The Cognizant Classic

Hometown favorites and world No. 3 Brooks Koepka and No. 9 Rickie Fowler were in the clubhouse at 8-under. If Mitchell misses his putt, he joins Koepka and Fowler in a playoff. If he makes, he wins. Mitchell draws back his putter …

“I think I might have early-looked it,” Mitchell said. “It looked good so early, I kind of stepped it too soon.”

There was a reason Mitchell started walking toward the hole. He knew he had made it. He knew he had realized his dream of winning on the PGA TOUR. “It was the best putt I’ve ever hit under the circumstances, hands down,” Mitchell said, “and just to have it fall is too cool.”

In a sense, this putt was a year in the making. Not on his part. On the part of PGA National.

As soon as last year’s Honda Classic ended with Justin Thomas winning in a playoff, PGA National Resort met the challenge: new greens.

The Champion was shut down last summer for four months to make way for the new greens. It’s not easy for a resort to close its most popular course for that long, but PGA National management, led by Greg “Coach” Saunders, delivered the dream.

The course reopened, and the rest was up to Mother Nature and PGA National’s superb agronomy staff, under the direction of Jeremiah Lockhart, Director of Agronomy.

Mission accomplished.

“They are better,” Koepka said. “Much better. This golf course is obviously a lot better than years past with redoing the greens.”

Despite the new, more consistent greens and calm conditions, par didn’t take a beating at this year’s Honda Classic. The leader was at 6-under after each of the first two rounds, 7-under after 54 holes and Mitchell’s winning score was 9-under. The average score in the previous 12 Honda Classics held on The Champion: 8.8-under.

“I’ve always loved this tournament,” said 2017 Honda Classic champion Fowler. “I love the golf course. It’s a true test of golf. You can’t fake it around here. If you’re a little off, it’s going to tear you apart.”

Ryan Palmer became the fourth player to shoot a 29 when he did so on the front nine Sunday. But he could only manage 1-under on the back nine, and his 63 left him two shots behind Mitchell.

The average score of 71.02 on the par-70 layout left The Champion as the second-toughest on the PGA TOUR in the 24 courses used this wraparound season. “The golf course still held up,” said Palmer, who lost in a playoff here in 2014. “The scores are still not that low.”

The Bear Trap lost some of its bite due to the lack of wind until Sunday. The 15th and 17th holes — usually among the toughest par-3s in professional golf — played to averages of 3.17 and 3.09, respectively.

The drama certainly ramped Sunday as Koepka and Fowler thrilled the hometown fans and 56-year-old Vijay Singh tried to become the oldest player to win a PGA TOUR event.

“It was good for the fans,” Koepka said. “They got what they wanted, a good tournament, two of the bigger names coming down the stretch and having a chance to win. That’s what this golf course will do, really bring out some of the best players.”

– By Craig Dolch, Golf Writer and ESPN Commentator

Justin Thomas, the reigning PGA TOUR Player of the Year and at No. 4 the highest-ranked player in the field, birdied the first extra hole to beat Luke List and put a fitting exclamation point on perhaps the most memorable Honda Classic held at PGA National.

When it was over, Thomas looked like a fighter who had just gone 15 rounds instead of a golfer who had played 19 holes. The Champion course, with its famed Bear Trap showing its fangs, can do that to one of the world’s best golfers.

“This was a hard win, it was,” Thomas said. “There were a lot of great players that were up around the lead or even tied for the lead at one point, and it’s a place where you can be seven, eight back, and you have a chance to win because you don’t know what’s going to happen.

“Just something about this one. I was very calm and comfortable those first 14 holes, and that’s the first time I’ve had to play The Bear Trap in that much pressure, and it was pretty nerve-wracking. It felt great to get it done this week.”

Funny thing is, Thomas’ victory won’t be the storyline remembered most by a record-setting crowd of more than 220,000 who showed up at PGA National Resort or by the millions who watched the CBS and Golf Channel telecast.

That would be the person responsible for those record crowds and the superb TV ratings: Tiger Woods.

Playing in the Honda for the first time since 2014, and in only his fourth PGA TOUR event since 2015 because of back surgeries, Woods put on quite a show on a difficult Champion course that was made even tougher by dry, windy conditions. Woods broke 70 in a PGA TOUR event for the first time in 917 days to move onto the leader board, thanks to Saturday’s 69. With four more birdies Sunday, Woods stepped to the 15th tee tied for sixth place, just four shots out of the lead.

Alas, Woods joined the list of star players who have been eaten alive by Bear Trap (holes 15, 16 and 17). He hit it into the water at the par3 15th for a double bogey and three-putted the 16th for a bogey — matching the same mistakes he made during Friday’s round of 70.

Woods finished in 12th place at even-par 280, but he was undone by the three-hole stretch named after the legend Jack Nicklaus that Woods has been associated with for all of his professional career.

Woods was 8-over on The Bear Trap for the week and eight-under on the other 15 holes. Had Woods played The Bear Trap in even par — no easy feat — he would have finished at 8-under.

It took 8-under to make the playoff. Do the math.

“I had a shot at it,” Woods said. “I was right there. Unfortunately, I didn’t play the last few holes well the last couple days. Might have been a different outcome.”

When’s the last time Woods left a golf course thinking he had a chance to win if he had minimized his mistakes? In 2013.

“It felt good,” Woods said. “I thought I might be able to sneak into a playoff, but gave myself a chance. This is a course that exposes you if you’re not hitting the ball well.”

Woods hit the ball so well he actually led the field in proximity to the hole. He also hit more than half his fairways after averaging five a round in his two previous starts this year.

“I’m surprised at how well Tiger played,” Nicklaus said. “I thought he had a fantastic week. Health-wise, he seems to be perfect. If he’s healthy, he’ll play as well as he ever did.”

Wood showed that at 42 he remains the most popular athlete in sports. His galleries over the weekend dwarfed the number of people watching the final groups.

Thomas, who joined an illustrious list of Honda champions at PGA National that includes Rickie Fowler, Adam Scott, Rory McIlroy, Ernie Els and Padraig Harrington, said he had no problems with a smaller gallery than Woods.

“It’s so weird,” Thomas said. “It was a good gallery, but it wasn’t anything remotely close to Tiger’s. But he fully deserves that and he is the needle. He’s the reason why the attendance this week was as high as it was. They weren’t coming out here to watch Luke List and Justin Thomas. They were coming out here to watch Tiger, so I don’t blame them. I’d go watch him, too, instead of me. To be honest, I don’t care. I’m sitting with the trophy, so I’m fine with it.”

– By Craig Dolch, Golf Writer and ESPN Commentator

Fowler started the day with a four-shot lead, pushed it to five, then saw it almost disappear until he made three birdie putts totaling 91 feet on the 8th, 12th and 13th holes. Fowler re-built his lead to five, finishing with two bogeys that only blemished his final round of 1-over 71.

“My putter saved me,” said Fowler, who lives 10 miles from PGA National in Jupiter. “Those putts on 8, 12 and 13 … if I don’t make those, I’ve got a pretty tight race.”

Fowler easily drew the largest galleries during a week when another record crowd of more than 200,000 flocked to PGA National. And he put on a show.

It marked the first time in five tries that Fowler converted a 54-hole lead on the PGA Tour. Fowler still hasn’t broken par in those situations, but that mattered little as he earned his fourth win in 179 starts on tour.

“It’s nice to get the goose egg off that stat,” Fowler said. “It was tough out there. I saw Gary was making a late run and I just had to hold on. I would have liked to have had a cleaner card today and played a little bit better. But I got the job done.”

Fowler started the week ranked 14th in the world, but the victory moved back into the top 10 in the world rankings (at No. 9). Fowler’s victory continued a trend where the Champion Course usually identifies the top players.

Adam Scott was ranked 19th in the world last year when he beat Sergio Garcia by a shot. Of the 11 winners since The Honda Classic has been held at the Jack Nicklaus-designed course at PGA National, five have either won a major or would go on to win a major (Ernie Els, Y.E. Yang, Rory McIlroy, Padraig Harrington, and Scott).

The Honda field got a break when more than 2½ inches of rain fell during the Wednesday pro-am, softening the course and forcing PGA TOUR rules officials to play preferred lies in the first two rounds even though there were calm conditions. As a result, the course played to a stroke average of almost its par of 70 during the first 54 holes.

But when the wind shifted and intensified in the final round, The Champion showed its fangs, especially The Bear Trap (holes 15-to-17). Sunday’s scoring average was almost two shots higher (71.84).

Fowler had only three bogeys in the first three rounds, but added three bogeys and a double bogey on Sunday. Fortunately for him, the rest of the field also struggled as only two players shot lower than a 68. “This golf course, without wind, it only gives you a little bit of wiggle room,” Fowler said. “Once there is wind and it starts to play a lot tougher, if you miss your window just by a degree, good luck.

“You’ve got to be pretty on point. Luckily, I was enough but there were definitely some areas that were a little off. It could have been a little bit more of I guess a simpler round. We decided to throw some bogeys and a double in there.”

One way to make up for a so-so ball-striking round is to get red-hot on The Champion’s greens. Fowler rolled in 134 feet of putts in the final round after averaging 80.3 feet in the first three rounds. “He made every putt that mattered this week, and that was the difference,” Fowler’s caddie, Joe Skovron, said.

The Bear Trap inflicted its usual damage, with more than 70 balls going into the water on the three-hole stretch. Reigning PGA champion Jimmy Walker felt the most pain, making a triple bogey at the 15th and a double bogey at the 17th Sunday to plummet from third to 21st place.

To show how tough The Champion played, only six players had bogey-free rounds during the week, and there were none in the second and final rounds.

In the end, they were all chasing Rickie Fowler. And they never caught him.

– By Craig Dolch, Golf Writer and ESPN Commentator