Bryan, Minnesota – We went to the 14th hole of the TPC Twins with Kurt Kitayama in the fairway bunker.
His hole has 192 yards. There was water in front of him. Green and water. He leads two. In the previous pairing, Jake Knapp and Sam Stevens did not disappear.
Kitayama pulls 7 irons, swings, swings… kicks the ball.
Kitayama opened a water on the water that never left the flag. It slams hard in front of the pin, rolls out and lands two feet away. Little bird. Three strokes lead.
“That’s a big shot,” Kitayama said. “The fairway bunker started in 190, to hit me, it was incredible.”
That field-covering situation was one of Kitayama’s second professional PGA Tour wins, who won after winning a 65-under 65 on Sunday to win the 3M Open.
At the age of 23, under 23, he scored a goal against Stevens, who finished the game with 66 points on Sunday.
Kitayama’s second PGA Tour victory came two years after his first time when he won the Bay Hill Arnold Palmer Invitational. It also has a long way to go to extend his season. In the FedEx Cup rankings, he stood out in the regular season Wyndham Championship game. In the next playoff opener, enter the top 70 of the FedEx Cup St. Jude Championship next week, the top 50 enters the BMW Championship and the top 30 of the Tour Championship, while Kitayama has not yet competed.
However, he was successful in Minnesota. He tied for sixth here last year and tied for course records on Saturday (under 60). On his 65th Sunday throw, and over the past two decades, the most-winning PGA Tour Kitayama made 20 birdies over the weekend.
Sunday, the score was low throughout the week, which should have been a gunfight, but some competitors had long disappeared.
In the final pairing, two 54-hole leaders, Akshay Bhatia and Thorbjorn Olesen, struggled. Bhatia shot 75 shots in three of the first four games. Olesen made only two birdies all day and shot 73.
Kitayama, 32, is one of four players to start the game, but Kitayama slowly pulled the game away and maintained momentum after a record round on Saturday. He made the top three birds and turned in at 29-six points.
“I just think I controlled my iron rods…my wedges got me into those positions,” Gitama said. “I grabbed them tightly. I believed that early on and used the shorter holes of the wedge. You know, after 11 shots, you don’t come out that way, and it’s special that way.”
When he reached Dogleg 4 par-4 14 and found the fairway bunker, his lead was two, but the unlikely birdie there pushed his advantage toward three shots, four games.
It turned out that he needed extra mats.
Kitayama performed well in the pins stuffed near the water in the lead of 3 17, but started threes from 65 feet. He reached his 18th tee with a leading Stevens.
Strike 5, 18, was a tricky final test, especially with sudden gusts of wind (up to 25 mph), direct towards the water that works from the tee. While eagles are possible, so are disasters. Joel Dahmen hit two people earlier in the day and ran eight in the water. Chris Gotterup hit the water in three of his three rounds of four rounds. Knapp wanted to have the eagle’s appearance and also hit his drink.
Kitayama pulls 3 wood and ties one safely in the middle. Stevens scored five points and took the club’s lead with a 22-year-old lead, meaning Kitayama needs to win the championship. From 219 yards, he pulled the 5-iron to the right of the green bunker, despite his ball having an awkward position on the downhill.
“When I got there with a lie, I wondered if I could cut it into pieces, I knew it wouldn’t spin, but the wind, and I could be pretty positive,” he said. “So I did make it a little right. I know if I just went on green, it would be rolling out.”
He splashed 17 feet and needed two putts to win. The second one is just a blow.
