Australian Marc Leishman produced a final-round, four-under 68 that concluded with a scrambling par for the ages to take his maiden LIV Golf title at Doral’s Blue Monster course on a gripping final day at LIV Miami.
The veteran pro produced the week’s only bogey-free round when it matter most to post -6 in the clubhouse, and see if either Charl Schwartzel or Sergio Garcia, the only two players on the course with a chance to match, could spoil the party.
And that bogey-free round was in serious peril as he pushed his tee shot at the closing hole and was forced to punch out, leaving himself a full wedge to a back-left pin that had a sea of blue in front of it. Playing to win, he took an aggressive line, drawing the ball into the back corner and then sank a 14-footer to keep his card clean.
Schwartzel, playing the par-5 first as his final hole, needed an eagle to tie but watched his long putt come up short. He cleaned up for birdie, tying the low score of the week with a 66, but it left him one behind on -5.
Now the only man capable of catching Leishman, Garcia’s tee shot followed a similar trajectory to Leishman’s 10 minutes previously, and the fiery Spaniard turned in fury to complain about a distraction at the top of his backswing. But whereas Leishman’s only option was to punch out, it turned out Garcia had a gap.
With $375,000 the difference between a two-way tie for second and solo third, he could’ve opted to lay up and try to make par, but he was playing to win and to win, he needed to thread the gap in the trees, and carry the hazard by a yard or so – he came up a foot short, the ball kicking left and down instead of forwards, and confirming Leishman as the winner.
“I heard the roar, so I figured that — I saw that he laid up with his second, and then obviously hit a decent shot in,” Garcia said of the final hole where he made the decision to go for broke, “and then I heard the roar, so I obviously figured that he made 4. I went for my shot, and unfortunately I was very close to pulling it off.”
It completed a remarkable turnaround for the Aussie who’d finished tied for 51st – of 54 – last time out in Singapore.
“It was pretty disgusting how I played there,” Leishman said of Singapore. “To come back on a golf course like this where there’s trouble around every single corner, I think playing so bad in Singapore helped me today just not letting my guard down at all.”
Tom McKibbin finished tied for 14th after three consecutive one-over 73s, while Graeme McDowell tied for 44th with a closing 78.
36-hole leader Bryson DeChambeau started his final round with a par-5 bogey, and added doubles on the par-3 fourth and par-5 10th to drop out of contention and ultimately finished solo fifth, while Jon Rahm, who’d worked his way to the top of the leaderboard with three early birdies, carded a quadruple bogey-eight on the 17th to slip into a share of ninth at +1.
Leishman’s performance also spearheaded Ripper GC’s push for team glory, where, at +4, they recorded the highest scores of a winning team in LIV history but still finished an amazing eight shots ahead of their nearest challengers, Crushers GC, while the 4Aces were five shots further adrift in third.
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