Winners and Losers from the 2015 Greenbrier Classic
It was a first-timer's weekend at the Greenbrier Classic.
A pair of non-winners on the PGA Tour, South Korea's Danny Lee and Canada's David Hearn, reached the second hole of Sunday's sudden-death playoff with a chance to break through.
Lee produced.
The 24-year-old sank a short putt on the 17th green to complete a scrambling par to better Hearn, who was unable to recover from a poor tee shot and made a bogey six. Lee became the ninth player to record his first PGA Tour victory this season and became the third winner in the Greenbrier's six-year history to win in a playoff.
The four-plus rounds of competition provided a generous cadre of winners and losers, and we took a look at both sides of the ledger while compiling a final list. Click through to take a look at what we came up with, and drop a viewpoint or two of your own in the comments section.
Winner: Mister (Danny) Lee
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Twenty-four-year-old South Korean Danny Lee scored his first PGA Tour victory after making par on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff with David Hearn on Sunday, and when CBS analyst Peter Kostis cozied up alongside him for a reaction, the winner was every bit the newbie.
"All I can say is wow," a jubilant Lee told Kostis, after heaving out a relieved sigh. "It's just amazing. It feels amazing. I was so close a lot of times this year. It's wow."
His play under pressure belied his lack of familiarity with big-stage winning.
Lee missed capturing the event outright when his putt on the final hole of regulation stopped less than a foot from going in, but he succeeded on the first hole of the extra session by draining almost an identical putt on the 18th green. He then drove wide left on the par-five 17th, but got back into the fairway on his second shot, reached the green on his third and calmly two-putted to clinch when Hearn made bogey.
Two previous victories had come on the European Tour, including the 2009 Johnnie Walker Classic when he was an 18-year-old amateur and the WNB Golf Classic on the second-tier Web.com tour. Sunday's win also pocketed him a cool $1.206 million, nearly doubling his previous 2015 earnings of $1,262,922.
Loser: Big-Name Hunters
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The British Open is 11 days away, so if viewers dialed up Golf Channel and CBS in search of the usual collection of big names for Sunday afternoon's Greenbrier homestretch, they got an anonymous surprise.
The fourth round began with precisely one of the world's top 20 within four shots and a shared lead in the hands of four men—Americans Jason Bohn (108), Sean O'Hair (145) and Bryce Molder (248), and South Korean Sung Joon Park (265)—whose rankings put them far closer to the likes of Scott Brown and Zac Blair than Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth.
In fact, only Justin Thomas (93) was both in the final four pairings and among the world's top 100, while occupants of the other seven slots in those groups ranged from player No. 158 (Danny Lee) to player No. 350 (Chad Collins). Molder and Collins wound up part of a seven-way tie for sixth, while Bohn and O'Hair were tied for 13th. Park ended tied for 37th and Thomas finished tied for 54th.
The field's highest-ranked player coming in, Bubba Watson, wound up tied for 13th.
Winner: The Tiger Hype Machine
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Gentlemen, start your sound bites.
Following a week of Eldrick-free machinations along the Illinois/Iowa border, the golf world's full hyperbolic consciousness will shift toward a small Scottish town within driving distance of the North Sea.
And after having won British Open championships at the Old Course at St Andrews in 2000 and 2005, Tiger Woods will return there on July 16 to begin this year's event after what was arguably his most successful PGA Tour performance of the 2015 season.
The 14-time major winner's closing 67 on Sunday may have left him well down the leaderboard at the Greenbrier, but the bogey-free 18 holes—his first in 56 competitive rounds—was still enough to prompt forward-looking sentiment in the tournament's post-round media tent.
By the way, though he's not won a major since 2008 and entered Greenbrier week ranked 220th in the world, he's already the No. 13 betting choice at the British, according to Odds Shark.
"I played really well today," Woods said. "This could have been one of those special rounds. It's the best I've hit it in a very long time. I had full control over all clubs. I made some nice strides heading into the British Open. I'll do some good work next week and be ready come Thursday."
Loser: The Justin Thomas Hype Machine
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Here's a concession. If Justin Thomas goes on to win 19 majors, we'll regret this choice.
That said, even the most partisan fan might admit the level of chatter surrounding the 22-year-old when he came off the eighth green was getting to be a bit much for a non-winner of well, anything.
He'd birdied the 234-yard par-three to get to 13-under par for the week, prompting CBS announcers Jim Nantz, Gary McCord and Nick Faldo to step over each other in a quest to be first to welcome him to the game's 20-something elite.
McCord won, insisting, as was the case with 21-year-old dual-major champion Jordan Spieth, that a single victory would provide a superstar-making boost. "He's playing aggressively. He's playing without fear for the consequences," McCord said. "I think, when he gets his first victory, it'll really break it loose. He'll get a lot in a short period of time."
The momentum, as it turns out, will have to wait.
Thomas greeted his ascension with a bogey and double bogey on the next two holes, and after another bogey at No. 13 dropped him four shots off the lead, the winds in the broadcast tower had shifted.
"This is the point in the day when you start talking to yourself, asking why you're not a lawyer or how you could have gotten into the medical field instead," McCord said.
Thomas finished the round with a five-over 75 and ended up tied for 54th.
Winner: Four for the British
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It's a grueling 3,644 miles from White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, the site of the Greenbrier Classic, to St. Andrews, Scotland—site of the 2015 British Open.
But as of Sunday, at least four more guys won't mind making the trip.
Tournament winner Danny Lee and runner-up David Hearn each punched a ticket to the game's most tradition-sopped event thanks to their weekend performances, as did American James Hahn and Englishman Greg Owen, each of whom wound up tied for sixth.
The top four players who finished in the Greenbrier's top 12 and hadn't already earned entrance to the British Open grabbed positions, and one more slot will be available next week at the John Deere Classic.
Jordan Spieth memorably earned his pass to the British by winning the John Deere in 2013.
Loser: Cheesy Holiday Banter
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We'll give the guy credit. Jason Bohn had a spectacular Saturday.
He birdied 10 holes and one-putted 14 of 18 greens en route to a nine-under par 61 that gave him a share of the 54-hole lead and a legitimate chance at a first PGA Tour win.
But it didn't deserve the treatment provided by CBS' Jim Nantz.
The broadcast host and his production team went a holiday step too far when putting together a pre-round package that promised to satisfy any lingering hunger for fireworks, unfortunately headlining the surging Pennsylvanian's exploits with a "Bohn in the USA" graphic.
If he'd been watching, even Bruce Springsteen would have suggested, "Yuck."
Perhaps as queasy as the viewers who saw it, Bohn's final round ended in a pedestrian one-over par 71, which left him tied for 13th.
Winner: Final-Round Drama
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It's not an old tournament, but the Greenbrier already has a tradition.
Each of the five winners prior to 2015 had come off the pace to pick up their trophy, including Stuart Appleby carding a 59 to overcome a seven-shot deficit in 2010, and Ted Potter Jr. (2012) and Jonas Blixt (2013) each rallying to win after entering the final round four shots behind.
Potter won in a playoff and Blixt ended with a two-shot margin.
It was no different this time around, when each of the stakeholders in a four-way Sunday morning tie wound up in also-ran status by the time the final shot was struck. In the end, Danny Lee, who'd been in another four-way logjam one shot behind, won the event on the second hole of a playoff with David Hearn.
2011 tournament winner Scott Stallings was a shot behind before winning in a playoff as well, while Angel Cabrera was two shots off the lead and overcame a final-round 61 by George McNeill to win by two in 2014.
"There's something about this place," CBS analyst Nick Faldo said, referring to three playoffs in the event's now-six-year history. "It always ends in drama."
Loser: Robert Streb's Putter
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A 28-year-old Oklahoman and product of Kansas State University, Robert Streb was an unnoticed commodity laying three shots off the pace heading into the final round. Once he tossed his putter toward his golf bag after making par at Sunday's ninth hole, though, he became a chatter-worthy subject.
The casual fling hit the bag at an awkward angle and snapped the club's head from the shaft, leaving Streb in the unusual position of having to employ a 56-degree wedge as an on-the-greens substitute for the final nine holes. But what seemed a disqualifying novelty became an unlikely asset.
"I meant to toss it right next to the bag, then the bag went flying and I was like, 'uh, oh,'" Streb told CBS after the regulation round. "At that point, the only choice I had was to take out the 56-degree, give it a rip and see what happens."
Streb birdied five holes on the back half of the course to get into a four-way playoff for the championship.
Because the sudden-death sequence is considered an extra round of play, he was able to replace the broken equipment with a back-up putter, but he never got a chance to use it after driving into the green-side rough, chipping to the green and picking his ball up when two competitors—Danny Lee and David Hearn—made birdie.
All quotes are from television broadcasts unless otherwise noted.
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