Kevin Tway wins Safeway Open for first career PGA Tour victory
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Don Lex (LuckyDuckImages.com)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
The Safeway Open final day is always dramatic and that trend continued on Sunday.
Kevin Tway ended being the winner in Wine County after three playoff holes. The playoff was the second one in the five years the Safeway Open has been coming to Napa.
After Ryan Moore and Tway birdied on the 18th hole and Brandt Snedeker bogeyed the 17th hole and parred the 18th to set up a playoff.
In the second playoff hole Snedeker was eliminated when he parred 18, while Moore and Tway each birdied.
In the third playoff hole at hole number 10 Tway birdied and Moore parred to give Tway his first PGA Tour victory. With the victory Tway is exempt on the PGA Tour through the 2020-21 season to go along with a trip to the Masters next April, and a nifty $1.1M check.
“Yeah, I didn’t think about that until just now,” the 30-year-old Tway explained of all the perks he gets from winning the event. “I’ve always wanted to play the Masters, now it’s actually happening. Yeah, I’m excited. Kapalua, I’ve been there with Dad (Bob Tway) before, but to play for myself, it’s going to be pretty awesome.”
Before the playoff ever happened Moore made six birdies and a bogey was what looked like it initially ruined his chances for a win.
“It was. It wasn’t the start I wanted, but knew it was going to be a tough day,” Moore said of his six birdies on the day. “Just kind of told myself be patient, don’t worry about it too much and let’s grind out some pars early. I knew it was going to die down a little bit towards the second half of the day, so I was like, let’s just fight through this front nine, let’s kind of get what we can out of it and who knows. At least those 16, 17, 18 was going to be kind of scorable and downwind, so be patient to that point. Was able to just put together a really scrappy round of golf really.”
Snedeker entered the day sitting at 16-under and made it 17-under-par for the tournament before bogeying holes 10 through 12 to bring to bring his score back down to 14-under. Later, a birdie on the 16th hole gave him a short lived advantage. It’s a disappointing end to the weekend for Snedeker after leading through three rounds of play.
“Really disappointing,” he said. “Played a really good front nine in tough conditions and made the turn on the back nine and actually drove the ball really well. Had a lot of opportunities, just hit some really poor iron shots, left myself in places you can’t do it. Didn’t make any putts and, you know, that’s — I’m going to look at that one in a few years and know I gave that one away. I had that full control, hit some quality shots when I needed to. It’s done and I didn’t do it. It’s disappointing and it sucks right now, but playing next week, so build on it and kind of take the positives from this week. I played probably 63 holes of pretty damn good golf and nine holes I wish I had back.”
After a fast start Phil Mickelson ended up fizzing out over the weekend and ultimately ended up finishing the tournament in the 17th position. Even though Mickelson fined his round at even he made three straight birdies on the final three holes, which was a nice way to end the week.
“Yeah, it was a nice way to start or end the year, however you look at it,” Mickelson said of his birdies down the stretch.
After playing in the Ryder Cup and this week’s Safeway Open Mickelson will be taking a break that he needs desperately.
“Well, for me it’s important and I’ve made a bit of a mistake this year that I’m going to learn from as far as playing too many events in a row and not being able to recover and be as sharp as I want to be when I do play and that’s something I’ll have to work on in the coming months and years,” Mickelson said of playing a jam packed schedule.
Fred Couples ended the tournament at five-under after a day where he had a 75, 3-over round in the 41st position. Couples said afterwards that the windy conditions made his round tough.
“Yeah, no, it was very — you know, for a while I didn’t think we were going to play and then we played and I didn’t really play,” Couples added on the conditions. “Then I just, you know, I started hitting it and hoping for the best. It’s very difficult. Now it’s pretty nice out, so hopefully the people out here can see some good golf, but it wasn’t in our group, although Lucas played pretty darn good to shoot what he shot, but it was hard. It was blowing, as everyone knows, and crap was everywhere and a firm tricky golf course.”
Tway, Moore, and Snedeker will all be in action again next week as the PGA Tour will head to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the CIMB Classic October 11th-14th at TPC Kuala Lumpur. Golf Channel will have exclusive coverage of the event.
