Outside a couple shaky moments at the onset of his final round, Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra looked at ease en route to his first professional victory at the 2022 LIV Golf Bangkok. Firing a 3-under 69 to reach 19 under and fend off the likes of Patrick Reed, Paul Casey and Richard Bland, the former All-American at Oklahoma State successfully entered the winner’s circle with his Fireballs teammates looking on.

Beginning his day with a birdie, Lopez-Chacarra was able to maintain his overnight lead of five strokes. This would be fleeting as a pair of bogeys on Nos. 4-5 — his first two of the week — opened the door for his pursuers to walk through. Reed did just that as the former Masters champion quickly became Lopez-Chacarra’s main competition with three birdies in a five-hole stretch.

With this run from Reed, the Spaniard saw his lead shrink to two before a rain delay forced players off the golf course late on Sunday. Like a perfectly timed timeout in an NBA game, the break in action was exactly what Lopez-Chacarra needed to resettle his nerves and finish his LIV Golf Bangkok experience the way he started it.

“[I] knew it was going to be hard today,” Lopez-Chacarra said. “It was going to be a long day. There’s such good players coming from behind and they want to win as much as I do. I just stayed patient, and I feel like when the rain and the cold out on 15 helped me a lot. I needed some time off.” 

Faced with a delicate chip on the par-4 15th, the 22-year-old hit it to gimme range and successfully saved his par. 

“I was kind of pretty nervous, and being with my family, my coach and my best friend Gonzalo kind of helped me relax and just see how life is and how nice is my life right now and just kind of going out there and trust all the work I’ve put in, and when I was on 15, I think that’s the best chip I ever had in my life,” Lopez-Chacarra said. “It was an easy shot, downhill, a little wet, but it came out like I wanted to, and I think that was big momentum coming into the last three holes, and here I am right now. Couldn’t be any more proud.”

At the same time, Reed’s first swing out of the rain delay was one he wish he had back. Teeing off on the par-3 16th only two strokes off Lopez-Chacarra’s lead, Reed made a fatal mistake and found the water with his tee shot. This additional breathing room was more than enough for Lopez-Chacarra as he added a birdie on the par-5 17th to ultimately win by three strokes over Reed.

“Feels great. I mean, I don’t think there’s a lot of secret. Just trusting yourself and working hard every day,” Lopez-Chacarra said. “That’s what they teach me when I was young and what these guys tell me you need to do, and trusting your team, having a good team, and just work and work I would say.”

Lopez-Chacarra not only claimed the individual trophy, but also the team title as the Fireballs waltzed to the first-place podium. Finally disarming the 4 Aces — winners of four straight team events — Abraham Ancer, Carlos Ortiz and captain Sergio Garcia were able to follow in the footsteps of their youngest team member to reach 45 under as a squad and win by seven strokes over the Crushers.

“It’s an amazing week,” Garcia said. “I think that we all played really, really solid, and to be able to, like you said, Four Aces were coming off four wins in a row, I think, so we knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, but we all had a lot of faith in each other. We’ve been playing really, really well and been quite close a couple of times. We felt like we just needed to click a little bit here and there, and that was going to make the difference, and that’s what happened this week.”

The 4 Aces were unable to carry their U.S. momentum to Asia despite Reed’s best efforts. LIV Boston winner Dustin Johnson was stuck in neutral for most of the week and despite a final round 5-under 67 finished solo 16th. This marked the first time the 4 Aces captain’s name fell outside the top 10 on the leaderboard, but still Johnson remains in a good position to win the season-long individual points race with only one event left.

The First Cut podcast crew is back to bring you their recap for the Shriners Children’s Open and the LIV Bangkok event. Follow & listen to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.  

Team leaderboard

What is next for LIV Golf?

There is no rest for the weary as LIV Golf is set to wrap up its regular season next week in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Playing in back-to-back weeks for the first time in the tour’s existence, players will hop on the jet from Bangkok to Jeddah and quickly assimilate themselves to the new venue from Oct. 14-16.

After putting the finishing touches on the regular season, players will have a week to prepare for the team championship at Trump National Doral. Taking place Oct. 27-30, a recently announced format featuring byes, alternate shot, singles matches and stroke play will pin teams head-to-head against each other before crowning the first LIV Golf Team Champion.

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For Cameron Smith, it lacked the historic nature of his final round at this year’s Open Championship or the lights-out golf of his last 18 holes at the Tournament of Champions or the dramatic finale at TPC Sawgrass when he took the Players Championship in March.  But the result Sunday at LIV Golf Chicago as he shot 69 in the final round of his second LIV event to finish at 13 under was exactly the same: he lifted a trophy.

Nobody would compare this trophy — which he won over Dustin Johnson, who finished at 10 under and Peter Uihlein, who also came in at 10 under — with any of his other three this year, but the field Smith conquered was solid and he took home more money ($4 million) than he did at any of the other three events where he was the champion.

Smith, who shot 64, 65 and 66 in the final three rounds of his other wins in 2022, posted was just 1 under through 16 holes after firing 66 and 68 over the first two days at Rich Harvest Farms but shut things down before they could get too dramatic with a birdie-birdie finish to put first place completely out of reach. Johnson, who shot 63 in Round 1 and curiously followed it with a 73-70 finish, could not chase him down on Sunday after ceding an early tournament lead to him in the second round on Saturday (they swapped 1-2 spots on the top of the leaderboard). It was actually Uihlein who gave the best effort, firing 66-69 over the last two days and securing his best finish yet (T2) in the LIV Golf League.

Smith has proven himself an elite closer in big time events, but he can also be a menace to try and catch because of how few big numbers he makes on account of his elite short game. He made just four bogeys on a tough golf course over the final two days at Rich Harvest Farms and cruised to a victory in which he was far and away the top player in the field.

“I think I have to prove to probably myself and some other people that I’m still a great player,” Smith said after his victory. “I’m still out here to win golf tournaments. I’m proud of how I hung in there today. I didn’t really have my best stuff the first eight or nine holes, but stuck it tough and made a few putts coming in. It was nice.”

It’s true that Smith, who started on the first hole in the shotgun start format, did not have his best stuff early. Two of his four bogeys on the weekend came on the first six holes on Sunday, but he righted the ship over the last 12 holes and played them in a combined 4 under to pull away from Uihlein and D.J., who Smith noted provided a nice benchmark for great play in LIV.

“He’s probably the one on the group of players here that you look at and you think he’s going to be pretty close to the top of the leaderboard every week,” Smith said. “I hope he thinks the same about me, and hopefully we can keep this going.”

The duo finished in the top five at the LIV Boston event as well with D.J. taking the trophy in a playoff, and Smith missing that playoff by a single stroke.

It was actually D.J.’s team — the 4 Aces — that pulled through for the team win with D.J. making a birdie at the last to seal the victory. His squad of Talor Gooch, Pat Perez and Patrick Reed squeaked out its fourth consecutive LIV Golf win (all but one of the five team finishes have gone to the 4 Aces) by a single stroke over Smash GC, made up of the Koepka brothers (Chase and Brooks), Jason Kokrak and Uihlein, who anchored them this week against the Aces.

Smith’s word choice after the win was interesting. He said he felt like he needed to prove himself to himself “and some other people” after moving over to LIV, even after winning the final major of the year in The Open at St. Andrews. Certainly Smith has heard from chirpy fans that he sold out to go to LIV and that his game will fall off as he moves away from the most competitive tour in the world, and it was clear in this week that he wants to prove that wrong.

Only time will tell how that plays out. However, his three round at Rich Harvest Farms this week were a reminder of what has been very clear over the last nine months, which is that Smith is unequivocally one of the top three players in the world, just as he’s been for all of 2022.

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