Jason Day has been left to curse his disobedient putter as the Australian came up three shots short of a first PGA Tour victory since May 2023.
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Day finished in third place at -22, one shot behind runner-up Justin Thomas at The American Express in California as Day’s playing partner Sepp Straka registered his third PGA tour win, pocketing the top A$2.6m prize.
The Australian former world number one agonisingly watched mid-range putts burn the edge of the cup on the 13th, 14th, 16th, 17th and 18th holes as he hopes of catching Straka were extinguished.
The Pete Dye Stadium Course shares many similarities to the iconic TPC Sawgrass, which hosts The Players annually, with daunting finishing holes surrounded by water, including an island green at the par 3 17th.
LEADERBOARD: Final scores
The tricky questions posed by the closing stretch kept Day in the hunt, and Straka made his only two bogeys of the week at the 16th and 18th, but Day’s inability to catch fire with the flat stick meant he never got closer on the back nine than three-shot gap he ended the tournament at.
A two shot swing went in Day’s favour at the par 5 16th, which boasts one of golf’s most fearsome bunkers where a played had 13 shots on the holes earlier in the tournament, where the 37-year-old followed up a nice drive with a cracking 3-wood to have a look at eagle, but the putt slid by the cup, while Straka stumbled with his first bogey of the week.
A thrilling finish was on the cards, but Day needed to play a blinder and could not do so.
Earlier in the round, he had a great opportunity to make up ground on the Austrian at the par 4 14th having 87 yards into the green after an excellent drive down the right hand side of the fairway, but three-putted for bogey including a cruel lip out from three feet, four inches when putting for par.
“I feel like I gave myself a lot of opportunities out there, I’m a good putter, so I just didn’t capitalize on the opportunities,” Day said.
“I could tell that something was off when the initial hit of the putts I could hear the putts jumping, so when you hear like kind of, it’s not like a skid, it’s like more of a (makes noise) like that, that’s when it’s difficult to control speed. When it’s jumping around a little bit, it’s difficult to get the correct speed, and then obviously when you don’t have the correct speed, then it’s hard to hole the putts.
“I could probably do a better job of painting a better picture before I hit the shot too, just being able to see the putt go in a little bit better.”
The highlight of the 2015 US PGA champion’s day was a stunning hole-out from the rough beside the ninth green, and another a superb chip set up birdie at the par 11th – which remarkably took 40 minutes to play because of delays as the playing groups banked up.
Day’s chip-in birdie was his third of a blemish free front nine as he stayed in the mix for his eventual top-three finish at the A$14.2m event.
A birdie putt from 17 feet, eight inches cruelly slid by the edge of the cup at the par 3 13th – the hardest hole on the course with water left of the green – as Straka dropped a near eight feet effort for birdie to extend his lead in what felt like a decisive moment.
Day birdied the first hole and then made a string of pars before making his second birdie of the day at the par 5 eighth.
Meanwhile, Davis, who is a two-time winner on the PGA Tour made seven birdies, one bogey and one par in an electric opening nine holes, and his putter was running hot with him gaining 4.321 strokes with the flat stick, better than anyone else in the field at that point.
The Sydneysider unfortunately dropped a shot with a bogey on the 12th hole after failing to get up-and-down from a greenside bunker, and then made bogey at the 14th and finished with a crushing double bogey at the par 4 18th.
Davis blasted his tee shot right and had to reload off the tee at the finishing hole, and he walked into the clubhouse at -16 for the tournament with a three-under final round of 69.
Throughout the rest of the field, there has been highlights a plenty with Norwegian Kris Ventura making a hole-in-one, Ben Griffin topping a shot and then holing out the next shot, and PGA Tour rookie Matthew Riedel holing out for eagle from the fairway.
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