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He was a connoisseur of the close call, an asset lesson to be lost with dignity, and at odds with his putter. Golf gave Tony Finau plenty of reasons to believe it just wasn’t meant to be. Not for him, and not on the PGA TOUR, the toughest tour in the country.
And yet, there was an ember that just wouldn’t die, a stubbornness to believe that despite all the evidence to the contrary – eight finalists and 39 top 10 since his first and only TOUR victory in Puerto Rico, in 2016 – he could do that.
“I have extreme confidence in myself and I have to do it,” Finau said after shooting a 65th final round and defeating Cameron Smith with a par on the first hole of a playoff at THE NORTHERN TRUST at Liberty National under the rain. “This game is difficult as it is. These guys are that good. If you can’t believe you can beat them, man, it’s just an uphill battle, and I just keep believing.
How did he do it? How did the extravagantly talented 31-year-old father bounce back to rise to the FedExCup rankings after so much heartache?
In terms of golf, he simply hit better than anyone from tee to green. Maintenance workers scrambled to restore course playability after nine inches of rain necessitated a finish on Monday, and the course’s smoothness may have further rewarded its distance advantage.
But for Finau, winning the tee-to-green game is not that unusual. What stood out was his work on the greens, where he gained 2,338 shots on the field in the last lap. He was 16 in Strokes Gained: Putting for the week despite entering the week in 114th place in that statistic.
His resilience was harder to measure but perhaps even more important. He entered his playoffs against Smith with a career record 0-3 in sudden death, and some of the losses were gruesome. Falling to Max Homa at the Genesis Invitational this season? Hard.
Losing the Waste Management Phoenix Open last year, when Webb Simpson birdieed the last two to catch him, then birdieed the first hole of the playoffs? Brutal.
Finau had appeared to have both hands on the trophy in Phoenix, and subsequently his eldest son, an aspiring golfer himself, was in tears beside the 18th green. Soon the TOUR took a COVID hiatus, leaving Finau to think about what he could have done differently. On Monday, he called it the toughest loss. “It’s hard to lose,” he said, “and it’s hard to lose in front of the world.”
A steady rhythm of endless questions and analysis followed each close call. Finau changed the putters, changed the grips. He went down to the left, went back to conventional. After hitting a succession of spectacular punches but enjoying little in his third round 68 at Liberty National on Saturday, he said he was going to have a talk with the flatstick.
Instead, given the day off Sunday as Henri poured nine inches of rain down the course, Finau trained on the mat in his hotel room throughout the day.
“I would say I rode for maybe an hour and a half in total,” he said. “Just a little five, ten minutes here and there throughout the day. I haven’t really left my room all day.
“I wouldn’t say I found something,” he added, “but I knew I was saying it right.”
In fact, Finau put in seven of his last nine holes for a back-nine of 30. Some of them, like his birdies on 12 and 16, were close to kick-ins. His eagle at 13 too, trained by a majestic 6 iron which was perhaps the coup of the tournament.
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