Keeping the hammer in Tiger Woods’ back pocket when Justin Rose faced a slippery six-footer on the third-to-last hole proved costly in the end as L.A. GC pipped Jupiter Links to win the first of the best-of-three TGL finals.
The match was tied at four points apiece when Rose stepped up to hit the tickler with Max Homa facing a simple three-footer of his own for birdie. With two holes remaining afterwards, and two hammers remaining, it seemed the perfect opportunity for Woods’ Jupiter Links to ramp up the pressure, but it seemed as though the thought never entered their heads.
Rose’s putt slipped by, and Homa cleaned up to give Jupiter Links a one-point advantage going into the final two holes.
Superb birdies from Tom Kim and Tommy Fleetwood on the penultimate hole left the tie to be decided between Kevin Kisner and Sahith Theegala on the last and an L.A. hammer on the tee meant that overtime would not be possible.
The equation was simple… A Theegala win won the tie for L.A. and any other result gave Jupiter Links first blood.
Theegala’s length advantage proved decisive as he carried the fairway bunker and was able to go at the green in two while Kisner, forced to layup short of it, found the rough and couldn’t get his second layup onto the short grass.
When he ultimately couldn’t hole a birdie chip, L.A. had completed the final-hole reversal and go into Tuesday night’s second match knowing that another win will secure victory, the SoFi Cup, and the $9 million first prize to be shared amongst the team.
“I feel like we got away with one today,” Fleetwood said afterwards.
“They’re a good team. They’re a tough team. I feel like I want to give them a lot of credit for, like, the unit that they are. I was watching them when Kis was over that chip shot on the last, and I was sort of watching them before he hit it and I loved how much it meant to them and how they were as a team.
“So again, I love the opportunity to play guys like that. It means so much to them. It means so much to us. It’s great to go against them like that.
“It was very close tonight. It could have gone either way. We could be stood here one game down very easily.
“Yeah, we’ve had the better of them twice, but we have to focus on tomorrow really. I feel like we wake up tomorrow, we go through our preparation and we get ready to play another match, because like I said, the love the way that they play and how much it means to them.”
“As a team, we were together in this, all of us together, and it was close,” Woods said. “We had our opportunities; they had their opportunities. We could have flipped in the middle of that back nine, and it came down to the last hole. We’ve been there before. We were in a playoff once, and this was damn near there.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, but we have possibly two more matches. We’re not out of this. Even with a loss we’re still not out of it.”
Leave a comment