Kuchar two ahead in Hawaii in bid for ninth PGA Tour win

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Keith Mitchell doesn’t have a lot of winning experience to draw upon. His only victory since turning pro in 2014 was a mini-tour event in North Carolina. Although he was an All-American at the University of Georgia, he never won a collegiate event, struggling early on with the discipline needed to maximize his potential. Oh, he’s come close to winning a couple of times. He lost a three-man playoff in Brazil on PGA TOUR Latinoamerica in 2015. He had a few looks on the Web.com Tour, including a tie for third in the News Sentinel Open in his native Tennessee. And in his rookie season on TOUR a year ago, he was solo second – albeit by four shots – in the Dominican Republic. Mainly, he’s suffered heartbreak. In August of 2017, he had a 15-foot birdie putt on the final hole in the final regular-season event of the Web.com Tour at Pumpkin Ridge outside Portland, Oregon. Making the putt would secure his PGA TOUR card. He missed it. “I think about it all the time,� Mitchell said about that putt. “I don’t have a number, but it’s in the thousands.� He was definitely thinking about it Sunday morning while driving to PGA National to play the final round of The Honda Classic. Tied for second to start the day, Mitchell had a life-changing opportunity in his grasp. He just needed to achieve something he’s rarely done the last few years. Some golfers might flinch at those negative feelings, of failing to get it done when the pressure and stakes were at their highest. Mitchell, though, used it as motivation, as determination. He’s felt what it’s like to come up short. Time for a different sensation. “I didn’t want to have those feelings today,� Mitchell said. “I wanted to overcome those. I wanted to see what it was like on the other side.� The other side was now 15-1/2 feet away on the 18th hole at PGA National late Sunday afternoon. A similar distance to Pumpkin Ridge, and no surprise that those memories were threatening to distract him from the task at hand. Hole the birdie putt, and he becomes a PGA TOUR winner. Miss it and he falls into a playoff with two of the TOUR’s biggest names, Brooks Koepka and Rickie Fowler, each a local resident with a huge following. But this was no Pumpkin Ridge. Keith Mitchell’s time had finally come – a one-stroke win, a two-year TOUR exemption and all the other accoutrements that come with being a TOUR winner. Sorry, Brooks. Sorry, Rickie. “If I make par here, I got a playoff with two of the best players in the world and potentially Hall-of-Famers of all time,� Mitchell said. “That’s a big thought for a guy that’s on his second year of TOUR that’s never won. So I was able to execute and that’s something I haven’t been able to do in the past.� Two days earlier, Mitchell had finished 36 holes as the co-leader with Sungjae Im. A headline in the local newspaper called them “no-names� and someone else in the media made the suggestion that neither one would be in contention on Sunday when the tournament was decided. A friend of Mitchell’s sent him a text with the headline and the slight, and added a simple “show those guys what’s up� message. On the first tee in Saturday’s third round, Mitchell read the text. He did the same on Sunday prior to teeing off. He wasn’t angry. He simply wanted that chip on his shoulder. He plays better when nothing is expected of him. “I don’t expect to have any great stuff to be written about me because I’ve only been out here for a year,� Mitchell said. “So I’m not saying that in a negative light. I just used that as a little kind of emotion that everyone gets their start somewhere, everyone gets their first win somewhere, and I wanted this to be mine.� It didn’t start that well, with Mitchell opening with consecutive bogeys. But that just moved the spotlight even further away. He bounced back with two birdies before making the turn, and then bounced back again after having to lay up with his second shot at the par-4 11th and suffering another bogey. An 11-foot birdie putt at the 12th was the start of three birdies in the next four holes. Once he reached 8 under after a brilliant tee shot to 4 feet at the par-3 15th, he was in a five-way tie for the lead. Koepka was about to finish at 8 under, but Fowler was in the group immediately ahead of Mitchell. He had to hear the roars at both the 17th and 18th holes when Fowler rolled in birdie putts to also reach 8 under. That might’ve been the breaking point for some, especially a non-winner on a hard course. And then Mitchell pulled his tee shot at the par-5 18th into the fairway bunker. His ball was too close to the lip, preventing him for reaching the green in two. Another potential negative for the big hitter, but a solid bunker shot set him up 129 yards away with his third shot. “I knew I had a chance to win the tournament and I wasn’t going to let my ball being in the bunker deter me,� Mitchell said. “I made birdie the old-fashioned way, I guess they call it – which is not the Keith Mitchell way at all.� Mitchell then rolled in the winning putt. Fowler, waiting in front of the scoring area to see if there would a playoff, decided to hang around to welcome Mitchell to the winner’s club. He doesn’t know Mitchell that well, but Fowler knows how hard a course PGA National plays. “I knew what Keith was going through on the last, having been there,� said Fowler, who won The Honda Classic two years ago. “It’s not easy winning out here, especially your first. So seeing him make that putt, it’s cool. “I know the feeling. All you can do is sit back, smile, congratulate him.� Congratulations, of course, generally are reserved for winners. Keith Mitchell might not have been on the receiving end the last few years, but there were plenty of people waiting to shake his hand Sunday.

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There were eight tournaments, and eight winners, from the East Coast to the West Coast to Asia. The best golfers in the world played it safe (Safeway Open) and gambled (Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas). They were hot (CIMB Classic) and cold (The RSM Classic). They won it on the greens (Cameron Champ), the tees (Champ), or both at the same time (Champ). What did it all mean? Here are five takeaways from those eight events. 1. It’s (still) not how you start … Charles Howell III went 3 over for the first four holes but 6 under for the final 14 in capturing The RSM Classic on Sunday. He was the latest fall winner to finish with a flourish. Kevin Tway was four behind playing partner Brandt Snedeker at the turn, reeled off five straight birdies — including three in a sudden-death playoff — and won the Safeway Open. He tied two others for the best score to par, 8 under for the week, on holes 16-18. Bryson DeChambeau played the front nine in just 6 under for the week, but the back in 15 under in winning the Shriners, a continuation of his great play in the FedExCup Playoffs. Brooks Koepka shot a back-nine 29 in the final round to win THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, then explained, “I’m not somebody that’s going to panic if things go the wrong way, pretty sure everybody can tell that. I just kind of hang in there, wait for my holes, I know I’m going to have some good looks and when I do, you’ve got to capitalize on them.â€� Yep, hitting the back-nine afterburners was kind of a thing in the fall. 2. You could almost measure Strokes Gained: Patience Howell, 39, broke a win drought that went back 333 starts, all the way to the 2007 Genesis Open at Riviera. And he did it one week after Matt Kuchar, 40, broke his own win drought of 116 starts dating back to the 2014 RBC Heritage. When he won for the first time in his 91st start, Tway, 30, made himself and his mostly retired father, Bob, the 10th father-son duo to win on TOUR. Marc Leishman didn’t win last season, but wasted no time in capturing the CIMB Classic, by five, in just the second tournament of the new season. Another example of the power of patience: Leishman said he was hitting the ball everywhere early in the week but found something on the driving range and used it to shoot 26 under, tying the tournament record at TPC Kuala Lumpur. 3. Champ lived up to his name The owner of perhaps the coolest golf moniker since Tiger Woods, Cameron Champ lived up to his surname. Befitting a guy who easily led the Web.com Tour in driving distance, he dominated with his long game in winning the Sanderson Farms Championship in just his ninth TOUR start. Or did he dominate with his short game? Although it’s true that Champ, 23, ranked second for the week in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee at the Sanderson, and led the field with eight drives of 340 yards or longer, he was also second in Stroke Gained: Putting, making over 114 feet of putts in the final round alone. Champ became just the 22nd winner on TOUR since the 2004 introduction of ShotLink lasers to rank in the top two in both categories. Two additional top-10s in the fall tied him for the TOUR lead with Scott Piercy and Gary Woodland, and his 117 birdies were the most of anyone over the first eight tournaments and the most ever for the fall portion of the wraparound season. 4. Koepka, DeChambeau validated Although the fall and the 2018 calendar year in general gave us more than the usual number of comeback stories (see above), Koepka validated his PGA TOUR Player of the Year season with a final-round 64 and a four-shot victory over Woodland at THE CJ CUP. Koepka fans had had to wait only a little over two months since his win at the PGA Championship at Bellerive. DeChambeau also validated in winning the Shriners in Vegas, where he dominated from tee to green. It had been two months and one day since DeChambeau’s win at the Dell Technologies Championship, his second victory in as many weeks in the FedExCup Playoffs last season. He also further cemented his status as a premier ball-striker. He ranked 6th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and 3rd in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green in Vegas, making up for his 45th in Strokes Gained: Putting. In all five of his wins, DeChambeau has not ranked worse than 27th in either SG: Off-the-Tee or SG: Approach-the-Green. 5. Spieth, Finau will command extra eyeballs in ’19 Jordan Spieth is back! That was the conventional wisdom after his opening 66 at the Shriners, his first fall TOUR start in the U.S., but rounds of 68-71-72 dropped him into a T55 finish. Not what he was looking for as he comes off a winless season that saw him struggle on the greens. There were fewer highlights as Spieth missed the cut at the Mayakoba Golf Classic (71-69) the next week, but focus may have been hard to come by as he prepped for his impending marriage to his longtime girlfriend, Annie Verret. A former world No. 1 and the 2015 FedExCup champion, Spieth, 25, has dropped to 16th in the Official World Golf Ranking, and will enter the 2019 portion of the schedule tied for 190th in FedExCup points. Tony Finau had better luck in the fall, but after looking nerveless while going 2-1-0 at the Ryder Cup, he shot a final-round 71 and lost a sudden-death playoff to Xander Schauffele at the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions in Shanghai. Finau, who still hasn’t won since breaking through at the 2016 Puerto Rico Open, later called it a missed opportunity. All of which says—what exactly? The fall doesn’t provide an adequate sample size, Spieth was on the verge of a major life event, and no less a superstar than Dustin Johnson had fumbled at the goal line at the WGC-HSBC Champions. (Yeah, he seemed to survive OK.) It happens. But going into 2019, the mega-talented Spieth and Finau aren’t just due for a win. They’re overdue.

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