One & Done: BMW Championship

Editor’s note: Coverage of the Monday finish at the Mayakoba Golf Classic will begin at 7:30 a.m. ET on Golf Channel. PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico – It’s far from settled at El Camaleón Golf Club. Brendon Todd was cruising toward his second win in as many starts at the Mayakoba Golf Classic until a two-shot swing on the 13th and 14th hole left him tied with playing partner Vaughn Taylor at 20-under-par before darkness halted play. “Today was a great day,â€� Todd said. “You know, I went out there and hit it well, shot 9-under-par with two bogeys. It doesn’t taste so great that the last one came on the last hole (the par-4 14th), but it’s all right. I’m tied for the lead with three to play and excited about the opportunity.â€� Harris English, the third member of their group, is just one back. Related: Leaderboard | WATCH: Kuchar, Gay make aces | Henley misses cut after violating One Ball Rule All three elected to mark on the par-3 15th green, calling it a day after playing nearly 33 holes. Todd and English have birdie putts, while Taylor still has around six feet to salvage par. They will return to the course at 7:30 a.m. ET Monday to finish the tournament. So will local favorite Carlos Ortiz of Guadalajara, who still has a shot at his first PGA TOUR victory. He’s also just a shot back, tied with English at 19 under, with the 18th hole still to play. While his playing partners, Zach Johnson (69, 9 under) and Mark Hubbard (74, 2 under), elected to finish the round, Ortiz, the only one in contention, chose to wait and play 18 in daylight.  “The whole point was to get in contention in the last nine holes,â€� Ortiz said. “I’m in contention with one hole to play. So, I mean, that’s also the position I took of not finishing. I think I have a really good chance for tomorrow and I’m pretty proud the way I played.â€� Ortiz and his younger brother, Alvaro, the Latin America Amateur champion, have been a big draw all week, with both playing well as their parents tried to follow along. But only Carlos could summon his A game in the final round, as Alvaro is 5 over through 16 holes, 7 under total. Todd is 47 under in his last eight rounds on TOUR and making his first start since winning the Bermuda Championship two weeks ago. He’s trying to become the first player to win back-to-back events on TOUR since Bryson DeChambeau at the 2018 THE NORTHERN TRUST and Dell Technologies Championship. He’s also trying to add another layer to a comeback of epic proportions. Fighting the full-swing yips, Todd plummeted down the world ranking and lost his status the last three seasons. Playing when he could on Past Champion status (2014 AT&T Byron Nelson), he had made just six of his previous 47 cuts when he turned the calendar on 2019. Taylor is seeking his fourth TOUR title and first since the 2016 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Ortiz might be the hottest player of the top four, having carded a 6-under 65 in the third round and gone 5 under for his first 17 holes of the fourth. The 28-year-old arrived on TOUR with high hopes after winning three times on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2014, but has just six top-10 finishes in 95 previous starts on the PGA TOUR. Two of those came this season, a pair of T4s at the Sanderson Farms Championship and Houston Open. A four-time All-American at Georgia, English won on the Korn Ferry Tour even before he turned pro in 2011, then promptly won twice on the PGA TOUR. Alas, his prosperity didn’t last. His average finish in the FedExCup the last three seasons has been 131, he fell out of the top 200 in the world, and had to go back to the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. Now, though, he’s already posted three top-10 finishes in four starts this season. Adam Long also has a shot. He’s two shots back at 18 under, with three holes remaining. He’s coming off a feast-or-famine season in which he won The American Express but had just one other top-10 finish, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. They’ll come back and settle it Monday morning. “Now that I’m tied for the lead, it’s kind of a new ballgame,â€� Todd said. “I’ll have to go out there and hit good shots and try and fight them off.â€�

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Two years after Max Homa played only one Sunday in an entire PGA TOUR season, he showed his mettle at Quail Hollow by closing with a 4-under 67 to pull away from the field and win the Wells Fargo Championship. Homa began the back nine with two birdies to build a four-shot lead and didn’t make any mistakes until it only affected the final margin. Joel Dahmen saved par with a tough chip over the creek for a 70 and finished three shots behind. Homa, who won the NCAA title at Cal in 2013, won for the first time in his 68th start as a pro. The victory gets him into the PGA Championship in two weeks at Bethpage Black and the Masters next April. But what a turnaround for the 28-year-old Californian. Homa was at No. 829 in the world when he got his third crack at the PGA TOUR in October. Two seasons ago, he made only two cuts in 17 tournaments, missing the 54-hole cut in one of them and finishing last at an opposite-field event in the other. But he made six of seven cuts coming into Quail Hollow, and played like he belonged. “Confidence takes a lot of anxiety away,” he said Saturday night as he prepared to play in the final group for the first time. Homa never flinched, effectively sealing it with a long shot up the hill and onto the green at the par-5 15th for a two-putt birdie, saving par to keep a three-shot lead going to the final hole and drilling his tee shot down the fairway. He wrapped it up with a 10-foot par putt to finish at 15-under 269. “Over the moon, man,” he said before going to sign his card. “It means a lot to do it under pressure, and job security is great. I haven’t had that.” The victory was worth $1,422,000 — about $454,000 more than he had made in his previous 67 starts — and gives him a two-year exemption, along with a tee time at Bethpage Black in two weeks. The only other major Homa played was the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion, a month after his NCAA title. Dahmen held his own until costly bogeys around the turn. But that chip was on the 18th for par to finish alone in second meant a difference of $158,000. “I didn’t beat myself today, which was kind of the goal,” Dahmen said. “Max is playing awesome. He’s a good friend. I think we’re going to celebrate tonight.” Justin Rose (68) finished alone in third and moved ahead of Brooks Koepka to No. 2 in the world. Rory McIlroy was primed to join Tom Weiskopf as the only three-time winners at Quail Hollow, starting the final round two shots behind. He never got anything going until it went the wrong way. He turned a 20-foot eagle attempt into a three-putt par on the par-5 seventh, failed to get up-and-down on the reachable eighth for a birdie, and then went bogey-double bogey around the turn to take himself out of the mix. No one else was much of a threat either, just two guys who had never come remotely close to winning on the PGA TOUR. Former PGA champion Jason Dufner, part of the three-way tie for the lead to start the final round, made consecutive bogeys early and had no bearing on the final round. A double bogey on the 18th gave him a 73 and dropped him into a tie for fourth. Rose pulled within two shots with a birdie on the par-5 10th, only to settle into a series of pars. By the time Sergio Garcia reached double digits under par, Homa was well on his way. Homa and Dahmen were at 13 under until Dahmen blinked first. He found a fairway bunker on No. 9, couldn’t get to the green and made bogey, and then missed a 12-foot birdie chance on the 10th. Homa, playing behind him in the final group, holed a 15-foot birdie putt on the 10th for a two-shot lead, made birdie from the left rough on the 11th with a 12-foot putt and escaped more trouble off the tee on the 12th with a two-putt from 80 feet. “Well done,” his caddie, Joe Greiner, told him when he hit a solid 6-footer to complete the par. After a one-hour delay from storms, Homa returned to hole a 6-foot par putt on the 14th and was steady down the stretch, just as he had been all day. Homa became the fifth player to make Quail Hollow his first PGA TOUR victory, joining Anthony Kim (2008), McIlroy (2010), Rickie Fowler (2012) and Derek Ernst (2013).

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• COURSE: Sea Island GC (Seaside), 7,005 yards, par 70. Sea Island’s original layout dates back to 1929, a nine-hole links on the southern tip of St. Simon’s Island created by English architects Harry Colt and Charles Alison. Among its early enthusiasts was Bobby Jones, who described Seaside as among the best nine holes he’d ever played. Joe Lee added the “Marshside Nineâ€� in 1973, and the two nines were combined in a 1999 Tom Fazio project. Entrants also play one of their first two rounds at the par-72 Plantation course, which joined the format two years ago after Rees Jones fused two other nine-hole layouts into an 18-hole test. • FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 500 points. • CHARITY: Special Olympics and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeast Georgia are primary beneficiaries, as the host Davis Love Foundation focuses its attention on programs centering on children and families. More than 70 other charities receive funds via the tournament’s “Birdies Fore Loveâ€� pledge program. • FIELD WATCH: St. Simon’s Island resident Patton Kizzire, just off the two-day lead in Mexico, and 2015 champion Kevin Kisner head a lineup that includes five of the top 30 in last season’s FedExCup standings. … A dozen St. Simon’s pros are entered, including tournament host and new World Golf Hall of Famer Davis Love III, two-time major champion Zach Johnson and 2017 winners Brian Harman (Wells Fargo) and Hudson Swafford (CareerBuilder). … Reigning NCAA champion Braden Thornberry is in on a sponsor exemption given to the winner of the Jones Cup. … Invitations also were handed out to former Texas A&M standout Cameron Champ, making his second pro start, as well as Love’s son Dru. • 72-HOLE RECORD: 260, Kevin Kisner (2015). • 18-HOLE RECORD: 60, Tommy Gainey (4th round, 2012). • LAST YEAR: Mac Hughes went wire-to-wire and then some, prevailing in a five-man playoff that spilled into Monday for his first PGA TOUR victory. The Canadian rookie won on the third extra hole, draining an 18-foot par save from just off the green at Seaside’s par-3 No.17. He then watched in disbelief as Blayne Barber, Henrik Norlander and finally Camilo Villegas all missed their par attempts from 10 feet and closer. Billy Horschel was the fifth man in the playoff, but went home early after a three-putt on the first extra hole. Hughes became the first rookie in 20 years to go wire-to-wire for his first PGA TOUR win, fueled by an opening 61 that was one stroke off Tommy Gainey’s course record. The last rookie to notch his first victory wire-to-wire was Tim Herron at the 1996 Honda Classic. • STORYLINES: Though past champions Kisner and Chris Kirk (2014) have been part-time residents, the tournament is still looking for its first true hometown winner. The closest a fulltimer has come was Love’s tie for fourth in 2012. … Chesson Hadley, with three top-four finishes in the new season, and Whee Kim are among a handful with a chance to displace Pat Perez atop the FedExCup standings before the holiday break. Perez is taking the week off. … It’ll be Love’s first home start as a Hall of Famer, following September’s enshrinement ceremony in New York. Aside from his 2012 performance, he hasn’t finished better than 33rd. • SHORT CHIPS: Six of the tournament’s first seven editions have been decided by no more than one shot, the lone exception being Kisner’s six-shot romp in 2015. Hughes’ triumph was the third resolved in a playoff. … The fall schedule typically is populated with first-time winners, but it hasn’t been the trend this season. The season’s first six stops produced just two – Ryan Armour (Mississippi) and Patrick Cantlay (Las Vegas). … Though nobody will have played all seven weeks of the new season’s fall schedule, Villegas and Kim are among a half-dozen set to head into the break with six starts. • TELEVISION: Thursday-Sunday, 1:30-4:30 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). • PGA TOUR LIVE: None. • RADIO: Thursday-Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, noon-5 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com).

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