“And I was the cart boy”.
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Russell Knox may have been the lesser-known sibling in his family – sister Diane, a radio presenter on Glasgow’s biggest commercial station, after all, has around 27,000 followers on social media site Twitter compared to his 6,000-odd – but not any more.
China’s brightest young star, he played the PGA Tour China series last year and earned Web.com Tour status, and he was in range to earn a PGA Tour card this year until fading late in the season.
Asked about his amateur days growing up in Inverness, he rubbed his forehead and said, “Oh, this might be hard”.
“He’s obviously playing very well, so he has a great chance to creep up on me or even overtake me”. His amateur career was, by his own admission, fairly modest but he has thrived in the U.S. since making the plunge into the professional ranks in 2007 after completing his studies at Jacksonville University. “I think if a few of the players would have come to the USA and played in college, they would have become better players”.
“He’s playing next week and I’m not, so no matter what happened today, he has a good chance to maybe overtake me next week”, said McIlroy when asked about Willett’s final-round display. Even though Li is only one shot behind, he kept his goal modest.
And he nearly didn’t get in this one. He was in Malaysia and had to scramble to get a Chinese visa, arriving in time for one practice round.
The rest of the week was a blur.
Knox had enough clarity of mind at the head of the leaderboard to opt not to finish the 18th in the gathering gloom on Saturday night and ended up birdieing the hole when he restarted on Sunday morning.
3 – Dustin Johnson had another disappointing final round.
Monday is just the most recent in a string of world No. 1 ranking changes that began back at the PGA Championship in August. I was smaller and curled away and was scared to win. “My game has improved steadily over the last couple of years so winning is definitely closer”.
“I thought about him (Flemming) throughout the day to be honest”.
Willett briefly made it five with a gain on the 16th but back-to-back birdies from Knox put him back in the box seat.
“As a kid I don’t know if I ever would have guessed I would have been on the PGA Tour winning a huge tournament like this”, he said.
5 – Jordan Spieth held on to win the battle of the big guns against Rory McIlroy. He’s going to the Masters. “I know that the final day, a lot of people are going to be making a lot of birdies”.
Jordan Spieth of the USA chips on to the green during the third round of the WGC-HSBC Champions golf tournament in Shanghai on November 7, 2015.
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Russell Knox of Scotland tees off on the sixth hole during the third round of the WGC-HSBC Champions golf tournament in Shanghai, China.
