On his third night of owning the lead in the Valero Texas Open, Akshay Bhatia had trouble sleeping. His mind raced.
He needed to settle down. He needed to set a goal. He arrived at this: 4-under par on Sunday. That would get him to 19-under for a tournament he had led since his opening-round 63. Nineteen-under, he thought, would be tough to beat. And it would likely get him into the Masters.
As it turns out, it would’ve lost. Denny McCarthy put on a dazzling display of putting on the back nine as Bhatia stacked one quality shot on top of another. Bhatia shot 67. McCarthy shot 63. They finished at 20-under par, nine distant shots from their nearest chaser.
One of them had to win. Bhatia, the improviser and innovator, was that player.
It never looked easy. It wasn’t. Bhatia did what he thought he needed to do, but the back-nine rally from McCarthy was a wildcard. It put him on edge.
“I felt so uncomfortable all day today,” said Bhatia, a creative shot-shaper who works just about every ball he hits. “I got off to a great start and kind of just tried to stick as much as I could to my game plan. But when you see someone charging at you and you’re playing with him, it’s really hard because you feel like you’re just slipping away.”
Bhatia opened his final round with two statement-making birdies, stretching his lead to six. He parred the third, then dripped a 6-foot birdie putt into the heart of the hole at the fourth. Bhatia was 18-under par. He was unflappably locked into his task. Only McCarthy, at 12-under, held the dimmest hope of catching him.
It looked like nothing would matter. The lead felt too great. So did the player who held it.
Bhatia simply never let the stakes crush his focus. He shot a 5-under 67 with the lead and his first Masters invitation in the offing. He flinched once, on the par-4 10th, missing a 6-foot par putt for his only bogey of the round. But he steadied on the par-4 11th with his fourth birdie of the round.
“I knew it was a two-man race,” Bhatia said
Then came the flurry. McCarthy birdied all the way home — eight straight from the 12th hole through the 18th, each hole chipping away at a lead that was six at the turn. After Bhatia missed a 5-foot birdie putt on the low side, he and McCarthy left the 17th green tied.
“The putts he made,” Bhatia said, “I mean, that guy has some guts, and he’s going to win a lot of times out here."
Bhatia and McCarthy birdied the 18th in regulation with 12-foot putts. Both drew the loudest roars of the day.
Both players laid up on the first and only sudden-death playoff hole. Then McCarthy inexplicably dumped his 99-yard wedge shot into the creek that runs along the 18th green. His fifth shot skipped long. Bhatia pitched to 6 feet from 84 yards.
“Let’s go,” Bhatia told himself over the putt to win. “This is kind of your moment.”
He rose to it. When the ball fell, he looked to the sky.
It was Bhatia’s second PGA TOUR victory, but his first in a 72-hole stroke-play start. He won the 2023 Barracuda Championship, an event with a Modified Stableford scoring format held as an Additional Event during The Open Championship. In some respects, his victory at the Valero felt like an affirmation.
“It was just incredible to be able to be in this position,” Bhatia said.
He reminded himself of his good fortune on the cart ride to the tee for the playoff. Four swings later, he’d won 500 FedExCup points and an invitation to Augusta National, where a decade ago he played in the first Drive, Chip & Putt National Finals.
“My mom’s birthday was on April 1, and her wish was to get into the Masters,” Bhatia said. “So I hope I make her proud.”
It wasn’t just her. Bhatia’s fiancé, Presleigh Schultz, met him on the green for a long, tight embrace. It was fitting that Bhatia won the Valero Texas Open, of all tournaments on the schedule. He and Schultz, who’s from Mississippi, met there in 2021. Bhatia messaged her on Instagram when she was a student at Texas A&M. He told her he was playing a golf tournament in San Antonio and invited her to meet him there. She’d never been to a golf tournament before. She went, changing her life and his.
“He believes in himself more than anyone,” said Schultz, who also noted that Bhatia had been telling her all year that they’d be going to the Masters. Even this week.
“I had no doubt,” she said.
There is none now.
Source: PGATour.com
Stephan Jaeger carries three ball markers in his bag. One is for his son Fritz, another for his dog Phil, and a third for his late dad Klaus, who passed away two years ago this month.
Jaeger reached into his bag Sunday morning, as part of a five-way co-lead at the Texas Children’s Houston Open, and pulled out the ball marker for his “Papa Klaus.” It made him smile. It was an extra push to play hard for his dad – who helped introduce him to the game in Germany as an elementary schooler, riding in the cart as his parents and sister played – against a tightly packed leaderboard that included young phenoms Nick Dunlap and Akshay Bhatia, several pros seeking their first TOUR title, and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler – the oddsmakers’ overwhelming favorite into the final round at Memorial Park Golf Course.
Scheffler seemed inevitable as he eyed a third win in as many starts, looking to become the first Tour player since 2017 to do so. After Jaeger two-putted for par on No. 18 Sunday for a final-round 67 and a 12-under 268 total, Scheffler had a 5-footer for birdie to force a playoff. Scheffler missed, and Jaeger earned his first TOUR title at the Texas Children’s Houston Open, one stroke clear of five players: Scheffler, Tony Finau, Alejandro Tosti, Taylor Moore and Thomas Detry.
Scheffler is nearly impossible to beat over a season-long race, Jaeger admitted earlier this week. But anything is possible over 72 holes on the PGA TOUR, especially for a seasoned competitor like Jaeger, a six-time Korn Ferry Tour winner who has focused on becoming a better person in recent years, on and off the golf course. That motivation was sparked in 2022 when his dad passed on March 11, and his son Fritz was conceived that same week. “You lose a life and you gain a life,” Jaeger said Sunday.
With his win in Houston, Jaeger’s career takes on a new life as well. He’s fully exempt on TOUR through 2026 and will compete in his first Masters next month. He’ll forever be known as a PGA Tour winner.
“I couldn't have thought, dreamed up a better week to do it,” Jaeger said Sunday. “Obviously playing (with) Scottie last couple days, he's been on a tear, so to kind of slay the dragon a little bit this week was amazing. He's such a good dude, such a good player; I was just happy to play with him a couple days.”
Jaeger’s career evolution is part physical – he has been diligent in speed training, ranking No. 24 this season in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee (he ranked No. 184 in 2022). It allows him to attack longer holes with more freedom and safeguard against disaster on certain shots like the par-4 17th Sunday – which played 329 yards from the forward tee, water down the entire right side. He hit a “spinny heeler” off the tee that easily cleared the hazard, leading to an easy par (his eighth of nine straight closing pars on a windy Sunday).
His evolution is also very much mental. A previous version of Jaeger, who twice lost his TOUR card before earning 2021 Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year honors and not looking back, was too quick to take a bad round home with him. Struggles would compound into missed cuts, and he found himself in mini-ruts that were difficult to escape.
“If he had bad rounds, he was just so down, so down,” Shelby Jaeger said Sunday. “I call it a golf hangover, and he would have those.”
“There are grumpy golfers out there, and he did, he took it very hard,” added Jaeger’s longtime friend Joel Dahmen (each January, the Jaegers spend a week with the Dahmens in Scottsdale, Arizona, before opening the Tour season in Hawaii.)
“He took it almost personal when he played bad.”
Jaeger’s fiery competitiveness brought plenty of good, including six Korn Ferry Tour titles (in just 118 starts), one off Jason Gore’s record seven.
“When (Jaeger) just gets a whiff of the lead no way can (anybody) catch him.... end of story. I’m not sure the right way to describe it other than having the heart of a champion. 4 (Korn Ferry Tour) wins in under 2 years. That’s crazy good,” posted Keith Mitchell on X, formerly Twitter, in 2018.
Mitchell and Jaeger were high school teammates at the Baylor School in Tennessee (along with Harris English), and Jaeger’s talent was on display from the first day, literally. As the story goes, Jaeger showed up in Chattanooga – jet-lagged, speaking minimal English – and beat his Baylor School teammates across 36 holes at The Honors Course. “It was our first tournament of the year, and I had played that golf course hundreds of times growing up in Chattanooga,” remembered Mitchell. “I think I shot 78-81, maybe even worse. We didn’t know if he was going to shoot 110 or what … and shot 74, and the next round was 68.”
Jaeger traveled from Germany to Tennessee as an exchange student for his junior year of high school. He never really left, staying for his senior year and then playing college golf at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. The Jaegers reside in Chattanooga to this day; they even moved into a new house last week, occupying a large part of their time. After a missed cut at The Players Championship two weeks ago, the clubs stayed packed up in the travel case for nine days, until last Sunday.
A previous version of Jaeger might’ve allowed The Players missed cut to fester – on the heels of back-to-back closing 76s at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, no less. Not the case this week, as a mentally sharpened Jaeger outlasted a contingent of worthy competitors with rounds of 69-66-66-67 at Houston’s beloved public municipal golf venue.
“He’s rock-solid in what he’s doing, he believes in what he’s doing, and it shows off out there,” said Dahmen, who congratulated Jaeger greenside at No. 18 Sunday, as did fellow Tour pros Mark Hubbard and Nate Lashley.
“If you win on the Korn Ferry Tour, you can win on the PGA Tour, and to do it six times, it’s not an accident,” continued Dahmen. “That means that when you get in that position, you know how to win. You’re not afraid of it. He’s not afraid of it, and he showed that today. The drive he hit on 17, over the water and sent it right at it, that’s just what he does now.”
Jaeger had been building toward this moment, and he relished the challenge of playing alongside world No. 1 Scheffler for the final 36 holes at Memorial Park. Scheffler hung tough down the stretch – making birdie at 16 to pull within one, then narrowly missing birdies from 12 and 5 feet on the final two holes. Jaeger’s bogey-free back nine, though, delivered his first Tour title in his 135th start – a memory he’ll cherish forever.
By refusing to bring the result home with him, he earned the ideal result.
“It was tough, and it made him realize golf wasn’t everything,” Shelby Jaeger said of Klaus’ passing. “That was the start of him not taking this so seriously … He’s so much more patient … in all aspects of life. He doesn’t always look like it on the golf course because he’s very fast, but he doesn’t get mad if he has a bad round or a bad day. I think he just knew this was coming eventually, and he was so patient, so patient.
“Something switched after (Klaus’ passing), and it was just like, there is so much more to life.”
Klaus Jaeger would be “rolling over right now happy,” his son said Sunday. In the name of a PGA Tour title, and of the Jaeger name doing good – this week, and perhaps for generations to come.
“This is wild,” Shelby Jaeger said. “We have a son, and I’m just so happy. He has no clue what’s going on, but one day he’s going to know his dad’s awesome.”
Source: PGATour.com
While it may not have been her preferred way to win a professional golf tournament, Nelly Korda ultimately emerged victorious on Sunday at the FIR HILLS SERI PAK Championship, defeating her fellow American Ryann O’Toole in a one-hole playoff after finishing bogey-bogey to take home her 10th career LPGA Tour title and second win of the 2024 LPGA Tour season.
“Honestly, I didn't start feeling nervous until I made that eagle putt (on 14),” said Korda, who shot a 2-under 69 in the final round. “I didn't really know what was going on, how the group behind me was doing. It was so windy I was caught up in trying to control my ball flight. Once I made the eagle, I got maybe a little nervous and kind of got a little ahead of myself and started making some mistakes.
“Interesting last couple of holes. Eagle, bogey, birdie, bogey, bogey. I say this all the time, but I seem to always make it interesting. Just doing normal Nelly things, making it interesting.”
The Bradenton, Fla. native collected her ninth career LPGA Tour victory in late January at the LPGA Drive On Championship at Bradenton Country Club, also winning in a playoff that week over Lydia Ko in just her second start of the year, making Korda the first player to win back-to-back events in playoffs since Inbee Park last did so in 2013.
She’s also the first player to win in back-to-back LPGA Tour starts since Celine Boutier won The Amundi Evian Championship and Women’s Scottish Open last summer, something Korda also did in June 2021 when she captured the Meijer LPGA Classic for Simply Give and took home her first major title the next week at the KPMG Women's PGA Championship at Atlanta Athletic Club. Additionally, Korda is the first American to win two events before the month of April since Stacy Lewis won the HSBC Women’s World Championship and Cognizant Founders Cup in 2013.
But all of those accolades aside, Korda is just grateful to have even had a shot at her 10th LPGA Tour title on Sunday at Palos Verdes Golf Club, especially considering she was 1-over through 18 holes in Southern California.
“I was kind of on the cut line after round one at 1-over, and I just told myself, there is so much golf to be played. The weekend is going to be tough. Just stay in my own little bubble and kind of continuously chip at it,” said Korda, who hadn’t opened with an over-par round on the LPGA Tour since the 2023 AIG Women’s Open at Walton Heath Golf Club. “I didn't get too ahead of myself throughout the 73 holes. That's what I did best around here. It gets tough. The conditions are tough.”
Her win this week makes Korda the 39th different American to reach double-digit victories on the LPGA Tour, and she is now projected to ascend to No. 1 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings for the sixth time in her career, a position she hasn’t held since August 2023.
While most players would give anything to reach both of those milestones at some point in their careers, Korda is a player who just enjoys the thrill of competition and relishes every opportunity she gets to contend for titles against the world’s top talent, not worrying too much about ticking boxes on her professional golf resume.
“I think I paused at eight (wins) for a pretty long time,” said Korda. “Then, in 2022, I got one at the end of the year, and last year was disappointing with no wins. I think it's just golf. You have got to take it as it comes. Everything happens for a reason. I'm always going to put 110% into everything I do, especially with how much I love the game.
“I just think it's so much fun competing. There is nothing better than that adrenaline rush coming down your last couple of holes when you're in the lead. When it comes to wins, obviously, every event that I play in I want to win, but I also love the experiences of playing in these events and learning more about myself.”
But winning an event named for a player like Se Ri Pak, whose incredible LPGA Tour career and global impact on women’s golf still reverberates in the game to this day? Even Korda, who has achieved nearly everything it’s possible to as a professional golfer, considers that to be a pretty special accomplishment, making her win at the FIR HILLS SERI PAK Championship one she’ll likely remember for the rest of her career.
“Actually, this was the first time I got to speak and interact with (Se Ri Pak),” said Korda. “Growing up, she inspired so many around, and me being one of them. She's one of the greatest to ever play the game. To get to meet her and talk to her and win her event is an amazing feeling.”
Source: LPGA.com
Scottie Scheffler was on the move, and the eight carts located around TPC Sawgrass’ practice putting green circled into formation behind him. He was headed to the range to keep loose as his final challengers played the course’s famed finishing hole, hoping for one last long-shot birdie to force a playoff with the tournament’s defending champion.
The ropes that keep spectators at bay had already been removed, so security scrambled to clear a path. Scheffler, with a wedge in hand, looked up when groans arose in the distance. They signified that one threat had been placated. He kept walking to the far end of the range, trying to in vain to find a quiet place to spend the final moments of The Players Championship and prepare for a potential playoff.
Fifteen people quickly gathered behind him, however, including several cameramen, and another two dozen fans crowded behind the chest-high steel barricade guarding the practice area. Scheffler took one brief look at his phone before pulling a ball out of the bag and striking a shot with his wedge. He hit a handful of balls, fittingly flushing one last one before another far-off reaction let Scheffler know that the title was his. He and caddie Ted Scott turned to the crowd for confirmation. One bystander waved his hand across his throat.
Scheffler bent over at the waist and put his hands on his knees as NBC’s Smylie Kaufman waited to conduct the winner’s interview for the broadcast.
“I put up a good fight for four days,” Scheffler said. “That's really all there was.”
If Scheffler looked unbeatable a week earlier, when he seemingly solved his putting struggles and cruised to a five-shot victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, his performance at The Players took his appearance of invincibility to another level.
He won one of golf’s biggest prizes, on one of its most penal courses, despite being hampered by a neck injury for much of the week. His swing speed was sapped, and he had limited ability to rotate freely through the ball. He was forced to rely on his hands, notoriously the least reliable body part for controlling a club travelling in excess of 100 mph. With his body not operating at its full potential, this win was a testament to Scheffler’s toughness, his athleticism and his creativity.
Despite the injury, Scheffler authored an unprecedented performance in the 50-year history of The Players. Not only did he finish atop a leaderboard containing many of the best players in the world, but Scheffler tied tournament records by shooting 64 on Sunday to overcome a five-shot deficit. He equaled the lowest final round by a Players winner and the largest fourth-round comeback at TPC Sawgrass. That allowed him to become the tournament’s first back-to-back winner in five decades.
The neck injury that arrived unexpectedly early in his second round made it painful even to hit chip shots. It was on his third hole Friday morning that he called over a PGA Tour rules official to ask about receiving medical care on the course. Hitting a 90-yard wedge shot on that hole was so painful that he questioned whether he could continue.
“I didn't really know if I was going to be able to swing,” he said. He received on-course massage and manipulation from physiotherapist Marnus Marais before hitting his tee shots on the 14th, 15th and 16th holes, and immediately after completing his second round.
Ted Scott, Scheffler's caddie, told his wife that he was uncertain if Scheffler could complete the tournament.
“It was kind of miraculous that he could even get it around,” said Scott. “It just shows you what tenacity, resilience, whatever fancy words that you want to use to describe Scottie Scheffler.”
Scheffler had to take extra club on his approach shots because he couldn’t swing at full speed, and his average driving distance dropped more than 20 yards between the first and second rounds. Scheffler said he was resigned to “slapping it around” in the second and third rounds. He was hit by a wave of pain each time he took the club back.
And yet, an injured Scheffler was still the best ball-striker at TPC Sawgrass. He led the field in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, SG: Off-the-Tee and Driving Accuracy, while also ranking in the top 10 of Greens in Regulation (T3) and SG: Approach-the-Green (7th).
"He was getting frustrated. He couldn't hit the shots that he wanted to hit," Scott said. "So that goes to show you how tough he is. He couldn't move. He was hurting. He was in pain."
Randy Smith, Scheffler’s longtime swing coach, watched the win from afar after leaving TPC Sawgrass earlier in the week. He saw the same tenacity that Scheffler has displayed since he was 7 years old.
“He just wanted to wear you out,” Smith said. “You call it a will to win … but he tends to take it a little bit further than most players I’ve seen.”
This latest victory was reminiscent of Scheffler’s high school days, when he won a Texas state championship while wearing a walking boot. He also played basketball so selflessly and wholeheartedly at Highland Park that the Scots’ basketball coach, David Piehler, had to temper Scheffler’s eagerness to take a charge in order to help the team.
“I had to pull him aside a few times and say, ‘If you see a big guy coming down the lane, you step aside,’” Piehler said. “He was unconcerned with his well-being. … My biggest fear was that he’d jeopardize his golf career.”
This result at TPC Sawgrass seemed inevitable, but Scheffler took an unexpected route to victory. After cruising to a five-shot win the previous week at Bay Hill, Scheffler shot a first-round 67 at TPC Sawgrass. When he birdied his first hole Friday, he seemed unstoppable. Then his neck pain began, and the week took a turn.
“Looking up to see the line on my putt was pretty difficult,” Scheffler said. “It was hard to hit putts because right when I turned my head to look at the hole my brain's sending pain signals … to my brain. It's not easy to focus on making a putt when you're in pain.
“I figured as long as I could get through the round on Friday, Marnus did a good job kind of getting me going for Saturday. I felt a little bit better, like I said, and then Sunday, today, I felt pretty good overall.”
Three consecutive birdies to close his third round put Scheffler within striking distance, five shots behind leader Xander Schauffele. Scheffler parred his first three holes Sunday before holing out from 92 yards for eagle on No. 4. He birdied the next hole, as well, and closed his front nine with two more. He missed a 12-footer for birdie on No. 10 but added another pair of birdies on the next two holes.
Wyndham Clark, who played alongside Schauffele in Sunday’s final group, said he laughed when he looked at a leaderboard for the first time on the back nine and saw Scheffler’s name on top.
“I said, ‘Yeah, of course.’ I mean, he's the best player in the world,” said Clark, the reigning U.S. Open champion who won earlier this year at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Scheffler’s birdie at 12 tied him with Schauffele for the lead at 19-under par. Scheffler made just one more birdie – getting up and down from a bunker on the par-5 16th – but it proved to be enough after Schauffele, Brian Harman and Wyndham Clark missed their opportunities to tie on the closing holes.
That trio tied for second at 19-under par, one shot behind Scheffler.
“It’s just another week,” said Schauffele, a reference to Scheffler’s continued success.
The victory is Scheffler’s eighth in the past 25 months, a haul that includes the Masters and two PLAYERS titles. He has been the No. 1 player in the world for the majority of that span and is the first player since Tiger Woods to win the PGA TOUR’s Player of the Year Award in consecutive seasons.
Scheffler has finished in the top 10 in nearly two-thirds of his tournaments since the start of the 2022 season (34 of 55, 62%). Last year, his 17 top-10s were the most on TOUR since Vijay Singh in 2005. And he’s been outside the top-10 just once in seven starts in 2024, including these back-to-back wins. The only hardship Scheffler has seemed to suffer on the course in that span were the putting struggles that hampered him last year. But he enlisted noted putting instructor Phil Kenyon last fall and switched to a mallet putter last week at Bay Hill. He also gained strokes on the green (+1.25) this week, but this victory isn’t about the numbers.
“He played with what he had,” said Smith, “and he knows he didn’t have anything but his hands and his creativity to get through it.”
Those hands were on display one last time at TPC Sawgrass when Scheffler first saw his wife, Meredith, after his victory was official. He raised his arms straight in the air as he rode in the passenger seat of a golf cart. Meredith, who is due with the couple’s first child next month, ran toward her husband in a scene that has become rather familiar over the past two years.
The Schefflers have a lot to celebrate, and more to come.
Source: PGATour.com
