World Wide Technology Championship Archives - Golf Digest Middle East

Adam Long became the first PGA Tour player in 31 years to accomplish this incredible piece of perfection

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 08:19:29 +0000

No matter what preview you were reading last week about El Cardonal at Diamante Resort, the first Tiger Woods-designed golf course to host a PGA Tour event, it was sure to contain a variation of the following theme: Tour pros will find plenty of room off the tee at the Los Cabos, Mexico, course.

And, indeed, they did. As Erik van Rooyen walked off with an emotional victory on Sunday at the World Wide Technology Championship, the finally tally was in. The field hit a collective 5,740 tee shots on the par 4s and par 5s over four rounds, and 5,194 landed in the fairway. That’s a 90.48 per cent accuracy rate, an astonishing number when you consider most hit previously in any tournament during the 2022-23 season was 74.94 per cent at the Masters.

En route to victory, Van Rooyen missed just four fairways — and ranked T-25 among his peers. Finishing first in the field was Adam Long, who didn’t miss a single fairway all week, a first on the PGA Tour in 31 years.

“It’s something I’ll be able to say forever,” Long told PGATour.com, “some sort of bragging rights or an interesting stat at trivia nights.”

For the season, Long ranks 13th on tour in driving accuracy, hitting 66.78 per cent. So maybe it wasn’t a surprise that he would be out front in Mexico.

Long admitted he was thinking about keeping his perfect week intact as he played the last hole, the reachable par-5 18th with a fairway bunker along the left side of the hole. Long’s tee shot drifted toward the sand, and because of the way the tee box was positioned, he wasn’t sure if where his ball finished up until he walked a good way up the hole.

“I was like: ‘Ahh come on, don’t make it the last one! It’s all right to miss one, but don’t make it the very last hole,’” Long said. “So we get over the crest, maybe 100 yards before the ball, and it’s sitting right in front of the bunker and it was mine. It hung on for dear life. It was only a few feet from going into that bunker.”

But here’s the scary part: Long ended up 10 shots back of van Rooyen, coming in T-23. And, as it turns out, accuracy hasn’t helped the 36-year-old former tour winner shoot lower scores much this season. Despite playing in 36 events, Long is 142nd in the FedEx Cup points list. Aware he was in jeopardy of losing his PGA Tour card, Long is signed up for the second stage of Qualifying School.

Main image: Adam Long. Orlando Ramirez

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Russell Henley slays 54-hole demons, collects fourth PGA Tour victory in stress-free fashion

Golf Digest Middle East — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 06:51:10 +0000

Hector Vivas

By Dave Shedloski
Winning on the PGA Tour is a satisfying feeling, but the manner in which it is achieved matters, too. And the way Russell Henley won the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba on Sunday in Riviera Maya, Mexico sure felt fulfilling to the Georgia native.

Henley secured his fourth career PGA Tour title with a four-stroke victory over Brian Harman by overcoming nerves and demons and loads of past disappointment while holding a 54-hole lead. But with six shots in hand beginning the final round, Henley didn’t need the fireworks he supplied the first three rounds as much as he needed to douse any hopes of his pursuers by limiting errors.

So it happened that a one-under 70 at El Camaleón Golf Course was more than adequate for Henley to win for the first time in five years and pick up a check for $1.476 million. Just as importantly, he converted for the second time in seven tries with a 54-hole lead, the other coming in his first tour title at the 2013 Sony Open in Hawaii.

“I just tried to learn from my past and my screw-ups,” Henley said with a chuckle after posting 23-under 261, tying Viktor Hovland for the lowest score in tournament history. “That’s kind of what I took from the last two events from this season, and ‘what am I doing wrong and how can I get better with it?’ All those events I didn’t close on, they hurt. And you don’t know if you’ll ever get to win another one. It’s so hard out here. To come down 18 with a four-shot lead, it was just really cool. I don’t know what to say.”

Well, he said quite a lot with his play, especially when he opened 63-63 and then added a third-round 65. His tournament-record 191 total augured success; it marked the 18th time in tour history a player had posted a score at least that low through 54 holes. The previous 17 players went on to win.

Henley began the day six ahead of Will Gordon and Patton Kizzire, who won at El Camaleón in 2017. He was far from comfortable, however, especially given his history. Among his disappointments when leading through three rounds included a final-round 76 in the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, where Jon Rahm surged to the title.

“Yeah, it’s tough. I don’t sleep well on a lead,” said Henley, 33, who entered the week No. 59 in the Official World Golf Ranking. “I need a lot more practice. I have no idea how Tiger did this 80-some times. It’s tough for me just to kind of calm down. You definitely don’t feel the same as when you’re practising at home, but that’s the fun of it. That’s why we play. We want to see what we’re made of out here and get tested under pressure.”

Hector Vivas

The key to victory came for Henley after he hooked a hybrid—there was mud on his ball—into the penalty area left of the green at the par-5 fifth hole and then missed a short par putt. The miscue, his first bogey of the week, dropped his lead to three over world No. 2 Scottie Scheffler, who came charging home with a nine-under 62, matching the low round of the tournament. Coincidentally, Scheffler, the reigning PGA Tour Player of the Year, held a six-stroke lead after 54 holes at the season-ending Tour Championship in August, only to lose to Rory McIlroy.

Henley seemed to reset after the error. “[Caddie Andy Sanders] just said, just shake it off and let’s just keep doing what we’re doing,” Henley said. “And hit a great drive on the next hole and kind of felt like I can do this, I can keep playing well, that’s just one hole.”

The next three holes were textbook. Henley birdied each of them to restore his six-shot advantage.

The run started when he stuck a wedge from 122 yards to three feet, giving him a birdie all four days at the par 4. He followed by holing a 21-footer at the par-5 seventh, and then he sank a nine-foot birdie at the par-3 eighth. Henley carded a second bogey at the 16th—on his second all week—but by then his challengers had run out of holes.

Harman closed with a 66 for solo second while Scheffler finished in a five-way tie for third another stroke back, a group that included Gordon (69) and last week’s winner in Bermuda, Seamus Power, who shot 68. Kizzire dropped to T-10 with a 71.

Henley not only wanted to change the narrative on his final-round outcomes, but he went to Mexico searching a bit. His first two starts to the new season resulted in a missed cut at the Sanderson Farms Championship and T-45 at the CJ Cup in South Carolina. It didn’t sit well with him, especially because he felt he had been playing good golf since his win in the Houston Open in 2017.

“I hope [the win] just keeps giving me confidence,” he said. “It’s just so hard to get in contention out here, first part, and then to close it out, it’s a really hard deal. I feel like it gets harder every year. I’m just going to try to just pull from the fact that when I didn’t feel super comfortable and I had a lead that I executed and I got it done.”

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Scheffler can steal No. 1 back, Hovland lurking and a Molinari sighting on tour for the first time in months

Golf Digest Middle East — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 07:54:16 +0000

By Evin Priest
Worldwide by name, worldwide by nature. With the PGA Tour in Mexico this week for the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba, it’s the fourth different country the tour has visited in the seven fall tournaments this season after playing in the US, Japan and Bermuda.
Will Gordon, a Korn Ferry Tour graduate, leads at nine-under par after a sensational 62, which was one shot off the course record at the par-71 El Camaleón Golf Course. Veterans Russell Henley (63), Scott Piercy (64) and Francesco Molinari (64) also put their names in the mix, while Sweden’s David Lingmerth, defending champion Viktor Hovland and Scotland’s Martin Laird (65) are among a group of players at six-under.
The international flavor is just one of the takeaways from Round 1 at Mayakoba. Here are a handful of other observations:

World No. 1 watch
The golf world welcomed Rory McIlroy returning to World No. 1 for the first time in over two years when he won the CJ Cup in South Carolina last month. But McIlroy’s ninth stint as top dog is under threat by the guy he usurped, Scottie Scheffler. The reigning Masters champ and PGA Tour Player of the Year could reclaim the top spot with a victory or a solo second place this week. Scheffler fired a well-balanced 65 on Thursday with three birdies on both nines and no bogeys. The Texan attributed his blemish-free round to solid approach play.
“I hit a few shots today that were like really, really close to the hole,” he said. “[The birdie on] No. 4 was really close, and No. 5 was a tap-in. No. 9 may have been the longest birdie putt I made today and it was like seven feet. I hit it to about two feet on 11. I had a tap-in birdie on the par 5 [13th], and on 16, I hit it to like a foot for a birdie.”

Viktor Hovland on the 13th green during the first round of the World Wide Technology Championship. Hector Vivas

Defending champion in the mix
Scheffler played alongside Hovland, who has won each of the past two years at Mayakoba. While there are still three rounds remaining, Hovland gave himself a chance at a three-peat in Mexico with a 65. [Sidenote: The last player to win a PGA Tour event three years in a row was Steve Stricker at the John Deere Classic from 2009-2011].
Hovland jumped out of the gates Thursday with four birdies and an eagle for a front nine of 30 before cooling down with an even-par back nine.
“I think the last two years I’ve started [with a] 4- and 5-under [opening rounds], so I improved on that,” Hovland said. “I made a couple putts and holed out from a bunker. I did a lot of good stuff today. But at the same time, I felt like I hit some really bad shots, too. So I feel like there’s still opportunities to improve.”

When in Rome
Molinari, who played the autumn solely on the DP World Tour before this week, got his PGA Tour season off to a flyer Thursday with eight birdies and a bogey for a tidy 64. The 2018 Open Championship winner is hoping to qualify for the European team for the next year’s Ryder Cup in his homeland, and not have to lean on captain Luke Donald for a pick when the cup heads to Rome in September.
A hero of the 2018 Ryder Cup in Paris, Molinari will have his work cut out; he is well outside the standings for Europe given his recent T-9 at the DP World Tour’s BMW PGA at Wentworth was his first worldwide top-10 since a T-6 at the PGA Tour’s American Express back in January.
With Rome on his mind, Molinari is hoping to make a statement over the next three days at Mayakoba.
“I think [El Camaleón] is a course that should suit my game quite well,” Molinari said. “I was happy to come back and hopefully improve the performance from [a missed cut at the event] last year.”

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Collin Morikawa’s theory on why he didn’t play better this year is not one you’d expect to hear

Golf Digest Middle East — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 06:07:21 +0000

By Jay Coffin
Collin Morikawa hasn’t won a golf tournament in nearly a year and, no, he’s not exactly thrilled about that fact. Talking to reporters in Mexico ahead of the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba, he has a few theories on why he didn’t produce better results in 2022.

One of those premises is not exactly something you’d expect to hear coming from a 25-year-old two-time major champion who is seemingly in the prime of his career.

“To be honest, I think it’s just getting old,” Morikawa said. “I mean, man, like I drank way more in college than I ever do now, but apparently when you get older, your body just moves differently. I still feel great, like everything feels great, everything moves great, but it’s just not as clean as it was. And the maintenance I have to do now is just a little bit more. It doesn’t mean I need to do anything crazy, I’m not changing anything really. It’s just getting my body to where I need it to be.”

Old Man Morikawa?

Since his last victory last November at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, he’s collected five top-five finishes and a runner-up at the Genesis Invitational in February thanks to a final-round 65. Morikawa finished fifth at both the Masters and the US Open but did not play well at the PGA Championship (T-55) or the Open at St Andrews (missed cut). He’s dropped from No. 2 in the World Ranking to start the year to ninth, as he prepares to play this week at Mayakoba.

The lack of desired results is why he added this week’s stop, looking for one more spark before the end of the year.

“This year’s been fairly stressful, a little frustrating at the same time,” Morikawa said. “I think some guys are definitely taking it easy and I’ve kind of ramped it up just trying to kind of figure things out. I want to finish this fall on the best foot forward as possible. That’s why I come to these tournaments, is to come out here and play well and hopefully win.”

Morikawa has travelled plenty over the last three-plus years and says that he can’t recall going more than a month during that span without playing in a tournament. It’s all a necessary part of his job, and he loves what he does, but it is something that caught him by surprise as the year progressed.

This week marks his third autumn event, after playing in the Zozo Championship (T-45) and the CJ Cup in South Carolina (T-29). He loves the vibes in Mexico, says it reminds him of traveling to similar locations during his amateur days and is hoping that it sparks some good golf during the week.

“The game’s feeling good,” he said. “But for me, a lot of it is just to really build on this, what happened through this year in ’22, and just come out swinging in ’23. I’m going to use this kind of fall season no matter how it turns out just to kind of fire myself up for ’23 and be ready come beginning of January.”

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Viktor Hovland shrugs off broken driver, defends Mayakoba title and delivers his most impressive win yet

Golf Digest Middle East — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 22:11:04 +0000

Photo By: Mike Ehrmann

By Dan Rapaport
Statement wins don’t usually happen in November. Autumnal golf is fertile ground for the first-time winner, the 40-something who turns back the clock, the total outsider who picks one off out of nowhere. But each golf tournament presents an open canvas, a fresh opportunity to grow as a player and send a message to your peers. It’s why Viktor Hovland made the late-year trip to Mexico. He sure got his money’s worth.

The 24-year-old Norweigan successfully defended his title at Mayakoba with a tournament-record score of 23 under, capturing the World Wide Technology Championship for his third career PGA Tour victory—and a massive confidence boost. He began Sunday with a two-shot lead and promptly suffocated his chasers’ ambitions by playing his first 11 holes in four under. It wasn’t quite so aesthetically pleasing coming in—his old nemesis reared its nasty head when he chunked a chip on 13—but you don’t need style points with that kind of daylight between you and No. 2. A four-under 67 more than sufficed.

This was not Hovland’s first W, sure, but this was the first time he slammed the door shut when it was his door to slam. It’s a vital skill for a player of his talent to develop, and so this was not an insignificant day in his career.

“It feels awesome,” Hovland said. “Obviously, I felt like my game was in a good spot going into this week, and I know this course fits my game really well. But there was some stuff that didn’t quite go my way at the start of the week. It was nice to overcome those troubles …”

Troubles indeed. It’s hard to throw around the word adversity in the context of a fall event played in a Mexican paradise, but hear us out. On Wednesday, Hovland and Danny Lee were doing what pros do during pre-tournament practice days—they were wailing away at golf balls, fixated on the readings of a launch monitor. The cool kids call it speed training. Hovland was curious if Lee would pick up any speed with his driver, an inch longer than Lee’s, and so he handed his gamer over and told him to fire away. Lee put every ounce of his not-small frame into it, recoiled and snapped the club into pieces. Hovland didn’t have a backup shaft on-site, but James Hahn came to the rescue with a good-enough replacement that would have to do. There was no alternative.

So Hovland headed to a nearby golf course—the pro-am was taking place at El Camaleon and the range only let him hit shots with one wind direction—for some last-minute cramming and decided he could make this thing work. He was pleasantly surprised at how much control he had over it in a Thursday 67, then striped it again and again during a second-round 65 that should’ve been lower. Yes, should is a dangerous game in golf, but this was a particularly brutal exhale from the golf gods. On his 10th hole on Friday, he sent a slightly pushed approach just a few paces right of the flag. It t-boned a sprinkler head and launched 20-plus yards into the unnavigable mangrove forest that border virtually every hole at El Cameleon. A lost ball. A double bogey. He birdied his very next hole and four more before he was finished.

Mike Ehrmann
Hovland quickly adjusted to his new driver shaft after his original bizarrely broke on the driving range Wednesday.

Finally, the funny stuff subsided on Saturday. Hovland was left to his own devices—and one of James Hahn’s—and it became unmistakably clear that those devices were a whole lot better than anyone else’s. He made shooting 62 as easy as one possibly can; his playing partner, Anirban Lahiri, not an exaggeration-prone man, thought it could’ve easily been a 59. And that set things up nicely heading into Sunday.

“I slept great, but I woke up really early this morning and I was pretty nervous and excited to get going,” Hovland said. “To be able to kind of sleep on the lead and go out in kind of the conditions early on today, because it was blowing pretty hard on the front nine. Frankly, I did not play well at all the front nine, but I was able to hang in there and make a lot of good putts. I was really happy to be able to just kind of pull off the round that I did today without having my best stuff.”

On his heels just three behind was a hard-chasing Justin Thomas, who found himself dead last after playing his opening nine holes of the week in three over, then went worst-to-first in just 41 holes. No one gets hot like JT, and when he got his claws on a share of the lead on Saturday afternoon, you figured he was the man to beat. But his pace slowed considerably, and a two-under 69 on Sunday saw him finish one behind a very, very popular silver medalist: Mexico’s Carlos Ortiz.

“I didn’t get off to a good enough start to really put any pressure on Viktor,” Thomas said. “It was a little windier, a little harder today, but I still wasn’t swinging it very good, and I felt like I really got away with how I felt over the ball the last couple days better than I would have thought. I think it just kind of caught up to me today.”

Mike Ehrmann
The dominant way Hovland won on Sunday hints at the maturity he’s making with his game.

A different tune, as you might imagine, from Ortiz, who was delighted to give a damn good show to the smattering of fans in attendance (only resort guests, player guests and corporate guests were allowed on-site this week) with a closing 66, including birdies on five of his last seven holes.

“I’m really proud,” Ortiz said. “It was a tough day. I couldn’t really find anything on the front nine and I just kept pushing. The people, having them out here, all my friends, I just found a way to get something going. And it’s funny how golf works, but once you hit that first shot that you see and how you want it, just clicks and I just find that confidence that I needed to finish strong.”

You’d do well to find two places as culturally and topographically different as Norway and Mexico, but Hovland has found a second home on the Gulf. He’s won two of his three tournaments in Mexico, both in the fall. The other came in an opposite-field event in Puerto Rico. He has not yet poached one of the shinier trophies on the PGA Tour, and majors are a whole separate conversation, but he did make his first Ryder Cup appearance in September. Plus, a man can only win the tournament he’s playing in. And if you saw the manner in which Hovland won this one, you know those conquests are only a matter of time.

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No silly season here: Hovland, Thomas set stage for intriguing Sunday at Mayakoba

Golf Digest Middle East — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 23:08:28 +0000

Photo By: Mike Ehrmann

By Dan Rapaport
RIVIERA MAYA, Mexico — Perhaps you were hoping for a sleepy Sunday leaderboard so you could lock in on the NFL games with a clear conscience. This chunk of the calendar used to be known as the “silly season” in the pre-FedEx Cup days, and even now November typically ushers golf into a gentle autumnal slumber that runs ‘til Maui.

Mayakoba, however, has other plans. The 2021 World Wide Technology Championship is doing everything in its power to siphon some attention its way. Defending champion Viktor Hovland holds a two-shot lead heading into Sunday thanks to a nine-under 62 that his playing partner thought could’ve easily been a 59. He’ll be paired in the final round with fellow Oklahoma Stater Talor Gooch, who found a heater halfway through his back-nine on Saturday, and closely trailed by the best player in the field, Justin Thomas, who sits three back at 16 under. On the surface, that’s anything but a surprise. There’s a reason both Hovland and Thomas adorn the signage plastered around this glitzy resort enclave. When you consider the events of Wednesday and Thursday, however . . .

Let’s start with Hovland, who surely did something to offend the Golf Gods. On Wednesday, he and Danny Lee were shooting the breeze during a speed session on the driving range. For those not familiar, a speed session is a distinctly modern practice technique that involves hitting the golf ball has hard as you possibly can. Hovland, a particularly curious young man, wanted to know if Lee would pick up ball speed, the currency of professional golf these days, with his driver, which was an inch longer. He encouraged Lee to take a rip. Perhaps he shouldn’t have—Lee snapped Hovland’s driver into multiple places. Making matters worse, the tour equipment trucksv don’t make it to eastern Mexico, and Hovland didn’t have a backup shaft. He’d have to make due with the replacement offered up by James Hahn, which is similar but half an inch shorter than Viktor’s gamer.

He’s hardly missed a fairway with it this week—which is especially crucial at El Camaleon, where wide misses turn into penalty strokes.

“On this golf course it’s perfect because I can get up on these tight holes and just kind of know that it’s going to go pretty straight if I just hit down on it a little bit and just flight one down,” Hovland said. “It’s been amazing.”

The young Norweigan was on the wrong end of another brutal break on Thursday, and he couldn’t blame a fellow tour pro for this one. On his 10th hole of the day, Hovland sent an approach four paces right of a tucked flag. It boinged off a sprinkler head like one of those bouncy balls you played with as a kid. A golfer’s worst nightmare. His ball kicked into the don’t-even-try mangroves and led to a brutal double bogey.

There were no hijinks on Saturday; just one of the world’s best golfers with his A-game.

“I played really, really well today, or the whole week. Yeah, it’s what I’m most happy with, just the fact that all those things happened is that I didn’t freak out or anything. Obviously it wasn’t the ideal situation.”

That Thomas is within even shouting distance of Hovland constitutes a minor miracle given the way his week started. The World No. 7 struggled to rev up the competitive engine and slept-walk through a three-over opening nine holes that had him in dead-last place. He proceeded to play his next 41 holes in 19 under par and held a share of the lead around 2 p.m. local time but failed to match Hovland’s strong finish.

“I’m very, very proud of myself to be where I’m at,” said Thomas after his 64. “It’s funny, I played with Cantlay the first two rounds of the BMW this year, and he had a very similar start. He was off to a very, very sluggish start. He was hitting it really bad and scrambling for pars and bogeys, and on an extremely easy golf course like that, I think he was a couple over around the turn, and we all know what happened that week.

“So I kind of remind myself of that because I watched him just stay patient and plod his way along. And I know this is a course, you can get on crazy kinds of runs out here. It feels good to know I haven’t really done anything special, but I’ve just kind of checked the boxes and done a lot of things I need to do and put ourselves in a good spot.”

Assuming he’s the type to relish a challenge—you don’t get to this level without that mentality—Gooch couldn’t ask for a better scenario to chase his first PGA Tour victory.

“It’s what you play golf for,” said the 29-year-old, who is yet another product of the golf assembly line at Oklahoma State University. A birdie-eagle-birdie stretch from Nos. 12-14 keyed a 63 that was the second-best round of the day behind Hovland.

“This is at the highest level—in the final group on Sunday and to do it with two of the best players in the world right now, two Ryder Cuppers, that’s what it’s about.”

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