Frankie Capan simply put his driver again within the bag this week.
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Frankie Capan III has finished nearly every little thing on the Korn Ferry Tour this season, together with clinching his PGA Tour card simply final week as he sits fifteenth on the Tour’s factors listing, besides win.
However this week in Columbus, Capan (pronounced SAP-en), is in place so as to add the lacking piece on the Korn Ferry’s penultimate 2024 occasion. Capan leads the Nationwide Youngsters’s Hospital Championship by one shot heading into the ultimate spherical.
Understandably, Capan’s sport has been firing on all cylinders this week as he’s second within the discipline, having missed simply 9 greens by way of 54 holes and is tied for fourth with 14 birdies at a tough Ohio State College Golf Membership Scarlet course.
One of many causes Capan has credited his robust play this week to is driving. He ranked ninetieth on the Korn Ferry Tour in whole driving, which mixes the ranks of distance and accuracy off the tee. Regardless of averaging almost 310 yards off the tee, that’s solely 56th on tour and while you mix it along with his 102nd rank in accuracy, you can begin to see the problem.
But it surely hasn’t stopped Capan from racking up two runner-up finishes — together with one final month on the Magnit Championship — and three different top-10s to safe himself “Tour Certain” standing.
Why hasn’t it stopped him? As a result of he took the motive force out of his bag for the previous few weeks main into the Korn Ferry Tour Finals.
“Yeah, numerous the programs we performed have been a bit shorter or there was type of a run-out at 310 to the place numerous holes weren’t driver in any case, so I simply determined to take it out,” Capan stated Saturday after his third-round 67. “On the time I wasn’t hitting it that nice.”
However at a beefy Scarlet course format, Capan has determined so as to add again the massive stick again to the bag and it’s led to outcomes. Capan is averaging a ridiculous 334 yards off the tee this week — which continues to be by some means solely thirteenth within the discipline. He’s solely hitting 54 p.c of his fairways, however when he’s hitting the inexperienced 83 p.c of the time anyway, it’s onerous to argue his tee photographs aren’t placing him in a very good place.
“I’m undecided when you guys caught just a few of [my drives today], it wasn’t all excellent in the present day but it surely’s been feeling higher and higher and this can be a course the place you positively want it,” Capan stated. He hit 7-of-14 fairways Saturday however averaged greater than 350 yards off the tee. “In the course of the couple weeks we had after Idaho earlier than Nashville I put numerous work in testing a pair issues, however primarily simply placing a bit work in making an attempt to tighten it up a bit bit as a result of I knew I would want it final week, this week and in French Lick.”
Clearly the technique as Capan has already secured a PGA Tour card, however a win Sunday may launch him up the precedence rating for subsequent season, serving to him extra probabilities on the “Huge Tour.”
