A long winning drought was broken on Sunday at the Zozo Championship in Japan, but perhaps not the one everyone was expecting. Rickie Fowler came into the final round leading and looking for his first victory since the 2019 Phoenix Open, but he was clipped in the end by a single stroke by Keegan Bradley, who had experienced an even longer time between wins with his last victory coming at the 2018 BMW Championship.

Bradley shot a 2-under 68, which was two better than Fowler and good enough to finish at 15 under, one ahead of Rickie, the man with home he was playing. It was a bit of a ride for both players as they sought to break streaks they never wished to start. Fowler shot his worst round of the week — a 70 — and never could get rolling at Narashino Country Club after shining for the first two days. Bradley nursed a lead coming down the back stretch but kicked it away with bogeys at Nos. 14 and 16, the latter on account of a shank coming out of a bunker.

He buried a birdie on No. 17 to retake the lead, however, and maintained it with a par at the final hole. The result?

“I’ve been crying since I finished,” said Bradley after winning for the fifth time on the PGA Tour. “I can’t remember the last time I cried. I talked to my wife on the phone a second ago, FaceTime. I can’t keep it together, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

There’s nothing wrong with Bradley, age 36, of course. It’s just that as you get older and actually understand how difficult it is to win on the toughest tour in the world, the victories start to mean more. Bradley won a lot early on, but he has just two wins since 2012. This victory moves him into the top 25 in the Official World Golf Rankings and ostensibly into some conversations of which he wants to be a part.

“It means a lot,” said Bradley. “There’s a lot of hard work that goes into it. Even if you play perfectly, doesn’t mean you’re going to win. But for me, I feel like I should be contending for tournaments, I want to be contending to play on Ryder Cup, Presidents Cups teams, majors. You know, this is going to go a long way. I haven’t really … of my five, I haven’t really won that many leading the entire day like I did today, and I really learned a lot and I think I can take a lot of that going forward the rest of the year.”

I don’t know if Bradley is going to be in the mix for next year’s U.S. Ryder Cup team in Rome. What I do know is that he’s an overlooked and probably underrated player on the PGA Tour. His ball-striking is world class, and if he can figure out how to return to being an above-average putter like he was a the beginning of his career, he will legitimately be in the conversation for the Ryder Cup and probably go fewer than eight years between major top 10s like he did from 2014 to 2022.

Regardless, this is one to celebrate. Bradley said he’s going out in Japan tonight and planning on catching the New England Patriots game at 2 a.m. local time. Who can blame him after breaking a four-year drought? The older you get the more precious those victories become. Grade: A+

Here are the rest of our grades for the 2022 Zozo Championship.

T2. Rickie Fowler (-14): I’m not sure the average fan knows just how in the desert Fowler has been over the last three years. Here’s a quick and non-exhaustive sampling:

• Three top 10s in the last 30 months
• Ranked behind Marcus Helligkilde and Kaito Onishi in the OWGR
• Missed three majors in 2022
• 0 SG player (basically PGA Tour average) for two years

All that to say it was awesome to see him back in the mix in Japen after such a difficult run for such a long time. There’s a catch, though. We saw this last fall when he nearly won the CJ Cup. Nothing materialized from that this year (he didn’t have a single top 20 in 2022 anywhere until September), so hopefully this resurgence will play out differently. Grade: A

“It’s just finally in a position where we’re building momentum and building more confidence,” said Fowler. “I feel like in the last few years there would be times where kind of take a step forward and just was never really able to build more momentum than for one week at a time. In a great spot and finally in a position where things are starting to kind of snowball and head in the right direction all together.”

T9. Xander Schauffele (-10): It wasn’t enough, but Schauffele nearly shot the round of the day on Sunday with a 5-under 65. That 65 was a reminder of this completely absurd stat.

Schauffele low-key rode a heater into the end of the 2021-22 season, and he’s picking up where he left off. In his last 11 tournaments last season, he finished in the top 20 a whopping 10 times, finished in the top five six times and won three of them (including a team championship with Patrick Cantlay). He’s on another level. Grade: A-

T45. Collin Morikawa (-2) and T53. Cameron Young (-1): Two Presidents Cup players went to Japan and couldn’t crack the top 40, which is disappointing. Both of these guys are on a bit of “wait, are we sure they’re going to be on next year’s Ryder Cup team?” watch. While both are terrific players — and Morikawa an accomplished winner — both can also be streaky, which can certainly be a good thing but often can also lead to some pretty sub-par results like these. Grade: D

Source link

Mackenzie Hughes rose above his own consistency to win the 2022 Sanderson Farms Championship in a two-hole playoff with a walk-off birdie against Sepp Straka. Hughes gutted out a 69 in regulation that concluded with a nasty up and down at the 72nd hole to get into the playoff, which he punctuated with an early fist pump that proved to be accurate. The victory, Hughes’ second on the Tour, ends a drought of 155 professional starts between wins. 

When I say Hughes rose above his own consistency, here is what I mean: The Canadian is your prototypically average PGA Tour player. He makes a lot of cuts, notches a lot of top 30s and top 40s, but he rarely wins because he rarely has those standard deviation weeks needed to win on the PGA Tour. Interestingly, he had one of those last year when he gained 12 strokes (a borderline winning number at a lot of events) at the RSM Classic but failed to capitalize.

That wasn’t the case this time around. Hughes took advantage of some terrific tee-to-green play (he finished first in the field this week in strokes gained from tee to green) and closed out a victory that had been so elusive. 

“I kept telling myself the whole week that I was going to do it,” Hughes said. “That was the only thing I saw in my mind. Those par saves down the stretch, just trying to will the ball in the hole. I’d say that describes my game a bit is that grit and perseverance. The second one felt harder than the first one, that’s for sure.”

The par saves were pretty incredible. The one on the 72nd hole was difficult, but he had an up and down from a greenside bunker on the first hole of the playoff that was just as delectable.

Hughes almost never finishes outside the top 75 in the FedEx Cup, but just as infrequently finishes in the top 25. He’s just a solid player who rarely tastes victory. There are a lot of those guys on the PGA Tour, but Hughes seems more bent on winning than most. It’s not as taxing to simply exist as an average PGA Tour player, but Hughes should be applauded for doing what so few seem to want to do: putting himself in contention to win and hitting the shots (and putts) to actually pull it off.

The man he defeated, Straka, has now lost two playoffs in his last four PGA Tour starts. He was terrific all week — he shot all four rounds in the 60s — and could be poised for a breakout year. The oily-swinging Austrian looks exactly like somebody who is going to have a career year that culminates in a 3-0-1 record at next year’s Ryder Cup in Rome right before Luke Donald pours his beloved Diet Coke from the Ryder Cup straight into the back of Straka’s throat.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though. This was event No. 2 of 47 for the PGA Tour season, and while it lacked the chaotic ending of the first one — when Danny Willett kicked away a winning opportunity to Max Homa — it still provided some good context for the rest of the season. Straka, as a breakout European, and Hughes as somebody who, as some would say given that football season is fully underway, might have that dog in him. Grade (for both): A+

Here are the rest of our grades for the 2022 Sanderson Farms Championship.

Mark Hubbard (T5): It was not a Sunday to remember for Hubbard, who was the 54-hole leader. He shot 2-over par in the final round — the only player in the top 12 to shoot over par at all — and couldn’t cash in the healthy lead he built up over the first three days. Hubbard is an especially easy player to root for, and it’s always fun to have him in contention. Unfortunately, he just didn’t have his best stuff when having it would have resulted in his first-ever PGA Tour victory. Grade: A-

Davis Riley (T19): After the first day, I thought we might get a Sam Burns redux, with Riley kick-starting his season with an early win and some whispers about whether he could make next year’s United States Ryder Cup team. Instead, he faded over the last three days with rounds of 71-70-71. Riley struggled immensely off the tee. not normally a weakness of his — and the result was that he let a group of players who were looking up at him after 18 holes overtake him over the final 54. Grade: B

Sam Burns (T30): Burns was the highest-ranked player in the field this week, so his T30 has to be a disappointment — especially coming off a strong Presidents Cup week and at a golf course where he won just a year ago. Burns was awesome off the tee, but he struggled elsewhere and couldn’t find his iron game (he finished second in approach shots a year ago and 49th this week). This says nothing about his long-term ability or what I expect from him this season, but it’s likely not the start to the season he envisioned. Grade: B-

Source link