Nakajima leads Asia-Pacific Amateur by a stroke

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LA QUINTA, Calif. — Andrew Landry regrouped to win The American Express after losing a six-stroke lead on the back nine Sunday. Landry broke a tie with Abraham Ancer with a 7-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th hole and made a 6-footer on the par-4 18th for a 5-under 67 and a two-stroke victory. Related: Leaderboard | Amateur with one arm makes hole-in-one  “That was probably the shot of the tournament for me,” Landry said about the 17th. “Just to be able to go over there and, to that right hole location, and just hold one up and hit a good distance and have a 7-, 8-footer to look at. … Thankfully, it went in and kind of made 18 a little bit easier.” Landy won the pro-am event at PGA West two years ago after losing a playoff to Jon Rahm. “This is a golf course that has suited me very well in the past,” Landry said. “And just to look back on some of the things that happened a couple years ago and then now, just to be able to finally get it done. I didn’t want to have to go back into a playoff again and we’re running out of daylight, so it’s good to finally get the job done again.” The 32-year-old Texan has two PGA TOUR victories, also winning the 2018 Valero Texas Open. He jumped up 161 spots to 17th in the FedExCup standings.  “That’s why you just got to keep grinding it out,” Landry said. “We all search for these weeks, and the majority of players out here are going to have them, four, five, six times a year and top-10 players are going to have them a little bit more often. So, these are the weeks that we search for and we just continue to just play our ball and keep doing what we do, and hopefully they come sooner than later.” Trying to become the third Mexican winner in PGA TOUR history and first since 1978, Ancer matched the Stadium Course record with a 63. Playing two groups ahead of Landry, Ancer birdied the par-5 16th and the island-green 17th and parred the 18th. “All week, really, I hit the ball great off the tee and iron shots, and in the first three rounds, I feel like I didn’t score as low as I should have for how good I hit the ball,” Ancer said. “But stayed patient and today the putts started to fall in.” Playing two groups ahead of Landry, Ancer birdied No. 16 and 17 and parred the 18th, missing from 35 feet and saving par with a 4 1/2-footer. He realized he was tied for lead just before teeing off on 17. “I wasn’t paying much attention to the leaderboard,” Ancer said. “And then that’s when I noticed and I was like, `All right, well, we got to make two other birdies.’ I made the putt there on 17, which was big, and then just couldn’t make it happen on 18. But I played good, man. I’m proud of how I played.” After missing the cut in seven of his first eight starts this season, Landry appeared to be cruising to victory when he birdied the first three holes on the back nine to open the six-shot lead. But he bogeyed the next three holes, made a par on the 16th that felt like another bogey, and was tied when Ancer ran in a 25-footer on 17. Landry finished at 26-under 262. He opened with a 66 on the Stadium Course, shot 64 in the second round at La Quinta Country Club and had a 65 on Saturday on PGA West’s Jack Nicklaus Tournament Course for a share of the third-round lead with Scottie Scheffler — four strokes ahead of third-place Rickie Fowler. The anticipated duel between Landy and Scheffler fizzled on the first six holes. Scheffler bogeyed the par-4 first after his drive rolled back down a hill into a large divot. He also dropped strokes on the par-5 fifth and long par-3 sixth to fall four strokes behind Landry. On the water-guarded fifth, his aggressive play with a fairway wood from a downhill lie near a right-side bunker went well left and, after a long chip, he missed a 3-footer for par. He also failed to get up-down-for par on the 234-yard sixth hole after hooking his tee shot. Scheffler shot 70, briefly giving Landry a scare with an eagle on 16, to finish third at 23 under. The 23-year-old former University of Texas player is in his first season on the PGA TOUR after winning twice and topping the Korn Ferry Tour Finals and overall points lists last season. Fowler had a 71 in the final group with Landry and Scheffler to tie for 10th at 18 under. From nearby Murrietta, Fowler played the event for the first time in six years.

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After failing to get through the Monday qualifier but cracking the field when David Berganio Jr. withdrew on Wednesday, Cinderella story Nate Lashley, 36, goes wire-to-wire to capture his first PGA TOUR title at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. Welcome to the Monday Finish, where Lashley became the first alternate to win on TOUR since Vaughn Taylor at the 2016 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and moved from 132nd all the way to 40th in the FedExCup. He also won job security, at long last, after a hardscrabble and at times heart-wrenching early career. FIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. Lashley is an overnight success – 15 years in the making. Suffice it to say almost no one saw this coming, as just six people in the PGA TOUR’s fantasy golf game had Lashley in their lineups. He had just one top-10 finish in 32 previous TOUR starts, and was 132nd in the FedExCup and 353rd in the Official World Golf Ranking. (He climbed to 40th and 101st, respectively.) He didn’t know where he was playing week to week, having earned just 188 of the 209 points needed in eight starts of his minor medical extension. Now he can say goodbye to all that uncertainty. He’s ditched the Monday qualifiers, and earned spots in the 2019 Open Championship, and 2020 Sentry Tournament of Champions, THE PLAYERS Championship, Masters Tournament and PGA Championship, among others. He did it with spectacular iron play, leaving himself with 10 feet or less on 22 of his 28 birdies. “I’m just really grateful that I got into the tournament,â€� he said. “…It’s a dream come true.â€�   For more on Lashley’s life-changing win, click here. 2. This one packed an emotional punch. A 2004 plane crash killed Lashley’s parents, Rod and Char, and his girlfriend, Leslie Hofmeister. They were in Rod’s four-seat, single-engine plane, headed home to Nebraska after watching Nate (University of Arizona) play in the NCAA West Regional in Oregon. Soldiering on, Lashley turned pro but struggled, at one point taking a break from golf to pursue real estate. Although still coming to grips with the tragedy, he returned and began to claw his way back, winning on the Gateway, EGolf and Dakotas mini-tours before a banner, three-win season on PGA TOUR Latinoamerica in 2015. A victory two years later on the Korn Ferry Tour (Corales Puntacana Resort) made him a PGA TOUR rookie last season at 35. No surprise that when he won in Detroit, he shared a tearful embrace with his sister, Brooke. “I’ve been through a lot,â€� Lashley said. “It took a lot of years for me to get over my parents’ death, for sure. It was mentally holding me back for a long time.â€� 3. Doc Redman won plenty with a solo second. The 2017 U.S. Amateur champion from Clemson earned 300 non-member FedExCup points to secure special temporary membership on the PGA TOUR for the remainder of this season. Redman can now accept unlimited sponsor exemptions for the rest of 2018-’19, and if he earns as many or more points as No. 125 in this year’s final FedExCup standings (he has 344; for reference, last season’s No. 125 had 377) he will secure full status on TOUR for next season. “I knew what was at stake,â€� said Redman, who got into the Rocket Mortgage field through the Monday qualifier, “but I was trying not to think about it. I actually didn’t even think about The Open Championship until someone said it to me after. But it’s awesome, I can’t wait.â€� 4. Victor Hovland is loving life as a pro. The Oklahoma State product shot a final-round 64, one of the best rounds of the day, to finish T13 in just his second start as a professional. This, after making the cut on the number. “I definitely heard a lot of people that wanted me to do well,â€� Hovland said of the energy at Detroit Golf Club, which he said reminded him of home for its tree-lined fairways and old-school feel. “That’s really cool. I mean, I’m just a 21-year-old from Norway and you’ve got Americans cheering on me. It’s still a little crazy for me to think about, but I really appreciate it.â€� 5. Patrick Reed is heading in the right direction. His 2-under 70 – on a day when he admittedly didn’t have his A game or anything close – left him with a T5 finish, his best since a fourth at the 2018 U.S. Open. He shot up 11 to 62nd in the FedExCup, and up two to 20th in U.S. Presidents Cup standings. “It’s always on my mind,â€� Reed told the Golf Channel, when asked about making U.S. Captain Tiger Woods’ team that will take on the International side at Royal Melbourne, Dec. 12-15. “If I continue doing what I’m doing … then hopefully it all takes care of itself.â€� FIVE INSIGHTS 1. Lashley was spot-on with his irons, with 22 of his 28 birdies coming from 10 feet or less. He was sixth in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green (+1.388), second in SG: Putting (+2.332), 13th in SG: Around-the-Green (+0.452), and T29 in SG: Off-the-Tee (+0.l66). 2. This marked the sixth wire-to-wire victory on TOUR (no ties) since 2017, and the first since Brooks Koepka at the PGA Championship at Bethpage. Lashley was 14 under par on the par 4s, making it the best par-4 performance by a winner on TOUR this season. 3. Lashley (2-under 70) joined an exclusive club. He became one of a select few to shoot 70 or higher on the way to a six-plus-stroke victory on TOUR. The last to do it was Tiger Woods at the 2013 World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational (70, seven-shot win), and most recent before that was Louis Oosthuizen at the 2010 Open Championship (71, seven-shot win). 4. Brian Stuard, a native of Jackson, Michigan, shot a 4-under 68 to finish T5, his second top-five finish this season. The other: T4 at the Valero Texas Open. He moved to 69th in the FedExCup. 5. Hovland (64, T13), Brandt Snedeker (67, T5), Joaquin Niemann (68, T5) and Joey Garber (69, T29) shot the day’s only bogey-free rounds. It was the second straight T5 finish for Niemann, 20, who has gone from 140th to 89th in the FedExCup in the last two weeks. WYNDHAM REWARDS The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is in its first season and adds another layer of excitement to the FedExCup Regular Season. The top 10 players at the end of the FedExCup Regular Season will earn bonus payouts from the Wyndham Rewards Top 10. Matt Kuchar remains No. 1, and there were no changes among the rest of the all-important Top 10. Just four weeks and six tournaments remaining until the start of the Wyndham Championship, the last event of the FedExCup Regular Season.

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