By Shane Ryan
GREENSBORO, N.C. — What if someone told you that a PGA Tour event finished with a six-man playoff, and that wasn’t even the most exciting part of Sunday’s final round? What if someone told you that Chesson Hadley and Justin Rose were locked in one of the most dramatic duels of the season, but neither of them was on the course and that their fates would be decided by Branden Grace and Tyler McCumber, neither of whom won the tournament?

Absurd as it all sounds, if you had any experience with PGA Tour golf, you’d nod knowingly, sigh deeply, and maybe even allow yourself a small, world-weary smile. “Ah yes,” you’d say. “The Wyndham.”

Here at sweltering Sedgefield Country Club, in the final event of the PGA Tour’s regular season, the greatest drama centres on the bubble, where various types of fate are constantly being decided in golf’s wildest Sunday, from FedExCup Playoffs berths and full status in the following season for the top 125 to the inglorious battles of the lower echelons—the fight, for instance, to finish inside the top 150 and at least retain conditional status for next season, or to sneak inside the top 200 and qualify for the Korn Ferry Tour Finals.

The day’s best story, as it turned out, was the unexpected clash of Hadley and Rose. Hadley came into the week 132nd in the standings, and his most notable result of the season was a mini-collapse at the Palmetto Championship when he bogeyed the final three holes to lose by a shot to Garrick Higgo.

After three rounds of the Wyndham, there was no indication that Hadley would threaten the top 125; at 4 under, he had performed competently but not exceptionally. Then Sunday came, and all hell broke loose. He made a hole-in-one on his seventh hole, gave an impromptu leaping celebration that he later compared to a “flying baby giraffe,” and suddenly realized he had a shot to do something incredible. After a front-nine 29, Hadley made two more birdies on the back, avoided bogeys, and finished with an eight-under 62. When the dust had settled, and he checked in with the PGA Tour’s Tom Alter in the scoring area, his position had improved to …

126th. One shot outside the bubble.

The good news was that there weren’t many players behind him who could send him farther down the line, but there were likely only two—Roger Sloan and Rose—who could fall behind him, and both contending for the win on a packed leader board.

Hadley, who is so tall and rangy that he gives the impression of being all bones, wept in his interview with Amanda Balionis after the round, speaking about how much he loved his job, how he cared “deeply,” and then making fun of himself as an ugly crier and an awkward jumper. He had calmed down by the time he joined the rest of the media and was suddenly in a jovial mood as he bantered with a tour media official.

“My first comment is John Bush is interviewing me for the first time, like, ever,” he joked, referring the official. “He’s at every event and every time he’s always looking for somebody else, but today he’s got me. So it’s a pleasure to have you ask me some questions, Mr. Bush.”

He fielded questions admirably, despite the fact that he was on the outside looking in. When asked how different it would be to finish one spot outside the playoffs, and one spot from securing full status, he took the opportunity to rib the questioner.

“That’s your question?” he asked. “How different is it? It would suck, right? I mean, to have [Palmetto] happen and then have today happen the way it did, and then still be … that would suck.

“I’d love to get on a plane to go to New York,” he added, referencing next week’s first playoff event, the Northern Trust Open. “But I’ve got a flight booked to Boise [the site of the Korn Ferry Tour Finals] too. Man, I would love not to get on that [New York] flight.”

He went on to say he had a bottle of single vintage cabernet from the Alpha Omega winery in California waiting for him, and that rather than stick around to live and die with every shot, he would just drive home to Raleigh, NC, less than an hour away.

Jared Tilton
Roger Sloan waves on the seventh green during the final round of the Wyndham Championship.

Roger Sloan didn’t help Hadley, making birdie on 16 and 17 to reach the six-man playoff. With a surprise chance to earn his card and perhaps win a tournament, Sloan wasn’t going to let it slip away. He eventually lost to Kevin Kisner like everyone else, but his performance was plenty good enough.

It was Rose, oddly enough, who gave Hadley his taste of hope. He came in needing an incredible performance to move from outside the bubble and earn a playoff berth—and show Padraig Harrington some form for a potential Ryder Cup captain’s pick in the process—and for 67 holes, the Englishman did just that. Then it all unraveled—a bogey on 14, three straight birdie putts missed inside 15 feet, and a final blown par putt on 18 of just six feet sent him spiraling down the standings. When he strode off the course, clearly frustrated, Rose had fallen two points behind Hadley.

But Sunday at the Wyndham is never over until the very end, and things can get mathematical in a hurry. Alter, the czar of the scoreboard, is a little like Dr. Jacques Bailly of the spelling bee or George Shea of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest in that he shows up once per year for a very specific purpose. He’s the one charged with informing the players of their fate, and he was the one communicating with Hadley and Rose. As it happened, when the final group came to the 18th green, bogeys by Tyler McCumber and Branden Grace would have reversed their fortunes, placing Rose over Hadley. McCumber obliged, hitting a strikingly poor putt from 68 feet to set up a bogey, but Grace made birdie to reach the playoff, and the result was set:

Hadley in at 125, Rose out at 126.

When Hadley reached Alter and heard the final result, Alter said the golfer was “thrilled” and allowed himself a celebratory scream.

Jared Tilton
Justin Rose walks off the second tee during the final round of the Wyndham Championship.

When the day finished, Sloan (who climbed from 132nd at the start of the week to 92nd in the end), Scott Piercy (from 126 to 116) and Hadley fought their way into the playoffs at the Wyndham, while Ryan Armour, Patrick Rodgers and Bo Hoag missed the cut and fell outside the 125 bubble.

Kiradech Aphibarnrat and David Lingmerth did enough to move inside the top 200, while Aaron Baddeley and Jim Furyk fell outside that threshold (you get the sense that this will bother Baddeley more than Furyk).

Anirban Lahiri was one of the players who managed to hang on to his top-125 status, which was particularly relieving after a year when quarantines and the COVID-19 virus—he lost 15 pounds in 11 days, and wasn’t back to full health for two months—and even the Olympics cost him plenty of chances to earn points.

“I’ve had a gun to my head for 60 days now,” Lahiri said of the pressure to hang on to his card. “I’m happy that at least for the foreseeable future what opportunities I get are in my hands and not something that I have to wait and hope for.”

Brice Garnett also came through narrowly, tying for 51st to finish at No. 123, and he marvelled at how the pressure affected players.

“Guys are told they’re going to get their job taken from them,” he said, “and they do miraculous things out here. Nobody wants to leave … having a full-time job next year is just a total weight lifted off my shoulders and my family’s shoulders too.”

Garnett’s family is in the process of moving to a new home in Valdosta, Ga., which is plenty stressful on its own, and he’s one of the players whose names you may not hear on a weekly basis, but for whom the struggle to stay afloat is intense and terrifying. To perform under those conditions will never get the same press as actually winning, but in some ways, it might be more impressive. If nothing else, it’s worth a glass of good wine, a flying giraffe leap, and maybe even a primal scream.

The post In tour bubble drama, Justin Rose suffers KO and Chesson Hadley aces the final test appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
GREENSBORO, N.C. — We already know Chesson Hadley is one of the funniest players on the PGA Tour, and if we needed more evidence that he’s One Of Us, we got further proof Sunday morning at the Wyndham Championship. There, on the 16th hole (his seventh of the day), Hadley made his first ace on the PGA Tour. That’s fantastic all on its own, but it’s the reaction that really made the moment. Watch the mad lad go absolutely bananas:

Go crazy, @ChessonHadley! ?

His first ace on TOUR deserves this level of celebration. pic.twitter.com/6H07IyHcQP

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 15, 2021

If you’re anything like the media room in Greensboro, you will be watching this clip over and over for the pure joy of it, for the massive amount of air Hadley gets on his jump—tour officials would not comment on whether this vertical leap was a record—and even the near heel-click he executes while literally sprinting and leaping off the tee box.

Even better, his ace contributed 1,000,000 Wyndham Rewards points to the charity Birdies Fore Backpacks, an effort that aims to alleviate childhood hunger in schools.

Hadley is one of the true gems, and this celebration is the undistilled ecstasy of everything that keeps us coming back to golf through the grind and frustration of a sport that can be stingy with its rewards—a stinginess Hadley himself experienced earlier this year with a heartbreaking late misstep at the Palmetto Championship. All that was forgotten today, at least for a moment, and we won’t soon see another celebration like this.

The post Chesson Hadley unleashes an epic celebration after his first PGA Tour hole-in-one appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
RIDGELAND, S.C. — Move over, Collin. You too, Viktor. Wolffie, Zalatoris, y’all need to clear some space. For we have yet another star of barely legal drinking age on the PGA Tour.

Garrick Higgo, a 22-year-old lefty from South Africa with a toothy smile and a killer instinct, won the Palmetto Championship on Sunday, albeit, it must be said, with some serious assistance from Chesson Hadley.

But details like Hadley’s six final-round bogeys, including each of the last three holes, will fade from memory. The enduring image from ruggedly beautiful Congaree Golf Club will be that of Higgo, erasing a six-shot deficit to win just his second career start on the PGA Tour. He’s the youngest South African to win on tour since Gary Player—who’s been a frequent sounding board for his countryman.

“I’ve spoken to him quite a lot actually,” Higgo said. “I spoke to him the whole week throughout Kiawah. He phoned me after every round. We spoke about the round, about all sorts of things about my swing, whatever, all that stuff. Then he phoned me this morning, actually, and he told me he’s done it before quite a few times, the way he’s won from six behind, seven behind. He just said don’t think too much about what the other guys are doing, just kind of do your thing and stay up there, and you never know what could happen.”

Despite Player’s plea, coming back from six down doesn’t happen often—it’s the largest comeback on the PGA Tour this season. But this is anything but a fluke. Those fond of waking up to watch European Tour action have known of Higgo for some time. He’s already a three-time winner on the Old World Circuit and won two of his last four starts across the pond, both on the Canary Islands, by a combined nine shots, which pushed him all the way inside the top 60 in the World Ranking. That got him into the PGA Championship, where he made the cut on the number then flashed his all-world potential in the final round, birdieing seven of his first 11 holes and looking remarkably calm while doing so. He hung around the low country after Kiawah, setting up a temporary base in Sea Island, Ga., a two hour straight-shot down I-95 from Congaree.

This, then, would be a pretty comfortable week. The area surrounding Congaree is not exactly a bustling metropolis; the fan turnout all week was what you’d expect at a Korn Ferry Tour event. Most of the top-ranked players opted to skip this event, it falling between Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament and that little gathering at Torrey Pines. The venue itself also played into his hands; it’s aesthetically similar to Frederica Golf Club, where Higgo has been practicing, and it’s the first time Congaree has hosted a tour event, which levels the playing field. And the last of those two wins was only a month ago. Still, he poured cold water on the idea that he was on some sort of heater coming into the week.

“I think I am bowling from scratch,” he said Wednesday. “I’m not going to say that I don’t have any momentum going into any week after that stretch, but I kind of just want to try to do the same things and see if that will work over here. I’m pretty sure it will, but obviously, the strength of fields are going to be a lot stronger. It’s going to be a much bigger challenge, but I’m looking forward to it.”

Back-to-back 68s put him on the edge of contention and booked a Saturday afternoon tee time with fellow South African Wilco Nienaber, a 21-year-old who might be longer than Bryson DeChambeau. He couldn’t have asked for a better pairing—the two have known each other since they were 10 years old and jockeyed for the No. 1 ranking in South African junior golf just a few years ago.

“It made it a lot easier,” Higgo said after a gritty 68 that left him six back heading into Sunday. “We could speak a bit of Afrikaans in between shots. My caddie was the only one that didn’t know what we were talking about, so that was great. Yeah.”

He busted out the blocks quickly on Sunday, birdieing Nos. 3 and 4 to get to 10 under but gave them back with bogeys on No. 6 and No. 9. It wasn’t until an eagle on the par-5 12th—364-yard drive, 183-yard approach to nine feet, a bucket from there—that he began to think I might be able to actually win this thing.

“I didn’t have to scoreboard watch—I knew already I was kind of up there or close enough. It was just whether Chesson was going to run away with it.”

Mike Ehrmann
Garrick Higgo reacts after saving par on the 17th hole during the final round at the Palmetto Championship at Congaree.

He did nothing of the sort. Simply put, Hadley had no idea where the ball was going when it mattered most. He’d hook one and then he’d over-compensate with a block-fade. The 33-year-old, who was chasing his first PGA Tour win in more than seven years, stopped short of using the c-word to describe his brutal ball-striking day—he lost 4.6 shots with his approach play—but you’d do well to find a more fitting descriptor.

Hadley fanned a drive well right on 16, only to inquire about, and be denied, relief from an ant hill. Punch out, bogey. On 17, he pull-hooked an approach from the fairway and sent a relatively standard bunker shot racing through the green. Bogey, and a good one at that. At 18, from 163 yards in the fairway and needing a par for a playoff, he missed his target with an 8-iron by a good 20 yards. He gave himself a nine-footer for par that might as well have been 90 feet, and it limped by on the low side.

“It sucks, right?” he said. “I can only imagine what it looked like on TV because it looked freakin’ awful from my view. I mean, I could barely keep it on the planet. That 8-iron from the fairway on that last hole is inexcusable.”

Higgo played his last six holes in one under par—nothing spectacular, but precisely what he needed on an afternoon when no one seemed particularly keen to close the deal. Bo Van Pelt, who nearly quit the game in 2018 and didn’t have a top-10 on tour since 2015, bogeyed 16 and 18 to finish one back. World No. 1 Dustin Johnson briefly reached 11 under before a triple bogey at 16 promptly shifted his focus to Torrey. Harris English shared the lead early but shot 40 on his back nine. All these veterans, and the only guy who played mistake-free coming in was the youngin’.

Higgo now moves inside the top 40 of the World Ranking after being 728th on June 1, 2019, and will ride a wave of confidence all the way to California. He gets full PGA Tour status, a spot in the Masters, all that jazz. And yet, in every star player’s career, there comes a point where he progresses past the “Getting into this tournament” stage and enters “He can win anywhere” territory.

“I’ve just gone to another level now. So I’ll just see what my game can do. I enjoy playing and seeing what my game does and where it takes me. I’m going to continue with that.”

Those paying attention knew it was a matter of time until Higgo made that leap. It just happened a little sooner than expected.

The post Garrick Higgo wins the Palmetto Championship with a little luck and a whole lot of talent appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Brian Wacker
As much as the United States has struggled in the Ryder Cup in recent years—particularly on the road—it hasn’t had the worst record in men’s professional team competitions of late. That goes to the International team in the Presidents Cup, which is currently on a seven-match losing streak as it eyes the next competition 14 months from now at Royal Melbourne.

So how can the International team stop its own slide? Well, performances like the one Marc Leishman delivered on Sunday at the CIMB Classic in Malaysia would certainly help.

Leishman broke free from a three-way tie at the start of the final round with four birdies in his first five holes. It was the start of a tidy seven-under 65 performance at TPC Kuala Lumpur that allowed Leishman to cruise to a five-stroke victory over Emiliano Grillo, Chesson Hadley and Bronson Burgoon. Leishman’s final 72-hole score—26-under 262—matched the tournament scoring record, with the victory becoming the fourth of his PGA Tour career and third in his last 44 starts.

It will give the Aussie a big boost when the next Presidents Cup standings come out (he was 16th at the start of the week), as he tries to make the team for a fourth time. This time it will carry extra meaning as the event is played in Leishman’s home country.

“Being back at Royal Melbourne’s going to be awesome,” Leishman said. “I’ve played three President Cups so far, two in America, one in Korea, so to play one in Melbourne again with all my friends and family there is going to be awesome. [I’m] hoping I can continue this form, be a leader on that team.”

Fourteen months is a long way off, but he’ll need to be one of the leaders if there’s any chance of the International team ending a losing streak that included an eight-point defeat at Liberty National last fall that was so bad the competition was nearly over before ever reaching the singles matches.

Scott Halleran

The good news for the International team in the next go round, aside from a suddenly reeling and somewhat disjointed U.S. team (can you say Patrick Reed?) is that Leishman might not be the only player it can turn to.

Grillo opened Sunday’s final round by going out in 30 before stalling on the back and finishing with a 66. Still, it was the 26-year-old Argentine’s best finish on tour since a runner-up at the 2016 Northern Trust, and his second top-10 in his last four worldwide starts.

Then there was India’s Shubhankar Sharma, who was one of the three players tied with Leishman at the start of the final round in Malaysia. He stumbles on Sunday, with two bogeys in his first six holes and five overall on his way to a disappointing 72 to tie for 10th. Still, it was the 22-year-old’s second top-10 on the PGA Tour in the last eight months in a still burgeoning career. He’ll get another chance to impress 2019 International captain Ernie Els with a practice round next week in Korea.

“He’s told me it would be great if you can make [the team],” Sharma said of Els. “That’s always enticing for a kid my age.”

A few other players also had performances in Malaysia that should be encouraging for Els. Mexico’s Abraham Ancer finished T-5 with a closing 65, fellow South African Louis Oosthuizen was T-5, and South Korea’s Siwoo Kim shots a Sunday 65 to finish T-10.

It’s still a long way out, but any little bit of optimism is a welcome one for the Internationals.

The post Marc Leishman takes an early first step toward his big goal for 2019 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

With so many interesting storylines developing, it’s the kind of situation where several players who are having compelling years to date aren’t getting the attention they likely deserve. We’re talking about seasons that would’ve ordinarily garnered far more buzz that are simply not getting much love. So, in an attempt to offer credit where it’s due, here are eight players we’d like to salute for their accomplishments thus far.

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Tim Bradbury

8. Jason Day
Admittedly, Day may be a stretch to include in this list, but it’s worth remembering that the Australian hadn’t won in almost two years before this season. But with victories at Torrey Pines and Quail Hollow, he’s one of seven players to grab more than one title in 2018. Plus he has a T-5 at the Players Championship, fifth in the FedEx Cup standings, and leads the tour both in strokes-gained/around the green and strokes-gained/putting. He’s not back to his best just yet, but he’s very close.

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Sam Greenwood

7. Patton Kizzire
His recent form—which has been nothing short of dire—is the reason he’s not higher on this list. But thanks to his early season hot streak, with wins at Mayakoba and Honolulu, the history books will read that in the 2017-’18, Kizzire proved he could play against maybe of the game’s best.

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Photo by Matt Sullivan/Getty Images

6. Chesson Hadley
The Georgia Tech grad’s lone PGA Tour win came as a rookie in 2014 and seemed to signal bright things ahead, but the dawn never lifted. He finished 159th on the FedEx Cup points list in 2016 and 211th in 2017. This season, however, he’s up to 18th, thanks to his 20 made cuts in 25 events, including two top-threes and 11 other top-25s.

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Jeff Gross/Getty Images

5. Beau Hossler
The former college player of the year at Texas has been getting some hype, but his first season on the PGA Tour has been genuinely impressive in lots of different ways. The 23-year-old is currently on a streak of 12 made cuts and co-leads the tour in most rounds in the 60s with 41.

Related: The contradictions of Bryson DeChambeau

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Sam Greenwood/Getty Images

4. Brian Harman
Harman is having a legitimately impressive season and warrants more Ryder Cup buzz than he’s getting. He’s registered a top 10 in almost half his starts this season (nine of 20), the second most on tour. This includes three in three starts at WGC events.

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Jamie Squire

3. Henrik Stenson
A lack of wins is keeping him from ascending any higher, though his good play perhaps warrant more attention, especially considering his recent injuries. The consistent Swede has eight top-25s in 11 PGA Tour starts, is fourth in total scoring average and third in strokes-gained/tee-to-green.

Related: Our top 13 picks to win the PGA Championship

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Francois Nel

2. Justin Rose
At 37, Rose is squarely in the prime of his career—and he’s playing like it. He ranks second in money won per start on the PGA Tour ($438,581) and top-10s. He’s made every cut in his 13 PGA Tour starts, boasts eight top-10s and has two wins. You could make a solid case he’s currently the best player in the world. Yet it seems like we don’t hear much about him.

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Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

1. Webb Simpson
The only real narratives surrounding Simpson since his 2012 U.S. Open win have centered around trying to get comfortable with the anchoring ban. But this season he’s come out of obscurity and looks even stronger than he did when he won a major. He ranks sixth in strokes-gained/putting and 14th in strokes-gained/overall. His results show the improvement: He won the Players in a stroll, has finished T-10 and T-12 in his last two majors and has five other top-10s. Simpson is playing some truly excellent golf, one deserving of a spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team.

The post 8 PGA Tour pros whose 2018 seasons have been going far too under the radar appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

I came in with high hopes, and I wasn’t disappointed. One of the first things Blixt told me was that the girls at his primary school used to call him “the tomato” because he blushed so easily. They’d run up to him and hug him just for the pleasure of watching him turn tomato-red, and he’d never gotten over his fear of women.

“I’m still scared of them,” he said, and went on to tell the story of the only two times he’d gathered his courage to approach a woman at a bar. The first time, he’d barely started speaking when his hope was crushed by an expression of pure ridicule, making it crystal clear that his overtures weren’t welcome. The second potential conquest was even less subtle—she reached out and pushed him away by the forehead.

It was one of my favorite interviews of the year, and one of the few times I’d seen a golfer display even a trace amount of self-deprecation. Later, reading through his transcripts, I saw that he was giving out gold even in his press conferences. There were stories of how he ended up accidentally living in a retirement community in Jacksonville because of bad advice from a swing coach, how he asked a mechanic neighbour to look after his car for a few weeks while he was on tour, and came back to find 2,700 extra miles on the odometer, and how his immediate emotion after winning his first PGA Tour event was terror at the prospect of having to make a speech.

Blixt was funny in an easy, self-aware way that made me like him instantly. I was forced to cut him out of the book I was writing (at gunpoint) since he didn’t win anything that year, but my time with him stood out in stark contrast to the dozens of other golfers I got to know in 2014. Many of them were interesting, some were not, but almost none were truly funny.

There’s nothing worse than explaining a joke, and analysing humour is almost as bad, so rather than try to rank the players or score them on their comedic abilities, I’ve decided to simply present a list of the golfers who seem to have demonstrated actual senses of humour in a sport that can be too dry. If you hear any of these guys being asked a question, stick around to listen for the answer. It will probably make you laugh, sometimes really hard.

Henrik Stenson
When I asked Patrick Reed if he had any friends on tour, he flailed around for a second before coming up with Henrik Stenson. Here’s what Stenson had to say about that, tongue firmly in cheek:

“I wouldn’t say that we go way back. I played one practice round with him at Wells Fargo a couple years ago. And … well, it’s nice if he thinks that everyone he knows a little bit is one of his friends. That’s obviously a way to look at it.”

Scott Halleran/Getty Images

Someone who can sting with that kind of vicious understatement (it’s practically British in its lethal restraint!), but who will also play golf in his underwear has clearly mastered every part of the comedy spectrum. Someday, I will write a 9,000-word essay on every funny thing Stenson has said or done, but for now I’ll have to settle for assuring you that his press conferences are unmissable.

• • •

Jamie Donaldson and Thomas Bjorn
After the 2014 Ryder Cup win in Gleneagles, Donaldson came into the team press conference riding Bjorn piggy-back style and slapping his butt while Bjorn neighed like a horse. That’s all you need to know for this one, right?

Harry Engels/Getty Images

• • •

Eddie Pepperell
I only had to go like 10 tweets down in his timeline to find the tweet below. Pepperell is probably the most philosophical golfer around, but he can also drop the comedy when necessary:

I’m not saying I deserve to win this, but I deserve to win this. The struggle I’ve gone through to reach this point is incomprehensible to many, myself included. I’ve been fat shamed, trolled, even sexually abused by my dog. I’ll also donate nothing if I win. Vote for Eddie. https://t.co/Jp2vXn0kZd

— Eddie Pepperell (@PepperellEddie) March 5, 2018

• • •

Billy Hurley III
I think his caddie wrote most of this, but I’m still giving Hurley props for going with it. It shows, at the very least, a familiarity with humour:

• • •

Chesson Hadley
Confession: I had no idea Hadley was funny until GD’s own Joel Beall cued me in. Skeptical, I watched this video, and I am SHOCKED at how good he is. That’s some bona fide talent. Also, he earns eternal comedy legend status for this:

Disappointed in how much we are playing for this week @THEPLAYERSChamp. Had to make some cash on the side. @PGATOUR pic.twitter.com/ebmPKchtQg

— Chesson Hadley (@chessonhadley) May 6, 2015

• • •

Phil Mickelson
The wonderful, hilarious thing about Phil is that he can simultaneously present himself as an unrepentant know-it-all, a flamboyant risk-taker and a grinning avatar of his own relentless self-belief, yet also wink at you—without breaking character, even a little!—to let you know that yes, this is all pretty funny. It’s one hell of an act.

5⃣0⃣ TOUR wins for Phil?

“Oh I will, yeah I’ll get there.” ? pic.twitter.com/3uVLn00s21

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 5, 2018

• • •

Bubba Watson
I hate doing this, believe me, but you need one “dumb funny” guy. Bubba sometimes captures that “defensive southern boy cracking an accidental joke that makes you laugh in spite of yourself” vibe, like Will Ferrell doing a George W. Bush impression. Here he is in that same Ryder Cup, after getting beat two days in a row by Stenson:

Q. I know you’re here to talk mainly about your own performance, but can you throw any light at all on Henrik Stenson’s injury?

BUBBA WATSON: On his what?

Q. He has a back injury apparently.

BUBBA WATSON: I didn’t see it. He beat me pretty good two days in a row (laughter). I don’t know anything about it, so I wouldn’t know. Obviously he beat me. Maybe I’ve got an injury.

That’s an annoyingly decent line. Let’s move on.

• • •

Max Homa
This deserved more than 113 likes:

Really hoping everyone knows that it’s never good to stare at the sun. Didn’t realize it needed to team up with the moon to make this point

— max homa (@maxhoma23) August 21, 2017

• • •

Sergio Garcia
This is one of my favorite examples of golfer self-deprecation ever, and I’m still convinced it’s why the karma gods let him win at Augusta:

McIlroy and Garcia on American fans after the last Ryder Cup. https://t.co/YCOfcD9am0 via @YouTube

— Golf Digest ME (@GolfDigestME) March 11, 2018

• • •

Pat Perez
Perez is like John Daly, but without the uncomfortable sense of witnessing human decay. This interview takes an excellent turn at 1:55.

• • •

All four of these guys
I had to include an Irishman in Paddy Harrington, but I’m particularly impressed with Kaymer’s perfect delivery. Germany is the new Sweden:

The post The humour roll: Who are the funniest golfers on tour? appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
For the second straight year, Brendan Steele entered the final round of the Safeway Open lurking a few shots off the lead, needing a low round to contend. Last season, he delivered with a seven-under 65 that erased a four-shot deficit for his second PGA Tour victory.

On Sunday at Silverado Resort and Spa in Napa, Calif., he didn’t need a 65, but his final-round three-under 69 was good enough to come back from two shots and defend his title with a 72-hole total of 15-under 273 to begin the 2017-’18 PGA Tour season.

Steele, 34, cruised on the front nine, going out in three-under 33. After dropping shots at the 12th and 14th, his lead shrunk to just one shot, with Phil Mickelson and Tony Finau making a charge. But Steele finished strong, making birdies at the par-5 16th and par-5 18th to win by two shots for the third victory of his career. He’s the first player in the Safeway Open’s 11-year history to win back-to-back.

After making eagle at the par-5 fifth and birdies at the ninth and 13th, Finau found himself just one off Steele’s lead. But his drive at the 14th was way off line, leading to a double-bogey 6. His final-round three-under 69 earned him a solo second finish at 13-under 275.

Mickelson, 47, also got within a shot of the lead after making birdie at the par-5 16th, and hilariously mocking himself in the process. But he made his third bogey of the day at the following hole, and finished with a two-under 70 to tie for third at 12-under 276.

Also finishing at 12 under was Chesson Hadley, who carded a final round one-over 73. It’s his fourth top-five finish in 46 starts on the PGA Tour.

Graham DeLaet and PGA Tour rookie Tyler Duncan, the leader after 54 holes, finished in a tie for fifth at 11-under 277.

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By Christopher Powers

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By Christopher Powers

The post Chesson Hadley shoots 61, trails leader Tyler Duncan by two shots at the Safeway Open appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.