Unusual warm-up prepped Austin Smotherman for sudden-death win   | News

Pro golfers typically have only minutes to prepare for a sudden-death playoff. If they’re lucky, they might sneak in a small bucket on the range — but often there’s time enough only for an energy bar and quick hug from a loved one.    

But for Austin Smotherman and Seamus Power, that was decidedly not the case. Smotherman and Power finished the third round of the Butterfield Bermuda Championship on Saturday tied atop the leaderboard at 16 under — a position in which they would remain for the next . . . oh, let’s call it 38 hours or s.o That’s because when the field returned to Port Royal for the final round Sunday, the players encountered “Twister”-grade conditions, with flag-bending winds that gusted up to 40 mph. 

Unplayable? The Tour thought so, making the decision to cancel the final round and trot Smotherman and Power back out Monday morning for a sudden-death playoff to decide the champion. Smotherman spent his Sunday trying to stay busy on the island but easier said than done when you have a PGA Tour title hanging in the balance.      

“Tried to sleep in, ordered some breakfast to the room,” Smotherman said Monday. “Luckily some football was on yesterday. Walked into town, went and had lunch at an Irish pub. Then just really twiddled our thumbs around the hotel walking around. Called my family probably five different times.”

Smotherman said he slept “OK” on Sunday night into Monday. He departed his hotel at 7 a.m. for the 8 a.m. playoff, leaving himself time only for a “brief modified warm-up.”

Smotherman’s normal routine was out of the question because (1) the format for the playoff called for the duo to play the par-3 16th hole on repeat, meaning they would need to hit nothing longer than a 7- or 8-iron, and (2) the into-the-players’-faces wind on the range was so strong that it was all but senseless to hit balls out there. Smotherman said he hit a few wedges but not much beyond that.     

Recognizing the challenge, the Tour made an allowance, permitting the players to warm up on the par-4 15th hole.  “The rules committee provided both competitors an option to hit a somewhat similar shot as to what they were about to face on No. 16,” a Tour spokesperson told GOLF.

“Similar wind directions,” Smotherman said after the playoff.  “And we had the GCQuad [launch monitor] down, that was able to kind of see what some numbers were doing. The wind on the range was tough, I’m glad we weren’t playing straight into the breeze on 16 today, that would have been wild, but off the left was manageable.”

The rules don’t typically allow players to practice on the course in advance of a playoff, but, the Tour spokesperson said, it’s also not unheard of, citing the Corales Puntacana Championship, CJ Cup at Byron Nelson and Charles Schwab Cup as three Tour-run events where pre-playoff on-course reps were permitted. Of those sites, the spokesperson said, “It was more convenient to hit balls on other parts of the course rather than the range which might have been located further away.”

For Smotherman, the practice paid off. With the wind blowing hard off the water, the tee shot on 16 called for bravery: throwing the ball at the cliff edge and trusting it would come back. “It’s one that you have to be in your mind OK trying to hit it in the water,” Smotherman said. “I told Zak [Williamson, his caddie] I was trying to hit the cameraman on the back left edge of the green and you saw that ball finished up right side. That was how disconnected feel and real was.”

With his first tee ball, an 8-iron from 178 yards, Smotherman missed the green right but was able to get up and down to match Power’s par. With his second tee shot — same club, same distance — Smotherman found the green but was 76 feet short of the hole. “Straight down to feel, walk it off and just trust your abilities,” he said of the ensuing lag putt, which he knocked to kick-in range. ”There’s no practicing that this morning or being comfortable, even throughout the week really having to putt that long.”

Power also made 3, sending both players back to the tee for a third time. But on this occasion, they faced a new pin and shorter yardage (152). 

Smotherman’s club choice: 8-iron again.  

“I felt like depending on how you try to flight the wind, you could get 170 out of it to that back pin and I didn’t really want to have a chance of going super deep because if got on the wind and the wind shifted down for just a second, it gets long right in a hurry if I’m hitting especially one more club.”

Good decision. He knocked his shot pin high, 16 feet left of the hole. From there, he two-putted for par. When Power missed short left and failed to get up and down, Smotherman had his second PGA Tour title in less than a month. 

“It’s a fairy tale really right now,” he said.