Sam Burns is the quiet sort, a man who rarely gets overly excited or exceedingly despondent. As the cliché goes, he’d rather let his clubs do the talking.
Last year, they spoke very well. During his breakout season, Burns, a man of immense power and gentle touch on and around the greens, won his first PGA Tour title, rose to No. 25 in the world and became a loud presence most every time he put a peg in the ground.
For instance, he led the PGA Tour in 36-hole leads/co-leads with five and led the Tour along with Jordan Spieth in 54-hole leads/co-leads with four. In 26 starts, he had eight top-10s and 13 top-25s. In one stretch, he shot 64 four times in eight rounds.
Heady stuff.
Going into last season, one of his goals was to play his way to the season-ending Tour Championship. Goal accomplished. Yet, after emerging as one of the game’s best young stars, a man who has the look and game to continue ascending the ranks to the Tour’s upper echelons, the 25-year-old Burns remains the same guy he was at the start of last season.
Thus, heading into his first event of the season in the Sanderson Farms Championship at the Country Club of Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi, his goal for the new season hasn’t changed.
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“Same as last season,” Burns said Wednesday in a conference call with reporters.
No, his aspirations have not bumped skyward despite winning his first Tour title at the Valspar Championship, losing in a playoff at the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Classic, finishing runner-up in the AT&T Byron Nelson and finishing third in the Genesis Invitational.
But Burns, however, did offer up a few mini-goals.
“Really just trying to kind of build on last year, kind of the things I did well, what I need to improve on, trying to find those areas and just trying to fine tune my game,” he said. “So that’s kind of the goal coming into this week and this year, just to continue to try and get better and improve in those areas.
“And we’ll see what happens.”
More specifically, he said his wedge game from 125 to 150 yards needs to improve. He’d like to lag putt a bit better. Is working on a few things where it comes to chipping.
“As competitors we’re always trying to find little areas where we can improve, not necessarily drastic but just a little bit over a period of time makes a big difference out here,” he said. “For me really it just stems from preparing well for each week. I think that’s where I really try to focus in on, is today and yesterday and Monday and just learning the golf course, how it’s playing this week, what areas we need to kind of hone in on for this golf course.
“So every week’s a little bit different, so I think for me just really focusing on that. That’s the only thing that I can control.”
Well, he’s in a good place to kick off his season. His best finish in four trips to the Country Club of Jackson is a tie for third in 2019.
“This (course) is one of my favorites all year,” he said. “I think these are probably some of the best greens we play all year. I like the golf course, I like the Bermuda grass, similar to kind of what I grew up on home, kind of tree-lined fairways.
“I’m really excited. I don’t know what the weather looks like, I think it’s going to be OK, so I think the golf course will firm up, get firmer and faster and it will be a good test.”