The Wins Are Now Coming in Bunches for Tony Finau

In his last dozen starts the Utahn has three wins, fully realizing the potential many had anticipated for one of the game's longest hitters.

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For years, it seemed we kept saying that it was “only a matter of time" before Tony Finau broke through and started knocking off multiple victories. And yet added close calls and disappointments came doubt.

Until his victory last year at the Northern Trust, Finau’s lone PGA Tour win came at the opposite-field Puerto Rico Open.

Finau had three top 10s in majors in 2018. He played on the U.S. Ryder Cup team that year and was one of America’s best players. He was in the last group at the 2019 Masters, where Tiger Woods prevailed. He added five more top 10s in majors over the next two years, but wasn’t winning.

Even after his victory at the Northern Trust—a FedEx Cup playoff event—in 2021, Finau went kind of quiet, with just one top-10 finish in his next 16 worldwide events.

But in his past 12 events, Finau has three victories, a second, fourth, fifth and ninth.

He won the Cadence Bank Houston Open on Sunday, cruising to victory, after having wins at the end of the 2021-22 season at the 3M Open and Rocket Mortgage Classic.

“I’ve always had belief, but the confidence when you win is contagious," Finau said following his victory. “I’ve always been a very hopeful person. I’ve worked really hard and now I’m starting to bear the fruits of that labor, all that work."

Finau is fun to watch when he has it all together, as one of the longest hitters in the game with a free-flowing swing who can make a ton of birdies. If anything has held him back, at times, it has been putting, but he’s made it look easy of late.

At one point Sunday, he had an eight-shot lead.

“That was the most important stretch of my PGA Tour career," Finau said of the down times. “I continued to believe, I didn't give up on myself, I continued to work hard on my body and on my game and I just knew that—I was always hopeful that I could go on special runs and I think we're starting to see that now.

“I'm starting to put together a full-package game, which is really exciting for me. That's all you can do is work hard and I've worked extremely hard on parts of the game that I know I have to and I think it's starting to show."

Finau is not done yet. He’s in the field for this week’s RSM Classic and also scheduled to play in the Hero World Challenge next month.