At a time when golf’s pool of talent is broader than it’s ever been, it’s the guys in the sportcoats who are threatening to scuttle the game in the post-Tiger Woods era. The 98th PGA Championship ended up working out just fine for winner Jimmy Walker, but Mother Nature ended up bailing the PGA of America out of what could have been a very ugly weekend indeed.
The tournament came down to a two-man race on the back nine at Baltusrol: Walker vs. defending champ Jason Day. Two weeks ago, at the British Open, golf saw one of the most epic head-to-head battles when Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson matched red numbers with red numbers.
This wasn’t that … until it was.
Walker, playing in the group behind Day, watched as the world No. 1 scrambled for par after par, leaving Walker to take a more conservative approach.
As Day walked to the 18th, he trailed Walker by two. It appeared the tournament was over, until Day plugged his second shot on the par-5 18th to within 12 feet. Eagle was in play, and so was the tournament … for about a minute.
Moments later, Walker drained a birdie at 17, moving him to 14-under, three strokes clear. Even if Day eagled, he’d only need par on 18 to grab his first major championship win.
Day did eagle to move within one, putting the pressure squarely on Walker, who flew his second shot on 18 into the greenside rough. Suddenly, the Wanamaker Trophy was still in play.
Still, he had three strokes to make par. He pitched out conservatively to 33 feet, lagged his putt to three feet, then stood over the knee-knocker and dropped it in.
“[The eagle] really put it in me to make a par, and sometimes pars are hard, and I got it,” Walker said. “There was a lot of emotion going on out there, I’m not going to lie.”
Walker’s victory came at the end of a marathon 12-hour day that featured the final five groups playing two full rounds Sunday. Clouds rolled in on Saturday afternoon, drenching the course with up to 10 inches of rainfall that washed out Saturday’s play before the leaders had even teed off.
Granted, the PGA has an enormous field, 156 players, and well over half of them managed to make the cut. Even so, the PGA set itself up for second-guessing by electing not to start Saturday’s round early, in trios instead of pairs, or on split tees. Everyone knew the weather was coming; the only question was how much would be lost.
Once Sunday morning dawned and the expected monsoon held off, the PGA elected to permit the controversial – but in this case wise – practice of “preferred lies,” meaning that players could clean the wet goop and garbage off their golf balls on virtually every shot.
But then things began to break the PGA’s way. First, the Sunday rain, while steady throughout most of the day, never increased in intensity, and lightning never materialized, meaning the Monday finish that everyone expected never materialized. As the round wore on, it became clear that the lift, clean & place rules were only going to speed up play, not lead to some kind of record-setting performance. A 62 carded with that kind of benefit would have carried an asterisk large enough to be seen from space.
Par ruled the day until 5:25 ET. Right when the leaders made the turn, the tournament finally caught a spark. In the lead was Walker, the 37-year-old journeyman who’d never won a major but held at least a share of the top spot every single round of this one. Right behind him, Henrik Stenson, just two weeks removed from one of the most exceptional major duels in golf history at the British Open. Also in the mix: Jason Day, the defending champion who’d allegedly come into this tournament sick and unprepared but had somehow managed to courageously post three straight sub-70 rounds.
Walker, who looks a bit like a face-swap of Justin Timberlake and Blake Shelton, had gone as bland as toast his front nine, parring every single hole. But then he chipped in from the bunker to start the back nine, and that kicked off the flurry. Moments later, Day rolled in a 22-foot birdie on the 11th to close to within one. Stenson, meanwhile, had ridden a relentlessly efficient one-under round – only a single birdie at the 6th – to remain close.
But the smell of destiny began cutting through the stench of wet hay that surrounded the course. Walker followed his birdie on 10 with a 30-foot birdie putt on 11, and suddenly he was two strokes clear of Day and three of Stenson.
Curiously, thanks to the rain none of the three leaders played with the other; the tight turnaround meant that the PGA couldn’t re-pair the groups to let the leaders compete head-to-head. That meant Walker, Day, and Stenson played within sight of, but not with, each other.
The lead trio parred their way through the next few holes, but Stenson was the first to blink, running into trouble on the 15th. He double-bogeyed to drop five strokes back, effectively ending his hopes of winning two straight majors. Day, meanwhile, couldn’t close the gap, only matching Walker’s run of pars. Day’s most clutch putt of the back nine, an 11-footer on No. 15, was only good enough for a par to keep him on the pace.
The eagle on 18 provided the tournament with a bit of drama, but ultimately Walker made it a moot point. He’d put himself in position where par on 18 would be good enough, and par he got.
That brings to a close the final major of 2016; while there’s golf in the Olympics and the Tour Championship and the Race to Dubai and the Ryder Cup still ahead this year, the real prizes golfers care most about are done for the year. It’ll be a long eight months until Augusta.
