Results

Summary

Brendon Todd cruised to a final round 66 in route to his first career victory, joining Patrick Reed as the only winners this year with two first names. The 28-year-old was firing on all cylinders and executed every shot down the stretch, including a 14-foot putt on the penultimate hole to maintain a two shot lead going into the finishing hole. The story of the weekend in our opinion was Mike Weir, who posted his first top-3 finish since the 2009 AT&T, and first top-10 since the 2010 Bob Hope Classic (back when it was still called the Bob Hope!). The veteran from the Great White North came out absolutely blazing with birdies on four of his first five holes, but was unable to maintain the momentum, and Todd marched flawlessly to the finish while the American people napped on their Sunday afternoon.

#PipingHotTakeaways

1) Although we’ve made a living making Mike Weir jokes over the last year, you’d struggle to find any non-Canadians that were rooting as hard for the Canuck as we were at NLU. Weir’s game has literally been a punchline for years, and with the amount of money he’s made in his career (he just passed $30 million!), it’s astonishing that he didn’t just cash in and just get deep in the wine game while letting the clubs collect dust in the garage. On the podcast this week, we discussed guys who had gone into the wilderness, but have somehow emerged and returned to peak form. The depths to which Weir had fallen seemed to be the point of no return, but he damn near almost won this thing this week. He looked completely rejuvenated while pimp-stepping drives that were missing the fairway, and three woods that were coming up 35 yards short of the flag. You could tell how much this meant to him, and it was cool to see the Canadians on twitter rally around him. He basically locked up his card for 2015 with this paycheck worth three quarters of a million. Below is a shot he hit on Saturday that literally made me jump off the couch. #WeirTheNorth

This #ProTraj from Weir got me jumping off the couch https://t.co/djYDMNb73W



— No Laying Up (@NoLayingUp) May 17, 2014

2) I’ll admit, I don’t know a lot about Brendon Todd. He’s another product of the University of Georgia, and by my count, this is his first ever top-5 finish on the PGA Tour. I respect the guys that grind out their struggles (seriously, peep his 2012), but I don’t think we’re necessarily looking at an American superstar, or an elite player by tour standards. Again, hate to downplay a PGA Tour win (these things are extremely hard to come by), but this is one of the worst courses the guys play all year, and this field was very weak by tour standards. All in all, he’s a fitting winner for an event that is utterly forgettable, in a PGA Tour season that is nothing if not bizarre. Seriously, winners this year include Todd, Steven Bowditch, Matt Every, Matt Jones, Seung-Yul Noh, Scott Stallings, and Kevin Stadler, and a list of non-winners that includes Big Cat, Phil Mickelson, Adam Scott, Henrik Stenson, Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, etc. Regardless, Todd’s play needs to be commended and recognized. I also loved his reaction to making the huge par save on 17 to preserve the two shot lead:

3) Again consistent with all of 2014, the big names faded on the weekend. Martin Kaymer looked poised to make another run, but ran out of steam and didn’t break par on the weekend. It’s hard to fault him considering how difficult this week was for him. I mean, my goodness, did you see how he had to sit on the floor at the airport to charge his phone like the rest of us?!? How was he expected to play golf after that?!? (What am I missing here? Do people really not know that most tour guys fly commercial everywhere, and they also are humans that need to charge their cell phones?)

4) A very confusing week for Gary Woodland. He finished T7 while playing the par-5’s one over par, and did so on a course that doesn’t really reward power as much as many other tour courses do. We’re pointing this out because Woodland is going to put together a week here soon enough, and his putter is going to get hot enough to win one of these things going away. His 2014 campaign has been an absolute model of consistency that we’ve never seen from him. Ignoring his MC in the first event of the season back in October at the Frys.com, he’s finished no worse than T38, meaning he’s essentially finishing in the top 25% of the field every single week. On the podcast this week, I noted I would easily have him as one of my captain’s picks for the Ryder Cup team, and at this point, he’s feeling like a near sure thing.

5) Adam Scott moved to #1 in the world today. I’m just using this as an excuse to post this (from Adam Sarson of course):

How Our Picks Fared

  • Mark Leishman – T3
  • Martin Kaymer – T29
  • Jordan Spieth – T37
  • Jason Dufner – T48
  • Angel Cabrera – T59
  • Martin Flores – T59
  • Jeff Overton – MC
  • Brooks Koepka – MC
  • Robert Streb – MC
  • Pat Perez – DNP (Could we be anymore on this bandwagon? We picked him this week, and he wasn’t even in the field!)

Overall a pretty poor weak. Leishman threatened to continue our hot streak, but didn’t have the firepower to last through the weekend. Kaymer was two back going into the weekend, but ran out of steam. Brendon Todd wasn’t even on our radar this week, so we’re hardly kicking ourselves for not nailing the winner this week.

Oil Spill of the Week (Brought to you by BP)

Our boy Steve Marino gets the double dip this week. Marino made like a Ukranian protester and lit himself on fire on his way to a 79. Greenside in three on the par-4 third hole, he walked away with an 8, including a three putt from 7 feet.

Marino went on to post two more doubles on the front nine, before this triple on the 11th.

NLU Shot Tracker of the Week

This is, without a doubt, the most you’ve seen Marino’s face in 2014. He holed his second shot on the 9th hole on Saturday before his blow up above.

#TourSauce of the Week

We didn’t watch a ton of coverage this weekend, so we don’t really have a #TourSauce. But we couldn’t let this shot from Brendon Todd just slide by without noting it. Ridiculous up and down on the back nine that required him to flip an 8 iron around backwards, and do this:

(GIF courtesy of Adam Sarson)

UPDATE: Sarson has posted his GIF’s of the week and has some great #TourSauce there that we’re now adding.

Spieth with the Follow Through Club Drop:

Louis with the Wayward Drive Directional Point:

Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano with perhaps the club toss of the year here:

Looking Ahead

Back to big boy golf this week, as we head to a ball striker’s paradise in Hogan’s Alley at Colonial. We’re hoping to catch up with our boy David Byrne, who recently played the course and will give us some insight as to how it will play this year. Three out of the next four weeks are some of the best on the PGA Tour, so getcha popcorn ready!