Nathan Kimsey became the first Englishman to win the Challenge Tour points list since 2016 after securing his second victory of the season at the Rolex Challenge Tour Grand Final at Club de Golf Alcanada in Mallorca.

The 29-year-old from Lincolnshire posted a closing 70 to move to nine under and secure a one-stroke victory over countryman John Parry and South African Bryce Easton, who shared second place to both break into the Road to Mallorca top 20 and clinch a place on next season’s DP World Tour.

Kimsey started the final day slowly with four pars and a bogey in his first five holes, however after carding birdies at 6 and 8 he climbed to the top of the leaderboard before an eagle at the par-five 13th essentially sealed a memorable victory.

“I’m knackered. Wining golf tournaments isn’t easy,” said Kimsey, whose lifted him five places to the top of the rankings. “That was a battle out there. I didn’t have my best stuff, but I hit some good shots and holed some putts when it mattered. I’m a jumble of emotions – relief, happiness, just everything. Coming into the week, knowing I had it in my own hands, if I won to then finish as number on, it just feels great. I just tried to keep grinding. Nerves were a part of it so it was about trying to battle that and hit solid shots. I wanted to keep myself in with a chance coming up the last few holes and I did that.”

He added: “At the start of the year we all have it as a goal to get your card, so to come here and win this tournament and become number one, is just awesome. The card was wrapped up, but I just wanted to finish as high as possible to secure as many starts as possible next year, so I knew it was tight at the top. With a lot of points on offer this week, you’re trying to have a good week, while everyone is fighting for the same thing around you.”

Kimsey, who won the Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge earlier this season, finished 48,894 points ahead of Switzerland’s Jeremy Freiburghaus, who came second on the Rankings, with German Alexander Knappe finishing third. Ten-time Sunshine Tour winner JC Ritchie graduated in fourth place with Swede Mikael Lindberg finishing fifth and completing the quintet who will benefit from the John Jacobs Bursary Award next season.

Lindberg’s fellow Swede Jens Dantorp finished sixth, while Daniel Hillier, from New Zealand, finished in seventh place. Number Eight Oliver Hundebøll was one of two Danes to secure graduation alongside Martin Simonsen, who finished the season in 14th place, while German Freddy Schott and Northern Ireland’s Tom McKibbin rounded out the top ten. Northern Irishman McKibbin, aged just 19, was the youngest man in the field and climbed five places to tenth on the Rankings with a tie for sixth in Mallorca.

Parry, Easton and England’s Matthew Baldwin all made a final day move into the top 20, finishing 17th, 18th and 19th, while the final DP World Tour card belongs to South African Deon Germishuys, who finished just 1,507 points ahead of Poland’s Mateusz Gradecki, who narrowly missed out on graduation.

The final Road to Mallorca Rankings can be found here, with the top 20 receiving the DP World Tour cards for 2023.

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Brooks Koepka won the LIV Golf Jeddah event over the weekend, which few people watched and even fewer attended. In a vacuum, this was strange moment in the sport: Koepka, a four-time major champion, led a terrific leaderboard — Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Peter Uihlein, Matthew Wolff, Paul Casey and Joaquin Niemann — that nevertheless lacked any buzz, even when Koepka got emotional about how difficult golf has been for him over the last two years.

That’s not to say LIV Golf Jeddah didn’t matter. It was clearly meaningful to its participants and those running the upstart league. However, something Phil Mickelson said earlier in the week kept reverberating as most of the sports world ignored the better story: Four-time major winner nearly cries after beating other major winners in $20 million golf tournament because he didn’t know if he was ever going to play again.

Koepka’s triumph was not the focus, though. Why is that?

Well, there are a thousand reasons, perhaps the foremost of which is that LIV Golf is not played in a vacuum. Among those factors is that the event was played in Saudi Arabia, which has accumulated a reputation for running this league with one eye on normalizing its human rights issues. So, that’s part of it.

Golf fanatics have thus far refused to see it as a legitimate league given that LIV relies on a shotgun start, plays 54 holes without a cut and doesn’t exactly boast a great roster of golfers beyond its top 10.

Mickelson, not in that top 10, disagrees. He spent the week in Jeddah touting LIV as the future of the sport.

“As I said earlier, for a long, long time, my 30 years on the PGA Tour, pretty much all the best players played on the PGA Tour, at least for the last 20 years,” said Mickelson. “That will never be the case again. I think going forward you have to pick a side. You have to pick what side do you think is going to be successful.

“And I firmly believe that I’m on the winning side of how things are going to evolve and shape in the coming years for professional golf. We play against a lot of the best players in the world on LIV, and there are a lot of the best players in the world on the PGA Tour. And until some of the — well, until both sides sit down and have a conversation and work something out, both sides are going to continue to change and evolve.

“And I see LIV Golf trending upwards, I see the PGA Tour trending downwards, and I love the side that I’m on. And I love how I feel. I love how I’m reinvigorated and excited to play golf and compete. I love the experience. I love the way they treat us.”

It’s certainly interesting that Mickelson claimed LIV Golf is trending upwards. To date, many have posited that the primary drive of traffic or viewership to LIV Golf has been its splashy signings, including that of Mickelson. It has also added Johnson, Koepka, Niemann, Garcia as well as reigning Open champion and Players champion Cameron Smith.

The way LIV has gone about these signings has been smart, too. It spaced them out such that there was a steady stream of intrigue and interest in the acquisitions. However, those signings are only serving as flash points for the league. 

In fact, interest in LIV is waning rather than increasing. Research conducted by Golfdatatech obtained by CBS Sports shows that only 23% of respondents believe LIV Golf is a “good” idea, down from 27% in a previous iteration of its polling. Additionally, 58% believe LIV is a “bad” or “very bad” idea, up from 50%. (Four versions of research have been conducted since LIV started.)

Contrary to Mickelson’s claims, this shows LIV Golf is not trending upwards — at least when it comes to buy in from fans.

The majority of folks polled by Golf Datatech (66%) agree that they “don’t like that Saudi money is funding” LIV Golf. This figure has been consistent throughout the last several months.

Even more interesting are the YouTube numbers. Across the five events before Jeddah (for which data was not yet available), Boston did the best viewership by far. That event coincided with Smith’s signing. Chicago, the event directly after Boston, did the second-worst with Bangkok coming in last by a wide margin.

LIV Golf is broadcast on other platforms globally; YouTube is not the only place you can watch worldwide. However, the YouTube-only data seems to back up what others have posited about how big-time signings are the only primary catalyst driving interest in the league.

Perhaps that changes in the months and years to come, but the data doesn’t seem to support Mickelson’s theory. That doesn’t mean it won’t in the future, just that it doesn’t right now. 

Mickelson is paid handsomely — like many others — to spout LIV Golf’s talking points for the purpose of turning the tide on the PGA Tour. That is their best interest, of course, but it doesn’t make those statements true. LIV is hardly the only organization that touts itself in that manner, though it does stand out given the circumstances.

One day, Mickelson may indeed wind up on the “winning side” of all this. We won’t know that for several years, maybe even longer than that. As it stands now, though, one cannot objectively make that claim. LIV Golf is simply not flexing all over the PGA Tour as some would like you to believe.

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Charley Hull won her first LPGA Tour event in almost six years when capturing the Ascendant LPGA benefiting Volunteers of America title.

The 26-year-old from Kettering fired rounds of 67, 64, 71 and 64 at Old American Golf Club in Texas to finish on -18 for a one-shot win over China’s Xiyu Lina, with New Zealand’s Lydia Ko a further shot back in third.

Going into Sunday’s final round, Hull, Lin and Ko were all tied at the top on 11-under. Hull carded four birdies on the front nine to move to 14-under, but she was still one behind Lin and Ko.

There was nothing to split the trio when they reached the 12th tee, but Hull, who had been playing aggressively all week, recorded three birdies in a row to edge ahead. She began her run with a wedge to five feet for birdie on 12, and then hit a superb pitch from behind the green on the par-5 13th to two feet. She watched anxiously as her approach to par-4 14th was in the air, but it settled 12 feet away and she rolled in the putt for yet another birdie.

Both Lin and Ko kept the pressure on Hull down the stretch, with Lin birdieing the par-3 16th and bagging an eagle at the par-five 17th to move to within one shot of the leader, while Ko made birdies at 15 and 17.

When Hull birdied 17, Lin required a birdie of her own at the last to force a play-off, but both players could only manage pars, and the title was Hull’s.

The win marks a remarkable turnaround for Hull, who has endured a few tough years after bursting onto the scene as a teenager. She said: “I have come close a few times since last winning a title, but I have put in some good work this year. I think I know my game is there, it was just a question of having the confidence. I feel really good, I felt in control of my game all week, and I feel very proud of myself to have got back in the winner’s circle.”

Hull now joins Laura Davies and Alison Nicholas on the list of English women to have won multiple LPGA Tour titles.

CHARLEY HULL WITB
Driver: TaylorMade Stealth Plus (8°)
Fairway wood: TaylorMade Stealth Plus (15°)
Hybrid: TaylorMade SIM (19°)
Irons: TaylorMade P·7MB (4-PW)
Wedges: TaylorMade MG3 (50°, 54°, 60°)
Putter: TaylorMadeTP Soto Hydro Blast
Ball: TaylorMade TP5x

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