Snedeker finishes Wyndham victory in style
First PGA Tour win since 2016 boosts his FedEx Cup ranking by 50 spots
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Brandt Snedeker began the Wyndham Championship with history — and ended it with a victory.
Snedeker earned his ninth PGA Tour title Sunday, three days after opening with an 11-under 59.
He closed with a 65 for a three-stroke victory in the regular-season finale, breaking a tie with C.T. Pan on the final hole with a birdie and Pan’s double bogey in the group ahead.
Snedeker finished at 21-under 259 for his first win since 2016 and his second at the tournament, but first at Sedgefield Country Club, to close what he called “the most stressful week I’ve ever had in professional golf.”
“Shooting 59 on Thursday, your expectations go through the roof,” Snedeker said, also expressing pride that he could “cap it off the way we did today, to play
pretty much a flawless round of golf.”
Pan shot a 66 to tie for second with Webb Simpson. Simpson matched his career-best with a 62.
“I feel like it was a round I needed to make a push to the leaderboard,” Simpson said. “Brandt’s obviously had a great week … so I knew it was going to take something super low.”
Snedeker opened the tournament with the 59 that made him the first tour player this year and just the 10th ever to break 60, then on the final day played 29 holes at 5 under to seal it. He’s the fifth tour player to shoot in the 50s and then win the tournament.
He was never in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time in his career, but the victory gave him a huge jump on the points list. He climbed 50 spots to No. 30 on the list, after arriving at 80th — which would have been his lowest finish.
“To be perfectly frank, I didn’t have any chance at all” to win the FedEx Cup before this week, the 2012 playoff champion said. “After this week, I feel like I have a chance.”
For a while, it looked like it might come down to a playoff between Pan and Snedeker, who were even at 20 under entering Pan’s final hole.
But the 26-year-old from Taiwan ran into big trouble: Pan shanked his tee shot out of bounds off a cart path down the right side of the fairway and needed four shots, including the penalty stroke, to reach the green on the par 4.
Pan said he heard “a couple noises in my head which caused me to hit a bad shot.
“It’s my fault. I can learn something from it,” he said. “I only played one bad hole, which is fine. You know, I’ve still got a lot of golf left.”
With the victory seemingly inevitable at that point, Snedeker sank a 20-foot birdie putt on the 18th to end it, making him the 10th player to win in Greensboro multiple times. His victory here in 2007 was the first of his career, and this time he finished one stroke shy of Henrik Stenson’s tournament record.
U.S. AMATEUR: In Pebble Beach, Calif., Viktor Hovland became the first Norwegian to win the U.S. Amateur, beating UCLA sophomore Devon Bling 6 and 5 to cap a dominant week at Pebble Beach.
Hovland took control of the match by winning four straight holes midway through the morning round of the 36-hole final and managed to scramble back after his rare mistakes to give him the Havemeyer Trophy.
Hovland trailed after only one hole in six rounds of match play as he was in control throughout with his coach at Oklahoma State, Alan Bratton, serving as his caddie.
Norway has little history of success in men’s golf with no one from the country ever winning a PGA Tour event. The most prominent Norwegian player is Suzann Pettersen, who has won two majors among her 15 wins on the LPGA Tour.
Bling, who is from Ridgecrest and about to start his sophomore year at UCLA, lost the match when he missed a long birdie putt on the 31st hole.
Hovland was barely challenged in the match play portion of the event, winning back-to-back matches 7 and 6 in the round of 16 and quarterfinals and never getting pushed to the limit in his six matches. Hovland won 43 of the 104 holes in match play.
LPGA: In Indianapolis, Sung Hyun Park erased a two-shot deficit over the final four holes and birdied the first hole of a playoff with Lizette Salas to win the Indy Women in Tech Championship.
The two-time major champion from South Korea reclaimed the No. 1 ranking in the world with her third LPGA Tour victory of the season and fifth of her career.
Park closed with a 4-under 68 to match Salas at 23-under 265 at Brickyard Crossing.
Salas appeared to be in control until hitting tee shots into the rough on the final two holes. She bogeyed No. 17 to fall into a tie with Park and missed a short birdie putt on No. 18 to close with a 70. In the playoff, the American slid a longer birdie putt just left of the hole.
Park then rolled her 10-foot birdie putt right into the center of the cup.
South Korea’s Amy Yang was third, a shot back after a 69.
CHAMPIONS: In Endicott, N.Y., Bart Bryant (NMSU) made a 25-foot birdie putt on the final hole to win the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open for the second time in six years.
With playing partner Michael Bradley facing a 7-foot birdie putt that he would make, the 55-year-old Bryant rolled in the left-to-right breaking putt for a 7-under 65 and a one-stroke victory.
Bradley, the second-round leader, bogeyed the par-4 15th in a 68.
Also the 2013 winner at En-Joie Golf Club, Bryant made six birdies in a nine-hole stretch from the third to the 11th and had six straight pars before the winning birdie putt on the par-4 18th.
Bryant finished at 16-under 200. The three-time PGA Tour winner’s only senior victories have come at En-Joie, the site of the PGA Tour’s B.C. Open from 1972-2005.
Tom Gillis (67) and Marco Dawson (68) tied for third at 13 under, a stroke ahead of Paul Goydos (65), Kenny Perry (67) and Mark Calcavecchia (67).