Danny Willett tees it up in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews this week as he defends the title he won last year.
Before he does that, though, he had time to reflect on one that got away – his agonising capitulation to Max Homa in the PGA Tour’s Fortinet Championship earlier in the month. Willett appeared to have the title all but sewn up on the final hole. Even after Homa chipped in, it was Willett’s for the taking. However, he missed a three-foot birdie putt to win outright, then an equally short putt for par, which would have forced a playoff but instead handed Homa victory.
Willett was praised for his dignified manner in defeat and admitted that had helped. He said: “Yeah, I don’t know how you else would handle it. Inside, you’re screaming at yourself. You can’t look at that week in a bad way. You still finished second. You still picked up a hell of a lot of points. Yeah, would you have liked to have rewound time for two minutes? Yeah. But we can’t do that. We’ve got to kind of take from it and when we are in that position, won’t happen. Like I say, take the positives from it.
“Every win that I’ve had, you always think there’s going to be a massive climax finish to an event. Dubai, I holed the putt to win back in 2016, and most of the time, people are tapping in from six inches to win. You know, it’s not – how that happened obviously was a little bit of a shock to the system at the time.”
While Willett was the orchestrator of his downfall at Silverado, he admitted that of all the players who could have put himself in contention before his fateful three-putt, it was Homa. He said: “But yeah, I mean Max obviously – he’s 15th in the world. He’s a great player and he’s had a great year last year, coming in there defending champion and favourite. You know, not that it’s – not that it always happens, but if anyone was going to probably do it, it would have probably been him.”
While missing out to Homa in such a manner obviously came as a blow to Willett, there is arguably more at stake in this week’s…
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