On a weekend when Sea Island’s Seaside Course could be had Svensson proved himself the man to take it, a final-round 64 good enough for a two-shot victory at the RSM Classic.

“It’s not even real right now,” Svensson said through tears. “I’m just so happy. I just put so much work in, and to win on the PGA Tour means everything to me.”

If Svensson is a foreign name, you’re forgiven. Technically it is foreign, Svensson hailing from Surrey, Canada, but we digress. The 28-year-old entered the week 174th in the world, and though he’s in his third season on tour he had failed to post a top-five finish in his 69 career starts. Moreover, Svensson had missed the cut at Sea Island in three previous appearances and had not been playing particularly well this autumn.

That included the start of this week, when he opened the RSM with a 75. Svensson bounced back with a 64 on Friday to make the weekend, but at T-43 and seven shots back of the lead through 36 holes, his name was not one expected to be a part of the weekend proceedings. Then Svensson showed that 64 was no aberration with a 62 on Saturday, putting him among a crowd of 12 within two shots of the lead.

For the better part of Sunday that’s what it remained, a crowd, no one able to break free, with cold, windy, overcast conditions ensuring there would be no fireworks. Callum Tarren went out in 31 and birdied the 10th to look like the player to beat, but over the last eight holes he managed just one more red figure to finish with a 17-under 265 total. It was an impressive score for the Englishman, yet with five groups on the course it felt like a number that would be matched, if not surpassed. Brian Harman came inches away from an albatross at the par-5 15th, and an eagle there along with a birdie at the 16th put the Sea Island resident at 17-under with two to go. Sahith Theegala, playing with Harman, erased a double-bogey at the seventh with four birdies in a six-hole stretch to reach 17-under as well. But needing 3s at the last both men walked away with 4.

We say “need” because behind them Svensson was holing everything in sight. Historically a bad putter, Svensson spurred a birdie run by knocking in a 20-footer at the eighth, dropping a 36-footer at the 10th and a 16-footer at the 11th to reach 17-under. He opened the door for Theegala and Harman by making par at the very birdieable 15th, but promptly shut it for good with back-to-back birdies — both from putts longer than 10 feet — at the 16th and 17th. The man who ranked 183rd in SG/putting a few years back gained a whopping 9.16 strokes over field the final three days at Sea Island.

“I changed my stroke a little bit on Friday and then it was feeling really good,” Svensson said, when asked about his short-game magic. “I just kind of stuck with it.”

First wins are seen as a breakthrough, and this certainly applies. (He was the eighth winner in the RSM’s 13-year history to make it his maiden tour title.) However, Svensson’s true inflection point didn’t come this week but many, many weeks before, back in the summer of 2019.

Svensson is the eighth player in the tournament’s 13-year history to make the RSM his first PGA Tour win. Mike Mulholland

Svensson had earned his PGA Tour card the previous autumn but failed to do anything with it, finishing 167th in the FedEx Cup. His demotion to the Korn Ferry Tour proved to be a wake-up call. In his words, he realised he wasn’t as good as he thought, that working hard is not for extra credit but a prerequisite on tour. He contemplated quitting, wondering if he had what it took to rectify what went wrong.

Yet Svensson believed his sense of direction was still true, he just needed another path. Rather than practise for a few hours each day, he devoted all daylight hours to his craft. He began training with a performance coach and cut alcohol from his diet.

“I relied mostly on talent when I was younger. I didn’t put enough work in, I wasn’t that disciplined,” Svensson said. “Like I said, two years ago I decided to give it 100 per cent and I’ve been super disciplined on, you know, I don’t drink anymore, I go to the golf course every day, I’m up at 6, I give it 100 per cent now. That’s the reason.”

Because his year back in the minors coincided with the onset of the pandemic, he ended up spending two summers on the Korn Ferry circuit. Still, he got his card back by winning twice and promised himself he wouldn’t let the second chance go to waste.

He hasn’t, and this win secures his playing future for some time. Yet in the win’s afterglow Svensson eschewed all the goodies coming in his direction — invites to the Masters and PGA Championship, a trip to Hawaii, lots and lots of money — and instead focused on the past. Where he had been and what it took to get here while carrying the weight of an impalpable unknown.

“I didn’t even think about [the exemptions] until it was brought up to me 15 minutes ago,” Svensson said. “I’m more proud of what I’ve accomplished from the direction I was to the direction I’ve gone now, it’s more fulfilling than money to me. I’m more just proud of myself for things I’ve been doing.”

Maybe that’s why the usually stoic Svensson became emotional when his ball disappeared on the final hole. Forget the exemptions and money and trophy. Svensson invested in himself, and this week proved it was a darn good investment to make.

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The post Second chance: Adam Svensson wins his first career PGA Tour title appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — The first win of Talor Gooch’s PGA Tour career was not easy inside the walls of his own mind—it never is—but to an outside observer, he certainly made it look easy. On a sleepy Sunday at the RSM Classic, in the last official event before the winter break, the Oklahoma native left no doubt that he was the best player on the course. In the process, he put a capstone on a superlative fall and, more importantly, secured the biggest result of his career seven days after his 30th birthday. Just like on Saturday, he proved stingy with a lead, responding to each salvo by his opponents with a birdie of his own, and the closest anyone could come was a brief moment when Mackenzie Hughes pulled within two shots at the ninth hole. Gooch was simply too steadily brilliant, showing no signs of nerves as he strode down the fairways at the Seaside Course, where in contrast to the heavy winds of Friday and Saturday, the wisps of Spanish moss hanging from the oak branches blew only slightly in the breeze.

“Apparently when you turn 30 you just have an abundance of wisdom that comes to you,” he joked later. “I played very wise golf this week…we had talked about wanting to get a win in before I turned 30, but the golf gods like to make you chuckle on occasion, so they wanted to wait until the week after. It is my mom’s birthday today, so it’s a nice little birthday present for her.”

Gooch played a bogey-free front nine to reach 18-under at the turn, and answered Hughes’ brief charge with four birdies in his next six holes, laying waste to the field and ensuring that his closing stretch was nothing more than a coronation. He did his damage with his irons and his putter, hitting approaches inside 10 feet on the 10th and 11th holes, then hitting a 16-foot birdie on 13 and a 15-footer on 15. When the dust had settled, he sat at 22-under, and would finish at that score, three better than Hughes. The statistics of the week told the story of his dominance—he finished second in Strokes Gained: Approach, second in SG: Around the Green, and sixth in SG: Putting. It was a comprehensive breakthrough, and tied the all-time record low score at the RSM Classic first set by Kevin Kisner in 2015.

It also completes one of the greatest fall seasons in memory. Gooch played in six tournaments and finished 11th or better in five of them, the only “hiccup” coming last week in Houston when he was merely average over the weekend. In all, 17 of his 24 fall rounds were in the 60s, and he has taken over the top spot in the FedEx Cup standings. His fall has been so good, in fact, that the 852 FedEx Cup points he has accumulated to date would have been good for 68th place at the end of the 2020-21 season, meaning that if he opted not to play another tournament for the rest of this season, he’d still likely have enough points to make the BMW Championship, the second playoff event. If anything, it’s bad luck for him that the tour now heads into its six-week winter break, potentially cooling off the hottest streak of his career. But the good news is that he’ll be in the field at the Tournament of Champions in Kapalua, and though that means delaying an annual buddies trip, his friends will understand.

“I thought about these types of interviews my whole life,” he said during his post-tournament presser. “Sitting in the showers, giving my winning speech, my winning interview, so it’s an absolute dream come true…I’ve envisioned it a thousand different ways.”

There was some early drama on the course Sunday when Tyler McCumber went hunting for a 59, ultimately missing the mark by a matter of inches, and he ended up with the best round of the day. Hughes was close behind with his 62, but Gooch’s nearest competitors, Seamus Power and Sebastian Munoz, could “only” manage 68 and 65, respectively—not nearly enough to catch the eventual winner.

Gooch has worked extensively on his mental game, which helps explain the equanimity he showed on the course, but he points to his childhood as the point when he learned the pitfalls of anger and frustration.

“Back in high school I used to play a lot of racquetball with my dad,” he remembered. “He would whip my butt…I didn’t take it very well. I broke a couple rackets, I had to go pay for those rackets and I quickly learned whenever I didn’t get so ticked off at myself that I was able to compete with him a little bit better and a little bit better. The times where I would get too upset, too mad, it just shut me down.”

It was a busy day in golf—Collin Morikawa became the first American to win the Race to Dubai, Rory McIlroy tore his shirt, Jin-Young Ko won the LPGA tour championship, and Tiger Woods is hitting golf balls again. Gooch’s win may look a little nondescript by comparison. In terms of pure life-changing impact, though, none of those other results will mean quite as much. Not only has Gooch secured his PGA Tour status for a couple years, plus a hefty chunk of change (a cool $1.26 million, to be exact), but he’ll make the Masters and PGA Championship automatically (it will be his first at Augusta), and with his world ranking improving to 33rd, he’ll be in prime position to make the two other majors and the WGC-Match Play.

But the impact goes even beyond all that for Gooch, who unlike some of the players mentioned above was never a can’t-miss prospect. He turned pro in 2014, but didn’t make it through Korn Ferry Tour Q-School until 2016, enduring difficulty and doubt throughout.

“I had a couple years that were, let’s just say, lean years,” he said. “Growing up not a country club kid, it just built a different kind of toughness in you than kids who grew up at country clubs with nice greens and Pro Vs on the range and all that. I’m super grateful for everything that we have here on the Tour and I think that gratitude pays dividends on days like today.”

He wouldn’t have the journey any other way, and now he has the one thing he was searching for throughout his childhood, his mini-tour days, and even the grinding years of surviving on the PGA Tour.

“Confidence will come and go,” he said, “but belief is everlasting.”

As he begins a new decade of life, Gooch has plenty of reasons to believe.

The post Legend of the Fall: Talor Gooch finishes an excellent autumn with breakthrough win at RSM Classic appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — There’s an old saying that pros miss their putts on the high side of the break, but moments after shooting 60 to reach 15 under at the RSM Classic on Sunday—tied for second as the leaders made the turn—Tyler McCumber wasn’t buying it.

“Pros hit it in the middle of the cup,” he said.

To be fair to McCumber, his own birdie putt on the ninth green at the Seaside Course—he started on the 10th hole early Sunday morning—was miles from a gimme. Following a string of five birdies over his previous five holes, he blasted a 3-wood 123 yards from the hole, but hit his approach a groove low with his 52-degree wedge and left himself 53 feet for the 12th 59 in PGA Tour history. The long attempt, which tour players drain roughly 5 percent of the time, came shockingly close, and before it slipped by on the high side, McCumber thought it was good.

Making dad proud. ?

Tyler McCumber taps in for an impressive 60. pic.twitter.com/dJUZrj844w

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) November 21, 2021

He was only one-under through his first five holes, but jump-started his round on the par-5 15th, his sixth, with a 3-iron into the wind from 224 yards that set up a 48-foot eagle putt. A birdie on 16 set him up for a 31 on his front nine, but it wasn’t until the fourth hole when he turned up the heat. Five straight approaches to within 10 feet set up that string of five birdies, and turned the idea of 59 from longshot to near-reality.

McCumber said he began considering the possibility on the seventh, and rather than making him nervous, it was a helpful goal to ensure that pushed hard for the finish rather than coasting in.

He was trailed by a favourable gallery all day, including his father Mark, a 10-time PGA Tour winner (whose career-low on tour was a 64, according to Golf Channel), and a group of family and friends wearing “Tito’s Banditos” hats. (Megan McCumber, his older sister, gave him the nickname Tito in childhood, and designed the hats.) Jay Haas walked with the elder McCumber, watching his own son, Bill Haas, in the same group.

“I’m happy for him,” Mark McCumber said after he made his birdie on eight. “I know how hard it is.”

Afterwards, when asked if his father had ever shot 60, Tyler McCumber laughed.

“He has not,” he said. “I know that for a fact. … I have a long way to go in that career to match him, but I’ll hold the 60 over his head tonight over a beer.”

There’s always a certain level of paradoxical disappointment when a player misses a putt for 59, despite the fact that it still indicates a brilliant round. McCumber is no different, but there was one subset of Tito’s Banditos who won’t be sad at all. Those are Megan McCumber’s kids, who told her before the round they didn’t want to leave St. Simons Island to go back to their home in Florida.

“I’ll tell you what,” she told them. “If your uncle shoots 10-under today, you don’t have go to school on Monday.”

She thought there was no chance, but her little brother proved her wrong, and her kids won’t be at all upset that Uncle Tito couldn’t quite make history.

The post Tyler McCumber comes agonisingly close to a 59 in his final round of 2021 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga.—The moment Talor Gooch can’t forget came at TPC Craig Ranch in 2016, at the second stage of the Web.com Tour’s Q-School. He entered the third round on the qualifying number and proceeded to bogey three of his first four holes. The negative thoughts poured in, and the most alarming for Gooch, who had never held a job beyond golf, was that he might have to join the working world. For reasons he can’t explain, Best Buy came into his head—he was flat broke, and in order to finance his golf career, he started thinking that he’d have to join the Geek Squad.

When he finds himself in pressure-packed moments now, he always thinks back to that day, when he was fighting for more than just money and status. That day, he was fighting for his career, and the memory is already making the pressure this weekend easier as Gooch sits on a three-shot lead heading into the final round of the RSM Classic.

“Of course, there’s tons of pressure, there’s tons of money, there’s so much on the line,” Gooch said, “but it’s just different … I was in survival mode then. I’m not in survival mode now like I was then, but I can reflect back on that and know that if I could do it when I was in survival mode, a little more comfort’s not going to make it any more challenging.”

Gooch turned things around at Q-School, earned his status on the Korn Ferry Tour, and was playing with the big boys of the PGA Tour just a year later. He survived inside the top 150 his first two years, improved in 2020 and 2021, and now he’s playing the best golf of his career.

First birdie on the back nine. ?@TalorGooch leads by 2. pic.twitter.com/oQEcb67LDB

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) November 20, 2021

Last week, we called Gooch one of the unsung heroes of the fall for his unerring consistency. He’s notched two top-fives and two T-11 finishes in five starts, and now has the chance to finish the calendar year with an exclamation point. With a third-round 67 on Saturday in overcast, cold, windy conditions reminiscent of his Oklahoma childhood, Gooch kept ahead of Seamus Power (67) and Sebastian Munoz (69) at the tournament where five of the last six winners have been outright 54-hole leaders.

The conditions required Gooch to hit a low, Tiger Woods-style stinger on several tee shots, and his drive on 18 stayed so low that another caddie in his group felt compelled to ask where he grew up.

“Oklahoma,” Gooch said. “We’ve got to learn how to hit that one like that.”

Come Sunday, with the forecast calling for calmer conditions, Gooch will have to hold off the likes of Power, the 34-year-old Irishman who won his own first PGA Tour event this summer at the Barbasol Championship, and Munoz, the Colombian who is also looking for his second tour win. Both played resilient golf in the stiff wind, and Power’s round was highlighted by a chip-in eagle at the 15th that was enough to briefly tie the lead and stamp his place in Sunday’s final threesome.

Seamus with the sand wedge. ?@Power4Seamus ties the lead with an eagle. pic.twitter.com/XbR4r0tAzG

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) November 20, 2021

“It’s one part of the game I’ve always really enjoyed practicing,” Power said of his eagle. “I love chipping. I could spend hours chipping all different shots.”

Power’s game, and his career, began to turn around in March, after a heartbreaking 151st place finish in the 2019 FedExCup standings. Despite not securing full status, he managed to overcome a COVID-19 diagnosis and play his way into enough tournaments to take advantage of his improving form. And starting at the Byron Nelson in May, Power strung together five straight top-20s before winning at the Barracuda. He hopes this is not his true peak as a player but knows he’s on an upward trajectory and playing the best golf of his life.

“Everyone wants to be the guy right out of college winning right away,” he said, “but that wasn’t meant to be for me. I wasn’t at the level I needed to be. So for me the journey was a little different. I didn’t lose hope or anything like that. I always said if I didn’t think I could win, I wouldn’t have continued to play. I love playing golf, but the best part of golf is being up in contention, making putts that matter, hitting shots that matter.”

The star of the early afternoon was Denny McCarthy, arguably the best putter on tour for the last five years, having finished No. 1 in strokes gained/putting in both 2019 and 2020, and top 20 in 2018 and 2021. His best club had gone cold thus far in the fall, and he was waiting for a day like Saturday, when on his front nine—the Seaside Course’s back nine—he made putts of 28 feet, 23 feet, 31 feet, and 23 feet again to post only the seventh 29 on the back in the tournament’s competitive history. In all, McCarthy gained 4.83 strokes on the field putting just in those nine holes, and finished with his highest total ever in that category—5.761. For a player with his skill on the greens, that’s a remarkable achievement.

“I have my own kind of art form, if you will,” the Virginia alum said. “I just work on trying to perfect my own little system, and I don’t try and let too many people tell me what to do because I know what I do really works. … I’m not looking at the hole, I’m seeing something tracking along that line whether it be ball marks or poa annua spots or something that sticks out in my way and kind of visualizing something along those spots.”

When asked if he sees a line representing the path of his putt, McCarthy laughed.

“I don’t like to think about it that much,” he said. “You’re making me think.”

McCarthy made a late double bogey to drop him to nine under and off the first page of the leader board, likely too far from Gooch to make a serious run.

In fact, the task of catching the leader will be tough even for the men in his group. As the sun went down Saturday night, Gooch fielded the media’s questions—serious and shallow alike—with total equanimity. His first name doesn’t contain the letter “y,” he said, because his mom’s side of the family had a penchant for creative name spelling, like Ambre, his mom, and Cassidi, his sister. (For the record, Gooch said he wouldn’t subject his own children to this quirk.)

He spoke about a golf trip he takes every year with his buddies in early January, and how he hopes he’ll have to reschedule if he wins on Sunday and earns a berth in the Tournament of Champions in Kapalua. And he spoke about the chip on his shoulder that has driven him from his early days, and through Oklahoma State and into the tough days of his early pro career. Even now, he wants to be thought of as the best Cowboys player on tour, a tough task when that group includes players like Viktor Hovland.

He’ll need that chip Sunday when nature lets its guard down and his competitors inevitably go low. But while he knows closing out his first PGA Tour win will be a great challenge, Gooch also knows he’s faced worse. Whatever else happens, he won’t lack perspective.

The post Talor Gooch moves from ‘survival mode’ to brink of his first PGA Tour win appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
With his victory on Sunday at the RSM Classic, Robert Streb checked off an obscure but notable financial accomplishment. The 33-year-old Oklahoma native became the 198th golfer in PGA Tour history to pass $10 million in career earnings. Streb was $34,271 shy of the mark coming into the week at Sea Island, and with his $1,188,000 payday easily passed the eight-figure mark, moving up to 176th all-time between Joey Sindelar and Bryce Molder.

As it turned out, Streb was almost joined in his economic achievement on Sunday. Tommy Fleetwood stood $29,475 shy of $10 million in career earnings on the PGA Tour entering the week. That meant that a top-35 finish or better would have been enough for the 29-year-old Englishman to get the job done. And that’s where Fleetwood stood entering the final round, in a tie for 31st place.

On Sunday, though, scoring was the easiest of any of the four days at Sea Island. Which meant that Fleetwood’s closing three-under 67 on the Seaside Course actually caused him to fall into a seven-way tie for 37th place. Which meant that he earned only $28,710. Which meant he came up $765 shy of the $10 million mark.

As it turns out, had Fleetwood birdied his final hole of the day (the ninth), after making birdies on the seventh and eighth holes, he would have bumped himself into an eight-way tie for 30th place and earned an extra $10K, enough to take that last step to $10 million. Or, had Webb Simpson not made a birdie on his last hole and had Brendon Todd birdied only four of his last five holes rather than all five, thus making it a five-way tie for 37th, Fleetwood would have earned $30,030 and joined the $10 million club.

Of course, Fleetwood—who has earned €19,303,095 on the European Tour—will cross the $10 million threshold with his next made cut on the PGA Tour. Yet if he does it without actually winning the tournament, well, he’ll join another category of financial obscurity that Paul Azinger might bring up during the telecast: He’ll become the 10th player in tour history to earn $10 million without having won a PGA Tour title.

The post Tommy Fleetwood fell one shot shy at the RSM Classic of this impressive financial milestone appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — Fourteen feet, one inch was the length of Robert Streb’s birdie putt that would have won him the RSM Classic the first of the three times he played the 18th hole on Sunday, and his miss won’t be particularly remembered. It was a medium-weak effort, short and fading off to the right, but it certainly wasn’t an easy putt to make in the first place. And, truth be told, he was lucky to have the chance at all.

After holding a three-shot lead at the start of the day, Streb spent most of the final round at Sea Island Golf Club running in place while the field charged from behind on a gettable-to-defenceless Seaside Course. Two missed six-footers, one for par on 13 and one for birdie on 15, saw him forfeit the lead late, and only a terrific and unexpected mini-resurrection on 17, by virtue of a 207-yard dart that left him 11 feet for birdie, nudged him back into a tie. Meanwhile, Cameron Tringale and Harris English shot 62, and Kevin Kisner, the man in Streb’s way, must have felt slightly disappointed after his own 63. A few rickety approaches on the last three holes prevented Kisner from delivering the killing blow.

And yet, as a slight wind blew, it was easy to be convinced that this was do-or-die for Streb. Make it, he wins, miss it and sure, he’s in a playoff. But golf fans who know anything about Kisner had to have this phrase running through their heads: You don’t want to get into match play with Kevin Kisner. It seemed sensible enough. Kisner’s the reigning WGC-Dell Match Play champion, and two-time semifinalist, with scalps like Francesco Molinari, Dustin Johnson, Ian Poulter, Matt Kuchar and Patrick Reed on his belt. There’s a toughness to his demeanor, and the former Georgia Bulldog was the overwhelming favorite of the gallery that existed, which “swelled” to about 250 people by the time he finished his par on the 18th hole.

Of course, this notion was wrong. After a desperate par on the first playoff hole, where Streb survived by sinking a tricky nine-footer, he nearly holed out from the fairway rough on his third and final try at the 18th. Kisner needed a spectacular response with his opponent safely in tap-in range, but an unfortunate lie in the rough meant there was very little chance of getting it close, and his approach rolled harmlessly off the right side of the elevated green. Even with an impressive up-and-down to save par, the end-game had reached its climax. Streb tapped in, and clinched his first PGA Tour victory since his first PGA Tour victory, six years ago at this same course.

Sam Greenwood
Streb fist-bumps tournament host Davis Love III after closing out the win on Sunday.

It wasn’t the first time an imagined narrative failed to materialize. It was Streb’s tournament to lose after 54 holes, and the first collective eyebrow was raised on the 13th hole, when Kisner drilled his approach to six feet and converted the birdie to come within a shot of the lead. Until that point, Streb had played a modest but effective front nine, coming in at 33, and needed only another birdie to get to 20 under and reach a plateau that would be difficult, if not impossible, for anyone match.

Instead, on his own journey to the 13th green, with the Sidney Lanier Bridge spanning the Brunswick River in the distance and the low drone of the Golf Channel’s plane providing the only background noise, he missed a short par putt. Almost simultaneously, Kisner converted a remarkable up-and-down from the fringe on the 14th, the ball trickling in on what might have been its final revolution after a slow downhill journey. Suddenly, there was a tie at the top. A few holes down the back nine, Cameron Tringale joined them minutes later.

At that point, it looked like Kisner had the massive advantage, and only more so when he recovered from an errant tee shot on the par-5 15th to make birdie and take his first solo lead. His body language reflected the impetus, grim and determined in the classic Kisner style as he marched over bridges and through the marshland. Even then, 20 under felt like a winning score, but his approach on 16 narrowly failed to climb the ridge and rolled off the front edge. Kyle Stanley took himself out with a tee shot into the water on that same hole, and up ahead, it became clear that Tringale wouldn’t add to his total. The two-horse race was on.

The same formula played out on 17 and 18 for Kisner, and it was Streb who seized back the momentum with the tee shot on the par-3 17th, in what he acknowledged later as the most important shot of his tournament. Like the rest of us, Streb was wondering if Kisner would reach 20 under, but by then it had become clear that he might have a chance to wrest the tournament away still. Striding past the dozens of white egrets that had gathered on the far side of a pond past the 18th tee, he gave himself his first chance to win, and missed what seemed like the definitive last gasp.

Instead, he saved his own bacon with a scrambling par on the first playoff hole, and then hit the approach that was so good, it didn’t really matter if it went in … though it almost did.

WHAT A SHOT. ?@therealstrebber nailed his approach on the second playoff hole to win @TheRSMClassic. ? pic.twitter.com/sAmFE6otjR

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) November 22, 2020

“It was 158, and we were planning on the ball kind of knuckling out of there and jumping,” Streb said of the shot. “You’re kind of at the mercy of whatever you get, and it came out really well. I was just hoping it would kind of land soft and obviously it just, it worked out as good as you could hope for.”

He knew he was lucky, and not just once. Lucky to reach the playoff, lucky to survive the disadvantage after a bad drive on the first hole, lucky to survive Kisner’s birdie putt that swerved at the last moment.

“I felt very fortunate to get to a second playoff hole,” he said. “As good as [Kisner] is, there was a very good chance he was going to make that birdie putt on the first hole, and I felt lucky to have a crack at par. Made it and got another swipe at it.”

Sam Greenwood
Kisner just missed his birdie putt on the first playoff that would have given him his second career RSM title.

Kisner was self-deprecating in the aftermath, joking that, “I just want to keep my playoff record intact here on tour and not have a win in a playoff.” It’s a strange stat for someone like Kisner who excels in match play, but he’s now 0-for-5 in his PGA Tour career in playoffs, while Streb moves to 2-1.

For Streb, it represents the end of a long winless drought, and it comes with all the usual perks—tour exemption through 2023, Kapalua, Players, PGA Championship, Augusta. As befits his personality, the 33-year-old Oklahoma native was muted in the aftermath, a small grin flaring up occasionally as he contemplated how his young daughters would feel about the win (“I’m not quite sure they’ll understand what it means”), why he doesn’t wear a glove (“just the thing as a kid, I never really liked how it felt”) and whether he’ll get ice cream at Frosty’s again (“Most likely. I haven’t missed this week.”)

As for what changed this week, he chalks it all up to putting, and no amount of interrogation would change or expand his tune. It’s a simple explanation for a no-frills player, and one whose final round reflected the trajectory of his recent career—stagnancy at the start, bearing up under pressure and doubt, and finally emerging for a brilliant last act.

The post How Robert Streb kept his Sunday at Sea Island from going completely off the rails and pulled out a surprise playoff win appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Christopher Powers
After a crushing three-putt par on the par-5 15th hole, it seemed to be quite clear that this wasn’t Robert Streb’s day. While the rest of the contenders at the RSM Classic were throwing up 62s and 63s, Streb was plodding along at one under. That wasn’t going to get it done on a day when there was virtually no wind on Sea Island.

But Streb stayed in it, even after watching his three-shot lead vanish and seeing that he was now going to have to do the chasing. Up head at the 72nd green, Kevin Kisner had posted a 63 to reach 19 under. Streb needed to make something happen.

He did exactly that at the difficult par-3 17th, stepping on a 6-iron and drawing it in to the back right pin. His tee shot came to rest 11 feet from the hole, and he poured in the birdie putt to tie Kisner.

Coming up clutch with the pressure on. ?@therealstrebber is back in the co-lead and controls his own destiny with one hole to play. pic.twitter.com/14A2YJaruz

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) November 22, 2020

A par at the 18th put them in a sudden-death playoff, and Streb began the playoff by hitting his tee shot in the left bunker. His week appeared dead again, but yet again he stayed within himself, grinding out a par and watching Kisner’s birdie effort for the win just slide past the hole. On the second playoff hole, the 18th once more, Streb found the left rough and pulled off hero shot No. 2 to all but end the tournament:

WHAT A SHOT. ?@therealstrebber nailed his approach on the second playoff hole to win @TheRSMClassic. ? pic.twitter.com/sAmFE6otjR

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) November 22, 2020

Kisner’s approach sailed the green, and when he failed to chip it in for birdie, Streb had locked up his second tour win in style. His first victory also came at Sea Island in 2014. When asked what it is he likes so much about the event, Streb was very matter of fact.

“I don’t have a good answer for you,” he said. “My finishes here are all over the lot, but I do like it here. Greens are always pure. I feel like if you’re playing good, you can do well.”

No lies detected there. Play well, do well. Simple as that. Pulling off a pair of hero shots in the clutch usually helps, too.

Here are three other takeaways from Sunday on Sea Island.

Sam Greenwood

What else does Kevin Kisner have to do?
If Robert Streb’s win came out of nowhere (Streb had just three top 10s on tour since August 2018), a Kisner victory would have been one many prognosticators saw coming. Kisner, who also previously won the RSM in 2015, had been playing so well of late. But each time he had a great week, somebody else had an even greater one. Bryson DeChambeau at the Rocket Mortgage. Jim Herman at the Wyndham. Dustin Johnson at The Northern Trust. Each of those events, Kisner was knocking on the door but couldn’t quite get it done.

But he’d yet to come as close as he did on Sunday, shooting a closing 63 to get into the playoff after not bogeying a hole since Friday. Which has to make this one the most crushing. Knowing Kisner and his Bulldog mentality, he’ll more-than-likely finish one off soon, but at some point even he has to wonder what the hell else he needs to do to get his fourth win on tour.

Sam Greenwood

That was still a special week for Camilo Villegas
After he shot rounds of 64 and 66 to get into contention, we couldn’t hide the fact that we were cheering hard for Camilo Villegas this week. If anybody “deserved” a win, it was Villegas, who went through a terrible tragedy when his 22-month-old daughter passed away in July. Winning a golf tournament wasn’t going to make that any easier to live with, but it would have given the 38-year-old Colombian something to smile about during what has to be one of the worst years of his life.

He was unable to get it done, a third-round even-par 70 costing him a real chance, but this was still a very special week for the four-time tour winner. He wound up finishing with a Sunday 66, which earned him a T-6 finish, his best since the 2016 RSM Classic when lost in a playoff. When you’ve had a few lean years like Villegas had, top-six finishes are like gold. Still a ways to go in this “Super Season,” but Villegas’ strong result on Sea Island puts him in position to make a run at the FedEx Cup Playoffs, somewhere he hasn’t been since 2017.

Sam Greenwood

Zach Johnson will have nightmares about the par-5 seventh tonight
All these guys who finished a few back could play the “what-if” game for all 72 holes this week. But for Zach Johnson, there is no more painful “what if” than “what if he hadn’t triple-bogeyed the par-5 seventh on Sunday?”

That’s right, Johnson finished just three shots out of a potential playoff at the RSM Classic, and that was because of a snowman on the Seaside Course’s first par 5 on the scorecard. Making it even worse was the fact he bogeyed it a day earlier, meaning he’d played it in four over on the weekend. Ouch.

“That hole’s kind of bitten me both days,” Johnson said. “A 6 there yesterday and an 8 today, and it’s a par-5, which is very frustrating because those are the ones you usually try to take advantage of, especially today with, well, relatively speaking very benign conditions. Hit the worst shot of the week on the tee. I’m still at that point I’m trying to make a 5 instead of a 4, but got a little aggressive with my next shot, which is my third shot, and it just kind of snowballed from there. How do you make an 8? Well, I missed about a seven-footer for a 7, so I made an 8.”

Good to see him laugh it off—he still shot a two-under 68 on the day for a T-6 finish—but we wouldn’t blame him if he spent the whole night staring at the ceiling wondering how it all went wrong.

The post Robert Streb pulls off multiple hero shots to claim RSM Classic over Kevin Kisner appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Ryan Herrington
If PGA Tour win No. 2 is the last in Robert Streb’s career, he will forever have one sweet highlight to remember it by.

Nothing came easy for the 33-year-old on Sunday at the RSM Classic. The Oklahoma native had a three-stroke lead entering the final round at Sea Island Golf Club, only to see it slip away on the back nine as a handful of players got aggressive on a scorable day at the Seaside Course. Still, a birdie on the 17th hole allowed him to get into a playoff with Kevin Kisner at 19 under.

Streb got a bit lucky on the first playoff hole, the par-4 18th, getting up and down for par from short left of the green after hitting into a fairway bunker off the tee. Kisner then missed a 12-footer for birdie, sending them back to the 18th tee for another sudden-death hole.

This time, both missed the fairway off the tee, Streb in the left rough, Kisner right. From 158 yards, Streb then hit a pitching wedge and did this:

WHAT A SHOT. ?@therealstrebber nailed his approach on the second playoff hole to win @TheRSMClassic. ? pic.twitter.com/sAmFE6otjR

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) November 22, 2020

As the Golf Channel announcers would note during a few replays of this, it look like the ball rolls over the left edge of the cup, begging the question of how did it not fall in the hole.

Seriously, how did that not fall in?!?

Kisner hit his approach over the green and chipped his third shot 10-feet by the hole. While he managed to make the par putt, it was academic and Streb tapped in his birdie for the victory.

The post Watch Robert Streb nearly hole this clutch approach shot en route to winning the RSM Classic appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — In changeable weather, there’s a luck-of-the-draw element to every golf tournament—did you tee off in the placid morning or the torrential afternoon?—and that’s particularly true at those events staged at multiple courses over the first two or three days.

In the RSM Classic at Sea Island, each player spends one of his first two rounds at the Plantation Course. Traditionally, it’s easier than the Seaside Course that hosts all of the weekend rounds. All things being equal, there would be no special advantage to playing it on Thursday rather than Friday, or vice versa.

But all things are never equal, and the raging wind helped to mitigate Plantation’s vulnerability on Thursday, such that the scores between the two courses were relatively balanced. Come Friday morning, though, the wind had all but vanished, the dark clouds dissolved and calm, sunny conditions smiled on the barrier islands. Half of the players smiled, too, because the Plantation Course lay unguarded for the morning wave, abandoned by its natural defences.

The result? The top seven players and nine of the top 10 after two rounds were beneficiaries of playing at Plantation on Friday. Rarely is the evidence of imbalance this clean. The 2014 Open Championship comes to mind, when 17 of the top 20 players before Saturday came from the Thursday morning/Friday afternoon rain-and-wind-dodging wave.

Playing in the first group off the first tee on Friday at Plantation, Robert Streb, whose lone PGA Tour win came at this event in 2014, birdied exactly half of his holes with hot putting, bogeyed none, and posted a career-low 63 to take a two-shot lead at 14 under over Camilo Villegas, who notched the lowest 36-hole total of his career. If it weren’t for Joel Dahmen shooting an anomalous 61 at the Seaside Course on Friday, it would be tempting to write off half the field without a second thought.

“That one’s a little nicer over there, you get a little shelter,” Streb said afterwards of Plantation. “Obviously, when it gets really windy you’re at the mercy of a gust, but yeah, it was nice to get over there [on Friday].”

Streb’s body language and manner is emphatically unruffled, and he greets most questions with an American version of the Gallic shrug, as if to say, “Who’s to say?” or “It’s not such a big deal.” His natural inclination is to downplay anything dramatic, and while it doesn’t make for the most compelling quotes, he does seem ideally suited to his current situation—contemplating his first PGA Tour win in six years. When asked if he expected to enter a less casual mental zone as the tension mounted, he stayed true to form.

“It will be a little different,” he conceded. “I probably haven’t been quite in a lead like this for a while, but obviously there’s a lot of golf left out there. I’m sure it will be pretty compressed starting tomorrow and there’s a lot of golf left.”

Pushed a little bit, Streb was asked if he was truly unperturbed or if this was a convenient act to help stay calm. The half-accusation produced a brief smile, but it disappeared quickly as he returned to his mantra.

“It’s what you try to do,” he said. “Obviously your mind wanders sometimes, but you try to do it. It’s only half the tournament, so there’s a lot left.”

The story of Streb’s career centres on one extremely good year—starting with a win and ending with an appearance in the 2015 Tour Championship—followed by an increasingly fallow period for which he hasn’t found a great explanation. Aside from perhaps a few regrets about his scheduling, the 33-year-old chalks up the lull in characteristic fashion to taking “too many shots to get the ball in the hole.” He secured his five-year pension with his one great season, but there’s an awareness that he’ll need something a little more inspiring to jumpstart the latter half of his career. By that metric, even Streb understands how important the next two days could be.

On lighter topics, he talked about bringing his family to St. Simons Island for the week. His kids enjoy the beach, digging for crabs, but when asked if he enjoyed the beach, it was back to the shrug.

“I don’t mind the beach,” he said. “My problem is when I hit the beach, I want to plop down with a cooler of beer.”

He is correct that there’s “a lot of golf left,” and even with a bit of wind and the possibility of rain in the weekend forecast, there are low scores to be had and plenty of fluctuation left. But if Streb is in the mix on Sunday afternoon, it’s difficult to imagine that he’ll be overcome by nerves. The stakes are high, particularly with the end of a long victory drought in sight, but in this sleepy island town, you can’t perturb the unperturbable.

The post A lucky weather draw and stellar putting have Robert Streb eyeing an end to victory drought appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
Camilo Villegas posted the lowest 36-hole score of his career over the first two days at the RSM Classic, and his story this week is inseparable from the death of his 22-month-old daughter Mia, who passed away in July from cancer. On Thursday, the PGA Tour’s Helen Ross posted a wonderful, heartbreaking story about Camilo and his wife Maria, who have shown tremendous courage in the aftermath of Mia’s death while attempting to bear the unbearable.

Their burden, like the burden faced by so many after a personal tragedy, amounts to a difficult choice that Villegas summed up to Ross when he related a conversation he had with Jack Nicklaus, who lost a 17-month-old grandson in a drowning accident in 2005:

“And it’s what I told him. I’ve got two options. I mean, I either have a good attitude or become the victim, and if I become the victim it’s going to go into a dark place. That’s definitely not where I want to be. That’s definitely not where Mia wants us to be.”

It’s one thing to say this, and another to live the reality, because the fact is that he and Maria are victims, and they are being asked by the universe to tolerate something that can break you—that, indeed, any parent can imagine breaking them. Maria, in particular, comes off as a person of astounding strength in Ross’ story, both in how she managed Mia’s illness while she was alive, and in how she has resolved to make something positive of her situation. They have done so spiritually in their example of resilience, and materially in raising money through their new foundation, Mia’s Miracles, while embracing the mystery of why it happened in the first place.

Many written perspectives on death tend to seek a resolution, a final redemptive word, when in fact life stretches on at its usual pace while pain takes its own hidden forms that are unknowable from the outside and are undoubtedly different for each person.

There was something a little remote about Villegas as he appeared before the media after his second-round 66 on Friday that left him two shots off Robert Streb. He stood in the flash area, dressed in bright white head-to-toe, and fielded a handful of questions tinged with hesitation. All of us gathered behind the barrier were likely thinking of questions surrounding his daughter, but none were asked. In particular, I was considering the strangeness of his situation as a public figure, in which he would likely have to field questions about Mia every time he had success on the course, and how this incredibly painful circumstance could be something he had to plan for, something that came up again and again from people who can’t understand, and who expect pat redemption quotes, and that might eventually require rote answers.

But how do you ask a question like that? And if it’s asked, isn’t there an ugly irony in perpetuating the very dynamic you’re trying to address? Isn’t there the same irony even in writing this piece?

Jennifer Perez
Camilo Villegas hits his tee shot on the 18th hole during the second round of the RSM Classic.

And so we asked about his round instead, and Villegas in his remoteness seemed to be his usual self, which is to say a little bit intense, a little bit prickly. When he ventured to the Golf Channel for his TV interview, they did ask him about Mia, and his response seemed to make it clear that he wanted to focus on golf.

“I’m going to be very honest with you,” he said, “there’s so much happening on the golf course, you’re so focused, and that’s what I’ve been doing all our life. Having my brother on the bag has helped, too. He keeps me in check, and we try to play golf when we’re out there. I said it yesterday, at the beginning of the day when I was on the range, there was a big rainbow. It was awesome. So once you get on that first tee, you try to focus on golf.”

As Golf Digest’s Christopher Powers wrote on Thursday, the entire golf world will be rooting for him this weekend, but the deeper truth is that his example in resilience, shared by Maria, is far more important than a win or loss. A win won’t redeem anything that’s already happened, and a loss won’t diminish the power of their choice.

When Villegas played a Korn Ferry Tour event this summer while Mia was ill, he said the words, “we have no option but to be strong.” In fact, there are other options, and it’s to his eternal credit that he chose what might be the hardest one. But I also thought on Friday of his description of his daughter while she was in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy, and how, months later, the words describe his journey this weekend, and the choice he and his wife keep making so well.

“She keeps inspiring me,” he said. “It’s unbelievable, what they go through … they can take a lot. I’ve seen it over the last two and a half months. Is she feeling pain? Yeah, she is. She keeps waking up the next day and looking at the TV, she wants me to put some cartoons or something there. She’s feeling pain, she’s playing with her toys. I remember at the beginning, she kept crying and playing. I didn’t really get that. I was like, ‘How can you cry and play?’ Hey, she wanted to play.”

The post Camilo Villegas plays on, just as his brave daughter did appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.