60 2GM Monday May 23 2022 | the times
SportUS PGA Championship
The final round of any major puts heart
and nerve through an emotional man-
gle but after Southern Hills had flatten-
ed most hopes on a gruelling day Justin
Thomas and Will Zalatoris were still
squeezing drama from the US PGA
Championship.
They entered a play-off but you had
to feel for Mito Pereira. The 27-year-old
from Santiago had managed to hang on
to a dream of becoming Chile’s first
major champion until the 72nd hole.
The world No 100 took only a one-shot
lead down the last after missing a birdie
by an inch. How were his emotions?
The answer came with his final drive,
down the right and into the creek. He
made a double bogey. Golf — bloody
hell!
Thomas, the most experienced man
in the mix and a past winner of the Wa-
namaker Trophy, had started to strut
and purr with purpose. For some time
he had looked increasingly likely to be-
come the first man since Paul Lawrie at
Carnoustie in 1999 to claw back a
seven-stroke deficit at the start of a
major Sunday. The gap had even wid-
ened to eight at one point. A birdie on
the 17th and then a pathfinder into the
testing 18th took him close to winning
in regulation time. Meanwhile, Zalato-
ris, runner-up at last year’s Masters,
made a great save on the last to match
Thomas at five under and dream of a
Pereira fluffs
his lines on
the brink of
famous win
Rick Broadbent
play-off. Pereira dropped to a share of
fourth place with Cameron Young, with
Tommy Fleetwood and Matt Fitzpat-
rick tied fifth.
All sorts of plotlines looked possible
before being subject to a raft of rewrites.
Some were just ripped up. English
players have a particularly dismal
record in this major and you have to go
back some 103 years to Cornwall’s Jim
Barnes to find a winner. Fitzpatrick
provided some rare hope, but faltered
around the turn. The Yorkshireman’s
two errant shots on the 10th and 11th
meant he was suddenly four behind
and, although the erratic weather had
calmed, he had a face like thunder. And
then he chipped in from the rough on
the 15th and he was back to within two.
It was heady, unpredictable fare with
fortunes swinging like a pendulum.
The leaderboard had a youthful hue
to it throughout a dramatic day of ebb
and flow. The old guard had gone early.
Tiger Woods withdrew before the final
round due to mounting pain and errors
and a torrid third round. Licking his
wounds in a physical hinterland, he
must decide whether Southern Hills
was a setback to his comeback or a mes-
sage.
In their absence players with mini-
mal big-time experience were fighting
both themselves and a treacherous
course. By a quirk, two of them, Zalato-
ris and Young, went to the same US col-
lege. Zalatoris got the Arnold Palmer
scholarship, Young the Lanny Wadkins
one. The latter joked that was a sign of
their respective abilities, but the Wake
Forest Americans were neck and neck
down the stretch. Young finally fell to a
double bogey three from home.
Pereira had started three strokesTulsa