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“Well played grandpa,” was caddy Jeff Weber’s salute to Davis Love III for winning the Wyndham Championship at Greensboro this morning to become the third oldest USPGA champion in history.
At 51 years and four months, only Sam Snead at 52 years, 10 months, an eight days, and Art Wall at 51 years, seven months, and 10 days, were older.
Snead won this tournament for the eighth time in 1965, and Wall the 1975 Greater Milwaukee Open.
What made Love’s tournament even sweeter was successfully overcoming serious reconstructive foot surgery last April that cost him two months on the sideline in a moonboot.
“Grandpa” finished at 17-under, one shot to the good of Jason Gore, and two shots ahead of Charl Schwartzel, Paul Casey, and Scott Brown who aced the par three third playing in the penultimate pairing with Tiger Woods.
As the entire sporting world was well aware, the former world number one had to win to qualify for the FedExCup play-offs, and was enjoying his best tournament for two years with a 54-hole total of 64 65 68, and even par to the 10th
Then disaster struck.
An out of character shanked chip shot on the 11th that led to a triple bogey ended Woods’ campaign right there, even though he came home strongly with four birdies to finish at 13-under.
But it was a totally different story for Love that catapulted him from 186th in the FedExCup rankings and way out of contention to 75, and he will be on FedExCup duty next week.
When Love won his last PGA tournament in 2008 at the Childrens Miracle Network Classic, that was his 20th career win that gave him automatic full-time exemption on the PGA tour.
That makes today’s success the icing on the cake.
What made this tournament so fascinating were the world rankings of the major contenders.
Love is ranked 613 in the world, Woods 282, Gore 252, Brown 209, Schwartzel 45, and Casey 27, yet there wasn’t a struck match between them.
The final leaderboard on the tough par 70 course:
17-under – Davis Love 111 with 64 66 69 64.
16-under – Jason Gore 66 67 62 69.
15-under – Charl Schwartzel 67 66 66 66.
Paul Casey 66 66 66 67
Scott Brown 66 65 66 68
13-under – Tiger Woods 64 66 68 70