Feeling “100 percent healthy” after a 2022 back injury kept him out nearly 18 months, Daniel Berger enters this week’s Cognizant Classic excited to compete for the title in his own backyard.
“Mostly playing in front of my friends and family and playing on a course that I’m familiar with,” Berger said of the tournament, which begins Thursday at the Champion Course at PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. “Obviously sleeping in your own bed is tough to beat. We don’t get to do that often. It’s one of the events that I circle on the schedule every year, and excited to play.”
Hailing from nearby Plantation, Berger is on a roll of late, coming off a 12th-place finish at the Genesis Invitational and a T2 finish at the WM Phoenix Open the previous weekend. With four PGA wins under his belt, he is seeking his first victory since the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Berger rejoined the PGA Tour at the American Express last January and finished in a tie for 39th, then went on to make 14 more cuts in 2024, finishing the year with a T2 finish at The RSM Classic in November.
Asked on Wednesday which aspect of his game took the longest to return following his lengthy absence, Berger pointed to club head speed.
“Over a year ago, I was swinging like 106 miles an hour, which doesn’t translate into long drives,” he said. “That took me probably eight or nine months to get back up to the high 119 and 120s. So now I feel like I can compete with the other guys.
“It’s a huge advantage to hit the ball — I’m not long by any means, but to get into that 300 carry number was huge for me, and being able to take some bunkers out of play that six months ago I wasn’t able to do, now I’m hitting a ton of fairways.”
Reflecting on his last event at PGA National Resort, when he led the 2022 Honda Classic by six with 19 holes left before a final-round 74 left him three shots behind the winner, Berger said it “ate at me for a while.”
“But I think in the end, golf is really tough, and you’re not playing against a bunch of average players,” he said. “You’re playing against the best players in the world, so there’s going to be times where people outplay you or you don’t quite hit the shots that you want to hit.
“I think in the last year just, like, being able to understand that and process that has helped me a lot, and what I take is that I wanted it way too much at that time because this is a tournament that I think fondly of and I have a lot of great memories here. If I was in that same position again, I would definitely approach it differently.”
–Field Level Media
