Scott Stallings: My First PGA Tour Title
Maybe it was my new workout regimen?
Today I won the Greenbrier Classic after a sudden-death play-off and became a PGA Tour Champion. (I'm only the sixth rookie this year to win a PGA Tour title.)
What a wild day. It definitely didn't start out right. For the first nine holes, I was having trouble just finding the fairways. At every hole my caddie kept telling me I could do it -- I had a shot at winning the tournament.
I had more control on the back nine -- I was just grinding it out. But then on No. 17, I had a bad swing, hit a tree and drove it into the water. If I was going to make it into the play-off I needed a birdie on No. 18.
And that was exactly what I did. I sunk a five-footer, signed my scorecard, and literally sprinted back to the tee to do the whole thing over again. (My trainer would have been proud.)
I watched both Bob Estes and and Bill Haas miss their birdie putts. I don't think it even occurred to me that they wouldn't sink those putts. So when I saw they missed, I was a little shocked. That's the moment when I knew I really had a shot at winning this thing. I teed off and tried to visualize doing the exact same thing I had just done. As it turned out, I wound up hitting almost the same shot except this time around I was seven feet from the hole.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to picture the ball going in the hole. I was really tired. It had been such a long week. After I hit the ball, it was all a blur.
Here's what happened:
When I played Transitions this year, I wrote about how my third place finish changed everything. But this is totally different. Winning Greenbrier means I also won 500 FedEx Cup points, boosting my ranking from 88th to 26th. I'm more excited about that than the money. (But obviously the money is a huge bonus -- I earned $1.08 million for finishing first.)
My head is spinning. More coming soon...
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