Pádraig Harrington missed out on a ninth Champions Tour title after he was pipped to the post by Jerry Kelly at the SAS Championship.
Teeing off with a three shot lead, Harrington could only post a final round of 71 for a twelve-under total as Kelly shot a 67 to take the title by one on thirteen-under.
There was late drama as Kelly bogeyed the last to drop back into a share of the lead with Harrington before the Dubliner played the 18th. Harrington didn’t take advantage, after a clutch up and down for birdie on the par-5 17th, he amazingly bogeyed the 18th as well to fall a shot shy of a playoff.
Kelly won for the 12th time on the Champions Tour and for the first time since 2022 after battling a wrist injury and rheumatoid arthritis for most of the year.
“This is definitely my favorite win. I mean, there’s no question. It just means so much more. It’s pretty incredible.
“I was diagnosed with lyme and rheumatoid arthritis. All of a sudden I went on a drug that was really not great for my body. I got so weak that I herniated two disks, and one of them’s hooked pretty good at L4 and 5.
“So I’ve had guys going, “You’ve got to take the rest of the year off, you have to have surgery, we can clean that up, no problem, you can come back next year and be strong.”
“And I met Dr. Skaggs in St. Louis when I couldn’t bend over even to putt, hold my arms out in front of me. He’s done a fantastic job of — you know, I’d like to call it holistically, but with him doing less is a little bit more. We got a pop out of my S1 probably, well, it was a week ago Friday. All of a sudden all of my spasms back there went away, just there’s so many exercises I was doing. It was a big shift. And it was so low that nobody could ever feel it up there.
“So I’ve gotten relief from all the spasms that were going on for five months. Hopefully I don’t have to have surgery at all and we can just have that jelly go back in the doughnut somehow.”
Darren Clarke closed with a round of 70 to end his week on three-under-par and in a share of 24th place.
Leave a comment