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LOUISVILLE, Ky. — So, was that the best major championship we’ve seen, or the worst?
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Pardon the hyperbole, but you get the idea.
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Over the next days, golf fans will be hearing plenty of takes about a PGA Championship that provided an undoubtedly major finish at a golf course that offered an undoubtedly minor challenge. Whether one of those facts invalidates the other is up to the individual.
Just to catch up anyone who perhaps spent the weekend in jail, on Sunday afternoon at Valhalla Golf Club, Xander Schauffele won his first major championship in a thrilling Kentucky horse race against a re-energized Bryson DeChambeau and a rebooted Viktor Hovland.
Records of all sorts were broken, including the all-time major championship scoring record versus par with Schauffele’s winning number of 21-under.
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Along the way, the single-round record for lowest score at a major was tied not once but twice, first by Schauffele’s 62 on Thursday and then by Irishman Shane Lowry on Saturday.
In total over the week, the entire field was 214-under-par, which was 254 strokes better than the second-easiest PGA Championship ever, the 1995 edition at Riviera. That stat came from golf statistician extraordinaire Justin Ray and just let it sink in. Valhalla offered many interesting things over the week, but a major championship test was not one of them.
The reason the course rolled over for players was largely out of the tournament’s control. It rained. A lot. And when the sun finally came out over the weekend, we found out Valhalla has some drainage issues because the conditions never firmed up.
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The course setup itself didn’t help, though. The thick Kentucky rough that bordered fairways ended up often helping players by protecting errant shots from water and other hazards. The extreme length of the course did very little to protect scoring because, well, there is no course too long for these guys.
But does any of that matter?
In the end, several of the best golfers in the world battled to a furious and dramatic finish and crowned a worthy champion. A victorious Schauffele took the final step in his career, showing both the game and moxie to overcome the pressures of a major.
Fans witnessed one of the most entertaining finishes in years between some of the game’s most compelling figures.
Xander was in danger of entering the Sergio Garcia zone as he entered his 30s with all the talent but zero major wins — he took care of that.
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Bryson completed his transformation from heel to hero, from carnival trick to golf’s greatest showman, and rightfully had the massive Louisville crowd in the palm of his hand.
Viktor showed what a difference a day makes, nearly winning his first major after telling Sirius/XM host Jason Sobel that his game was in such tatters a week ago that he nearly withdrew from the event.
So what’s the problem?
What was missing is that Schauffele may have answered all the questions he had of himself, but he wasn’t forced to answer many questions from the golf course. DeChambeau gave full credit to Schauffele, but also mentioned that he shot 20-under at a major with his B game.
What makes a major championship, well, major, is its ability to separate the wheat from the chaff by providing a thorough test of both a player’s mettle and his entire golf game.
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“The only thing I would say is that when the conditions are soft like this you can get away with a little bit more,” said Canadian Adam Hadwin, who went to school at the University of Louisville. “You don’t have to be as precise going into the greens.”
With laser rangefinders legal at the PGA Championship, Hadwin said that device might have been all a player needed on the course.
“It was one of those weeks where we’ll just laser the pin and fire at that number,” he said. “We didn’t even need a yardage book on cover yards and stuff because it stopped so quickly. I think the top players might not have had a chance to separate themselves from the pack because great ball-striking might not have been justly rewarded.”
If the tournament needed a saving grace, it came at the 72nd hole when Schauffele’s drive finished in the thick rough bordering the edge of the left fairway bunker. Needing a birdie to win, he took on a great amount of risk with a mighty four-iron lash to set up the winning up-and-down.
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Standing in the sand with his ball far above his feet, choking up on a long iron, the soon-to-be major winner brought a hook, a chunk, or even a shank into play. Schauffele said afterwards that he didn’t want to go to a playoff beginning on the par-5 18th against big Bryson and, just as importantly, that he needed to earn the win.
With one last gamble, he did just that.
These are strange times in the world of men’s professional golf and more than ever the game simply needed a win.
At Valhalla, the best man won over four days, on the course provided, which is all anyone could do. Sometimes — not all the time — that should be enough.
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