Winners ‘Round the World

There were some big happenings around the world in golf this weekend as players follow the sun as 2016 winds down.

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Justin Thomas staged a final round comeback to successfully defend his title at the CIMB Classic.

Thomas was money for the first two rounds (64, 66) and led the tournament until a horrid streak at the turn during the third round where he dropped four strokes to par over three holes. But he found his game to finish with five straight birdies. Even with that spurt he started the final round four shots behind the leader, Anirban Lahiri.

But Lahiri started the fourth round with a bit of trouble himself as he lost his ball in a tree on the third hole and walked off the par five with a devastating quadruple bogey nine. That let Thomas and the field back in.

That was all Thomas needed as he went bogey free to card his second 64 of the tournament and finish three strokes clear of runner up Hideki Matsuyama.

They say there are “horses for courses” and Thomas must like the feed in Malaysia as he broke through for his first PGA Tour win here last year.

“It was obviously a fun day. It couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for my finish yesterday. That was huge for me and put me in a good position to have a chance to win today. I definitely owe a lot of it to that.

I think the main thing right now is that I just played really well this week. I feel like I would have played a lot of courses really well but this place obviously suits my eye, and I think the fact that there’s a lot of wedges and scoring clubs bodes well for me.”

The ladies of the LPGA Tour are in the midst of their second Asian swing and were hosted by the Jian Lake Blue Bay Golf Course on Hainan Island, China for the Blue Bay LPGA.

Few professional sports are as dominated by a current youth movement as is the LPGA and that continued as twenty year old Minjee Lee earned her third career win by holding off Jessica Korda and Ariya Jutanugarn.

Lee and Jutanugarn were tied for the lead as they teed off on the final hole which the long hitting Jutanugarn had birdied the last three days. Still playing without a driver Jutanugarn succumbed to the pressure and pulled her three wood into the water.

Korda needed an eagle to tie Lee but could only manage a birdie as Lee carded her own birdie to win for the second time this year.

“Obviously because I won, I’m very happy right now. But yeah, going into the final round, I knew that it was going to be a good fight today. So yeah, I think yeah, if we kept trading scores, yeah, it was a good fight out there, and I fought to the end.

I knew that I had a good opportunity but I was getting ahead of myself. I knew that either Jess was going to make birdie, was probably going to make birdie, and so I thought to myself, I need to make birdie here. I just put myself in good spots and then yeah, I ended up making birdie. Yeah, just stuck to my game plan.”

Half a world away we saw the most unlikely victory of the weekend. Padraig Harrington is a loyal member of the European Tour who also holds membership on the PGA Tour. It’s not an easy task but it paid off for the affable Irishman as he ended his eight year victory drought on the Euro Tour with a win at the Portugal Masters.

Harrington last won on the PGA Tour at the 2015 Honda Classic and has won in Asia but he has struggled to earn any hardware on his home tour. But the three time major champion channeled vintage Paddy as he chipped and putted his way to a one shot win over Andy Sullivan.

No player works harder tweaking his game than Paddy, some say to his detriment, but it’s good the see the 45 year old get back to the winner’s circle.

I haven’t won yet this year, so I know the year is nearly done, it’s always important to get a win every year, a winning year,” he said.

I tried to be really aggressive. The golf course suited me and I just tried to go after every pin I could and make birdies. I have a pretty good short game that was on form this week. No matter where I hit it, I felt like I could get it up and down.”