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Australia’s Jarrod Lyle fired a 2-under 69 Sunday to finish at 11-under 273 and T11 at the Midwest Classic. Lyle, recovering from a second battle with leukemia, was making his first competitive start in the United States in nearly 2 ½ years.
“Everything’s good,” he said after finishing 72 holes. “The body’s held up well. I’ve done a lot of good things. I think the biggest positive is the fitness side of it, that in the heat I got around four days and got around comfortably. The golf game’s been in good shape for a while but we had to wait and see if it fared well in tournament golf.”
Lyle was under par each of the four days and led the tournament in greens in regulation (58 of 72/80.6 percent) and finished T2 in fairways hit (44 of 56/78.6 percent).
“The focus was good. It didn’t take me long to get back into that ‘tournament’ frame of mind with that little fire in the back of your head burning,” he said. “It was my touch on the greens. I struggled a bit this week but the positives were that I was giving myself a lot of good looks at birdie. I left myself a lot of 4, 5 and 6-footers for pars but the good thing is that I holed them.”
Lyle had a total of 124 putts for the week (31, 33, 27 and 33). Asked to assess the week overall, Lyle had a tough time containing his smile.
“I’d give myself an ‘A’. Probably an A-minus, I’d be happy with that. I didn’t really get many of those in school so I’m happy with it,” he said with a laugh. “I’m ecstatic with the way the week has gone. Better than expected. Inside the top-10 at the moment, so you couldn’t ask for much more.”
Lyle will take next week off and then return to the Web.com Tour for consecutive weeks at the Price Cutter Charity Championship (Aug. 4-10) and the News Sentinel Open (Aug. 11-17).