This pro played the season’s stretch run without a driver. Here’s why

Frankie Capan III has done just about everything on the Korn Ferry Tour this season, including clinching his PGA Tour card just last week as he sits 15th on the Tour’s points list, except win.

But this week in Columbus, Capan (pronounced SAP-en), is in position to add the missing piece at the Korn Ferry’s penultimate 2024 event. Capan leads the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship by one shot heading into the final round.

Understandably, Capan’s game has been firing on all cylinders this week as he’s second in the field, having missed just nine greens through 54 holes and is tied for fourth with 14 birdies at a difficult Ohio State University Golf Club Scarlet course.

One of the reasons Capan has credited his strong play this week to is driving. He ranked 90th on the Korn Ferry Tour in total driving, which combines the ranks of distance and accuracy off the tee. Despite averaging nearly 310 yards off the tee, that’s only 56th on tour and when you combine it with his 102nd rank in accuracy, you can start to see the issue.

But it hasn’t stopped Capan from racking up two runner-up finishes — including one last month at the Magnit Championship — and three other top-10s to secure himself “Tour Bound” status.

Why hasn’t it stopped him? Because he took the driver out of his bag for the last few weeks leading into the Korn Ferry Tour Finals.

“Yeah, a lot of the courses we played were a little shorter or there was kind of a run-out at 310 to where a lot of holes weren’t driver anyways, so I just decided to take it out,” Capan said Saturday after his third-round 67. “At the time I wasn’t hitting it that great.”

But at a beefy Scarlet course layout, Capan has decided to add back the big stick back to the bag and it’s led to results. Capan is averaging a ridiculous 334 yards off the tee this week — which is still somehow only 13th in the field. He’s only hitting 54 percent of his fairways, but when he’s hitting the green 83 percent of the time anyway, it’s hard to argue his tee shots aren’t putting him in a good position.

“I’m not sure if you guys caught a few of [my drives today], it wasn’t all perfect today but it’s been feeling better and better and this is a course where you definitely need it,” Capan said. He hit 7-of-14 fairways Saturday but averaged more than 350 yards off the tee. “During the couple weeks we had after Idaho before Nashville I put a lot of work in testing a couple things, but mainly just putting a little work in trying to tighten it up a little bit because I knew I would need it last week, this week and in French Lick.”

Clearly the strategy as Capan has already secured a PGA Tour card, but a win Sunday could launch him up the priority ranking for next season, helping him more chances on the “Big Tour.”