If Erik van Rooyen looked like a man on a mission Sunday at the World Wide Technology Championship, it’s because he was. But it wasn’t so much for himself as for the man whom he calls “my best friend.”
Van Royen rolled in more than 50 feet of putts on his last three holes, capped by a 16-foot eagle putt at the par-5 18th hole at the Tiger Woods-designed El Cardonal at Diamante in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, to steal his second PGA Tour victory by two shots over Matt Kuchar and Camilo Villegas.
Van Rooyen finished birdie-birdie-eagle for a back-nine 28 in a 9-under 63 for a 27-under 261 total. But it wasn’t the extraordinary golf that brought van Rooyen, with his bushy mustache, flat-billed cap, perpetual 5 o’clock shadow and jogger pants, to tears behind the 18th green.
“I was calm because there’s bigger stuff in life than golf,” he said, with his caddie and former University of Minnesota teammate Alex Gaugert at his side. “Look at my ball, and there’s little music notes on there and the initials ‘J.T.’ It’s for Jon Trasamar, my best friend. He’s got melanoma, and he’s not going to make it. Every shot out there today was for him. When you’re playing for something bigger than winning some silly trophy, it puts it into perspective. At the end of the day, whether I won here or whether I lost here, it really did not matter.”
Van Rooyen and Gaugert felt their joy tempered by Trasamar’s fate.
“It dragged me down,” van Rooyen conceded. “When I step onto the golf course, I’ve got a frickin’ job to do. And that’s what it comes down to at the end of the day: Do your job. Now, we can celebrate and cry.”
Van Rooyen and Gaugert plan to fly today to Minneapolis to visit their former teammate early Tuesday morning. They will have quite a story to share.
“I wish I could take all his pain away,” van Rooyen said.
Van Rooyen, 33, had been trending in the right direction during the past few months on both sides of the Atlantic. After a T8 at the European Masters and a T16 at the Irish Open, he posted solid results in three starts on the PGA Tour: T30 at the Fortinet Championship to start the FedEx Cup Fall series, T16 at Sanderson Farms and a T23 at the Shriners Children’s Open.
The victory earns van Rooyen $1.476 million from the $8.2 million purse and a two-year exemption on tour, through 2025. He also earns a spot at Augusta National for the Masters...
He entered the final round Sunday trailing co-leaders Kuchar and Villegas by one stroke and had his job right in front of him as part of the final threesome.
After stumbling with a bogey on the par-5 opening hole, van Rooyen holed a bounce-back birdie at the par-3 third. Another birdie on the outward nine got him into red numbers at the turn but hardly hinted at what was to come.
Van Rooyen birdied his first three holes on the back nine, added another birdie at the par-5 14th before his torrid closing stretch, going 4 under on the final three holes to stun Kuchar, who had led by two strokes with three holes to play but parred his way in.
The victory earns van Rooyen $1.476 million from the $8.2 million purse and a two-year exemption on tour, through 2025. He earns a spot at Augusta National for the Masters, which he has played only twice: a WD in 2020 and a missed cut in 2022. He also can book spots in the year-opening Sentry Tournament of Champions, the Players and the PGA.
Kuchar and Villegas matched final-round 66s to share second place at 25-under 263.
Fortysomethings Kuchar and Villegas were attempting to complete comebacks on the back nine of their careers. Kuchar, 45, a nine-time winner on the PGA Tour, hasn’t won in nearly five years, since the 2019 Sony Open in Hawaii. Villegas, 41, a four-time tour winner, including the 2008 Tour Championship, hasn’t held a trophy in nearly a decade. The Colombian endured a family tragedy three years ago when he and wife, Maria, lost their 22-month-old daughter, Mia, to cancer on her brain and spine.
American Justin Suh, who tied for 10th two weeks earlier at the Zozo Championship in Japan, posted another top-10 result with a solo fourth.
Sweden’s Ludvig Åberg, who began the year playing college golf for Texas Tech and ended it on Europe’s victorious Ryder Cup team, surged into the top 10 with a final-round 64.
Brandt Snedeker withdrew before the third round, citing a rib injury. Snedeker, 42, a nine-time PGA Tour winner who was ranked as high as fourth in the world a decade ago, stood tied for 27th after rounds of 66-70. He had been out for the first five months of the year after surgery last December for a rare condition in his sternum. Snedeker had made five cuts – including the past four – in nine starts in 2023 but with no finish better than T41.
The Mexico event was the second of three consecutive international tournaments. This week’s $6.5 million Butterfield Bermuda Championship (for field, click HERE) precedes the season-ending RSM Classic, an $8.4 million event at Sea Island Resort in coastal Georgia that will conclude the FedEx Cup Fall in which players can lock up top-125 eligibility for next season.
Steve Harmon