La Quinta, Calif. – No matter where you are, there’s nothing wrong with a little sweat on a Sunday, especially when you find yourself in possession of a winning ticket.
Sepp Straka was in control of that faucet on Sunday at The American Express. He started the final round with a four-stroke advantage and … breathe … prevailed by two. As the mild slide suggests, it wasn’t without a classic concern of the floodgates giving way.
Straka squared a bogey-6 at the 16th hole on the Pete Dye Stadium Course at PGA WEST. If that doesn’t seem dire, consider that it was his first bogey of the tournament! It also occurred right around when Justin Thomas posted 23-under after a bogey-free, 6-under 66.
With the par-3 17th (aka “Alcatraz”) awaiting, what factually and rapidly had become a three-shot margin for Straka also was only a three-shot margin. However, the big fella from Austria calmly stepped in front of the situation with a standard-issue par after finding the green with his tee ball over water. He closed with a careful bogey-5 to post 25-under 263.
Straka’s third PGA TOUR victory yields 500 FedExCup points and $1,584,000. While solidifying his position inside the top 40 of the Official World Golf Ranking since August of 2022, he went all of 2024 without a podium finish, so it helps explain why he was a healthy +6000 to win The American Express pre-tournament at FanDuel. Relative to all odds, it was tied for the 19th-shortest. He’ll now rise comfortably into the top 20 of the OWGR and he already was exempt into all of the Signature Events, THE PLAYERS Championship and the majors.
Thomas was the tournament favorite at +1200. After an eight-year hiatus, he returned to the Coachella Valley last year and finished T3. This time he did one better on the leaderboard with a solo second.
Jason Day (+7000) and Justin Lower (+15000) finished joint third. The odds for Lower were juicy. Although he’s yet to connect for a title on the PGA TOUR, this is his second runner-up finish among four top 10s in the last four months.
One of the headlines entering the tournament was the return of Nick Dunlap, who emerged with victory as an amateur at PGA WEST last year at pre-tournament odds of +40000. As the defending champ, he was a mere +5500 and settled for a nine-way share of 34th place, 12 strokes outside Straka.