Winner: Francesco Molinari
Around the wider world of golf: David Skinns won the Pinnacle Bank Championship on the Web.com Tour; Tyler McCumber won the Osprey Valley Open on the MacKenzie Tour; Yechun “Carl” Yuan -- an amateur! -- won the Qingdao Championship on the PGA Tour China; and Eun Jeong Seong won the Danielle Downey Credit Union Classic on the Symetra Tour. The Barbasol Championship, the PGA Tour's alternate event, won't finish up until Monday morning; it's airing at 10am ET on GC.
There are so many storylines we could talk about, concerning Tiger and Rory and Jordan and Justin Rose and Xander Schauffele -- just to name a few -- but that would be disrespectfully stupid. There's really only one story.
Francesco Molinari just made history, and he did it in a way that ought to put all of his critics to shame.
Over the weekend, on two days of dramatically different course conditions, Francesco posted two bogey-free rounds of 66-69. That's seven under par... and the winning score was only one shot lower than that. He's won three times (with two runner-ups) in his last six starts, during which he posted weekend scores of 66-68 at the BMW and 65-62 at the Quicken Loans... and he had a grand total of ONE bogey in all six of those weekend rounds.
That's just freaking unbelievable!
In the process, he become the first Italian golfer to win a pro major -- ANY pro major -- and will debut at #6 in the OWGR on Monday. He and his older brother Edoardo -- who won the 2005 US Amateur -- have also won the 2009 World Cup together and were on the victorious 2010 Euro Ryder Cup team. In essence, we watched the Molinaris become Italy's First Family of Golf with Francesco's win on Sunday.
Oh, and Francesco did it while playing in the maelstrom that is a Tiger Woods pairing. Tiger himself praised Francesco's play after the round, noting how he was even working his short game shots around the greens to leave himself easier putts.
All this is to say that we can't even begin to appreciate what Francesco has done yet. But although I am at a loss for words, that won't stop me from giving him the best bilingual Limerick Summary I can come up with.
Molto bene, Francesco—you won!
Turin, Italy’s favorite son
Just took down the best
With a swing that seemed blessed,
Going bogey-free under the gun. The photo came from this page at PGATOUR.com.
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