At least one of the TGL’s two league founders will be absent from the four-team playoffs as Boston Common and Jupiter Links are vying with New York Golf Club for the fourth and final playoff berth.
The penultimate week of regular season action saw L.A. take on New York and it proved to be a thrilling affair with Los Angeles overturning a 4-0 deficit with four holes to play before securing an overtime victory.
With Justin Rose and Tommy Fleetwood both unavailable, Tony Finau subbed in for L.A. and took his place alongside Collin Morikawa and Sahith Theegala, but it looked as though New York were going to seal the points as Cameron Young, Rickie Fowler and Matt Fitzpatrick each held lengthy putts in triples to take a healthy lead.
A raking, 28-footer from Theegala on the 12th hole lead to a singles win over Fowler, before the cat was really thrown among the pigeons on the next when Finau, with a hammer thrown and accepted, went on to eagle the par-5 to reduce the deficit to one.
And in the space of three holes, the four-point lead was gone as Morikawa birdied the next and when Theegala and Fowler tied the last, it set up an overtime chip-off that L.A. emerged victorious from, securing their playoff berth in the process of the 5-4 win.
But New York’s defeat was good news for McIlroy and Boston Common, even though they got one point for an overtime loss.
The Boston team of McIlroy, Keegan Bradley and Hideki Matsuyama needed to beat Atlanta Drive’s Justin Thomas, Billy Horschel and Patrick Cantlay, however, if they wanted to move off the foot of the table.
After going one-down early, Boston rallied to take a 2-1 lead by the end of triples play. After Thomas and Bradley halved the first singles hole, Horschel defeated Matsuyama on the next to bring the tie back to all-square before McIlroy and Cantlay squared off.
With the honour on the par-3, Cantlay stuffed his approach in to close range and McIlroy found himself on the fringe some 20 feet away. Atlanta opted to turn up the heat by throwing a hammer which Boston accepted, but McIlroy, feeling that he needed to hole it, got a little aggressive with his chip and it ran five feet past and he missed the comeback putt before conceding and putting Atlanta 4-2 ahead with three holes to go.
Bradley and Thomas halved the next, before Matsuyama and Horschel both hit excellent approach shots to the par-3 14th. On opposite sides of the hole, Horschel’s birdie putt was four inches longer but by holing and then throwing a hammer, he piled the pressure on the Japanese meaning the equation was simple; hole it, or lose. He missed, and they lost.
McIlroy scored a final-hole consolation win over Cantlay, leaving the final scoreline 6-3 in Atlanta’s favour, meaning that Boston now have to beat New York in their final match and overturn the four-hole aggregate deficit they face, but that’s only going to help if Jupiter Links don’t win one of their final two matches, starting with the contest with Shane Lowry’s Bay Golf Club tonight.
“Yeah, I think the big turning point was obviously Patrick hit it in close there on the hole that we played, and then they threw the hammer, and I felt like I had to accept it,” McIlroy said afterwards.
“I just didn’t — I wanted to at least have a chance to tie that hole and give it a good run with the chip. But then getting those two points and going 4-2 up at that point was obviously a big turning point.
“Then Keegan made a great birdie on the next hole, and Hideki hit a great shot into the par-3 and hit a good putt. It just didn’t break to the right like we thought.
“It was tough. We felt like we played pretty good. We hung in there in the triples, and just disappointed to not get the job done.”
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