ADELAIDE, Australia Sunday at the Grange Golf Club, Talor Gooch almost lost his 10-point lead from the night before, but he came back and won the first LIV Australia event.
After two rounds of bogey-free 10-under 62, Gooch shot a 1-over 73 to win his first LIV Golf tournament by three strokes over Anirban Lahiri, who was moving quickly. Gooch ended up with a score of 19-under 197 after three rounds.
As the leader of the game, the 31-year-old American started his round on the first hole on Sunday. He made a birdie at the par-3 fifth hole, but his streak of not making a bogey ended at the par-5 seventh.
He lost a shot on the eighth, and then he made a double-bogey on the tenth, which made things even worse. With eight holes to go, his lead over Lahiri, who was moving quickly, was cut to just two strokes.
That was the closest it got. Gooch came back with birdies on the 11th and 13th holes and a par on the par-4 18th hole to win the tournament and $4 million of the $20 million prize pool.
“Golf is just really hard,” said the one-time winner of the PGA Tour. “It’s hard to put back-to-back days together like I did, and it’s even harder to do it three times in a row.”I played pretty well out there. “We don’t want this win to be easy for you,” the golf gods told him.
Lahiri shot a 65 to take second at 16-under, two shots ahead of Cameron Tringale (67), Pat Perez (67), Patrick Reed (65), and Cam Smith (66), who all tied for third at 15-under.
Phil Mickelson tied for 11th place after a 69, which put him at 12-under 204. As was the case in the first two rounds, Mickelson was the clear favorite of the crowd. On a warm day at the Grange, another sold-out crowd of 35,000 cheered him on for most of his round.
Chase Koepka’s ace on the par-3 12th hole was without a doubt the best shot of the day. Several thousand fans lined what was called the “watering hole” and cheered loudly.
On April 22, 2023, in Adelaide, Australia, Captain Cameron Smith of Ripper GC responds to his putt on the first green during the second round of LIV Golf Adelaide at the Grange Golf Club. (AP Photo/Jason O’Brien/LIV Golf). © Provided by The Associated Press – Sports
Fans threw hundreds of plastic cups and bottles at the tee area, which stopped play for a few minutes while guards cleaned it up. This is not something that usually happens at a golf game.
“The roars just kept getting louder and louder and louder,” said Koepka, who finished with a 10-under score after shooting a six-under 66 in the final round. “When it went in, people started throwing beer cans at me. I smelled like beer for the rest of the whole day.”It was a wild and crazy thing to do.”
More than 90,000 people came to the three-day event, making it the most popular of the two-year-old LIV Golf tournaments.
Next weekend, the 14-event season will continue at Singapore’s Sentosa Golf Club.
