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The Breakthrough: After 142 starts, Maverick McNealy captures his first PGA Tour victory – Australian Golf Digest

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  • November 25, 2024
The Breakthrough: After 142 starts, Maverick McNealy captures his first PGA Tour victory – Australian Golf Digest

[PHOTO: Kevin C. Cox]

Before today, there were 20 men in the world who could claim an interesting distinction: they had each won $US10 million in their PGA Tour careers, but never won an actual event. Call them the “Winless Decamillionaires”. It’s a strange little club… the kind that most golfers would love to join, but you can bet that every single member wants nothing more than to leave.

Today, that group is smaller by one. Maverick McNealy, age 29, 142 starts into a very good career, has dropped from the ranks of the winless. Or, to frame it positively, the monkey is finally off his back: with a five-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole – the kind he’s dreamt about and executed on a thousand practice greens, but never on a Sunday afternoon – he captured the RSM Classic.

“I’m shaking right now,” he said, tears in his eyes, moments after the putt dropped. “I feel like I could run a marathon. Absolutely exhausted, but the adrenaline is unbelievable.”

After admitting that he was struggling with nerves on the back nine, and praising his caddie for cracking him up at a critical late moment, he began talking with such passion about his team and his family that he actually apologised to the on-course interviewer for talking too much.

“It was almost like déjà vu standing over that last one, and it came off perfect,” he said, referring to the frequency of his dream of holing a winning putt. “I don’t know, man. I’m at a loss for words.”

If this were a Shakespearean comedy, it would start with an ominous prophet of some sort – perhaps a Kerouacian beatnik from McNealy’s native northern California – making a promise that he would never win a PGA Tour event until he had made 100 cuts. That’s the feat McNealy accomplished on Friday, and rather easily, too, thanks to an opening 62. That was all the springboard he needed for Saturday, when a 66 ushered him into a tie for the lead. Come Sunday, he wasn’t quite scintillating, with just two birdies on the front nine and nothing but a single bogey between holes 10 and 17 – including a series of missed late birdie putts, the most agonising of which was a four-footer on 15 – but he saved his absolute best for last, hitting a gorgeous 7-iron from 167 metres on 18 to five feet, setting up the winning putt.

“Playing professional golf and trying to win a golf tournament late on Sunday is designed to make you as uncomfortable as you possibly can,” McNealy said. “Holes are challenging, the golf course plays about as hard as it does all week in those conditions, you’re hitting golf shots that potentially could change your life. And that’s the amazing thing about this tour is you have the potential to change your life every given week.”

He credited two people in his life, his wife Maya and his brother Scout, his caddie, for the support that made the win possible.

“Having two people that ground me, believe in me more than I believe in myself sometimes and just unconditionally in your corner, it made all the difference in the world and I felt that all year.”

It was Scout who cracked a joke on 17 that lightened McNealy’s mood sufficiently to let him play the final hole unburdened. What was the joke, you ask? He wasn’t telling.

“It’s not safe for work,” he said. “There’s two kinds of jokes, there’s jokes that you can share and there’s funny ones, so I’m sorry.”

McNealy’s closing birdie saved him from entering a four-man playoff that would have included playing partner Daniel Berger, Nico Echavarria and amateur Luke Clanton. Berger, whose excellent performance brought him inside the top 125 bubble, missed birdie putts of his own at 17 and 18, while Echavarria and Clanton, who seemed to have all the momentum at 16-under heading into 18, each pulled their approach left and failed to get up and down for par.

“It’s hard, man. It’s a hard loss, for sure,” said Clanton, who was trying to duplicate the feat of Nick Dunlap and become the second amateur to win on the PGA Tour this season. “I think God’s given me a great talent and to be out here in general, just to be in contention again, it’s awesome. It’s going to be a tough one to definitely take, for sure, after bogeying the last, but I think it’s proven to me that out here I can win, so I’ll be training for that.”

As for Echavarria, he was trying to earn his second win of the fall after triumphing at the Zozo Championship, but a red-hot putter alone wasn’t enough to put him over the top.

“Obviously finishing with a bogey on the last hole having the lead, it’s not awesome,” he said, “but I didn’t feel comfortable at all the last two days and I just played my heart out out there. I was almost on defensive mode a lot of times and leaning on my putter and the putter got hot. Unfortunately, the one on the last hole didn’t drop, but overall it was an amazing week.”

The other player in the final threesome, Vince Whaley, came into the final round tied with McNealy, but drove into the water on the fifth hole, leading to a double-bogey, and could never find his footing afterwards, stumbling to a 71 and a T-8 finish.

It left the stage empty for McNealy, who hit the shot of the day on his last approach, and erased the stigma of never winning on tour. He’ll leave the Winless Decamillionaires Club behind, but that won’t bother him – the money keeps piling up, and nothing makes better company for all that cash than a brand new trophy.

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