Smylie Kaufman Comes From Behind To Win in Vegas
- Dan Hauser
- 26 Oct, 2015
Smylie Kaufman played his final round 61 in right around four hours yesterday. It was the two plus hours after his round was over though, that was the most agonizing of the day.
Kaufman posted a four day total of 16-under par and then had to sit and wait as group after group in front of him finished their rounds, all chasing the PGA Tour rookie who was sitting in the clubhouse with the lead.
”I was just hitting it so good the last few days and just wanted to give myself a chance and post a number, and that’s what it came down to,” said Kaufman. ”I dodged a lot of bullets coming down the stretch with guys coming in. … So much more stressful than on the course. So much worse. I felt like I was watching an LSU football game.”
Kaufman entered the day seven shots behind 54-hole leader Brett Stegmaier. Early on in his final round he wasn’t able to get much going. As he headed to the ninth tee box, he found himself still six shots off the lead and jokingly asking his caddie who he thought was going to win.
“I think you can post a number and you can see what happens,” Kaufman’s caddie Aaron Alpern told Kaufman. “He knew better than I did.”
Boy was Alpern right, Kaufman birdied the ninth and then went on to play the back nine in 29. In total, Kaufman played his final 11 holes in 9-under with an eagle and seven birdies.
After Kaufman finished his round he had to wait as Stegmaier, Kevin Na, Patton Kizzire, Cameron Tringale, Jason Bohn and Alex Cejka all finished their rounds. Each one at one point or another had a shot at either tying or passing Kaufman. In the end though, each came up one shot short and in a tie for second.
Na and Stegmaier were the closest to catching Kaufman. Na, coming off a heartbreaking playoff loss last week to Emiliano Grillo in the season-opening event, made a 25-foot birdie putt on the par-5 16th to tie for the lead, but bogeyed the par-3 17th after flubbing a chip, and missed a 15-foot birdie try on 18. Stegmaier, meanwhile, left his birdie putt on 18 from 20 feet short.
While all this was going on, Kaufman found ways to keep himself busy. He visited the TV tower, relaxed with fellow Alabaman Kizzire and hit some balls on the range while the other leaders finished.
”He was keeping me calm, kind of cracking some jokes here and there,” Kaufman said about Kizzire. ”He actually made it a lot easier on me watching the finale.”
Kaufman now becomes the second rookie already to win on Tour during the 2015-2016 season, joining Grillo who won the Frys.com open last week. With the win, he clinches a birth in the Masters as well as the Hyundai Tournament of Champions.
“It’s unbelievable,” Kaufman said. “If you would have told me I had a round at the Masters, if somebody was going to take me out and not completely with the Masters, just to play Augusta National, I would have freaked out. But now that I’m playing the Masters, it’s a joke. It’s unbelievable.”
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About Dan Hauser
As an avid golfer and sports enthusiast, Dan has had a passion for sports starting at a very young age. Dan’s other passion has always been writing. Since the time he could write, he has always enjoyed sharing information with people and telling stories through writing. In middle school he combined his two loves by joining the school newspaper in the sports department.
