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Nick Taylor went wire to wire in winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, finishing four strokes ahead of Kevin Streelman and earning his second career PGA Tour victory in the process.
Leading Phil Mickelson by one stroke entering the final round, Taylor used a birdie-birdie-eagle run midway through the opening nine to put distance between himself and Mickelson. He held on through the closing holes in blustery conditions, and finished at 19-under-par 268.
Taylor, a 31-year-old Canadian, had the look of a future star when he turned pro in 2010, having won both the Mark H. McCormack Medal and the Ben Hogan Award for his excellence at the University of Washington.
Though he won the PGA Tour’s Sanderson Farms Championship in 2014, Taylor had spent the bulk of his career on the tour’s periphery, making a solid living but few headlines.
That changed with his performance on the Monterey Peninsula, where he outplayed Mickelson in the final round, denying Mickelson his sixth victory in the event while altering the trajectory of his own career.
“That was amazing,” Taylor said after finishing off a final-round 70. “It was an up-and-down day. I believed I could do it because I’d done it before but to do it that way with Phil will help my confidence going forward.”
On Sunday, with the crowd clearly pulling for Mickelson, Taylor wobbled in the middle of the round when his driver let him down but he never seemed rattled. Even a double bogey at the par-5 14th that cut his lead to two strokes didn’t outwardly shake Taylor, who sealed the tournament with a chip-in birdie at No. 15.
Mickelson, who closed with a 74, posted his second third-place finish in as many weeks after going nearly a year without a top-10 result. If there was a downside for Mickelson, he needed no worse than a two-way tie for second to re-enter the top 50 in the world ranking and qualify for next week’s WGC-Mexico Championship.
RESULTS | MONEY LIST
Ron Green Jr.