Stephan Jaeger (-12) has won the Texas Children’s Houston Open after signing off with a final scorecard of 67 strokes, achieving his first victory on the PGA Tour and, at the same time, proving himself as an outstanding player, given all the circumstances that have occurred in the final round. The first of these, perhaps the most important, is that the German was playing in the star match alongside the world’s Number One, Scottie Scheffler (-11), and has been able to stand firm, very solid, hardly making any mistakes, taking just the right risks when they probably had to be taken.
Jaeger has won a tournament on a tightrope, said in the best sense and considering the large group of contenders who, in one way or another, depending more or less on themselves, have arrived with options at the very 72nd hole. His triumph is well deserved. However…
However, it is also mandatory to point out that there have been two players who have really made it a little easier for the German. It’s the law of sport, on the other hand, in the circle of winners: squeeze your successes and take advantage of the opponent’s mistakes. One of these two players is Thomas Detry (-11), who has finished in second position, just one stroke behind the winner, and who in the final stretch has not tired of sparing everyone’s life on the greens. On the 14th hole he missed a putt of just over a metre to save par, on the 16th another of two and a half metres for eagle and on the 17th one from the same distance, just over two metres, for birdie. It is true that Jaeger also spared a rather short putt on the 17th, but the Belgian’s, once again, has been especially striking. He does not find the way to let things happen as they can and should happen in the hour of truth.
The other is Scottie Scheffler, of course. If the Texan has gone to the hotel with the feeling of having been too generous on the greens of the fantastic Memorial Park, he is not misguided, in light of what happened. And it’s not just because he missed a birdie putt from a metre and a half on the 18th to make a birdie that would have taken him to a playoff with Jaeger. It’s that before that he had already left a good bunch of putts on the way, most of them for birdie (also one for par on the 15th hole) from distances ranging from two and a half to over three metres…
These are not distances from which you always convert, agreed, but yes in a much higher percentage, at the levels of elite professional golf. And he has only holed one, the one he had on the 2nd hole, from just over three metres. Scottie has closed the week in Houston in 37th place in the SG:Putting statistic, relying mainly on the first and third rounds, in which he putted notably. His numbers are not disastrous this week, far from it, but not even he, the excellent Number One, always manages to win with such a deficit, especially when it is seen that the rest of the players who have been in the fight until the end are not below 12th place in this statistic, including Detry, who has actually been very fine on the greens until that damn final stretch. Well, not all of them: Tony Finau (-11) has given even more advantage to the rest with the putter in his hands (75th place in SG:Putting), and that’s even though he signed a powerful 62 on Friday.
Jaeger’s success has been to be there until the last moment, without giving ground, after having played high school golf for the first nine. It’s no small thing. Jaeger had to be thrown from there above, because he was not going to fall apart, not this time. And nobody has been able to. Alejandro Tosti (-11), for example, was not far from such coordinates, but he closed the round with a bogey, as did the brave Englishman David Skinns (-10). With this victory he enters the Masters of Augusta for the first time in his career and also debuts in the top 50 worldwide.
Scheffler, in general terms, for putting together some kind of objection that he probably does not deserve, has been seen a little more irregular, even crisp, than usual, and yet there we had him, throwing a birdie putt from a metre and a half on the 72nd hole to go out and play a playoff. Look at it from any angle, if you do it objectively, he continues to mark abysmal differences with the rest.
