) to do so and earned five points with a 1-over 72 on Sunday to finish in a five-way tie at T-57 (1-under 283). “The emotions were going crazy today,” said Knous, who moved to 78th in the FedExCup rankings. “I was running through all the scenarios in my head, which is exactly what you don’t want to do, but it’s hard to block those out. Once that first tee ball was in the air, it was game time, everything kind of pushed to the back in my mind, so I was just able to focus on golf. But it’s emotional now.” Knous had injured his right wrist at the 2019 RBC Canadian Open and had surgery that August, which sidelined him for the rest of the year and all of 2020. In his only other start so far this season, Knous held the 54-hole lead at the Fortinet Championship in September – his first time holding the lead or co-lead after any PGA Tour round -- before finishing T-11 after a final-round 74. “Greatest top-60 of all time,” he said Sunday. “I’m going to celebrate with my caddie and my friends tonight and then my family when I get home. Then it’s back to work, job’s not done. Obviously conditional status, the ones I get in I have to be ready, and I plan to be ready and go low and have chances.”

The 31-year-old Knous could also extend his season with 3.516 points -- needing a solo 67th or better -- to play out of the 126-150 category for the rest of the season. If he finishes worse than solo 67th, he’ll lose his Tour membership and head to the Korn Ferry Tour. The Colorado native began the year with two chances to earn 153 FEC points and almost made up all that ground at the Fortinet Championship, finishing T-11 after sharing the 54-hole lead. A top-three finish would have secured his full card and a top-10 finish would have given him conditional status for the season, but he shot 74 on Sunday to fall back and earned 61.4 points. Last season, he made four starts and missed the cut in all of them, but he did show a flash of success in the KFT’s Live and Work in Maine Open in June with a T-5 finish. He made five cuts in 18 starts overall in the KFT’s wraparound season.

The 31-year-old, making his second-to-last start on a medical extension out of the Reshuffle category, needed 64.916 FedExCup points for conditional status (152.643 for full status). Due to the fact a non-member, John Augenstein, finished T6 (no FEC points for him), Knous is credited with points equivalent to a five-way T10, which is 61.40 (3.516 short of conditional). After sleeping on his first lead/co-lead after any round (70 rounds played), he mustered five (of 14) fairways and seven greens in regulation. The Colorado native offset one bogey-4 at hole 2 (missed par-saver from 5'7") with two birdie-4s at 5 (fringe-shot from 13'4") and 16, but the big blow was a triple bogey-7 at 14, where he hooked his tee ball into the hazard (took an unplayable), hit a tree up ahead on the punch-out attempt, the ball nearly coming back to him, and then 3-jacked from 70'0". The Colorado School of Mines alum, who records his second top 25 in 25 events, joining a T10 here in 2019 during his rookie campaign, gained 1.984 strokes around but lost 2.005 strokes off-the-tee, 1.145 on approach and 1.924 on-the-green. He ended the week with 21 birdies against six bogeys and a triple, and ranked 54th in SG: Off-the-Tee (-0.747), 61st in SG: Approach (-2.046), 1st in SG: Around (7.146), and 20th in SG: Putting (3.352)