The final round of the Valspar Championship is going to be a horse race, a cat fight, a logjam or some combination thereof. A horse fight. A cat jam. Nahh, don’t write that.
Sunday’s final round is going to be close, in other words. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Yeah, it’s shaping up to be a good, old-fashioned cat jam. That’s definitely not catching on, pal, and you’re making less sense as you go.
Well, there’s a light at the end of this tunnel, and it’s probably not an oncoming locomotive. Thanks for not saying cat jam again, clown.
At one point Saturday afternoon, there was an eight-way tie for first and a seven-way tie for second place, which was actually ninth place, of course, because of all those bodies sharing first. At least you didn’t try to sneak log fight in here. Still not funny.
The Valspar has a leader and finally, it’s not a plural noun. You might be plural soon if you keep wolfing down pressroom candy snacks, pal.
Ryan Moore, a Washington native who grew up in Puyallup, is on top after a 67. There are eight more players within five shots. That’s a veritable posse, sure, but nothing like the freeway traffic jam earlier in the afternoon. It might resemble Hwy. 19 outside the resort gates here, though. There were so many fans on the grounds Saturday and there’s so many tourists down here now that there couldn’t have been anybody left to turn out in the lights in Canada when they came south for the winter.
Jordan Spieth is second. He’s America’s official Boy Wonder of golf.It’s a good thing Robin’s tiny green tights are out of fashion.
Matt Kuchar was a Boy Wonder, too, once upon a time. Now he’s the Tour’s Mr. Consistent and he’s tied for fifth.You can’t keep him out of the top ten any easier than you can wipe that grin off his face.
Derek Ernst is third, Sean O’Hair is fourth and Henrik Stenson, one of the world’s best players, is tied for fifth with Kuchar and Patrick Reed. That last threesome is strong, the kind of talent usually reserved for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Put that in, man, the boss loves it when you promote company product.
All right, you can probably stop Sunday preview countdown there but you shouldn’t. Really, you just can’t ignore 53-year-old Vijay Singh, a three-time major winner who defies the laws of aging. He shares eighth with Daniel Summerhays, and you’d like Singh’s chances better if he didn’t have to climb past Stenson, Kuchar, Reed and Spieth to catch the leader. In my old bowling league, they used to say, No hill for a stepper. Still don’t know what it means.
So here’s your unofficial tout sheet for Sunday’s tiptoe through the Snake Pit, in order of those most likely to win: