Zac Blair shows comeback form heading into final round at PGA’s Travelers Championship

Zac Blair never let work get in the way of fun.

Blair shot a pair of 65s at the PGA Travelers Championship before Saturday’s round to turn many heads when he found himself in contention after Friday’s 36-hole stretch.

The former BYU and Fremont High star is apparently back, even if he struggled to make birdies on Saturday’s third round with great scoring conditions. Ricky Fowler shot 10-under on the day.

Starting Saturday in a tie for fifth, Blair was even after 10 holes at TPC River Highlands in Connecticut before making a pair of birdies. He got to 3-under par after 16 in a tie for 10th before dropping back to 2 under (65-65-68) T15 heading into Sunday’s finish.

The thing you have to love about Blair is his deep passion for just playing the game. He loves golf so much that he’s been known to go play after playing a tournament, play before a tournament, and if he could get away with it, he’d probably sneak off to play some other holes during a tournament.

We saw this passion firsthand when Blair was the dominant amateur golfer in Utah for most of a decade. He overwhelmed UGA events, the local opens, and the winter tournaments in Southern Utah including back-to-back wins in the 2015 and 2016 Sand Hollow Open and the state’s biggest honor, winner of the Utah State Amateur in 2009.

The son of former BYU All-Ameican Jimmy Blair, Zac has had golf injected into his veins since diaperhood. He is also fulfilling a dream of designing a golf course, The Tree Farm Golf Club, near Augusta, Georgia, on the border of South Carolina.

Blair started the season on a medical exemption after being unable to play for almost two years following surgery to repair tears in his labrum. Taking a club out of his hands for that long had to have been frustrating, but he turned his attention to family activities.

“The thing I love about Zac Blair is his youthful enthusiasm for the game of golf. I’ve been covering Zac’s career path from its earliest beginnings in the Utah Junior Golf Association,” commented Randy Dodson, publisher of Fairways Magazine.

“He was maybe 12-13 years old when he told me, while he was following his father Jimmy around a Utah PGA event with a wedge in his hands, that he was going to play on the PGA Tour. Now he’s won at every level. It’s that determination, drive, and devotion to the game that carried over to his dream of building The Tree Farm Golf Club.”

Blair’s passion flared up on the national stage when he told Golf Channel anchors that he’d “heated up” by playing some of his favorite courses in the Connecticut area before the Travelers Championship.

On Monday he played Eastward Ho. On Tuesday he hit Fisher’s Island and Wednesday found him on the famed Winged Foot in Westchester, New York, a site that first hosted a U.S. Open in 1929.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who likes to golf more than Zac Blair,” said ABC4 (Salt Lake City) sports anchor Wes Ruff.

“When he was a kid, all he did was golf. Like all the time. Skipping school to play, playing money games out of state, it didn’t matter, he just wanted to play. I don’t think it was about winning with him so much as it was about just having a chance to play. And when he was done with that round, he was looking to play another round someplace else. The guy just loves to be on the course.”

Blair gets eight more PGA starts as part of his medical exemption. His goal is to earn 271 points to retain his Tour card.