The Olympic Games men’s golf competition gets underway Wednesday evening in the Eastern Time Zone. Note: This event is not part of the official PGA TOUR Fantasy game.
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CROMWELL, Conn. — Harris English birdied the eighth hole of sudden death to win the Travelers Championship on Sunday, beating Kramer Hickok after both birdied the final hole of regulation to force the playoff. RELATED: Leaderboard | Winner’s Bag: Harris English, Travelers Championship | Remembering John Shippen It matched the second-longest sudden-death playoff in PGA TOUR history. English shot a 5-under 65 to finish the fourth round at 13 under, then made a 5-foot putt on the seventh trip down the 18th hole of the day. Hickok had missed a 36-foot birdie putt and finished the playoff with eight consecutive pars. The TOUR record for a sudden death playoff is 11 holes in the 1949 Motor City Open, when Lloyd Mangrum and Cary Middlecoff were declared co-winners by mutual agreement due to darkness; four other events have reached an eighth playoff hole. The eight-hole playoff was a record for the tournament, which went seven holes in 1961 (Ted Kroll) and again in ’62 (Bob Goalby), when it was known as the Insurance City Open. It was the second win this year and the fourth career victory for English, who finished third at the U.S. Open last week — and fourth in the pandemic-delayed U.S. Open in September. He won $1,368,000 and 500 FedExCup points, moving into second in the standings. English sank a 28-footer on the 72nd hole to emerge from a three-way tie and finish at 13 under. Then he headed to the range to stay warm in case Hickock, who was minus-12 with two holes to play, could catch him. The 29-year-old Texan, who had never won on the PGA TOUR, couldn’t convert a 39-foot birdie putt on the 17th, but he knocked in a nine-footer for birdie on No. 18 to match English. They played 18 again — twice — and parred it again — twice. On to No. 17, then 18, then 17, then 18, then 18 again: All pars. Hickok lipped out on two long birdie putts that would have won it; on the sixth playoff hole, English missed a seven-foot birdie putt to win. On the final trip down the 438-yard par 4, Hickok put his second shot 28 feet from the pin and two-putted. English landed his approach 16 feet away and made birdie. Hickok has never won on the PGA TOUR. The second-place finish was his best ever, topping a tie for eighth in the 2018 Bermuda Championship that was his only other time in the top 10. Four players were tied at 12 under after Bubba Watson bogeyed the 14th. But the three-time Travelers winner played the last five holes at six over to drop out of the chase. “I’m glad that I was there, had the opportunity,” Watson said. “You know, I would love to do it again next week, throw up on myself again. It would it be great. I want to the opportunity and the chance to win.” Watson’s collapse left Hickok — his 54-hole co-leader —- on top at 12 under with English and Marc Leishman, who had finished his round with a 64 two hours earlier. English finished the fourth round birdie-bogey-birdie, skipping after the ball and pumping his fist after the final hole of regulation. Hickok’s celebration was even more emphatic. But there was still a playoff to come. Leishman won the tournament in 2012, shooting a 62 on Sunday to come from six strokes behind and earn his first career victory on TOUR. This year, he shot 64 in the final round and was the leader in the clubhouse for several hours at 12 under but settled for third. With plenty of low scores Sunday and all of the leaders still on the course, he sensed it wasn’t enough. “Nice to make a run and be around the lead,” said Leishman, who did head out to the range to warm up before English took his place. “Not holding my breath, but I won’t be going anywhere.” Abraham Ancer (65) was fourth at minus-11. Kevin Kisner had his second 63 of the tournament — along with a 70 and a 74 — to tie for fifth at 10 under with Brooks Koepka (65) and three others. A top-five finish would have moved Dustin Johnson back to the No. 1 spot in the world. But the defending champion shot 71 on Sunday to tied for 25th at 6 under.
SILVIS, Ill. —The John Deere Classic turns 50 this year. The small-town TOUR stop has played a pivotal role in many players’ careers, as the site of their first victory, or at least their first taste of contention, and as a familiar locale for stars hailing from the Midwest. Recent champions include Jordan Spieth and Bryson DeChambeau. Like fellow future major champions Payne Stewart (1982) and David Toms (1997) and 19 other Quad Cities champs, Spieth and DeChambeau scored their maiden TOUR victories at the Deere. As for can-you-top this moments, TPC Deere Run’s closing stretch of holes has produced an array of rallies and exciting finishes, and by such notable winners as Vijay Singh, Kenny Perry, Steve Stricker and Zach Johnson. 1. JORDAN RULES (2013) Spieth had little to lose and a big, bold head start on a brilliant future to gain when he set his feet in the bright white sand of a greenside bunker on TPC Deere Run’s final hole in July 2013. He’d already earned TOUR status and established himself as a rising star before turning 20. Now he had a chance to get his first victory. Spieth had begun his first season as a pro without status on TOUR, but a runner-up finish in his third start and another six top-10 finishes earned him unlimited sponsor’s exemptions for the remainder of the year. Those performances also ensured he’d be a member in good standing the following season. A win at the Deere, though, would earn his entry into the 2013 FedExCup Playoffs, with all the points accrued in those seven previous top-10s also added to his account. It would gain him two full years of exempt TOUR status. It would punch his ticket to the Masters the following April. The young Texan came to the 18th having birdied four of his previous five holes, but needed a fifth birdie to tie the lead. He got it, and did so with a flair for the dramatic that would become SOP (Spieth Operating Procedure) in the years to come. With a one-hop clank off the flagstick, Spieth holed his 44-foot shot from the bunker to earn his way into a three-man playoff. Then he outlasted Zach Johnson and David Hearn over five holes of sudden-death. His first professional win came 13 days shy of his 20th birthday, making him the first teen to win on TOUR in 82 years. 2. GETTING A GRIP ON TIGER (1996) Between September 16, 1996, and August 16, 2009, Tiger Woods would win 36 consecutive PGA TOUR events when holding the outright lead after 54 holes. To this day, Woods has lost just twice when entering the final round in sole possession of the lead. Those numbers make it hard to believe that Woods coughed up the lead the first time he held it on the PGA TOUR. Ed Fiori, nicknamed “The Grip,” was the beneficiary. Making his third start as a pro following a storied amateur career, Woods took the lead with six straight birdies on the inward nine of his second round at Oakwood Country Club. When Sunday dawned, Woods held a one-shot lead over Fiori, a 43-year-old veteran 14 years removed from his last victory. Woods led by three on the fourth tee, but a wild hook into an irrigation pond led to a quadruple bogey and a one-shot deficit. Three holes later, Woods four-putted a short par-4 for a double-bogey. Steady Eddie brought it home with a final round 67 for a two-shot win. Woods shot a 2-over 72 and finished tied for fifth, but he got his first win two weeks later in Las Vegas and is 44-2 as you read this when taking an outright lead into Sunday. Y.E. Yang joined Fiori in the Tiger Tamer Club at the 2009 PGA Championship. 3. A STOP ON THE SLAM TRAIL (2015) Spieth’s brilliant future already was realized when he returned to TPC Deere Run two years after his first win, having won the Masters in April and the U.S. Open in June. The week after the Deere, he would attempt to join fellow Texan Ben Hogan as one of two men to win three professional majors in a single year. Given those stakes, his decision to keep a promise to play the Deere beforehand was questioned in some circles. Yet, Spieth said he came to Silvis with an eye on a winning second leaping deer trophy and to build momentum for his pursuit of a Claret Jug. He accomplished the former with another fast finish, making up four shots in six holes to force another playoff and then defeating Tom Gillis on the second hole of sudden-death. In his bid for immortality at St. Andrews, Spieth finished a single haunting shot out of a playoff. 4. THREE-PEAT (2011) Steve Stricker made his first trip to the Quad Cities before he earned a PGA TOUR card. The Illinois alum made his tournament debut in 1993. Sixteen years later, he started an incredible run at TPC Deere Run. The affable Stricker won in 2009 and 2010 before showing that he had an edge, as well, with his dramatic win in 2011. A walk-off birdie from a difficult lie in a fairway bunker made him just the 18th player to win the same TOUR event in three straight years. Stricker responded to a 24-foot birdie make from the fringe with a full-body, two-handed fist-pump celebration that was entirely out of character, deliciously ferocious and magnificently appropriate. Stricker had taken a five-shot lead into Sunday’s back nine but stood on the 17th tee two shots down to Kyle Stanley. He birdied the par-5 17th for the ninth time in his three-year run at Deere Run and stood in the18th hole’s fairway bunker tied at the top after Stanley bogeyed in front of him. Actually, he almost stood in the bunker. Facing a lie that forced a stance announcer David Feherty likened to a giraffe at a watering hole, Stricker stood left foot in the sand, right foot in the grass, 189 yards from the flagstick. He ripped a 6-iron to the back fringe, holed that putt and it was no more Mr. Nice Guy. For a few seconds, anyway. 5. AN AGELESS WONDER (1979) Sam Snead became the youngest player on TOUR to shoot his age in the second round but the 67-year-old was something less than ecstatic. “Now, I gotta come back two more days,” groused the legend, who was feeling the effects of a bad back after walking 18 holes for only the third time that year. “I was almost trying not to qualify.” Snead’s record 67 didn’t hold up long. After a 74 in the third round, the Slammer rallied with a closing 66 at Oakwood Country Club. 6. A LEGEND’S FIRST (1982) Payne Stewart scored the most fashionable victory on TOUR since the days of Walter Hagen when he carded five back-nine birdies en route to a final-round 63 and his first official TOUR victory. It was also the first tournament in which Stewart played all four days in the plus-fours and Hogan cap that would become his signature look. “What I remember about Payne here is him saying ‘I don’t want to look like everybody else – blond, with a visor,’ and that’s where he started wearing the knickers,” remembered D.A. Weibring. “Payne almost got to the point where he looked funny in pants.” For Stewart, the victory was forever memorable because it was the only time his father, Bill, was on hand to see him win as a pro prior to Bill’s untimely death in 1985. Poignantly, Stewart was wearing the Rolex watch he received for the win when he died young himself in a 1999 airplane tragedy. 7. HATS OFF (2017) It was hat’s off to the SMU Mustangs when Bryson DeChambeau capped a six-birdie back nine with a 14-foot putt at 18 and joined the late Payne Stewart among the strong parade of players who notched their initial TOUR win in the Quad Cities. DeChambeau’s trademark Hogan-style cap is worn in homage to Stewart, a fellow SMU alum. The curious and studious Californian knew a great deal about Stewart, but he didn’t know the Hall of Fame Mustang also had earned his maiden win at the 1982 QCO. When so informed, DeChambeau took off his cap, slapped his knee, and became genuinely emotional. “That broke me,” DeChambeau said later. “He’s done some amazing things for the game of golf, and I hope I can do something similar down the road.” DeChambeau was a highly-touted prospect before his rookie season on the PGA TOUR. He won the NCAA Championship and U.S. Amateur in 2015 and won on the Korn Ferry Tour the following year to earn his PGA TOUR card. He was struggling when he arrived at TPC Deere Run, however, ranked 114th in the FedExCup and in danger of losing his card. He had made the cut in just nine of his 24 starts. The Deere changed the course of his career, however, and sent him down that major-winning road, using his unique approach to the game to win seven more times, including the U.S. Open. 8. ZJ’S FIRST WIN (2012) In the history of the TOUR, it’s hard to imagine a sponsor’s exemption that led to a better relationship than the one the John Deere Classic has enjoyed with Zach Johnson. The native Iowan was on the mini-tours when he was granted an exemption in 2002. He was on his way to leading the Korn Ferry Tour in earnings when he received a second in 2003. Johnson hasn’t missed an event at TPC Deere Run since, including in 2007, when he was the reigning Masters champion, and in 2016, when he was a week away from defending his Open Championship win. Johnson has been a player representative on the tournament’s executive committee since 2008 and is the only player on TOUR who has an endorsement deal with Deere & Company. From 2009 through 2017, Johnson scored seven top-five finishes at the Deere. That included three second-place finishes and an epic victory in 2012, when, on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff with Troy Matteson, he found himself in the same fairway bunker from which Stricker had worked his magic a year earlier. Johnson outdid Stricker, lacing a 6-iron from 194 yards to within a foot of the cup for a very popular tap-in victory. 9. GOYDOS GOES LOW (2010) The round Paul Goydos was putting together after teeing off early in the opening round was the talk of TPC Deere Run. The place seemed to hold its collective breath as Goydos stood over a 7-foot putt at 18 to become the fourth TOUR player to shoot 59 in competition. “Did he get it?” Stricker asked a reporter while on his way to the first tee. Goydos did indeed get his 59. Then Stricker tried to follow suit. Needing to hole a 159-yard 8-iron from the 18th fairway for eagle and an improbable share of the first-round lead, Stricker came within 2 ½ feet and settled for 60. Only once to that point had a 59 and 60 been scored in the same year. A decade later, Scottie Scheffler (59) and Dustin Johnson (60) would match that same-day feat in the second round of THE NORTHERN TRUST at TPC Boston. And Jim Furyk’s 58 at the 2016 Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands would create a new magic number. Still, July 8, 2010, remains a day to remember in Silvis. 10. BEMAN GOES BACK-TO-BACK (1971/1972) In 1971, Deane Beman won the first Quad Cities Open fighting off a 100-degree fever. A year later, he won the second fighting off a future legend. Beman’s closing 4-under 67 was just enough to nip Tom Watson, who posted a 66 just ahead of the defending champion. For the rookie Watson, the near-miss was an early taste of the Sunday heat he’d feel often in his career and he was aided by the “thinking advice” of his playing partner, Lee Trevino. “That was the first time I’d been in contention,” Watson would remember years later, deep into his Hall of Fame career. “That was the first step.” As commissioner years later, Beman would credit the Quad Cities’ volunteers for helping his understanding of the vital importance of volunteer support to achieving his vision for the TOUR. For a QC event that turns 50 this week, Beman’s support from Ponte Vedra proved helpful during some lean and challenging years. Win. Win. Win. Freelance writer Craig DeVrieze is the author of “Magic Happened: Celebrating 50 Years of the John Deere Classic,” available for order here.
