Brandt Snedeker cashes in big

ATLANTA (AP) — Brandt Snedeker doesn’t claim to be the best player in the world, the best player on the PGA Tour or even the best over­all player in the FedEx Cup play­offs. All he needed was the best round of his career at East Lake to become FedEx Cup cham­pion, giv­ing him the biggest pay­check in golf.

And he’s not about to apol­o­gize for that.

“Life is all about tim­ing,” Snedeker said with a sneaky grin.

He proved to be the right man in the right place Sun­day in the Tour Cham­pi­onship. On a tough day on a tree-lined course, Snedeker over­came an early dou­ble bogey in the water with four big birdies and closed with a 2-under 68, mak­ing him the only player in the final five groups to break par.

That gave him a three-shot win over Justin Rose and two tro­phies in one day — the Tour Cham­pi­onship and its $1.44 mil­lion prize, and the FedEx Cup with its $10 mil­lion. That’s more money than Snedeker had made in his career going into the 2012 season.

“You go out there and play that round of golf, with that kind of pres­sure on that tough of a golf course, and to go through the adver­sity I had to go through, hit­ting the ball in the water and mak­ing a dou­ble bogey early and fight­ing my way back … that’s what you work your whole life for,” he said. “This is about as close as I get to speechless.”

Snedeker was tied with Rose going into the last round, though he could not ignore the pres­ence of Rory McIl­roy, who was three shots behind, and Tiger Woods, who was four back. McIl­roy (1), Woods (2) and Snedeker (5) were among the top five seeds in the FedEx Cup going into the final event, mean­ing any of them only had to win the Tour Cham­pi­onship to cap­ture the FedEx Cup.

Never mind that McIl­roy had won four times this year against the strongest fields, includ­ing a record eight-shot win in the PGA Cham­pi­onship and back-to-back wins in play­off events at Beth­page Black and the TPC Boston that make him the clear-cut No. 1 player in the world.

The FedEx Cup was designed to put every­thing up for grabs in the Tour Cham­pi­onship, with the bet­ter odds given to the higher seeds.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Sep 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.