Justin Rose wins HSBC Champions in stunning comeback over Johnson
— Justin Rose took advantage of a record-tying collapse by Dustin Johnson and rallied from eight shots behind to win the HSBC Champions.
Johnson, the world’s No. 1 player going for his third World Golf Championships title of the year, lost a six-shot lead Sunday. That matched the PGA Tour record for largest blown lead in the final round, most recently by Sergio Garcia at Quail Hollow in 2005, and most famously by Greg Norman in the 1996 Masters.
A one-man show turned into a four-man race, and Rose seized on the surprising opportunity in a wild, wind-blown final round.
He shot 31 on the back nine, getting into the game with birdies on the 13th and 14th, saving par with a 10-foot putt on the 15th, and then taking the lead with a birdie on the reachable par-4 16th and perhaps his best shot of the day into 3 feet on the par-3 17th.
It added to a 5-under 67, and he wound up winning by two shots.
“It’s unbelievable,” Rose said. “We all know the position DJ was in, and I think today was the kind of day that the leader probably didn’t want. Well, you want a six-shot lead any time, but this is the kind of day where that kind of swing is possible.”
Johnson, who made 22 birdies through 54 holes in building his six-shot lead, didn’t make one in the wind-blown final round. His last hope was to made eagle on the par-5 closing hole at Sheshan International, and he smashed his second shot into the wind and over the water. It caught the right edge of the green before tumbling down the slope with enough pace to disappear into the water.
He finally made a putt — for par. He closed with a 77, his worst closing round with the lead since an 82 at Pebble Beach in the 2010 U.S. Open.
“I just could never get anything going and didn’t hole any putts,” Johnson said. “It was pretty simple.”
It was simply shocking.
Rose two-putted from long range on the 18th for par to finish at 14-under 274 and win for the first time since capturing the gold medal at the Olympics last summer in Rio de Janeiro. Rose now has won every year since 2010.
“I was very aware that was slipping away,” he said.
The HSBC Champions sure didn’t look like a tournament where he would keep that streak going, not when he was eight shots behind going into the final round against Johnson, who has been No. 1 in the world since running off three straight victories against strong fields in the spring.
Johnson tied for second with Henrik Stenson (70) and Brooks Koepka (71), who also had their chances.
Stenson used a 4-wood to reach the front of the 16th green and set up a two-putt birdie that tied him with Rose for the lead. But on the 17th, after Rose had made his birdie in the group ahead, Stenson’s ballooned his tee shot into the wind and came up well short and to the right, and he failed to save par.
“That wind was blowing hard,” Stenson said. “On this golf course, if you hit the wrong shot at the wrong time, it’s going to penalize you. Certainly it penalized DJ a number of times today. That’s why he came back to the rest of us. I played pretty strong, and then I hit one bad shot with possible the wrong club on 17. That kind of ended my chances to win the golf tournament.”
Koepka got up-and-down with a tough chip on the par-5 14th to get within one shot of Johnson. But on the next hole, after he and Johnson smashed drivers down the middle of the fairway, both came up well short into plugged lies in the bunker.
Johnson made bogey. Koepka came out to 30 feet on the fringe and three-putted for double bogey, effectively ended his hopes.
“It was blowing straight down for us, and all of a sudden it came in off the right,” Koepka said of the 15th. “That’s why you saw Dustin and myself come up 10 and 15 yards short. It would have been just fine if it didn’t just like that.” Nothing went right for Johnson. He made bogey on No. 1. He drove into the water on the par-5 second and had to scramble for bogey. Still, he made the turn at 15 under and had a three-shot lead, and he was driving it down the middle and long on every shot.