Four years after suffering a collapsed lung, Taylor Moore wins first PGA Tour title at the Valspar Championship

Adam Schupak
·5 min read
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Four years after Taylor Moore suffered a collapsed lung in the spring of 2019 while he was competing on the Korn Ferry Tour, he made four birdies in his final 10 holes to earn his first PGA Tour title at the Valspar Championship.

“I think if I would have taken a left, I might not be here in front of you guys tonight,” Moore said during his winner’s press conference. “So, I mean, that was God’s will just to tell me to take a right and go to the hospital and check out what was going on.”

Moore, 29, erased a three-stroke overnight deficit by shooting 4-under 67 on Sunday at Innisbrook Resort’s Copperhead Course at Palm Harbor, Florida. Moore finished with a 72-hole total of 10-under 274, a stroke better than Adam Schenk and two better than Jordan Spieth and Tommy Fleetwood.

“Really solid player that’s been knocking on the door,” Spieth said of Moore, a fellow Dallas resident.

And yet Moore hadn’t recorded a top-10 finish on the PGA Tour this season. Entering the week ranked No. 103 in the world, he joined the trophy hunt by canning an 18-foot birdie putt at nine and stuck his approach shot inside 5 feet at the 12th to climb a stroke closer. For the week, he was 64-for-64 inside 7 feet.

“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything close to that,” Moore said. “Just a testament to the work I’ve put in with my coach and my team and that was pretty sick to see.”

Moore made back-to-back birdies – a 6-footer at 15 and a 27-footer at 16 – to tie Schenk for the lead at 10 under. He said he didn’t see a scoreboard until he reached the 17th green, parred in for 67, the second-lowest score among the field of 72 on a windy day, and had to sweat out waiting at the practice tee to see if anyone could match his total and force extra holes.

For much of the day it seemed as if Schenk, 31, playing in his 10th straight tournament as he attempted to grab as many FedEx Cup points as he could before the birth of his first child, would be the one lifting a trophy for the first time. Wife Kourtney, who is eight months pregnant, flew in on Sunday morning and walked the entire round in his gallery.

She witnessed her hubby, the 54-hole leader, chip in for birdie at the first and build a two-stroke lead before stumbling with bogeys and Nos. 6 and 8. But he responded with birdies at Nos. 7 and 9, where he drained a 23-foot birdie putt. That was his longest putt of the tournament to that point but that figure didn’t last long. Schenk poured in a 71-foot birdie at the 12th, the longest made putt of his career, to claim the lead at 10 under and lifted his right arm to the sky.

He strung together five straight pars and shared the lead standing on the tee of the 72nd hole. Then he hooked his drive near a tree at 18 and had to play his next shot left-handed. He rammed his 41-foot par putt to remain tied with Moore and force a playoff and it hit the flagstick but had too much pace and wouldn’t go down. He finished with a 70.

“It stinks,” Schenk said, despite recording the best finish of his career. “I hit a really bad drive on the last hole. I toed it. Wish I could have lightly hit somebody and stayed where I had a chance to get to the green, but it did not, and I didn’t deserve it.”

Spieth, 29, won this tournament in 2015 and was seeking his 14th Tour title. He canned a 10-foot birdie putt at 14 to join the party at 10 under. All tournament, Spieth worked wonders from the sand, getting up and down 12 of 14 times overall, including at the difficult par-3 15th.

“It was the boring round I was looking for,” said Spieth, who stayed bogey-free for the day to that point.

But he fanned his tee shot at the dogleg par-4 16th into the water guarding the right side of the hole and had to scramble to save bogey. He missed a very makable 7-foot birdie putt at 17 and couldn’t get a 48-foot birdie putt to drop at the last. He missed the par comebacker and closed in 70 to finish tied for third with Fleetwood.

The 32-year-old Englishman has six DP World Tour victories and ranked as high as No. 9 in the world in 2019, but he still hasn’t won on the PGA Tour. He had a share of the lead until he made a bogey at the par-5 14th hole. He closed in 70. Despite remaining winless, Fleetwood’s career earnings on the PGA Tour alone surpassed $15 million.

Two-time defending champion Sam Burns fell short of a three-peat but made a valiant effort with a final-round 67 to finish sixth.

Once asked to name the most interesting fact about him that golf fans should know, Moore said, “Well, grew up a baseball guy, so I was a pretty high-level baseball player until I was about 15 years old and actually had a scholarship from Arkansas for baseball before golf and ended up deciding to play this.

“Kind of fell in love with golf as I got older and just being in control of a little bit of everything instead of relying on teammates and umpires and things. I was either going to win by myself or lose.”

On Sunday, that decision paid off as he finally became a champion on the PGA Tour.

Story originally appeared on GolfWeek