Down by three points with three holes to go, Jupiter Links staged an incredible comeback, highlighted with a Tom Kim hole-in-one on the penultimate hole, to take down Bay GC and leapfrog Shane Lowry’s outfit into the fourth and final playoff berth.
After his disappointment at the Cognizant Classic, Lowry wasn’t in the Bay lineup, as instead, Ludvig Åberg, Wyndham Clark and Min Woo Lee took on Jupiter’s Max Homa, Tom Kim and Kevin Kisner.
Wins on holes one and four saw Bay GC take an early advantage over the fifth-placed team, and as long as they didn’t lose the match outright, they were guaranteed to advance to next week’s semi-finals, but Jupiter struck back to level the match with back-to-back wins on six and seven.
The comeback looked as though it would be short-lived, however, as further wins on eight and nine saw Bay restore their advantage going into singles play.
Homa gave Jupiter Links hope with a win over Åberg on the 10th, but Bay’s putting looked as though it would be the decisive factor as both Lee and Clark holed from outside 15 feet on 11 and 12 respectively, putting them three ahead with three to play.
This forced Jupiter Links to throw their remaining two hammers on the 13 and 14th tees, forcing Bay to accept, and Homa turned the tables by sinking a 10-footer to win and reduce the deficit to the minimum.
Then, with the honour and the gauntlet laid down, Kim stepped up on the tee on 14 and flighted a wedge that landed inches from the hole and bounced six feet past where the spin took hole and the ball screwed back down the slope and dropped in for just the second hole-in-one in TGL’s short history.
Wild jubilation ensued, and when Lee’s response was good but not good enough, Jupiter Links had turned a three-point deficit into a one-point lead in the space of two holes.
TOM KIM MAKES A HOLE-IN-ONE AND JUPITER’S NOT OUT OF IT YET!!! pic.twitter.com/kYJ7GUr4I5
— TGL (@TGL) March 4, 2026
Bay GC still had two hammers at their disposal, and used one on the final tee meaning that they’d still knock Jupiter Links out if Clark could get the better of Kisner on the par-5 ‘Spear’ – a hole where Clark’s power gave him a significant advantage as a good drive could see him comfortably reach the green in two while Kisner would have to play it as a three-shot hole.
And that’s the way it panned out, but after Kisner had laid up to a favourable yardage, Clark pushed his approach, leaving a tricky up-and-down and Kisner wedged to 13 feet, meaning that unless Clark holed his chip shot, Jupiter Links would have a putt for the win.
Clark had been deadly from around the green all evening, but his chip was a little thin and the ball caught the slope beyond the hole and rolled 23 feet past. When he missed the comeback birdie putt, Kisner had the benefit of having two putts for the half on the hole and the win overall, but he only needed one, completing a 9-6 scoreline with Jupiter having been 3-6 down with three to play.
“Yeah, I’ve never been tackled before,” Kim said when asked about the mayhem that followed his ace in which Homa inadvertently knocked over the Korean. “That was one thing. It’s a shot that I’ve hit well before and it’s a shot that I’ve practiced a lot in the stadium. I haven’t made much hole-in-ones in my life, and not a better way to do it than today.”
This means that Jupiter Links will now play top-seeded Boston Common in a repeat of last week’s match that went to overtime, while defending champions Atlanta Drive and L.A. Golf Club will play in the other semi-final in a St Patrick’s Day double-header.
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