Scott Piercy can join Bonanza jackpot with birthday win in Shriners Open

It has been a heck of a week for guys who graduated from Bonanza High School.

After knocking the cover off the baseball during much of the playoffs, Kris Bryant (BHS Class of 2010) was credited with the assist on the final out of Game 7 as the Chicago Cubs edged the Cleveland Indians to win their first World Series in 108 years.

Then on Saturday at TPC Summerlin, Scott Piercy (BHS Class of 1996) shot 6-under-par 65 to vault from 26th place at the start of the day at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open to tied for sixth at the end of it, three shots in arrears of third-round leader Lucas Glover.

Dan Reynolds (BHS Class of 2005) is frontman for the rock band Imagine Dragons. The Dragons’ last studio album was in 2015, but the record company should have released something this past week. It almost assuredly would have gone platinum.

“This week is set up perfect for me,” Piercy said Saturday after shooting the day’s second-best round (along with two others). “It’s my (38th) birthday tomorrow, so it would be a pretty awesome thing if I could win on my birthday.”

But if there is going to be birthday cake served out of a championship trophy, Piercy says he’ll have to putt much better.

“I hit it close enough to make a few birdie putts, but I need the putter to warm up and keep hitting it the way I am, and I’ll be in a good spot,” he said.

Piercy made it sound as if he were putting with Bill Murray’s scythe in “Caddyshack.” On the 18th, it looked as if he finally would get one to drop. After coming up short on his approach, his birdie putt from way off the green appeared headed for the middle of the cup.

Some 40 feet later, it came to rest directly behind it. The gallery groaned, and the hometown favorite pulled his golf cap over his eyes in disbelief.

“That’s what they all looked like today,” said Piercy, who has three top-10 finishes in his hometown event, but none higher than a sixth-place tie. “Finally, the last hole, it’s going to go in — I don’t know how it didn’t.”

That’s on one hand. On the other: “I did what I needed to do to have a chance, as long as the guys on the back nine don’t run away from me.”

They didn’t. By then, Piercy had put his cap back on top of his head.

“I’m still gonna probably need 6 or 7 (under) to get it done, but at least I have a chance and don’t have to shoot 10 or 11 (under),” he said.

Piercy talked about the Bonanza connection, on how he keeps tabs on Kris Bryant when he can, and how he probably is bettered remembered as a Bengals soccer player than a golfer, having played sweeper on two state championship teams.

Bryant hit 39 homers and drove in 102 runs and scored 121 for the Cubs this season. I don’t know what the golf equivalent would be, but Scott Piercy must have come pretty darn close in the U.S. Open in June at hallowed Oakmont Country Club in suburban Pittsburgh.

He was the near the top of the leaderboard all weekend before finishing in a second-place tie with Jim Furyk and Ireland’s Shane Lowry. It was Piercy’s best finish in a major, surpassing his tie for fifth at the 2013 PGA Championship.

To call it a confidence builder would be a misnomer. He has been chasing the dimpled ball around on the PGA Tour since 2009, and anybody who has played that long at that level — and made as much as Piercy has ($14.3 million) — does not lack for confidence.

It was more of an affirmation, he said — an affirmation that he has the tools to compete on golf’s biggest stages.

“It was great — I feel like I should be competing (at that level) week in and week out, and that just kind of told me I have the game to win a major,” said Piercy, who made 20 of 24 cuts with three top-10s in 2016 and a career-high $2,905,349 in season earnings. “I always kind of felt that, but that kind of made it more realistic in everybody else’s mind, I guess.”

It’s also realistic in a lot of people’s minds that he could rally from three shots back to put Bonanza High back on top of the leaderboard Sunday, especially if he starts rolling the ball as well as he has been striking it.

When I left the media center, Scott Piercy, Bonanza High School Class of 1996, was on the practice green, rolling 20-footers in virtual solitude. Not that many were falling, but they wouldn’t be turning back the clocks until he turned 38. There still was plenty of daylight to make things right.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.