Pressure does funny things to athletes, and no one more than Will Gordon would have been feeling it at the Rocket Classic this week.
The American needed to make the cut to retain his PGA Tour card. However, being four-under-par for the tournament with two holes left in his second round, his job was slipping away from him.
Gordon, though, had other ideas, and managed to birdie his last two holes to keep the fight alive. His birdie on the 18th was just inside six-feet, with the crowd witnessing an outburst of emotion from the 28-year-old.
In an interview after his second round, he said: “I think just – I was just proud of keeping my head in it, fighting to the end.
“That’s what I do. It hadn’t been the prettiest kind of last three, four years, but I always fight. I’m just really proud of that, that’s kind of who I am.”
This was Gordon’s final start on Tour under his major medical exemption, which is given to players who are side-lined for more than four months, either through illness or injury.
Gordon, who sustained a serious neck injury that side-lined him for five months last season, was then left nervously waiting to see if he made the cut at the Rocket Classic, as the projected cutline continued to hover between six-and-seven-under-par.
Looking emotional in his interview after his round, he said: “Yeah, like I said, I mean, I put myself in this position.
“This is a game that you kind of get what you deserve, and unfortunately I haven’t played well enough to, you know, give myself more breathing room.
“It’s kind of crazy it’s kind of come down to this, but again you get what you earn in this game and this is what I kind of earned myself. Just try to use it as motivation for whatever comes next.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Left nervously waiting for a few hours after completing his second round, Gordon’s fate was no longer in his hands but, little did he know, a stroke of luck was just around the corner.
Thanks to Michael Kim’s three-putt bogey on the last hole of the day, the cut line was lowered to six-under-par, meaning the American would just sneak into the weekend.
This helped him to earn the 0.644 points required to maintain conditional PGA Tour membership, meaning he will be able to play for the rest of season.
After avoiding losing his card for the…
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