Connect with us

Tour News

Tour Mash: Day goes wire-to-wire, wins No. 10 at The Players

Published

on

The third weekend of May saw a bit of everything: domination, soul-crushing collapses, playoffs and memorable highs and lows. How did Jason Day, Shanshan Feng, Jeung-hun Wang, Timothy O’Neal and Trey Mullinax score victories on Sunday? Take a taste of our smooth weekly Mash to find out.

PGA Tour: Day goes wire to wire at The Players

We can summarize Jason Day’s Players Championship win with one quote and move quickly on to more important matter… Just kidding, but here’s the quote from Day:

I’m very motivated to win as much as I can right now.

We haven’t heard such a succinct statement from Rory, Rickie, Jordan, or anyone else on Tour. Day’s desire for a place in competitive golf history is apparent, and his work ethic may have no equal. On Sunday at TPC Sawgrass, the 2015 PGA Champion won the game’s unofficial fifth major by playing so well that even the occasional faux-pas failed to let the rest of the field within two strokes of his lead. By round’s end, the Aussie stood four clear of Kevin Chappell, who played 3-under-par golf on the final day to move from 6th to solo 2nd. Justin Thomas was another shot back at 10-under, tied with Matt Kuchar, Ken Duke and Colt Knost.

Related: Photos of the clubs Day used to win

With this win, Jason Day is the first golfer to win wire-to-wire over Dye’s Swamp since Hal Sutton’s career-defining “Be the right club today” win over Tiger Woods. That’s 16 years since we’ve seen domination like this. It was also his 10th PGA Tour win, and his seventh in his last 17th starts. Moving on from our winner, take a look at the epitome of the highs and lows of the week, summarized in these two moments.

Will Wilcox’ ace at the 17th on Friday was tasty, but his reaction was off-the-charts violent! Honestly, how many of these golfers and caddies needed to ice down after Wilcox bashed and smashed his way through the post-perfection celebration?

Sergio Garcia will spend time on the psychologist’s couch, mulling over just exactly how one can six putt a golf hole. Although TPC Sawgrass’ greens were most speedy on Saturday, that’s no excuse for the detachment that led to Garcia’s sextet of strokes on the 5th green.

European Tour: Mauritius Open 

Siddikur Rahman of Bangladesh stood on the 16th tee on Sunday, three shots clear of last week’s European Tour winner, Jeung-hun Wang of South Korea. Feeling confident in his swing, the 31-year old promptly lost his tee shot and made double bogey. A subsequent bogey on the 17th erased the remnants of his lead, and the pair stepped to the 18th tee tied for the top spot at the national open championship of the island nation off the coast of Madagascar.

Wang proved that his playoff win over Spain’s Nacho Elvira last week at the Trophee Hassan II event in Morocco was no fluke, as he recovered brilliantly from a greenside bunker for birdie. Moments before, Rahman had missed a short birdie try of his own and, in the blink of an eye, the 20-year old Wang was a two-time winner on the European Tour.

Ladies European Tour: Buick Championship

Shanshan Feng of China and Na Yeon Choi of South Korea had some serious match play going all week at Shanghai’s Garden Golf course on the Ladies European Tour. The pair posted matching 67s on Sunday to open a 6-shot advantage over third-place Beth Allen. Choi had an opportunity to dethrone Feng, the defending champion, but made bogey on the final hole to drop out of solo first. The 2012 U.S. Women’s Open champion then repeated the bogey on the first extra hole as Feng birdied, and the 26-year old from Guangzhou had her sixth European Tour win (and 16th professional victory) sewn up.

Web.com Tour: Rex Hospital Open

Despite winning two national championships as a member of the Alabama Crimson Tide squad, Trey Mullinax might have been overlooked as a potential tour winner. That’s because three of his teammates (Justin Thomas, Bobby Wyatt and Cory Whitsett) were members of the winning U.S. side in the 2013 Walker Cup matches. On Sunday, Mullinax made all his hard work pay off, as he lit up the back nine at TPC Wakefield Plantation in Raleigh with three birdies and a chip-in eagle to score his first professional victory on the Web.com Tour.

Mullinax put pressure on the overnight leader, Brady Schnell, by recovering time and again from the menacing rough. Unnerved, Schnell three-putted No. 17 and failed to get up and down from a greenside bunker at the last. His two closing bogies dropped Schnell to solo second, two behind Mullinax.

PGA Tour LA: Dominican Republic Open

Preserving any type of lead over the closing holes at the Teeth of the Dog course at Casa Del Campo is difficult. Timothy O’Neal stood on the 15th tee in Saturday’s fourth round at 13-under for the week, but stepped off the green three strokes to the worse after a triple-bogey seven. He wasn’t the only one to experience misfortune on the back nine of Pete Dye’s most endearing creation; Sebastian MacLean of Bolivia tied for second at 6-under, after an inward half that included a triple bogey and two bogeys. Rafael Echenique of Argentina was 12-under through 12 holes of Round 4. One par, four bogeys and a double later, he was out of contention and tied for second.

In the end, it was O’Neal’s ability to restrict his mistakes to the one hole and preserve a four-stroke victory. The 43-year old from the U.S. became the oldest PGA Tour Latinoamerica winner by surviving the Caribbean winds better than anyone else in the field.

Your Reaction?
  • 4
  • LEGIT1
  • WOW1
  • LOL0
  • IDHT0
  • FLOP0
  • OB0
  • SHANK1

Ronald Montesano writes for GolfWRX.com from western New York. He dabbles in coaching golf and teaching Spanish, in addition to scribbling columns on all aspects of golf, from apparel to architecture, from equipment to travel. Follow Ronald on Twitter at @buffalogolfer.

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Tour Photo Galleries

Photos from the 2024 CJ Cup Byron Nelson

Published

on

GolfWRX is on site this week in McKinney, Texas, at the 2024 CJ Cup Byron Nelson (FKA the AT&T Byron Nelson).

Last year at TPC Craig Ranch, Jason Day ended a five-year winless streak. J-Day is in the field again, as are Jordan Spieth, Tom Kim, and Will Zalatoris.

We have our usual assortment of general galleries, WITBs, and pullout albums for your perusal. As always, we’ll continue to add links to additional albums as they make their way to us from the Lone Star State.

Check out links to all our photos below.

General Albums

WITB Albums

Pullout Albums

See what GolfWRXers are saying in the forums.

 

 

Your Reaction?
  • 10
  • LEGIT0
  • WOW0
  • LOL0
  • IDHT0
  • FLOP0
  • OB0
  • SHANK1

Continue Reading

Tour Photo Galleries

Photos from the 2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans

Published

on

GolfWRX is live on site this week at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans for the PGA Tour’s one-and-only two-man team event.

As usual, general galleries, WITBs, and pullout albums — including some pretty spicy custom putters and headcovers — await your viewing.

Be sure to check back for more photos from the Big Easy, as we’ll continue to update this page with additional galleries throughout the week.

General Albums

WITB Albums

Pullout Albums

See what GolfWRXers are saying about our photos from the Zurich Classic of New Orleans in the forums.

 

Your Reaction?
  • 7
  • LEGIT3
  • WOW1
  • LOL0
  • IDHT0
  • FLOP0
  • OB0
  • SHANK2

Continue Reading

Tour Photo Galleries

Photos from the 2024 RBC Heritage

Published

on

GolfWRX is on site this week at Harbour Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island for the RBC Heritage. Plenty of golfers who competed in the Masters last week will be making the quick turnaround in the Lowcountry of South Carolina as the Heritage is again one of the Tour’s Signature Events.

We have general albums for you to check out, as well as plenty of WITBs — including Justin Thomas and Justin Rose.

We’ll continue to update as more photos flow in from SC.

Check out links to all our photos, below.

General Albums

WITB Albums

Pullout Albums

See what GolfWRXers are saying and join the discussion in the forums.

Your Reaction?
  • 10
  • LEGIT0
  • WOW0
  • LOL2
  • IDHT0
  • FLOP1
  • OB0
  • SHANK0

Continue Reading

WITB

Facebook

Trending