DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Collin Morikawa ended a sensational year with five birdies on his last seven holes, finished with a 6-under 66 and won the DP World Tour Championship on Sunday’s Follow up as a top player on the European Tour Dubai.
Winning two trophies in Dubai complements a year the 24-year-old Californian won the British Open and pocketed the crucial putt in the Ryder Cup.
His final stretch allowed him to overtake a fading Rory McIlroy.
McIlroy, who went for back-to-back titles after winning the CJ Cup on the PGA Tour last month, started the final round by one stroke – three over Morikawa – and his game has seemed at its best for some time.
He was still in the lead despite a stunning attack from defending champions Matt Fitzpatrick on the final day when a chip on the green hit the flagstick at the 15th hole and the ball bounced back into a bunker. This resulted in the first of three bogeys in his final four holes when McIlroy finished with a 74 and a tie for sixth place.
Fitzpatrick (66) and Alexander Bjork (70) were tied in second place.
LPGA TOUR
NAPLES, Fla. (AP) – Jin Young Ko faced her toughest opponent at high stakes and performed near-perfect to win the richest award in women’s golf and overtake Nelly Korda for LPGA Player of the Year.
Ko opened with a 25-foot birdie putt and never looked back at the CME Group Tour Championship. She shot 30 on the top nine, finishing the tournament’s low at 9 under 63 for a one-shot win from Nasa Hataoka of Japan.
Having struggled with a left wrist injury since May, Ko was so flawless that she typically hit the last 63 greens at Tiburon Golf Club.
That win brought big booty for the winner, in excess of $ 1.5 million. The 26-year-old South Korean had to win the tournament to win the points-based LPGA Player of the Year, and for the second time in three years Ko has won the award.
Korda’s big year, in which he became Major Champion and Olympic Champion, ended in one fell swoop. The 23-year-old American finished with a 69 and tied in fifth place, six strokes behind.
Ko won the season finale for the second year in a row, and that cost all she had. She started the final lap in a four-way tie for the lead with Korda, Hataoka and Celine Boutier and quickly left everyone behind with four birdies on the first six holes.
The winner finished her 12th career victory with 23 out of 265. She has won five of the last nine tournaments she played on the LPGA Tour and became the LPGA’s first five-time winner since 2016.
PGA TOUR
NS. SIMONS ISLAND, Georgia (AP) – Talor Gooch played too well to be impressed by anything in the finals of the RSM Classic, and it paid off with his first PGA Tour title when he got a 6-under 64 for a. completed a three-shot win at Sea Island.
He played with two guys who have won before. He was pushed by a former Sea Island champion early on. The buzz in the middle of the round was another player flirting at 59.
Gooch shot three birdies in four holes to start the second nine and didn’t let anyone get too close to top off a heavy fall with the ultimate prize. The win brought him to the top of the FedEx Cup standings, 33rd in the world and in April to Augusta National for the Masters.
Gooch set the tournament record set by Kevin Kisner of 22 out of 260 in 2014. He was the seventh player in the event’s 12-year history to make the RSM Classic his first win.
Mackenzie Hughes of Canada, who won the 2016 tournament, rallied from the group ahead of Gooch with four birdies under his final six holes, topped by a 20-foot put on No. 18 for a 62 to at 19 under 263. To be second.
Sebastian Munoz (65) was third and Tyler McCumber (60), Cameron Smith (64), Tom Hoge (67) and Seamus Power (68) were tied in fourth place.
Together with the Masters, Gooch will start next year on Maui for the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Kapalua.
Tiger Woods posts a short video of him swinging a wedge
One swing, two words, and three seconds of video were all it took Tiger Woods to talk everyone about his future on the golf course on Sunday.
Woods hadn’t made a public comment on the injuries in his February 23 car accident in Los Angeles since May, and he didn’t have much to offer on Twitter.
“Making progress” was all he said, accompanied by the video of a gentle swing with a wedge. Woods wore a black compression sleeve on his right leg and a large bucket half full of golf balls on a practice range.
It also had a launch monitor behind it, which measures metrics like distance and ball speed.
Woods was recovering from another back procedure earlier this year when he drove his SUV over a median and it tumbled down a steep hill on a winding, curving road in the Los Angeles suburbs on his way to a television shoot on a golf course. Doctors said he smashed the tibia and fibula bones on his right leg in several places. These were stabilized by a rod in the shin. A combination of screws and pins was used to stabilize additional injuries in the ankle and foot.
In an interview published in Golf Digest on May 27, with whom Woods has a financial deal, he described rehabilitation after that surgery as “more painful than anything I have ever experienced.” He said at the time that his top priority was “going alone”.
He made sure of that with videos on social media last month showing him at junior events on golf courses.
Woods has not played since the PNC Championship with his son Charlie last December. His last full tournament was the Masters a year ago in November.
It wasn’t clear why Woods posted the video on Sunday. In the week after Thanksgiving, he’s hosting the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas.
Woods had 10 surgeries – four on his left knee, five on his lower back, and the last one for crushing injuries from the car crash in February. He will be 46 years old on December 30th.
He won a third US Open in 2008 while participating in a torn ligament in his left knee and a double fatigue fracture, and he returned from fusion surgery on his lower spine in 2017 by winning a fifth Masters in 2019.
His most recent win was the Zozo Championship in Japan in the fall of 2019, earning him 82 for his career on the PGA Tour to tie Sam Snead for the all-time record.