American Ryan Moore was able to pull ahead of Brendon de Jonge on the 16th hole on Sunday, and finished with a five-under-par 66 final round to win the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open.
The battle was set from the start of the round, Moore entered the final round tied for the first position with Jonas Blixt and Brendon de Jonge. Blixt opened with a bogey in the first hole and never was able to mount a serious challenge to Moore and De jonge the rest of the way.
Moore took a two-shot lead after he made a birdie in the third hole and De Jonge made bogey—the only blemish his scorecard. But, De Jonge bounced back to even the score at 21-under-par when they made the turn, rising the expectations among the fans of a thrilling back-nine finish.
And they didn’t disappoint.
Both Moore and De Jonge maintained their duel as they matched birdies on the 11th and 13th holes to remain tied at 23-under-par until the par-five 16th hole which proved to be the decisive hole.
Moore was able to reach the edge of the green in two shots, and with his third he pitched-in to within two feet of the hole, allowing for the easy birdie-putt.
De Jonge wasn’t able to match Moore’s birdie effort and they par the remaining holes, giving Moore his second career win. His lone previous win was the 2009 Wyndham Championship in a playoff over fellow Americans Jason Bohn and Kevin Stadler.
If this would have been a thoroughbred horse race, this final round would have been equal to a head-to-head thrilling stretch battle where one horse takes a small lead at the sixteenth-pole and hold on to win at the wire.
The Shriners Hospital Open kicked-off the four-tournament PGA Tour Fall Series and was played at the TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Moore, a 29-year-old Tacoma, Washington native, is a former UNLV standout player that still resides in Las Vegas which made this win a hometown victory for him.
The win helped Moore move up five to a career-high 39th in the Official Golf World Rankings this week.
When he arrived on the tour in 2005, Moore was another golfer that was pointed as the next great star in golf. As an amateur, Moore had just finished an amazing year in 2004 winning the U.S. Amateur, the Western Amateur, the U.S. Amateur Public Links (which he won also in 2002) and the NCAA individual championship.
High expectations were justified.
But after some average years, since 2009, when he got his first PGA Tour win, he has been steadily knocking on the doors of joining the top players in the world in the rankings
Besides this win, in 2012, he has eight Top 10 finishes in 24 tournaments, making the cut in 21 of them. He has also tallied a career-high in a single year earnings of over $2.85 million.
His improvement could be directly related to his change in swing coaches last March. Vancouver native Kendal Yonomoto became Moore’s coach in March and his medicine-ball training has helped improve the shoulder problems he had earlier in the year.
This win could signal Moore's long awaited breakthrough on the PGA Tour. The future looks bright for Moore; he is certainly one player to watch in the near future.