Was This Adam Long Win The Biggest Upset In PGA Tour History?


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The surprising win Sunday by Adam Long might be the biggest PGA Tour upset surprise that I can remember. Please clue me in if you know of a more shocking head-scratcher. But I don’t believe Long was chosen on any of the DraftKing contests (well, he wasn’t chosen by any of the top-100 finishers in our contest and the overall winner or high-finisher roster usually includes the eventual event winner ).

GolfDigest.com’s Joel Beall submits this.

How about this; this was his first professional win since taking the 2011 Woodcreek Open on the  Hooters Tour. That’s it. Oh, there’s this…

Adam Long missed the cut in all four Web.com Tour Finals events last fall. Had never won in 135 career starts across the Web, Mackenzie, and Latinoamérica circuits. Started the week 205th in the FedEx Cup out of 218 players, and outside the top 400 in world rankings. Not exactly the profile of a legend killer.

And this…

Anyway, Adam was so clutch on the 72nd hole starting with this amazing approach from a dicey sidehill, downhill lie and then jar the winning birdie putt.

Did I say surprising?

Doug Ferguson on PGA.com has the wild but most definitely earned life-changing win deets.

Making his sixth career start on the tour, Long closed with a 7-under 65 on the Stadium Course at PGA West to beat playing partners Phil Mickelson and Adam Hadwin by a stroke.

 

“I got a pretty good read off Phil’s putt,” Long said. “It was one of those putts that you just stand over you just know you’re going to make. And you can’t control that, but when you have that feeling it’s a good one. I’m in pretty disbelief right now. I don’t really know what happened.”

 

Mickelson, the leader after each of the first three rounds, fought putting problems in a 69. His 40-foot birdie try on 18 curled left at the end.

 

“I had a terrible putting day — one of the worst I can recall in a while,” Mickelson said. “Started right on the first hole with a little 4-footer uphill and three-putting that green. And I missed a bunch of short ones on the front and some birdie opportunities, but it felt awful with the putter. I hit a lot of good shots today, but just couldn’t get the ball to go in the hole.”

 

“In some ways it’s been a little bit of a roller-coaster, but it’s been a steady improvement throughout my career,” Long said. ” I’ve played in pretty much most tours around the world that there are and just kind of steadily progressed. It kind of can seem like it came out of nowhere, but my game’s been trending in the right direction for really the last two years now.”

 

Hadwin shot 67, losing a three-stroke lead on the back nine. Plus he nearly holed his bunker shot to force Long to convert his putt.

 

“It’s golf,” Hadwin said. “I made a bunch of putts all week and then honestly I was kind of battling it a little bit swing-wise, didn’t quite have it like I did the first three days. … It just kind of flat-lined on me there in the last few.”

 

The Canadian had his fourth straight top-six finish in the event. He was second in 2017 after a third-round 59 at La Quinta Country Club and tied for third last year.

 

“It was a huge thrill to play with Phil,” Long said. “I looked up to him my whole life and big fan of his and he couldn’t have been greater to me out there and he was awesome to play with, a lot of fun.”

 

Feeling like he probably won the lottery, there’s this…

Maybe the best part for viewers is it occurred during halftime of the Rams/Saints contest, so we all got to witness the magic live. Sometimes the sports gods do smile upon us.