Four feet, seven inches.
That’s the par putt that Joe Highsmith had Friday at PGA National to make the cut at the 2025 Cognizant Classic at The Palm Beaches. Highsmith poured the putt in the center to play the weekend, but he had no idea what the next 48 hours would hold.
The Pepperdine product had a terrible warmup before Saturday’s third round but rode a hot putter to a 7-under 64 to vault into contention. On Sunday at the Champion Course at PGA National, Highsmith watched as every other contender stumbled while he fired a bogey-free 64 to finish at 19-under par to claim his first PGA Tour win.
In doing so, Highsmith became the first player in nine years to make the cut on the number and go on to win. Brandt Snedeker was the last to do so at the 2016 Farmers Insurance Open.
“I feel like once I made it on the number, I knew I was going to go out early on Saturday, and that was going to be a good chance because the scores just get so much harder as the day goes on,” Highsmith said Sunday after his win. “I definitely took advantage of that. I played really nicely on Saturday.
“Then the course got really tough, so I ended up moving way closer to the lead than I should have. I knew that I was going to be on the opposite side of that today. I played really, really good today, so it was nice to kind of conquer that course when it was a little easy but also when it was baked and crusty and windy and everything. It was really hard out there this afternoon.”
While Highsmith described his Saturday warmup as awful, he had a good range session before his tee time on Sunday and went out and picked apart a course that punished everyone else on the leaderboard. His 36-hole score of 128 over the weekend is the lowest 36-hole finish in the 53-year history of the event formerly known as the Honda Classic.
The 24-year-old credits a change in mindset for the recent uptick in his play, but it was the flat stick that carried him through the Bear Trap this weekend. Over the final two rounds, Highsmith made 231 feet of putts, including birdie putts of 14, 14, 15, 18, 18, 20 and 35 feet. He made just one bogey over his final 36 holes.
Highsmith peaked at the cramped Cognizant Classic leaderboard a few times early on and was unsure if he would have enough in the tank to track down the proven winners ahead of him.
His putter, one he put in his bag just before the Farmers Insurance Open, propelled him past some of the PGA Tour’s most notable names.
“A lot of big names, obviously, up on that board, and knowing that there’s a lot of great accomplished players that are right around the same score, and I saw, like, Russell Henley was under early, I think, and I was playing so good, and I think I was at 14-under and he was at 17, and I was like, how am I going to catch these guys?” Highsmith said. “Was able to just stick with it.
“The putter for sure saved me. Every part of my game was really good today, but I made a lot of long putts. Those are just stuff that doesn’t really happen too often, especially on greens like this.”
Highsmith’s win gives him a two-year exemption and spots in the Masters, PGA Championship, Players and next week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational.
None of it would have been possible if that four-foot, seven-inch putt hadn’t found the bottom of the cup on Friday.
“It was, like, the worst putt you’d ever want,” Highsmith said of his cut-making par. “The greens were so baked out and bumpy and it was right to left kind of falling away. Just a super sketchy putt. I hate right-to-left putts because I have a tendency to wipe them or block them a little bit.
“I had already been kind of crumbling under the cut pressure. I think I had bogeyed two of the last five or something, made a couple pars, and of course I ended up with this five-footer just to make the cut. Same kind of thing. I just tried to make sure, at a minimum, I committed to it. I didn’t want to leave knowing that I had wished the last putt on Friday, so I committed to it and fortunately it went in.”
Armed with a newfound mental clarity and a putter that won’t leave the bag anytime soon, Highsmith poured in the par putt and marched into the weekend. He then proceeded to torch PGA National in record fashion and change his life in the process.
And it all started with a “sketchy” Friday par putt at dusk.
