While You Were Watching Football: Hudson Swafford Won The American Express At PGA West With A Final Round 64
Sam Greenwood. Getty Images.
If you were watching football instead of the AmEx on Sunday, I do not blame you. What the NFL put together this weekend was absurd. Even golf Twitter king Max Homa said as much
Regardless the show went on in Cali. In a tournament that had a pretty decent field featuring the world's #1 and last year's FedEx Cup champ, the top of the leaderboard was an absolute snoozer. A couple guys named Lee Hodges and Paul Barjon were your co-leaders going into Sunday. Both were recent Korn Ferry Tour grads and 1st time PGA Tour cardholders who came into the week ranked 312th and 313th, respectively. 36 hole leader Patrick Cantlay fizzled on Saturday under tougher conditions with his first round in the 70's in 22 rounds (!) and left the front page of the leaderboard without any big names. The board was packed, but with tons of fringe Tour guys looking for a life-changing W.
Hudson Swafford made his move late on Saturday. He birdied 4 of his last 5 holes (he starting on #10) to put himself in position 3 shots back going into Sunday. Numerous guys moved in and out of the top spot throughout Sunday including well-liked Tour vets Brian Harman and Harold Varner, but it was Swaff that created fireworks on the back 9. 5 birdies, 2 bogeys, and one big eagle on 16 made for some final round theatrics. It was this eagle approach that put him out in front to a lead he would go on to close out.
The par putt on 18 was a cherry on top, and gave him the breathing room he needed to sit back and watch his W comfortably as the final groups came in.
Hudson Swafford is far from a big name on Tour, but he actually has 3 Tour wins now. He earned his Tour card first for the 2014 season and it took until 2017 at this very same event for him to get his first W. He also won early last season at the Corales Puntacana Championship, which helped him to go as far as the BMW Championship in the playoffs last year. The Georgia grad is a great example of a guy who has cashed in a few big spots throughout the course of his career. He's not exactly a model of consistency - he's missed more cuts than he's made in each of the last 3 seasons. But he's proven an ability to win down the stretch on Sunday, having won those 3 events by a combined 4 strokes.
This win moves him from 166th in the world all the way up to 61st, which is the best ranking in his career. He's not far off from that Top 50 cutoff that gets you into so many big time events. It'll be interesting to see if he can ride this wave and parlay it into those positions.
Short week this week as the PGA Tour made the smart play of moving the Farmers Insurance Open up to a Wednesday-Saturday format to avoid the NFL conference championship games. Preview will be coming at ya tomorrow. Congrats to Hudson Swafford and see ya then.