Jake Knapp’s watery demise reminded us why this event is great

The Cognizant Classic has faded in importance over the years. Ever so slightly, but it has faded nonetheless. There are four tournaments in this Florida Swing and it ranks fourth for a lot of people. It’s okay to say so.

It used to be the Honda Classic — the automobile manufacturer sponsored the event for more than 40 years, but they moved on when things started getting weird in pro golf in recent seasons. The event used to draw Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson — the Jupiter crew — but none of those guys have played since 2022. (Woods and McIlroy are in town, but saving themselves for the Seminole Pro-Member and some nighttime TGL. Koepka and Johnson are in Singapore.)

But the Cognizant Classic pushes on mostly for those who aren’t in next week’s Signature Event field, or who aren’t in good form, or who aren’t in great standing in the world ranking. It’s a place to tee it up for more money than anywhere else, but more importantly, it’s a place to see if you’ve got some mettle. This is what PGA National reminds us constantly, and did so once again this week. It wasn’t just Sunday when players had to walk through the Bear Trap on their tiptoes. It was the week as a whole.

On an overseeded golf course with tame conditions, the best modern golfers — largely built by numbers to be repetitive robots — are going to take this course down. Jake Knapp was our chief aggressor, shooting a 59 with a closing tap-in — the way you’d prefer to shoot 59 if you were a Tour pro. He drove it supremely, which is Jake Knapp Golf. He is not known for his short game, his putter or iron game. He’s PGA Tour Average in a lot of spots but way above average in distance and well below average in accuracy. But on the days when he is accurate? Look out. That was Thursday. 

Fifty-nines are rare enough that they still feel special, though their lore is, like the event, fading as well. A 59 is special enough that if it comes in the opening round, all the tournament’s eyes are locked on you now. There have been 15 59s, but only five have led to victories. Don’t get too full on the appetizer and ruin the entrée.

Knapp was never going to pull off that round twice. He is not made to thrive on this golf course. He’s made to thrive on big, wide courses without water everywhere. You can ignore those hazards for 18 blissful holes, but eventually they will greet you. How you respond says a lot. Knapp made a double on Friday when he met those hazards for the first time, but otherwise kept his ball dry all weekend. He teed off Sunday with the lead and appeared on cruise control, up one shot on the field when he found the 11th fairway.

But the Sunday back nine at PGA National can feel a bit like the walls are slowly inching inward. Misses tend to beget other misses.

So when Knapp mishit his wedge on 11, leaving it short of the green, partly submerged in the water, we must give him credit for trying the one-shoe recovery shot. Even if he hasn’t had a lot of practice with this shot, every player in the field has imagined how they’d need to play it. We’ve seen Bill Haas and Henrik Stenson do it, creating highlights the PGA Tour plays for years to come.

But Knapp made a highlight of the negative variety.

Never have greenside microphones told the entire story so perfectly. You can play the clip with your eyes closed and still feel everything, from the club spanking the water to the crowd’s sorry reaction. All the way to Knapp’s second try from the water, which hung up on the bank but got him to utter the only two words we needed: No way.

After making triple bogey, Knapp moved from alone in 1st on the 11th tee to three shots back on the 12th, on a stretch of the course where re-finding your comfort zone just doesn’t exist.

To Knapp’s credit, he didn’t shy away from it. When asked afterward about his thought process about playing submerged pitch shots in contention, he reiterated one thought: He just didn’t hit them hard enough. 

“I wish I had that shot back on 11,” Knapp told reporters. “I think other than that, I’ll think about the 59, obviously, but it’s not that that shot is going to haunt me or anything like that. For the most part I’m really happy with how I hit it and felt like I just played super solid today except for just one hole.”

But that’s the thing at PGA National. One bad hole can just get a lot worse than it gets elsewhere. And quickly. The objects in the mirror at the Cognizant — dominated by the starving class of players anxious for a win — are always closer than they may appear. In Knapp’s case, Joe Highsmith was that object sneakily moving much quicker than he seemed. 

We’ve seen it here before — with Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed — and we’ll see it at PGA National again. Maybe 12 months from now. It doesn’t matter who is leading, what their lead is or their world rank, PGA National is like a boxer backed into a corner weathering body blows, knowing it can still throw a punch or two of its own. And every year it knocks a few players out.