Scott Stallings gets sweet consolation prize

WILMINGTON, Del. – Scott Stallings isn’t a numbers guy, but when he saw PGA Tour rookies Harry Higgs, Maverick McNealy and Robby Shelton qualify for the 2019 BMW Championship by finishing in the top 70 and he didn’t yet again, Stallings realized those three players shared one common trait: a stats coach.

“I need to know what you did with them that’s going to help me,” Stallings told Hunter Stewart, a former player turned stats guru.

Three years later, after hiring Stewart, Stallings not only made it to the BMW Championship this week, held at the south course at Wilmington Country Club in the First State for the first time, he nearly won the tournament, shooting a final-round 2-under 69 to finish second to Patrick Cantlay on Sunday.

But there was a pretty sweet consolation prize for Stallings, who in his 12^th year on Tour booked his first trip to the Tour Championship, which is reserved for the top 30 in the season-long FedEx Cup point standings.

“That was my No. 1 goal to start the year,” said Stallings, who entered the week at No. 47 and vaulted to No. 12 in the FedEx Cup. “To compete with the best players in the world and make it to East Lake was better late than never, I guess.”

Stallings, 37, opened with a pair of 68s and climbed within a stroke of the lead with a 66 on Saturday as he searched for his first victory since the 2014 Farmers Insurance Open. Stallings tied for the lead early with a 6-foot birdie putt at the third hole, but gave a stroke back with a bogey at the fifth. He bounced back by stiffing a pitch from 72 yards to inside 3 feet for birdie at the sixth. Stallings built a two-stroke lead with a birdie at 11 and a bogey by Cantlay, playing a group behind him, at No. 10.

But Cantlay, who successfully defended his title and won for the eighth time in his career, carded three birdies on the way to the clubhouse, including a 6-foot putt at 17, which turned out to be the difference. Stallings made a three-putt bogey at 13 and a birdie at 14, but couldn’t buy a putt down the stretch. Stallings missed a 9-foot birdie putt at 18 to tie Cantlay, one of four birdie tries from 18 feet or less that didn’t drop.

“It did exactly what we thought it was going to do,” Stallings said of the final birdie effort, “it just did it behind the hole.”