Bubble boy Sam Burns ties Olympia Fields course record with bogey-free 62

OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. – Max Homa’s course-record 62 at Olympia Fields Country Club (North Course) stood for less than 24 hours.

Sam Burns tied the mark in Saturday’s third round of the BMW Championship, and he admitted knowing his 38-foot birdie try at the par-4 18th hole was to top Homa’s record.

“Unfortunately, yeah,” Burns quipped after signing his card Saturday. “I didn’t want to tie him; I wanted to beat him. But I’ll take it.”

Burns’ record-tying round came at an opportune time, as the LSU alum has plenty to play for this week in Chicagoland. He entered the week at No. 30 in the FedExCup, squarely on the bubble to advance to the TOUR Championship at East Lake. He’s also 12th in the U.S. Ryder Cup Team standings, looking to make a final case for a spot on Captain Zach Johnson’s squad (the six automatic qualifiers will be finalized after the BMW Championship, with six captain’s picks to be selected after the TOUR Championship).

Not a bad time to card a sizzling 62 at a historic venue, especially considering Burns began Saturday in the bottom half of the field after rounds of 71-70 in mostly benign conditions.

“It's a hard, hard game. It can really beat you up at times,” Burns said Saturday. “I think for me, just trying to stay the course and just keep working hard and know that I was doing the right things, and eventually I would see something on the golf course that would kind of show me that, and today was definitely a piece of that.”

Burns made four birdies on each nine Saturday, and he kept a clean card en route to the 62 that could help extend his season. He missed just two greens – one came at the par-3 13th hole, but he holed out from a greenside bunker, 27 feet away, in what he described as his shot of the day.

Although he won the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play in March, his fifth TOUR title, with a 6-and-5 victory over Cameron Young (also in the mix for a U.S. Ryder Cup selection), Burns has recorded just one top-10 finish since that win (T6 at the Charles Schwab Challenge in May). He’s spent a lot of time on the range this week, and admitted Saturday it has “been a frustrating year at times.”

That said, he also expressed appreciation in having qualified for the BMW Championship to begin with, knowing that making the FedExCup Playoffs is no sure thing – now more than ever, with just 70 players teeing it up at last week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship, then 50 competing this week at Olympia Fields.

With another great round Sunday he could put his frustrations behind him.