As Patrick Cantlay warmed up on the left side of the range at Caves Valley Golf Club ahead of the 2021 BMW Championship, his long-time instructor Jamie Mulligan watched him hit one wedge and gushed, “That’s it.”
Cantlay hit another ball and Mulligan offered the same response. Cantlay shot him a quizzical expression.
“I told him, ‘That’s our look. Stay in that bubble. Your pace is great, your club is in the perfect position and I love the way the ball has been coming off your putter,’ ” recalled Mulligan, the CEO at Virginia Golf Club in Long Beach, California, where Cantlay learned the game and is a member to this day.
If anyone should know if Cantlay was on the verge of arguably his greatest run of golf to date, it was Mulligan, who knew from the first time he set eyes on Cantlay that he was special.
“At our junior clinics we’d tell kids to throw a ball towards a tree and whoever was the closest to it would win a candy bar,” Mulligan recalls. “We’d have 100 kids trying to whip it over there as hard as they could like Nolan Ryan. After they all went Patrick too his ball and rolled one that just followed the contours of the ground and kept going and rolled up right next to the root. What is that? You can’t coach that, right?”
Cantlay, 30, has grown up to win much more than candy bars in golf. What he did at the 15th BMW Championship was nothing short of brilliant, shooting a total of 27-under for 72 holes – and 31 birdies for the week – and it still wasn’t enough to win in regulation. Cantlay would have to duel six more holes in a sudden-death playoff with Bryson DeChambeau before he could drive off with his third trophy of the season.
Cantlay raced out of the gate with rounds of 66-63, but it wasn’t enough to match the other-worldly performance of DeChambeau, who seemingly could do no wrong. After an opening-round 68, the 2020 U.S. Open champion made two eagles and eight birdies in his first 17 holes. He had faced 17 putts inside 12 feet during Friday’s second round and made 16. Unfortunately, he missed a 6-foot birdie putt at the last and settled for a career-best 60 to grab a one-stroke lead over Cantlay.
“A lot of putts went in. A lot of things went right,” said DeChambeau, who was attempting to shoot the 13th sub-60 round in PGA Tour history. “Just wasn’t able to clutch those putts up.”
On Saturday, DeChambeau extended his lead until making his first bogey in 30 holes at No. 12 after slicing…
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