It was quite a week for Peter Malnati.
It began last Monday when Malnati, in his role as a player director on the PGA Tour Policy Board, was among a group of tour leaders who met with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund in a face-to-face session intended to spur negotiations between the two sides in pro golf’s fractured world.
To say the future of professional golf was being discussed is not necessarily an exaggeration, and Malnati has a direct role in it.
From there, Malnati returned to his role between the ropes. By late Sunday, the 36-year-old Tennessean had emerged from a crowded and constantly moving leaderboard to win the Valspar Championship in Palm Harbor, Florida, his second career victory coming nine years after his only other tour win.
Malnati separated himself with a birdie on the difficult par-3 17th hole in the middle of the Snake Pit stretch run at Innisbrook’s Copperhead course, finishing at 12-under-par 272, two strokes ahead of Cameron Young, who placed runner-up for the seventh time without a win.
“You wonder if you’re ever going to do it again because it’s hard,” said Malnati, whose only previous tour win came at the 2015 Sanderson Farms Championship.
“In the nine years since my last win, it’s gotten a lot harder, too. You look at the level of talent out here, guys coming out when they’re 20 years old and they’re ready to go on this stage, and they’re so good. You just wonder … To have this moment, it just feels so amazing.”
With third-round leader Keith Mitchell falling out of contention early, Malnati and Young endured challenges from Mackenzie Hughes, Chandler Phillips and Xander Schauffele, arriving at the three closing holes tied.
After pulling his approach shot at the par-4 16th hole into deep rough left of the green, Malnati found himself able to drop on the fringe because of his proximity to a sprinkler head. When a tour official granted him the drop, Malnati, who wears a bucket hat and a perpetual smile, asked whether the arbiter was sure, saying, “I mean, this is a really good break for me.”
He saved par there and birdied the 17th to go one up. When Young three-putted the 18th green, Malnati was able to pick up a victory that sends him to the Masters for the first time. He has played just three majors in his career – all missed cuts.
“I told myself I was going to do my best on every shot, and that was what I did,” Malnati said. “I was so nervous coming down the stretch; a lot of those shots, you could kind of see it. The approach into 16 was terrible. You can’t describe; it’s so cool.”
Malnati had made only three cuts in seven starts before last week, with a previous best finish of T9 at the Cognizant Classic three weeks earlier in the Florida Swing opener. Last year, he missed 20 cuts in 35 starts, with only two top-10 results.
One behind on the final hole, Young pulled his tee shot left into trouble. He hit a gap wedge to the edge of the green but came up short again.
“It was just a bad time for a pull,” Young said. “Just a bad time for a bad one.”
Ron Green Jr.