Mackenzie Hughes and his caddie, Jace Walker, at some point on the back nine of Friday’s first round of the QBE Shootout, were watching Kevin Na over about a 15-foot putt. They thought about putting a little action on it. They quickly thought better of it.
“My caddie and I were like, ‘Do you want odds on this one?’” Hughes said. “I’m actually like, ‘Nah, I don’t want to bet against him.’
“And he made it.”
Again and again. Had you bet on Na, even Vegas at some point would stop taking your money.
“I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” said Sean O’Hair, Na’s playing partner in the two-man, PGA Tour Challenge Season event. “I honestly felt like if we were just on the green, we were making birdie. … Golf’s pretty easy when you do what he did today. It was fun to watch.”
Among the fun:
A 30-footer for eagle on the 600-yard, par-5 6th.
A 10-footer for birdie on the 480-yard, par-4 9th.
A 30-footer for birdie on the 430-yard, par-4 11th.
A 12-footer for birdie on the 578-yard, par-5 14th.
A 20-footer for birdie on the 420-yard, par-4 15th.
A 40-footer for eagle on the 559-yard, par-5 18th.
Na’s 30-footer for birdie on 18 would slide by the hole. In the end, he and O’Hair would shoot a 16-under 56 in the scramble format, one stroke short of the tournament record. Yes, it was a scramble, where Na could either get a read of his partner’s putt, or know that if he missed first, O’Hair would have a crack at it. But yes, Na still had to make the putts.
“What you wouldn’t give, no matter the sport, to be able to, on demand, call that up,” play-by-play announcer Terry Gannon said on the Golf Channel broadcast. “The great mystery is, why am I making everything and I know I can’t wait to get to the green because I know I’m going to make this.”
“Well, a lot of it is not afraid of missing,” analyst David Feherty said. “That’s what great putters have in common.”
“This is almost another level of that,” analyst Curt Byrum added. “It would be different if they were 10- and 12-footers. But a lot of these have been 30- and 40-footers.”
Na has gone nuclear before. On his way to winning the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in 2019, Na rolled in 558 feet, 11 inches of putts over the 72 holes, the most since the Tour began tracking the stat in 2003. He was an incredible +14.263 in Strokes Gained: Putting.
No such stats were kept this week. So simpler terms will have to do.
Na didn’t miss.
“By any stretch of the imagination, this is a heck of a display,” Feherty said.
