Winner: Abraham Ancer
Around the wider world of golf: Nelly Korda, Mone Inami, and Lydia Ko won the gold, silver and bronze medals respectively at the Olympics; Erik van Rooyen won the Barracuda Championship, the PGA Tour's alternate field event; Grant Forrest won the Hero Open on the ET; Joshua Creel won the Utah Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour; Fernanda Lira won the FireKeepers Casino Hotel Championship on the Symetra Tour; Team Buhai and Alison Lee won the team and individual trophies at the Aramco Team Series – Sotogrande on the LET; and Jensen Castle won the US Women's Amateur.
My Twofer Tuesday picks were a disappointment this week. I had Brooks Koepka (T54) and Louis Oosthuizen (T17). Louis was in the Top10 starting Sunday and got derailed by the wind but Brooks never really showed up. I don't know what's wrong with him these days.
- Top10s: 19 for 64 (15 Top5s, 4 other Top10)
- Winners: 2 for 31 events
I'm not going to say a lot about Sunday's round. Clearly the wind got the better of most of the field -- only 22 players beat par, and leaders Harris English and Bryson DeChambeau were nowhere near doing so. The two were a combined +11 on the back nine.
And that brought a whole lot of players back into the game.
Abraham Ancer remarked that he thought he was going to finish four or five shots back at one point, only to realize down the stretch that a single birdie might be all he needed for the win. He was correct... except that single birdie came in a three-man playoff on the second hole, where he outlasted Hideki Matsuyama and Sam Burns.
I think we all were pulling for Abraham. He's been so close so many times recently, and it's great to see him get his first PGA Tour win. And he gets it at a WGC -- next year this will be the first event in the FedExCup Playoffs instead -- which vaulted him up into the sixth spot in the FedExCup Points List. If you want to win the Tour Championship, going into the Playoffs in the Top10 is the way to improve your chances. That's where the big bucks are, after all!
So I'm very happy to give Abraham his first Limerick Summary. Hopefully he'll get many more.
Next year it’s a playoff event,
But this year it marked the ascent
Of Abe—with this win—
To the FedEx Top10
Where he hopes to win every last cent!
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