GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA | At the end of an excruciatingly long Sunday that included chasing the dying daylight and long-time leader Max Greyserman, Aaron Rai found himself in the unlikely position of holding the winner’s trophy at the Wyndham Championship.
It wasn’t so much that Rai won – he’s nibbled around the edges enough that his time seemed destined to come – but it was how he won.
Rai’s good fortune was, in large part, a result of Greyserman’s misfortune over the final five holes. Four clear of the field after holing out from the fairway for an eagle at Sedgefield Country Club’s par-4 13th, Greyserman imploded, clearing the path for Rai, whose closing 64 left him at 18-under-par 262.
It was a sudden, dramatic twist of fate for both players in the final event before the FedEx Cup playoffs begin this week. The victory pushed Rai to 25th in the points race and assured him top-50 status this year, thereby qualifying him for the signature events next year.
“A dream come true, truly a dream come true,” said Rai, a 29-year-old Englishman who earned $1.422 million from the $7.9 million purse. “Understanding how difficult it was and how the standard of golf is out here, I’m not sure it has set in.
It was a grueling day that began with 20 players concluding their second rounds, then rolling directly into the final two rounds, a rare three-round day in one.
Technically, the Wyndham Championship did not end Sunday night. Matt Kuchar, playing his 36th hole, elected not to finish due to darkness though both Greyserman and Chad Ramey, his playing companions, did complete play. Kuchar will play the final hole Monday morning.
That won’t change the grinding reality for Greyserman, a tour rookie who seemed in command until one bad swing on the 14th tee set a stunning collapse in motion.
Having holed a 91-yard wedge shot for an eagle with his previous swing, Greyerson blocked his tee shot at the 14th hole and, after taking a hard bounce off a cart path, it wound up out of bounds.
He pulled his second tee shot into the left rough, pitched out into a cross bunker and walked away with an 8 and his four-stroke lead gone.
A bounce-back birdie at the 15th was then wasted by a four-putt double bogey at the par-3 16th.
“[I] played really, really well this week. Played good enough to kind of run away with it. Obviously, stuff happens in golf that sometimes it's not meant to be sometimes,” said Greyserman, who shot 10-under-par 60 in the second round.
“I'm just going to walk away that I played really, really good golf, executed really well. … I had a four-shot lead with five holes to go. If you're doing that in a PGA Tour event, you're doing something exceptionally well, so that's what I'm going to walk away with.”
In the tournament within the tournament, Victor Perez – who made the trip from the Olympics in his native France to play the Wyndham Championship – secured the 70th spot in the FedEx Cup regular-season race, earning the final place in the FedEx St. Jude Championship this week in Memphis, Tennessee.
“I think you're always nervous,” Perez said. “This was probably a little bit closer to like a chance of winning a tournament because you're trying to really stretch as much as you can, whereas usually you're 25th place, you're just trying to improve, but it's not as do or die, which was a little bit more the case today.”
Ron Green Jr.