Lopez-Chacarra wins LIV Golf-Bangkok
BANGKOK, Thailand – Former top amateur Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra shot a final-round 69 and won the LIV Golf Invitational-Bangkok by three strokes over Patrick Reed on Sunday.
Lopez-Chacarra had a three-round, 19-under total of 197 after the storm-delayed finish on the newly opened Stonehill Golf Club course north of Bangkok.
Reed shot a closing 67 while Paul Casey (65), Richard Bland (68) and Sihwan Kim (68) were tied for third, four shots behind Lopez-Chacarra.
Ex-Oklahoma State player LopezChacarra, who turned professional to play on the LIV series, led after the second round and was among three who led after the first.
The two-time first-team All-American was No. 2 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking before he signed a three-year contract with the Saudi-backed LIV tour.
Lopez-Chacarra opened with a birdie but had back-to-back bogeys on his fourth and fifth holes to pull the field back to him
. But those were his only bogeys of the tournament.
“Obviously I think I played great golf. I hit the ball great all week. I had two bogeys in 54 holes and my goal was to have zero,” he said. “But the course is in great condition so you can go low, but also I think I played really good. More birdies than bogeys. That will make it.”
The tour heads to Saudi Arabia for next week’s LIV Golf Invitational-Jeddah.
PGA Tour Champions
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Steve Stricker followed his plan to perfection Sunday until the final hole, and by then it didn’t matter. He closed with a 3-under 69 for a two-shot victory in the Constellation Furyk & Friends, his fourth PGA Tour Champions title this year.
Staked to a three-shot lead, Stricker played it conservatively at Timuquana Country Club, a Donald Ross design with crowned greens and trouble on all sides.
The objective was to score on the par 5s, and he birdied them all. He also wanted to keep bogeys off his card, and he nearly made it. Leading by three shots, he chunked an 8-iron short of the green, pitched just over the back and made his only bogey of the weekend.
He finished at 14-under 202 in winning for the third time in his last four spots. Harrison Frazar closed with a 65 to finish alone in second, which gets him into the PGA Tour Champions event next week in North Carolina.
Stricker knew winning was entirely up to him if he followed his plan.
“I felt like if I could go around here and not make a bogey today and take care of the par 5s – birdie two or three of them – shoot 3-under par or 4-under par, it was going to take a really special round” to beat him, he said.
Jim Furyk, the tournament host, ran off four straight birdies on the back nine and rallied for a 69 to finish third, his best finish of the year.
Stricker won $300,000 and is a solid No. 3 in the Charles Schwab Cup behind leader Steven Alker, who did not play this week, and Padraig Harrington. Only one tournament remains before the PGA Tour Champions postseason, but it will be longer before Stricker shows up again.
This is the time of the year where he would prefer to be up in a tree stand with a bow during deer season. He set a goal of winning at least twice in his final three events to move up in the standings. The job in hand, he said he would contemplate playing in the Charles Schwab Cup Championship in November.
For now, it puts an amazing wrap on a year that began with Stricker having a health scare that hospitalized him for 11 days in November. His white blood cell spiked, his liver count plunged and inflammation around the heart caused it to pump out of rhythm.
He returned the final week in April, and some six months later, he leads the PGA Tour Champions with four victories this year.
“I didn’t know what to expect coming out this season at all, so it’s been a lot of fun,” Stricker said. “It gave me a different perspective last fall. I’ve said that on a number of occasions and it’s true. I’m blessed to be out here to play and to do the thing I love to do.”
European Tour
MADRID – It took a year longer than he’d hoped for but Jon Rahm is finally a three-time winner of the Spanish Open, matching the achievement of his hero Seve Ballesteros.
There was frustration and disappointment after Rahm finished his home tournament last year when he failed in his first attempt to match the three titles won by the Spanish golfing great.
It was a lot different this time as Rahm raised his putter and gave a hard fist pump after making his second straight birdie to close out a remarkable final round 9-under 62 for a six-shot win at the Club de Campo Villa de Madrid on Sunday.
He finished at 25 under for the week, bettering his own tournament record from 2019 by three shots. Matthieu Pavon of France was second after a 6-under 65.
“My lowest round out here, my lowest score out here. It was pretty much a perfect week,” Rahm said.
A loud “Viva Seve” shout was heard from the crowd that packed the 18th green just as Rahm’s six-foot birdie putt was on its way.
“It was the goal coming in,” the 27year-old Rahm said. “Seve is a great hero of mine and to do something he took his whole career to do in just a few years is quite humbling, I’m not going to lie.
“I understand it might not be the strongest field I play all year, but sometimes these can be the hardest to win,” the sixth-ranked Rahm said. “I’m supposed to win, everybody is betting on me to win, and to come out and play a Sunday like I just did is hard to describe.”