Matt Kuchar capped a four-under 68 with a birdie at the final hole on Sunday to win the PGA Tour’s US$6.2 million Memorial by two strokes.
Kuchar led by as many as four strokes on the back nine and his 12-under total of 276 gave him a two-shot triumph over Kevin Chappell of the US.
Chappell closed with a bogey-free round in the Jack Nicklaus-hosted event at Muirfield Village, keeping the pressure on Kuchar with four birdies in his final six holes in a four-under 68 for 278.
Photo: Reuters
Kyle Stanley was third after a 71 for 281.
“This stuff never gets old,” said Kuchar, whose young sons Cameron and Carson were at the 18th to help him celebrate. “To shake Mr Nicklaus’ hand, to win the tournament, that’s pretty great, but to have my family run onto the green, this is as special as it gets.”
Kuchar, winner of the WGC Match Play Championship at Dove Mountain, joined world No. 1 Tiger Woods as the only multiple winners on the PGA Tour this season.
Woods, a four-time winner already this year and a five-time Memorial champion, wrapped up a disappointing final tuneup for the US Open with an even-par 72 that left him on eight-over 296.
His six at the par-three 12th hole was his second triple-bogey of the week.
“It happens,” Woods said. “It happens to us all.”
Woods said he would work on all aspects of his game before the second major of the year.
“You want everything clicking on all cylinders, especially at the US Open, because everything is tested in the US Open,” he said.
However, he will no doubt pay close attention to his putting, after struggling on the greens all week.
“I had bad speed all week,” Woods said. “I thought the greens didn’t look that fast, but they were putting fast. I could never get the speed of them.”
World No. 2 Rory McIlroy was in trouble from Thursday, when he opened with a 78. He fought back to make the cut and also closed out his week with an even-par round that included two birdies and two bogeys for a six-over total of 294.
“I found a couple of little things this weekend,” McIlroy said. “I hit the ball much better today. I actually putted a little better, too ... It’s not that far away.”
Kuchar earned the sixth PGA Tour title of his career, but first Stanley and then Chappell made him work to the end for it.
Stanley had closed within one stroke of Kuchar’s lead after a five-footer for birdie at the ninth, but Kuchar stretched his lead back to three at the par-five 11th — playing as the second easiest hole on the course — with a 14-foot birdie putt as Stanley bogeyed.
A birdie at the 15th gave Kuchar a four-shot lead, but he gave a stroke back with a bogey at 16.
Meanwhile, the steady Chappell was mounting a late challenge, notching his first birdie of the day at 13 and picking up another stroke at the 15th.
Chappell drained a long birdie putt at 17, where Kuchar was in a bunker and had to make a testing four-footer to save par and preserve a two-stroke cushion.
Chappell left himself a short birdie putt at 18, while Kuchar rolled in his 21-footer to put an exclamation point on his round.
“There at the end it got scary,” Kuchar said. “Kevin made a great run and Kyle played well, too.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier