Patrick Cantlay wins the FedEx Cup and $15 millionPatrick Cantlay wins the FedEx Cup and $15 million
Patrick Cantlay wins the FedEx Cup and $15 million
Day: September 5, 2021
Patrick Cantlay wins TOUR Championship, FedExCupPatrick Cantlay wins TOUR Championship, FedExCup
ATLANTA (AP) — Patrick Cantlay delivered the goods again, this time with a 6-iron instead of a putter. “Patty Ice” was just as clutch with a $15 million shot that allowed him to hold off Jon Rahm and win the FedExCup and the TOUR Championship on Sunday. RELATED: What’s in Cantlay’s bag? | Final leaderboard In a tense duel with the world’s No. 1 player, Cantlay had a one-shot lead going to the par-5 18th hole at the TOUR Championship when he hit 6-iron from 218 yards to just inside 12 feet that secured the biggest victory of his career. “Felt like a huge win, and it was,” Cantlay said. Rahm’s shot was equally special, landing next to the hole on its second bounce but rolling to the light rough beyond the green. With Cantlay in close, the Spaniard had to hole the chip to have any chance of a playoff. He narrowly missed, and Cantlay safely two-putted for birdie and 1-under 69. The victory was worth $15 million for Cantlay, a 29-year-old Californian whose rise in golf was slowed by a back injury that kept him out for three years and nearly ended his career. Now he has stamped himself among the elite in golf, boosted by the FedExCup Playoffs. Cantlay showed remarkable grit in surviving a six-hole playoff to beat Bryson DeChambeau in the BMW Championship last week to take the No. 1 seed and a two-shot lead to start the TOUR Championship. He never flinched over four days at East Lake. Rahm, who started the tournament four shots behind and went into the final day two back, never caught Cantlay. He never let him breathe easy, either. Cantlay took a two-shot lead with an approach to 6 feet for birdie on the 17th hole, and then nearly lost it all. He drove to the right on the 17th, clipping a tree and dropping down into deep rough, and then hit a flyer over the green and the gallery. His pitch back to the green came up short and into more deep rough, and he had to make a 6-footer to save bogey and stay ahead. With Rahm well down the 18th fairway, Cantlay hit his best drive of the day, rolling out 361 yards that set up a 6-iron he felt he needed to hit close. Rahm was bogey-free over the last 28 holes, but he only cashed in on two birdies. He closed with a 68 and tied with Kevin Na for the 72-hole score of the tournament at 14-under 266. They will split points toward the world ranking. Cantlay started at 10-under par and finished at 21 under. Rahm earned $5 million for finishing second in the FedExCup, while Na (67) picked up $4 million. Justin Thomas (70) birdied the last hole to finish fourth, which was worth $4 million. This was more than about money for Cantlay. He won for the fourth time this season — one of those at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, when Rahm had to withdraw after building a six-shot lead after 54 holes because of a positive COVID-19 test results — and no one else won more than twice.
Winner’s Bag: Patrick Cantlay, TOUR ChampionshipWinner’s Bag: Patrick Cantlay, TOUR Championship
Patrick Cantlay edged out Jon Rahm by one shot to win the TOUR Championship and claim the FedExCup. It’s his second win in a row and fourth win in an incredible 2020-2021 season for Cantlay. Check out the clubs he used to close out the win. RELATED: Final leaderboard Driver: Titleist TS3 (9.5 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana ZF 60 TX 3-wood: Titleist 915F (15 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana ZF 70 TX Hybrid: Titleist TS2 (21 degrees) Shaft: Mitsubishi Diamana ZF 80 TX Irons: Titleist 718 AP2 (4-9) Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold 120 Tour Issue X100 Wedges: Titleist Vokey Design SM7 (46-10F @47, 52-08F), SM8 (56-08M @57), SM8 Prototype (61) Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S300 Putter: Scotty Cameron Phantom X 5 Ball: Titleist Pro V1x Grips: Golf Pride Tour Velvet
‘So many difficult blows’‘So many difficult blows’
Editor’s Note: This article was orginally published on February 2, 2017. Since then Patrick Cantlay has become a PGA TOUR star with a FedExCup title to go along with six career TOUR titles. PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – The stress fracture in his lower back derailed and stalled his PGA TOUR career for nearly four years. The tragic death of his close friend and caddie in a hit-and-run accident a year ago offered unwanted perspective and heartache. But while those two developments combined to send Patrick Cantlay to the lowest point of his young life, he doesn’t see them tied neatly into one emotional package, ready to offer equal parts inspiration and determination as he begins his comeback this week at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. That’s not how he’s planning to cope. In order to play his best golf this week, Cantlay must focus only on the tasks at hand, the process of managing his way around 18 holes. “I’m just trying to make it all about the golf,” he said on the eve of his first round. “Trying to forget everything else.” It won’t be easy. The image of seeing Chris Roth struck by a car while crossing a street in the early-morning hours in Newport Beach, California, last February will forever remain embedded in his mind. Cantlay, after all, was just a few feet away at the time as the two headed towards a local restaurant. After calling 911, Cantlay then cradled his unconscious friend in his arms. Covered in Roth’s blood, he felt helpless while waiting for the ambulance he knew couldn’t reverse the inevitable. Roth’s death, at age 24, was pronounced a short while later at the nearby hospital. Dealing with death of any kind is challenging. But dealing with it for the first time – under those circumstances and at that age – can test a person’s fortitude. While the flashbacks of that night have lessened with each passing month, they will never completely go away. Nor should they, insists Cantlay. “Just a freak, one-in-a-million type deal,” Cantlay said. “Extremely unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. … I’ve done my best to deal with it, but I still accept that it’s going to bother me now and it’s going to bother me for the rest of my life.” Just two weeks before the accident, Cantlay had received a different kind of punch to the gut. He had been preparing to play the 2016 CareerBuilder Challenge when his back flared up. It would’ve been his first start on TOUR in more than a year. Instead, he pulled out of the event and met with his medical team. The news was not good – he could not play golf for another nine months. Cantlay was devastated. His promising career had already been in neutral for far too long, ever since May 24, 2013 when he was on the range hitting irons prior to his second round at Colonial. He experienced a pain in his back that day and had to withdraw. At the time, Cantlay – then a full-time member on the Web.com Tour — figured he would bounce back quickly. A couple of days off and he’d return the next week. But the pain never disappeared. Initial examinations could not pinpoint the problem. It took two months before Dr. Robert Watkins – whose Marina Spine Center in Marina Del Rey counts many professional athletes as patients – finally confirmed the stress fracture. He also, more or less, confirmed the length of recovery. Six weeks to a year. For Cantlay, it was essentially the latter. He did make three Web.com Tour starts that fall in order to ensure his status for promotion to the PGA TOUR, and somehow gutted out a second-place finish at the Hotel Fitness Championship – an ironic tournament name for someone in such discomfort. He returned to TOUR competition a year later in Dallas and played five events during the summer of 2014. None were pain-free. “That’s kind of the nature of stress fractures,” Cantlay said. “It’s tough not being able to go do what I love to do. That’s the hardest part. I don’t know if I ever really coped with it. I coped with it because I had to. But it never felt OK or right to me.” Cantlay started one more event in 2014, the OHL Classic in Mayakoba in mid-November. He made the cut after a second-round 68 but struggled on the weekend and finished 76th, last on the leaderboard. He was ranked 623rd in the world after that week. Due to his inactivity since then, he’s unranked entering Pebble Beach. Given that Cantlay once spent a record 55 weeks as the world’s top-ranked amateur during his celebrated college days at UCLA, that free-fall off the pro charts might have prompted a career change by less-determined players. Though discouraged, Cantlay never reached a breaking point. “It’s natural to feel a little like that when you’ve taken so many difficult blows,” he said. “But I knew that my main goal was still to play golf at the highest level and I was going to do everything I could to get myself back to a spot where I was doing that.” The unpredictable and lengthy recovery from his stress fracture prompted some drastic action. Cantlay went to Europe to receive the same kind of Regenokine blood-spinning treatment that other athletes – including a handful of pro golfers – praise as a way to overcome chronic pain. “I figured it couldn’t hurt,” Cantlay said. Whether it helped, no one knows. All Cantlay knows now is that he’s been relatively pain-free for an extended period, and that he’s swinging the club well. He’s also ready to share his story, even though it’s not easy to discuss. “It’s difficult every time,” he said, adding, “it’s part of dealing with it.” One thing he doesn’t want to do is exploit the memory of his deceased friend by using it as a motivating factor this week. Golf teammates at Servite High in Anaheim, California, the two had talked about a pro partnership, and Roth was on the bag the last time Cantlay played on TOUR. Their high school golf coach, Dane Jako, told the Orange County Register that “it would have been one of the Bones-Phil Mickelson relationships, I am sure.” Instead, Cantlay’s caddie this week is veteran Matt Minister, who has worked with players such as Nick Price and, most recently, Chris Kirk. Asked if Roth would have been his caddie had he lived, Cantlay replied, “Potentially. Who knows, he may have evolved past me. A lot can happen in a year.” Dwelling on the events of the last year will do no good inside the ropes – and syncing the two major storylines during that time is not fair. “The golf part and the Chris part seem like two completely separate deals,” Cantlay said. “The golf part is very upsetting and an issue for me. It’s been a struggle just to get back and play golf pain-free. I’ve done a lot of work to get to this point to be able to play this week. “But the Chris thing is totally separate. That would be difficult whether I was playing or not playing, and it would be just as difficult both ways and just as life-changing and just as earth-shattering. Just something like that changes your life and puts you on a different trajectory than you ever thought you’d get on. And it definitely changes your perspective on things.” That’s not to say Cantlay – who is making the first of his 10 starts on a major medical exemption — won’t be thinking of Roth this week. After all, they bonded over golf. Roth knew how frustrating the injury problems were for Cantlay, and how important it was for his friend to continue chasing those big dreams. Just being back inside the ropes is the best way for Cantlay to honor his friend’s memory. Asked if he would feel Roth’s presence this week, Cantlay replied, “I don’t really want to turn it into that. It’s not about that. But I know he’d be happy seeing me play again.” So will everybody else who has ever lost a close friend or been robbed of their dreams. Patrick Cantlay’s comeback begins at Pebble. Feel free to wish him well.
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Joaquin Niemann sets speed record at TOUR ChampionshipJoaquin Niemann sets speed record at TOUR Championship
ATLANTA – Joaquin Niemann was 24 shots off the lead, and the tension was thick. Playing as a single and determined to beat Kevin Na’s speed record (1:59) for an 18-hole round at the TOUR Championship, Niemann had the clubhouse in sight, and he was flying. A group of 30 to 40 supporters, many of them college kids and younger, were running with him, witnesses to history. Na, waiting for his tee time on the practice putting green next to the 10th tee, kept up with the breathless commentary and the timed splits on his phone. “Oh, he’s breaking it,” Na said. He smiled. “He needs a ruling on 18.” There was no such hinderance. Niemann creamed his drive – about a foot or two from being too far and in the water – found the front greenside bunker with his second, blasted out to 6 1/2 feet, missed the birdie, and tapped in for a 2-over 72. Elapsed time: 1:53. He’d made history. “I’m tired,” Niemann said, out of breath and smiling at his ridiculous feat. Asked about the intrepid fans who legged it right along with them on the back nine, Gary Matthews, his caddie, said, “It felt like the Tiger Woods time here.” Andy Pazder, Chief Tournament/Competitions Officer for the PGA TOUR, met them in the scoring trailer and notified Niemann that he would be receiving a $10,000 fine for his conduct. Before a fuming Niemann could say anything, Pazder said he was only kidding. “I was like, ‘Oh, I hate you,’” Niemann said with a laugh. The rushed round required some preparation. “He had three golf balls,” said caddie Matthews, when asked if he’d strategically emptied out the bag. “He didn’t have the usual nine. He didn’t have a rain cover. He didn’t have any little instruments that we had. He only had one glove, five tees.” And if it had rained? “Umbrella was gone,” Matthews added. Niemann rubbed the caddie’s belly. “Didn’t have breakfast this morning so he was light.” Wesley Bryan has the fastest round on record on the PGA TOUR, 1:29 at the BMW Championship. The record-breaking round was a welcome diversion amid the tension of Patrick Cantlay and Jon Rahm trading blows with the $15 million FedExCup first prize on the line. It also won Niemann some fans. Brendan Reilly and Will Arsenault, students at the University of Miami who were in town for the Hurricanes’ football game against Alabama on Saturday, were sweating and out of breath on 18. “We saw him at 11 and realized he was only an hour into his round,” Reilly said. “He picked up the pace and next thing you knew he was on 14 already, and it was on from there.” Added Arsenault, “There were a good 30 to 40 kids like us running with him. Never in my life did I see myself participating in a Tiger moment like this. He really grew a following.” Tyler and Evan Henley, teenagers from Beaufort, Georgia, carried the scoring standard and were also exhausted and pushing fluids by the end of the round. “I wrestle,” said Tyler, 17, “so I’m probably in the best condition I’ll be in, and it still wore me out.” Did they know on the first tee what Niemann was going to do? “No,” Tyler said. “He was talking to his caddie; me and my and my brother heard the word ‘run.’ Then he kind of took off and then stopped, so we thought he was jokin’ around and he was gonna take it kinda slow. And then on 10 and he just took off.” Told at the turn he was off the pace; Niemann knew he had to step on it. He had double-bogeyed the eighth hole, a misadventure that seemed to take forever. It was time to blow off some steam. Although he professes to hate running since his school days, when he ran track, he took off down the 10th fairway, telling the brothers over his shoulder, “We’re beating this record!” The next five holes were a blur. When Niemann reached the watery, par-3 15th hole, Stewart Cink and Hideki Matsuyama, who’d started 10 minutes behind him, were teeing off at the eighth. Niemann and Matthews resolved to finish the round before Cink and Matsuyama finished the front nine. Niemann hit the 15th green and made a 29-foot birdie putt, his shot of the day. Really, though, it was the time that he would remember, and being on the clock – in a good way. “It’s been a long week, a long three or four weeks,” he said, “and I wasn’t playing my best golf this week. I was in last place and wasn’t going to win. I was pretty far behind from the guys in front of me, so I was like, let’s make it fun and have fun. It was a lot of fun.”
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