Day made the eagle putt, and the lead was down to one.
Advertisement
“There was nothing easy about the day – really about the week, for that matter”, Walker said after his round. “Especially coming down the last hole”. That’s just the way it goes.
Walker calmly pumped his fist twice and embraced his caddie Andy Sanders, whom he met at Baltusrol in the 2000 U.S. Amateur when they played a practice round.
“He really put it on me to make a par”, Walker said. “I was ready to go, on edge, because you never knew when you were going to get the text that said, “hey, let’s go play golf”.
J.H.: Yeah we’ve seen Jimmy Walker get hot before and look unstoppable.
The 37-year-old Texan calmly canned a three-foot par putt to cap a wire-to-wire win with steely precision, shooting a final-round 67 to finish on 14-under-par 266. Even with the silver trophy at his side, Walker still had a hard time letting that sink in.
Phil Mickelson won the 2005 PGA Championship when tournament organizers took a gamble on not moving up the Sunday tee times because of rain in the forecast, and it cost them. “Day is a great champion and I wouldn’t expect anything else – eagle at the last”, Walker said after his win.
Jason Day reacts to missing a putt on the 18th.
Padraig Harrington believes his game is in great shape as he turns his attention to Rio after another fine round lifted him to the fringes of the top 10 at the US PGA Championship.
But it ended on a happy note for Walker.
And for the first time since 2011, all four of the year’s Majors had been claimed by first-time winners.
Better yet: It moved him from No. 29 to No. 4 in the Ryder Cup standings, all but assuring him a spot on the team. At the end of third round, he led Day by one and that’s how the final score stayed as both carded 67 each.
Walker began the back nine by holing a 45-foot bunker shot on No. 10 and making a 30-foot birdie putt on No. 11.
The Australian flipped his club in despair as he neared the green, seeing the leaderboard and realizing that cheer behind him was Walker answering with a birdie on 17. And thanks to Day, he needed it.
Sure, Henrik Stenson destroyed old man par at the British Open, but in the other three majors, par for the course was pretty good.
Walker played so well in one of the strangest PGA Championships in recent memory that he led wire to wire. “Obviously I kind of lost it there at the end, but it was a long day and a lot of fun”.
“It’s surreal. I just had not quite played as well as I would have liked to this year”, the world No.48 said.
“I was talking to Emiliano [Grillo] out there, and I said I would much rather be in this position than being 70th and finished already”, Day said.
From surprise winners to stunning missed cuts to trying to figure out when to tell someone they may or may not have broken a rule, the four majors this year certainly had enough to capture even the most casual golf fan’s attention. He was in his mid-30s before he broke the world top 100 but marked himself out as one to watch with five wins in an 18-month period between 2013 and 2015.
Advertisement
For his second shot, he returned to the 2-iron for a near flawless second shot to the green. That at least would allow the chance to finish Sunday evening, though it also meant the champion could finish hours before the last group finished.
