As Matt Fitzpatrick celebrated a 72nd-hole birdie that won him the Valspar Championship, two players were processing different Sunday misses as they prepared to leave Innisbrook Resort.
One was ruing what might have been one of his last best shots. The other was hopeful a defeat could be the key to what comes next.
There was Presidents Cup captain Brandt Snedeker, who went off in the final group alongside 54-hole leader Sungjae Im. Snedeker, 45, is a nine-time winner on the PGA Tour, but his last victory came at the 2018 Wyndham Championship, when he opened with a 59. Since then, Snedeker has been through the wringer. In 2022, he underwent experimental surgery to fix a joint in his sternum that was separating. It took him eight months to return to competition. While his health is “the best” it has been in a decade, Snedeker has struggled on the course, posting just three top-10s in 62 events over the last three years.
But at the Valspar, Snedeker rode a hot putter and tidy short game into contention, giving him a chance to get back into the winner’s circle for the first time in almost eight years.
“Nobody expects me to be here,” Snedeker said Saturday.
He entered Sunday with a chance. By the time Snedeker made the turn, Im had fired a front-nine 40 and Snedeker found himself in a five-way tie for first.
It was all there for Snedeker. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t.
Snedeker missed makable birdie tries on 10 and 11, and then made a messy double bogey on the par-4 12th. Bogeys at 13, 16 and 17 followed as Snedeker came unravelled to finish in a tie for 18th.
“Stood on the 10th tee tied for the lead, which is all you can do,” Snedeker said after the round. “My swing left me on the back nine. I really struggled. I couldn’t really find anything to go to put the ball where I wanted to. This golf course — it’s a perfectly designed golf course — if you get out of position, it’s going to punish you. All those putts I’ve been making all week dried up today.
“It’s frustrating, it sucks, and all the good stuff this week kind of feels like I threw it away today. But that’s part of golf. That’s why I love this challenge, and I’ll come back next week and try to figure out what I did wrong and try to fix it.”
Snedeker began the year with conditional status and opened with four straight missed cuts. For 63 holes at the Valspar, he had a chance to author an improbable story. Instead, he limped to the finish and left the Copperhead Course hopeful that this was a sign of what’s to come and not an isolated flash of good play.
“I was really happy with my process today,” Snedeker said. “Never felt nervous, never felt like I was uncomfortable with the situations I was in. Feel like my swing was a little bit off. This golf course can really make you pay. It’s not like I hit any wild, awful shots, just constantly a slow drain. Miss a fairway here, miss a green there, and put the ball in the wrong spot and you’re going to make bogeys. That’s what I did on the back nine. Hung in there on the front nine. Just wish I could go back and tee off on 10 one more time.”
As Snedker was finishing up a slow back-nine bleed, David Lipsky was up ahead pushing Fitzpatrick to the limit.
The 37-year-old Lipsky has never won on the PGA Tour and is currently playing on conditional status after finishing 107th in the FedEx Cup Fall standings. He arrived at the Valspar with one top-20 in four starts this season, but Lipsky opened with rounds of 69-65-70 to start the final round tied with Snedeker, just two off Im’s lead.
Lipsky went out in even and then birdied 14 to join Fitzpatrick atop the leaderboard at 10 under. He missed a birdie putt at No. 15 and then watched his 15-foot birdie attempt at 17 come up short. When Fitzpatrick birdied 18 ahead of him, Lipsky needed to answer on the final hole to force a playoff. But his tee shot landed in the right rough, and his approach left him 32 feet for birdie. Lipsky gave it a run, but his playoff-forcing effort just missed, leaving him with a runner-up finish.
Sunday at the Valspar could have changed everything for David Lipsky. But the near-miss didn’t leave him with regret or frustration; all that was there on Sunday was excitement about what was to come. That solo second finish vaults him to the top of the AON Swing Five, which means he is on track to get into the RBC Heritage, the next Signature Event. That can open up everything for a journeyman still grinding for playing opportunities on the PGA Tour and hoping to get out of the conditional land where he currently resides.
“Massive,” Lipsky said of his week. “It’s going to probably get me into a few of the Signature Events or whatnot. It’s a great week. I have no notes on that.
“It gets you into so many more events. You don’t feel like you’re behind the 8-ball, especially going into the summer. So this week was an awesome week and I’m really looking forward to seeing what events I get into the rest of the year and trying to play my way into those playoffs.”
Lipsky will head to Houston this week, looking to bolster his chances of kicking down the door to a Signature Event. Snedeker, meanwhile, will continue to “split” his focus between his duties as Presidents Cup captain and as a nine-time PGA Tour winner in search of a late-career resurgence.
His Valspar could very well be the start of that. But there’s one thing it won’t be: the start of a conversation that mirrors what Keegan Bradley lived last year as he tried to play himself onto his own Ryder Cup team. Snedeker will be at Medinah in September as a captain, and captain only. His golf will be secondary until the final putt drops this fall.
“There’s no chance,” Snedeker said on Thursday about the possibility of being a playing captain. “Let’s not even talk crazy here. There’s no chance, no chance.
“I want to make sure I play some good golf out here,” Snedeker said on Sunday after he stumbled home. “But more importantly, I want to make sure I do a good job being Presidents Cup captain.”
