What to expect on PGA Championship Sunday with such a crowded leaderboard

In the spirit of the Valero Texas Open celebrating its 100th anniversary, here’s a ranking of the top 10 Valero Texas Opens in tournament history. 1940 Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan drove from Phoenix to San Antonio in a two-car caravan — Nelson in a gleaming new Studebaker, Hogan in his old maroon Buick with many miles on the odometer — for the first Valero Texas Open of the 1940s. The two friends from the caddie yards of Fort Worth played thrilling golf that week at Brackenridge Park, which teemed with spectators trailing the marquee pairing before marquee pairings were a thing. Nelson birdied the 72nd hole to tie Hogan, who finished 66-66 on the weekend. Thousands followed the playoff between the two. Nelson beat Hogan by a shot to secure his 11th PGA Tour title. Hogan, who had won only once at the time, would finish second in the next two Texas Opens, in 1941 and ’42. 1981 Reigning Open Championship winner Bill Rogers, born and raised in Texas, crafted a final-round 63 that autumn at Oak Hills Country Club, forcing a sudden-death playoff with fellow Texan and longtime friend Ben Crenshaw, who had shot 64. Rogers birdied the first hole to win for the fourth time that season, his best on the PGA TOUR. “I’m excited about winning,” Rogers said collegially, “but there’s a little something taken away when I have to beat one of my best friends to do it.” 2021 The Valero Texas Open returned with tremendous fanfare after the global pandemic cancelled the 2020 tournament — and so did Jordan Spieth. The 27-year-old Texan, the winner of three major championships and eight other PGA TOUR titles, had gone a mystifying 83 starts since his last victory at the 2017 Open Championship. He ended that streak on a bright Sunday at TPC San Antonio. Spieth, who had been working that week to return to the swing of his youth, shot a 6-under 66 on Sunday at TPC San Antonio to win by two. “It’s been a road with a lot of tough days,” he said. That road had ended, and this was not one of those days. Spieth, who hasn’t won since, returns this week to defend. 1923 The great Walter Hagen, who became in 1922 the first American to win the Open Championship, shot a course-record 65 that January in the third round at Brackenridge Park. He and Bill Mehlhorn finished the tournament at 9 under par before a record gathering of 6,000 who came to watch the stylish club pro from Michigan. Hagen won the ensuing playoff by a shot. His victory vaulted the Texas Open into the consciousness of the American sporting public. 1962 Arnold Palmer struck one of the most famous — and most-watched — shots in the history of the Valero Texas Open at the 72nd hole at Oak Hills Country Club. His soaring 7-iron stopped a foot from the hole, giving him a birdie and his then-record third consecutive VTO title. More than 15,000 spectators witnessed the charge from Palmer, who beat four other players by a stroke, one of Palmer’s eight TOUR titles that year. 1955 A burly former Duke University football player name Mike Souchak amassed 27 birdies over four days at Brackenridge Park, which included a first-round, 11-under 60. He shot 257 for the week, a scoring record that stood for 46 years, and wore deerskin gloves between shots through a frigid final round when temperatures never rose above freezing in San Antonio. His 60 shared the TOUR single-round record until 1977, when Al Geiberger shot his celebrated 59 in Memphis. 1950 In a reflection of the growing popularity of the Valero Texas Open, more than 300 contestants entered the tournament, played that year at both Fort Sam Houston Golf Course and Brackenridge Park. Sam Snead won his second VTO over Jimmy Demaret with a final-round 63 in rain and, for a moment, pounding hail. The Slammer “came roaring down the muddy stretch with birdies flying off his warclubs like leaves off a tree in fall,” read a breathless account of his round in the San Antonio Express. His weekend of 63-63 set a 36-hole scoring record on TOUR. 1946 Byron Nelson played his last Valero Texas Open in 1946, when his longtime friend and rival Ben Hogan won the tournament for the first and only time. The victory — one of Hogan’s remarkable 13 titles that season — launched a streak of five consecutive starts in which Hogan won or finished runner-up. Nelson came in third and retired from competitive golf that year with 52 wins and five major championships in his career. Hogan went on to win at least once each year through 1953, including 10 titles in 1948. But he never again contended at the VTO. 2003 Tommy Armour III shot rounds of 64-63-62-65—254 at the La Cantera Resort Course to shatter by three the PGA TOUR 72-hole scoring record set by Souchak in 1955. Armour’s four-round total of 26-under 254 included no bogeys until the 10th hole on Sunday. He won by a stunning seven shots. Even Armour seemed bemused. “You only get one trip around life,” he told reporters after his epic performance at La Cantera. “Golf is something that I love to do. I don’t play for the money. I never have.” He won $630,000, which was easy to love. 1980 Lee Trevino of Dallas finally won the Valero Texas Open at the age of 40. He holed a bending 25-foot putt — a putt he simply was trying to lag — on the 72nd hole to beat Terry Diehl by a stroke. Trevino signed for a 65 that gave him $45,000 and 27 titles on TOUR. He had suffered many close calls in his 14 starts at the VTO, one of his favorite stops because so many in the Mexican-American community in San Antonio could identify with him (and he with them). Trevino sipped a beer with reporters after his round. “I love it,” Trevino told them. “This is what I live for.”

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KAPALUA, Hawaii – Kevin Tway is listed as a Sentry Tournament of Champions rookie but his preparation at the Plantation Course in Kapalua started 15 years ago as a 16-year-old kid. Tway, son of eight-time PGA TOUR winner Bob, opened his first tournament round at the venue with an impressive 7-under 66 for the early lead on Thursday despite being sick with an ear and sinus infection. Generally first timers don’t do great at Kapalua but Tway recalled some important reconnaissance from his teenage years. After winning the 2003 RBC Canadian Open, Bob had his ticket to Maui for early 2004 and decided to bring the family out a week early for a vacation and extended preparation. But a freak injury meant it was Kevin doing all the prep work. “It’s weird, we came a week early and I played with dad the whole week before, but on one hole dad took a huge divot and a centipede had come up from the ground and he went to flick it away and it stung him,â€� Tway recalled. “His finger swelled up to like the size of a golf club grip, so he couldn’t play that entire week, so he just watched me play the course. He was just kind of watching me play for his preparation.â€� Teenage Kevin went home to return to school before the tournament proper but after claiming the Safeway Open this season for his first PGA TOUR title he returns to Kapalua playing for real. Running third in the FedExCup, Tway was forced to pull out of the pro-am after a few holes Wednesday after feeling “like I was walking on a water bed.â€� But it didn’t hold him back on Thursday as he knocked in a seven birdies in a blemish free day. “When you’re making a lot of birdies it makes everything better. I was just trying to drink a lot of water. But I didn’t think I was going to play that good, to be honest … still a little dizzy,â€� he said. “I hit the ball well, kept the ball in play, made a few putts, controlled my ball in the wind. “It’s windy where I’m from in Oklahoma so it’s kind of like I was at home. Each shot’s difficult so you’re just focused on the trajectory and where I need to land it and where I need to miss it.â€�

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