‘This was a failed coup’ – Inside how Phil Mickelson’s challenge of the PGA Tour backfired so quickly and what comes next

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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Shaking off 232 previous PGA TOUR starts without a victory, Jason Kokrak takes advantage of his familiarity with the course to blitz Shadow Creek with a final-round 64 and win by two. Here are five stories you might have missed from THE CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK. 1. Kokrak had a career putting week. Always a great ball-striker, Kokrak has not always been such a great putter. But going to a longer, 36-inch putter, plus his familiarity with the greens at Shadow Creek - where he estimated he'd played "north of 20 rounds" as a BetMGM ambassador - paid off handsomely. Kokrak credited his caddie David Robinson for not just reading the greens but also the tip to go with the longer putter, hold it more in the palms of his hands, and stand taller. "Ever since that happened," he said after a bogey-free Sunday, "I got one that I feel great with with Bettinardi and we dialed it in and started rolling it pretty nicely for the last month or two." That was an understatement at Shadow Creek, where Kokrak led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting (+2.573 per round) for the first time ever. He also made a career-high 14 putts of 10 feet or longer for the week. The last two TOUR winners to make that many putts from 10 feet or longer were Jim Herman (Wyndham Championship) and Webb Simpson (RBC Heritage). 2. ‘Old guys’ are having a moment. Thanks to incandescent talents like Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth, 20-somethings have dominated the TOUR in recent years. Not so far this season, as Kokrak, 35, becomes the third consecutive winner on TOUR age 35 or older. Martin Laird, 37, won the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open last week, while Sergio Garcia, 40, captured the Sanderson Farms Championship the week before that. Oh, and keep in mind, Stewart Cink, 47, won the season-opening Safeway Open. "I definitely had some scar tissue," Kokrak said of his journeyman status. It didn't show. He birdied five of the first eight holes, including four straight, and held it together admirably on the back nine until Schauffele, 26, finally cracked with a bogey at 16. 3. Schauffele getting scary consistent. A poor drive led to a sloppy bogey at the par-5 16th hole, which forced Xander Schauffele to play from behind and try to make something happen coming in. He couldn't. Still, his final-round 66 yielded his third straight top-five finish, and he moved from 33rd to eighth in the FedExCup. It was his eighth career runner-up in his 98th career start, and he finished 20th or higher in all five major Strokes Gained categories: Off the Tee (20th), Tee to Green (4th), Approach the Green (16th), Around the Green (5th) and Putting (3rd). Schauffele said he regretted not so much the bogey at 16 on Sunday but his 74 on Saturday. "I was trailing, that was sort of the mistake," Schauffele said. "... It’s one of those things where you’re always going to have one bad day unless you’re Dustin (Johnson), you shoot 30 under for a tournament, but typically you like to squeeze sort of one bad‑ish round in. Unfortunately, mine was 2 over. If it would have been even or 1 under, it would have been a different story." 4. Hatton had a marathon commute. Tyrrell Hatton recorded multiple scores of 65 or better for the second time in his TOUR career as he closed with a 7-under 65 to finish T3 with Russell Henley (70), three back. Pretty impressive, considering Hatton won the European Tour's BMW PGA Championship last week to crack the top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time, then hopped on a plane and flew 20-plus hours across eight time zones, from England to Las Vegas. He said the ordeal left him grumpy, but he still played very well. "Yeah, my game’s in a good place at the moment," Hatton said after matching his opening-round 65 with another in the final round, though he couldn't atone for his 73 the day before. "Winning last week, and obviously it was a long travel time to get here, thankfully my game’s held up. "We battled a bit of jet lag to be honest," he continued. "I felt fairly tired throughout the week and I’m really happy with how I’ve played. It’s still a great week to finish inside the top five on the PGA TOUR, so I’m very happy with that and looking forward to L.A. next week." Indeed, one of the hottest players in the game throughout 2020 presumably will have caught up on his sleep by the time he tees it up Thursday at the ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP @ SHERWOOD. 5. Koepka says he's good to go. Brooks Koepka says he's healthy again and finished T28 at Shadow Creek. He was knocking the rust off in his first start since the Wyndham Championship in August. "Just nice to be back playing," he said after a 2-over 74 Thursday, his first action in two months. Koepka underwent stem cell treatment on his left knee in 2019. He returned at THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES only to slip on wet concrete, re-injuring the tendon. Unable to shift his weight correctly to his left side, he overburdened his hip, and tore the labrum at the PGA Championship in August. Although he contended, his final-round 74 left him with a T29 finish. He missed the FedExCup Playoffs and U.S. Open while rehabilitating, which he said included more stem cell therapy on his left knee and a cortisone injection in his hip. In his first start of the 2020-21 season at Shadow Creek, he said he was just trying to get reps. "I feel normal now," he said. "I just feel like I’m supposed to." TOUR TOP 10 The PGA TOUR Regular Season top 10 will receive bonuses for their efforts.

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