In all, a spectacular week
Tiger’s return, weather help Honda Classic continue attendance trend.
The rain didn’t come until Monday morning, just another on a long list of wins for the 2018 Honda Classic.
Because Justin Thomas wrapped up his playoff victory over Luke List a few minutes after sundown Sunday night, the tournament didn’t have to worry about a Monday finish, which causes logistical problems even when the weather is right. And because the rain never visited PGA National during tournament week as anything more than a brief sun shower, the golf got in without a hitch and the people came out in record numbers.
Attendance was up 10 percent over last year with a weeklong total of 224,642 spectators out to see Tiger Woods’ return to the Honda for the first time in four years. Not that the numbers wouldn’t have grown without him. They always do, and so has the reputation of the only PGA Tour event left in South Florida now that Doral is a golden memory.
Still, the happy coincidence of Tiger posting the best finish of his latest career comeback was a magnet of metaphysical proportions, and that goes for people who don’t normally follow golf, too. His rounds of 70, 71, 69 and 70 added up to even-par 280 on the demanding Champion course. That was good enough for 12th place and had the 14-time major cham
pion within shouting distance of the lead for much of the weekend.
“It’s amazing to have so many people out here,” Daniel Berger said Friday, when he played with Thomas, the eventual Honda winner and Sergio Garcia, the defending Masters champion, but often saw fans rushing past them to see someone else. “We had a pretty
good group, too, but you go back and see Tiger’s group and he has just thousands of guys.
It’s really fun and really great for the tournament.”
Here’s another way it can get better. The Honda Classic announced in a Monday news release that the tournament’s 2019 dates will fall one week later on the PGA Tour calendar, with Feb. 28-March 3 as
the competitive rounds.
The rest of the 2019 tour schedule won’t be released for months, but the Honda dates
make room for a change that has been talked about at tour headquarters for some time now, a switch to move the World Golf Championship event in Mexico ahead of the Honda instead of immediately following it.
The way it is now, with the tour going from Los Angeles to the Honda to Mexico and back again to Florida, has spurred some top players to skip Palm Beach Gardens for the sheer logistical simplicity of it. Expect that switch to happen, and expect the phenomenon of big-name Honda winners to continue as well.
Since the tournament moved from Mirasol to PGA National in 2007, the list of champions has included Rory McIlroy, Ernie Els, Adam Scott, Padraig Harrington, Y.E. Yang and now Thomas, the 2017 PGA Player of the Year. There’s a combined total of 14 major championships, and 2017 Honda champion Rickie Fowler, still looking for his first major, is as popular and as talented as any name a tournament could want atop its leader board.
Another thing that’s always going for the Honda is the contrast between the brutal Bear Trap, where holes 15-17 chew up the field, and the par-five 18th, a birdie hole.
Thomas and List each birdied No. 18 in regulation Sunday to push each other into a playoff, and JT’s 117-yard wedge to 3 feet will probably be remembered as the shot that actually won him the tournament. It was a wedge approach shot from pretty much the same spot on the Champion’s closing hole that once brought Jack Nicklaus to tears.
The year was 1983 and he was captaining the U.S. Ryder Cup team against Europe at PGA National. The final matches were tight, and so was the team score, until Lanny Wadkins lofted one to tap-in range from the middle of the fairway and earned a tie in his singles match with Jose Maria Canizares. Soon, the Americans were celebrating a 14½-13½ victory and Nicklaus was calling it “a bigger thrill than anything I’ve done in the game of golf.”
“There toward the end,” Jack said, “walking down the fairway with my players, tears were running down my face. I was glad right then nobody wanted to talk to me because I couldn’t get a word out.”
Back in 1983, the Honda Classic was still played in Broward County, at Inverrary Country Club. Nothing special, that course.
It moved all over the place after that, including Eagle Trace out by the Sawgrass Express- way, where there were no buildings or trees or much of anything to deflect the howling winds. One year, Kenny Knox won the tournament there despite shooting an 80 in the third round.
PGA National works so much better than that, and better than most PGA Tour venues around the nation, because it allows the world’s best players to push it a little bit under par but makes them earn every bit of it.
Look at Thomas’ winning efforts in this Honda Classic and at the 2017 PGA Championship, his first major victory. Eight under par for 72 holes in each case, and tons of respect for getting it that low.
“There’s just something about this one,” Thomas said Sunday night after collecting the Honda trophy and jumping to No. 3 in the Official World Golf Rankings. “I was very calm and comfortable those first 14 holes, but that’s the first time I’ve had to play the Bear Trap in that much pressure and it was pretty nerve-wracking.”
Three pars served him well there, with two of them tough saves from the green-side rough. That’s how Honda champions are made, holding their breath, holding their own.