FORT WORTH, Texas (Keynote USA) — Davis Riley was practicing a week before Colonial when he received a disturbing call that his older sister had had a seizure at work, leading to the discovery of a tumor in her brain and surgery at the time. next day.
Riley wasn’t even sure then if he could or wanted to play in the Charles Schwab Challenge.
“When you have someone that close to you, all the worst-case scenarios go through your head,” Riley said. “It was certainly a scary feeling to think about how you could lose your sister.”
The family breathed a huge sigh of relief when the surgery was successful and the tumor was no longer cancerous. His parents told her that her sister wanted her to go play.
So Riley did, earning his first individual victory on the PGA Tour after playing in the final group Sunday with Scott Scheffler. Riley shot par 70 to finish at 14-under 266, five shots ahead of the world’s No. 1 player and Keegan Bradley.
After starting the final round with a four-stroke lead, Riley gave up a stroke with a bogey on the second hole when he entered the right gross and then hit the bunker. But that was the closest Scheffler, or anyone else, would get, with wind gusts of 20 mph and higher all day, and with firm greens.
Bradley shot 67 and Scheffler shot 71 on a day when he didn’t birdie until the 13th hole. Collin Morikawa, the only player in the field to finish all four rounds under par, was fourth at 8 under after his closing 68 .
The 27-year-old Riley’s only other victory on the PGA Tour came when he and Nick Hardy won the Zurich Classic team event in New Orleans last year. The Mississippi native’s victory in the historic Colonial, which had been completely restored since last year’s tournament, earned him $1,638,000, the winner’s traditional plaid jacket and a completely restored and modernized 1975 Stingray car.
Riley’s parents were still with her sister and were not there to see her victory. But Hardy, who teed off five hours before the final group, was there to greet him after his final 6-foot par putt.
“We have a special friendship and obviously having our first PGA Tour together was certainly special,” Riley said. “We actually played together the first two days of this week. So there’s definitely a comfort level there. Probably one of the main reasons I got off to a good start.”
The final round was played on the day Grayson Murray’s parents said their 30-year-old son took his own life Saturday, a day after the two-time Tour winner claimed illness when he withdrew from the event with two holes remaining. in his second. round. The family had urged PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan to continue play.
Bradley was 10 under after a 4-foot birdie on the 17th hole, but missed a chance of similar length to save par on the 18th hole after his tee shot and approach ended up in the right gross.
“Probably my best round of the year. Hang in there,” Bradley said. “I felt really comfortable in contention, which isn’t always the case.”
Colonial was his first top 10 since being in a three-way playoff at the Sony Open in January, won by Murray.
Riley made a 27-foot birdie on the 229-yard par-3 No. 4 that is in the middle of the famous “Horrible Horseshoe,” which remains the most difficult three-hole stretch on the course. Scheffler bogeyed again and again on No. 5 after entering the rugged right that parallels the Trinity River.
“It was certainly nice to start with a cushion,” Riley said. “You have the number one player in the world breathing down your neck, no shot advantage is really too comfortable. … I tried to treat today like we both started tied and just tried to win the day.”
When Riley closed the front nine with a 9-foot birdie putt, he was six strokes ahead of Scheffler.
“I just wasn’t able to put as much pressure on Davis as I would have hoped early in the round,” Scheffler said. “He made that bogey on 2 and responded very quickly with a birdie on 4 and didn’t really give us much of a chance today. … It was a well-deserved victory for him.”
Scheffler was playing near his home in Dallas a week after his arrest in the early morning darkness before his second round of the PGA Championship, when police were investigating the death of a pedestrian and arrested (and briefly jailed) Scheffler. for not following traffic instructions.
After tying for eighth at Valhalla, Colonial earned his 11th top-10 finish in Scheffler’s 12 tournaments this year. Before the PGA Championship, he had taken three weeks off for the birth of his first child after back-to-back victories at the Masters and the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head.
It was Scheffler’s third consecutive top-three finish at Colonial, even after an opening 72 that was the first time this season he failed to break par in a first round. That also included his first triple bogey of the season, when his tee shot on the par-3 13th went into the pond in front of the green.
No. 13 was Scheffler’s first birdie on Sunday, but he was still seven shots behind at the time. After Thursday’s triple, he had played 44 consecutive bogey-free holes, including rounds of 65 and 63, through Sunday’s Nos. 4 and 5.
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