[PHOTO: David Jensen]

It must have been a lonely vantage, standing in the fairway on the 18th hole, watching Aaron Rai make the birdie that put the 2024 Wyndham Championship to rest. That’s where Max Greyserman stood, his approach from the fairway suddenly rendered irrelevant, and it would have been hard not to stew on missed opportunities. He took a final full swing – he needed to hole out from 148 metres to force a playoff – watched the ball land in the greenside bunker, and began the long uphill walk in the fading light.

Rai, who finished at 18-under to capture his first PGA Tour win, deserves all the credit we afford to winners on this circuit, and his final-round 64 tells the story of a clutch performance that continued to the very end, but it’s an undeniable fact that the lasting memory from Greensboro will be the nightmarish closing stretch from 29-year-old tour rookie Greyserman.

It all began, strangely enough, with what looked like a (literal) stroke of great fortune. Already leading Rai by two shots on the 13th hole, Greyserman striped a drive and then hit his 83-metre approach into the hole for an eagle. It seemed to be the shot of the tournament, it pushed him to 21-under, and, based on his terrific form all day, at least felt decisive.

The good feelings, however, lasted exactly one hole. On 14, he pushed his tee shot to the right, where his good luck turned instantly bad when the ball hit the cartpath and bounded out-of-bounds. He hit a provisional, confirmed his first tee shot had rolled out, and then made a drastic mistake in hitting his next shot into a bunker. When the dust had settled on this burgeoning nightmare, he’d made a quadruple bogey 8, and given his four-shot lead away in one fell swoop.

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To his credit, he rebounded instantly with a birdie on 15 to retake the lead, but on 16, facing a three-foot par putt, he lipped it out, then lipped out the comebacker to make double and lose his lead for good. Meanwhile, Rai made five straight pars to take him to the 18th, where he hit a marvellous approach to six feet before burying the tournament-winning birdie putt while Greyserman watched helplessly from the fairway.

“I didn’t hit a good tee shot,” Greyserman said of his disaster on the 14th. “You’re going to hit bad tee shots over the course of 72 holes, but if that doesn’t hit the cartpath, we’re probably in a different situation. That doesn’t mean that that one bounce is the reason I didn’t win, but what happened after… if that doesn’t hit that cartpath, I’m potentially able to hit onto the green.”

“It’s honestly not the first time that I’ve hit the cartpath on the right and it went OB,” he continued. “In Savannah on the Korn Ferry Tour, I was in contention down the stretch and the same thing happened. I’ve got to ask the people not to put cartpaths on the right side.”

Like Greyserman, Englishman Rai is 29, and like Greyserman he had never won before on the PGA Tour (though he was won twice on the DP World Tour). His triumph in Greensboro, along with the money and the two-year exemption, will also earn him entry into his first Masters next year at Augusta.

“It’s truly a dream come true,” Rai said, “understanding how difficult it is out here and how difficult the standard is. I’m extremely grateful. It hasn’t sunk in, but it’s an amazing achievement.”

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Standing on the 18th tee, Billy Horschel approached him and asked if he wanted to know the situation – Rai led by one, but had avoided scoreboards all day. He declined, but changed his mind 30 seconds later and asked his caddie, who advised him to just focus on the hole, but in a way that Rai interpreted as a good sign – he must be in the lead or close to it. His drive was dead straight, and he followed with one of the best approaches of the day on the notorious closing hole. Rai described himself as “pretty calm” standing over the birdie putt on 18.

“I obviously felt a little bit nervous at times,” he admitted. “That’s pretty normal in that situation, but I’m proud of staying pretty focused and present throughout.”

For his part, Greyserman said all the right things in the aftermath of his painful defeat, and seemed to have a solid perspective on a potentially rattling afternoon.

“Obviously stuff happens in golf that sometimes it’s not meant to be,” he said. “I’m just going to walk away that I played really, really good golf, executed really well, had probably a four, four or five-shot lead… if you’re doing that in a PGA Tour event, you’re doing something exceptionally well, so that’s what I’m going to walk away with.”

Ryo Hisatsune and J.J. Spaun finished in a tie for third at 15-under, while Luke Clanton, the amateur who has been posting great results on the PGA Tour throughout the northern summer, did it again with outright fifth, playing 39 holes on Sunday less than 24 hours before the start of his US Amateur campaign in Minnesota.

The Wyndham is the last event of the tour’s regular season, but the bubble watch proved relatively uneventful on the final day, with the top 70 coming into the weekend staying the same by tournament’s end. The only real drama came between Victor Perez and Davis Riley, with Perez holding off Riley to maintain his spot just inside the bubble.

The circuit heads to Memphis for the first leg of the playoffs this coming week, and both Greyserman and Rai will be in the field. While Greyserman can be proud of a strong rookie season, there are questions he has not yet answered, and they will loom even larger as the postseason begins. As for Rai, he hung in just long enough to rise to the moment, and though he owes his chance to some strange circumstances late in the day – appropriate, considering the strange circumstances of the entire week, starting with the heavy rains that cancelled play on Thursday – he made the best of what fate gave him, and took a huge step forward in a career that keeps getting better.