The Limerick Summary: 2019 Travelers Championship

Winner: Chez Reavie

Around the wider world of golf: Hannah Green made the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship her first LPGA win; Jerry Kelly won the American Family Insurance Championship on the Champions Tour; Daniela Iacobelli won the Island Resort Championship on the Symetra Tour; Alex Chiarella won the Lethbridge Paradise Canyon Open on the Mackenzie Tour; Zhengkai “Bobby” Bai won the Huangshan Championship on the PGA TOUR China; Andrea Pavan won the European Tour's BMW International Open; Jazz Janewattananond won the Kolon Korea Open Golf Championship on the Asian Tour; and Thai amateur Atthaya Thitikul won the Ladies European Thailand Championship for a second time. The Korn Ferry Tour's Wichita Open continues their playoff today. [UPDATE: I forgot to include James Sugrue, winner of the 2019 Amateur. And Henrik Norlander won the Wichita Open playoff. So much golf this past week!]



My Tuesday Twofer picks were both new pros so I admit I didn't have terribly high hopes. I picked Viktor Hovland (T54) to win and Matthew Wolff (MDF) to Top10. But at least I was correct that Hovland played the better of the two.

• Winners: 2 for 25
• Place well (Top10): 11 for 25 (6 Top5 finish, 5 more Top10s)
• Overall Top10s: 22 of 50 (11 Top5s, 11 more Top10s)

But just like last week, it's hard to believe that anybody would have picked this week's winner. It's true that Chez Reavie has been playing pretty well -- he finished T3 in Pebble last week -- but he hasn't had a PGA Tour win since his original win back in the 2008 RBC Canadian Open. (That was almost exactly 11 years ago!)

It's not that Reavie is a bad player. Far from it! He's won on the Web.com Tour (now the Korn Ferry Tour) since his first PGA Tour win. It's just that, like so many other players, his career has been plagued by injury. It's hard to build any consistency that way, even though he almost won twice in that time.

But Chez never gave up. And now his work has finally paid off.

He went into Sunday's final round with a six-shot lead. And while he only shot a one-under 69, that was enough to withstand the runs put up by Zack Sucher and Keegan Bradley and give him a four-shot win. That should be enough to push him up above #48 in the OWGR, which is where last week's performance at the US Open put him.

And it's good enough to give him his first-ever Limerick Summary. (My blog didn't exist back in 2008.) And hopefully for him, it won't be his last.

Chez won back in 2008.
His health at times hasn’t been great
Though he almost won twice
On the Tour. Ain’t it nice
That his work paid off after that wait?

The photo came from this page at pgatour.com.