Matty Ice is of course no more in Atlanta, shipped to Indy in a Manhattan-for-beads kind of deal that gained the Falcons a mere third-round pick. Thus was franchise quarterback Matt Ryan ingloriously disposed of.
Patty Ice, he’s not so easy to shake. Patrick Cantlay, dubbed Patty Ice a year ago for his nerveless, almost frigid approach to winning the Tour Championship at East Lake, is back again. And appearing just as ready to go all frosty for four more rounds.
The nickname resonated so strongly that tournament organizers last year presented Cantlay with a No. 2 Falcons jersey, “Patty Ice” stitched across the shoulders. “I’m sure it’s in the closet somewhere,” he said Tuesday. OK, so maybe the jersey wasn’t his most cherished keepsake of the week, ranking a little behind a big PGA Tour title and a $15 million payday.
Last year, Cantlay won the playoff event leading to Atlanta, came to the Tour Championship No. 1 in points, given a couple stroke advantage over the field as a result and never lost the lead no matter the pressure from his pursuers.
This year, he likewise won the BMW Championship before getting here. But now finds himself second in points, and will begin Thursday at 8-under in this staggered scoring event, with Scottie Scheffler just ahead of him at 10-under.
It’s a difference of just one place in the points standings, but a far greater gap than that mentally. “Starting the tournament ahead, I think, adds a little bit of pressure that guys don’t usually feel, teeing off on a Thursday or a Friday,” Cantlay said.
Not that he necessarily prefers being one of the chasers this year to being the chased a year ago. “No, I’d take as much of a handicap as they’d give me,” he said.
For a guy who admittedly dislikes the current Tour Championship format of staggered scoring – “I’ve talked before about it, I’m not a fan, I think there’s got to be a better system, although frankly I don’t know what that better system is,” he says – Cantlay sure knows how to game the system. He can become the first player to win back-to-back FedEx Cups since the big-money giveaway came along in 2007. And that includes the era when Tiger Woods wasn’t completely held together by masking tape.
Amend that: He very well should be the first to go consecutive at East Lake. After flopping around early in his career, with finishes of 20th, 21st and 21st in his first three visits to East Lake, Cantlay has something figured out here. Something about marshalling his game here at the end of a long season, here on the far side of the grind of all the majors and the playoffs. That makes him someone not to be trifled with, even a favorite if you feel like a bit of a stretch.
“I don’t know if I figured anything out about the strategy of the place. I don’t think it’s overly complicated. I think my body has been better the last couple years, so that three-week stretch to end the year wasn’t as taxing on me and I came in a little more fresh even though I was playing three weeks in a row,” Cantlay said.
“But golf courses are kind of like that. Sometimes you come to a place, don’t see it perfect, and then you play a couple rounds well and then you start playing well there all the time.”
Cantlay’s good buddy on Tour, another serious threat to win this thing as well as to blow out your spell check, Xander Schauffele, suggests that were he not a wealthy golfer he would make a terrific wealthy lawyer. “He’s really good at putting his thought into words, thinking to finality, and he’s very linear,” Schauffele said of his friend. “So yeah, I’d say a lawyer would be an easy (career) for him.”
That clear, undistracted approach comes in quite handy in a high-stakes setting like this. A simmering intelligence, one the PGA Tour plans on tapping next year when they install him as a member of the players’ advisory committee, can’t hurt either.
It’s the same flat-line approach he’ll take when asked about the possible historic significance of winning back-to-back FedEx Cups.
“I don’t put too much stock in kind of random stats like that,” he answered. “Last week I said I was surprised Tiger hasn’t defended, and it might just be because he was injured one year.
“I think at the end of your career you’ll look back and say I wish I would have won every FedEx you had a chance to win because it’s a big tournament. The fact that it’s a year-long race I think means a little bit more. Back-to-back doesn’t do anything more, but two is a lot better than just one.”
Brrrrrr.
Winning consecutive FedEx Cups has proven undoable.
But who’s to say Cantlay can’t?
This is one glacier that’s not melting.
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