Winner: Mackenzie Hughes
Around the wider world of golf: Charley Hull won the Ascendant LPGA; Ryan Foxx won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on the DP World Tour; Celine Borge won the Tuscaloosa Toyota Classic on the Epson Tour; Chan Shih-chang won the Mercuries Taiwan Masters on the Asian Tour; Ruan Korb won the Vodacom Origins of Golf on the Sunshine Tour; and Bryson DeChambeau nearly pulled off an upset when he came in runner-up at the PLDA World Championships on the Professional Long Drivers Association Tour.
For my Twofer Tuesday picks I had Sam Burns (T30) and Sahith Theegala (MC). Not so good, guys. Perhaps you should have taken another week off...? Still, I realize that having 4 winners in 50 tries is 8%... and that would be an amazing number if I was actually winning that many events, so I'll try not to gripe too much.
- Top10s: 27 for100 (18 Top5, 9 Top10)
- Winners: 4 for 50
- Top20s: 43 for 100
The final round at the Sanderson Farms Championship was probably a lot closer than anyone expected. Only Scott Stallings had an unexpectedly bad round; almost everyone else in contention moved up the leaderboard on Sunday.
Ultimately though, the battle came down to three men — Mackenzie Hughes, Sepp Straka and Garrick Higgo. And each man was looking to double his wins on Tour.
That's right, each had a single PGA Tour win.
The big talk going into the week had been about Hughes's work over the past year or so to increase his strength and clubhead speed, and to add a dependable fade to his game. But perhaps ironically, it was his short game — and particularly his proven putting touch — that finally won it for him.
He scrambled his way in when he began to miss fairways, finishing #1 in those stats at 91.67% for the week and 88.89% for Sunday's round. (I believe the actual number was 22 for 25. Amazing.) And after hitting a 105-yard putt from the fairway inside 4 feet to make a playoff, he canned two putts — a par from 5 feet and a birdie from 7 — to seal the win.
Mackenzie Hughes waited nearly six years to pick up his second PGA Tour win and just as long for his second Limerick Summary. It may have taken him a long time to get that monkey off his back, but I'm sure the floodgates for more Limerick Summaries is open now. Congrats, Mac!
All week, people talked about Hughes—
How he’d spent the year paying his dues
Building swing speed and muscle.
Now, ripe for a tussle,
His scrambling was what made the news.
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