Poston claims 1st PGA Tour victory at Wyndham Championship

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — Phil Mickelson survived a wild ride Saturday at Kiawah Island with a 2-under 70 in the PGA Championship that left him 18 holes away from becoming golf’s oldest major champion. RELATED: Jordan Spieth Slam chances dwindle at PGA Championship | Leaderboard The 50-year-old Mickelson walked off the 10th green with a five-shot lead and such amazing control of his game that it was shaping up to be another runaway on the Ocean Course. Far from it. Mickelson hit one tee shot into the water and another under the tire of a cart. Brooks Koepka rattled off three birdies to tie him for the lead. The difference was the closing hole at Kiawah, easier as the wind shifted from being in the players’ faces to coming from right-to-left off the Atlantic Ocean. Koepka, in the group ahead, went just long and took three putts for a bogey and a 70. Mickelson went well long and played a flop shot, a risky shot to most everyone but him, and nearly jarred it. He curled in the 4-foot par putt to become the oldest player with a 54-hole lead in a major since 59-year-old Tom Watson at Turnberry in 2009. That didn’t end well for Watson, who lost that Open Championship in a playoff to Stewart Cink. For Mickelson, it’s an opportunity to become the oldest player to win a major. Julius Boros was 48 when he won the 1968 PGA Championship. Mickelson was at 7-under 209. For all his success in the majors — five victories, runner-up finishes in all four of them — this is only the third time he has held the 54-hole lead. He will play in the final group with Koepka, a twosome with nine majors among them. Koepka will be going for his third Wanamaker Trophy in the last four years. Koepka, shaking off effects from ligament surgery on his right knee that has limited him to two tournaments in three months before arriving at Kiawah, called the third round his worst performance of his career. Louis Oostuizen knows the feeling. He started the third round tied with Mickelson and had a long three-putt bogey. The South African never caught up, though he had his chances until missing a 4-foot birdie putt on the par-5 16th and a 5-foot par putt on the par-3 17th. He wound up with a 72 and was two shots behind. At least they have a chance. Mickelson broke away quickly with four birdies in seven holes, and he even managed to avoid losing his focus. One distraction came from the fourth fairway, when Mickelson saw a drone in the air left of the green and said to a CBS spotter, “Can you radio to the TV guys to get the drone out of the flight of my shot?” He saved par from a back bunker. He went out in 32 — Mickelson played the front nine on Friday in 31 — and was five shots clear until he showed signs of sputtering. He badly missed a 7-foot birdie attempt on No. 11. He pulled his tee shot into a bunker on No. 12 and had to play back to the fairway, leading to his first bogey of the round. And then he drove into the water on the 13th with his 2-wood, had to hit his third shot from the tee because of where he thought it crossed the hazard line, and missed a 12-footer for bogey. Oosthuizen also found the water with a big fade, dropped further up the fairway and made bogey. “Mine was on the edge,” Mickelson said on why he hit again from the tee. “I just didn’t feel good about it.” It was tight the rest of the way. Mickelson is going after his first major since the 2013 Open Championship, and the final hour made it clear that this might not be easy. But it will be loud. The gallery is the largest at a major since the pandemic — the PGA of America has said there would be 10,000 people, a number that felt far greater — and Mickelson was the object of their raucous shouting. Kevin Streelman bogeyed the 18th for a 70 and was alone in fourth at 4-under 212, followed by Branden Grace and Christiaan Bezuidenhout of South Africa, each with a 72. Jordan Spieth matched the low round of the day with a 68, still seven shots behind and most likely too far back to contend with a dozen players ahead of him. Spieth was headed back to his rental home to flip on the TV, a rarity for him. But it’s Phil. It’s theater. “I don’t watch golf but I promise you I’m going to turn it on to watch him today,” Spieth said. “It’s pretty incredible. I have no way to relate to it, right? But I also don’t think it’s necessarily that special because didn’t he win a World Golf Championships in the last couple years? “The guy’s got four good rounds on any golf course in him, and no one would bet against that.” Mickelson has had three good ones at Kiawah Island. One more for history.

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OnScene: Curry prepares for Web.com Tour event

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Chesson Hadley needed golf’s version of a Hail Mary to keep his PGA TOUR card last season. He hopes he won’t need it this time around. “Last season was not a great ball-striking year, unfortunately,” said Hadley, 34, who will make his second start of the new season at the Sanderson Farms Championship in Jackson, Mississippi. While he probably won’t start in earnest until after Thanksgiving, the 2014 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year is embarking on some changes to shore up those tee-to-green deficiencies. He began working with a new swing coach, Raleigh-based Chase Duncan, 37, in early August. “I like to try to keep it as simple as possible,” Duncan said. “Initially I’ll help him understand his current pattern, and we’ll work on the takeaway, getting a good feel for the clubface coming back. Not big changes. I’ve been impressed how much he likes to eat for such a skinny guy.” Indeed, Hadley’s feast-or-famine 2021 suggests he’s not far away. Although he ranked 169th in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green last season, he was 11th in SG: Putting and very nearly won. At the Palmetto Championship at Congaree in June, he was the 54-hole leader by four but bogeyed the last three holes to lose to young South African Garrick Higgo by a shot. “I can only imagine what it looked like on TV because it looked freakin’ awful from my view,” he said afterward. “I mean, I could barely keep it on the planet. That 8 iron from the fairway on that last hole is inexcusable. I just didn’t have it today.” He redeemed himself with a T15 at the Wyndham Championship in August. Having begun the tournament languishing at 132nd in the FedExCup, and tied for 51st place going into Sunday, he looked destined to miss the Playoffs and lose his TOUR card. The rest is flying-giraffe history: Hadley got off to a hot start, made his first-ever hole-in-one – leaping into the air with the grace of “a flying baby giraffe,” he said later – birdied his last hole, and shot a final-round 62. Would it be enough? All he could do now was wait. He was at a Bojangles drive-through (very on-brand) with his father, Russell, on their way back to Raleigh when the TOUR’s Tom Alter gave him the news. With Justin Rose’s three-putt bogey on 18, Hadley had slipped into the 125th spot to keep his card and get into the Playoffs lid-lifter, THE NORTHERN TRUST, by one FedExCup point. “I’ll remember everything about that day,” Hadley said. “I had my food in my lap and was waiting to eat until I had the full run-down. There was some screaming, some crying. It was great to have something to celebrate with my family because it didn’t feel like there was a lot to celebrate the last 18 months or so. We just opened a bottle of wine. “We have a couple that we’re really close with,” he continued, “and we had them over for a small celebration because I had to get on a plane for New York the next day.” He missed THE NORTHERN TRUST cut, ending his season, but he had spared himself a trip to Boise for the start of the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. He felt relief for himself, but also for his wife, Amanda. “And she was certainly emotional because she feels like she’s been all by herself while I’ve been trying to do all this,” he said. “I did not want to go to Boise for lots of reasons. That’s a long way away from home. My family wasn’t going to be able to come. My kids are starting school. “So Sunday was huge professionally,” he continued, “but it was also really big personally just because I could be with my family more. It was just such a relief.” Given some time to reflect, Hadley believes Congaree, in South Carolina, and Sedgefield, in North Carolina, were connected by more than a common state border. “I think one of the reasons why I did so well the Sunday at Wyndham is because of the Sunday at Congaree,” he said. “It had been a while since I had been in that position, and I didn’t handle Congaree the way I wanted to, but I learned a lot.” Specifically, Hadley was able to find a way to close even as he felt his command wobbling at the Wyndham. He was in the fifth fairway at Sedgefield when he told his caddie, David Cooke, that he was starting to see some squirrely shots and they needed to make a quick fix. “I was kind of hitting it a little bit loose,” Hadley said. “I told him, ‘I feel like we need to make an adjustment.’ Which is something I didn’t do at Congaree when it was getting crooked. So I just kind of did that, I put a little more left lean, a little more weight left, so that I wouldn’t fall back on it. It was the right adjustment because I hit some really good shots coming in.” Like the ace at the 160-yard, par-3 16th hole, with a 9-iron. Amazingly, it wasn’t just his first hole-in-one on TOUR, it was his first anywhere despite being an 11th-year pro. The trails of his previous few years were apparent during Hadley’s tearful post-round interview with CBS’s Amanda Balionis. “I’m not just out here for fun,” he said. “This is my job and I love it and I care very deeply about it.” Then he made fun of himself for crying, and his giraffe jump. This week he returns to one of his favorite places on TOUR, the Country Club of Jackson, where he finished second behind Ryan Armour in 2017. That result that was sandwiched between a T3 at the Fortinet Championship and a T4 at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas. When he’s on top of his game, Hadley is very, very good. He’s working on it.

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