CRUSHERS SLIP AFTER A RARE OFF-DAY BUT HEAD TO MIAMI AS SECOND SEEDS
KING ABDULLA ECONOMIC CITY, Saudi Arabia: The red-hot Crushers GC endured one of its most disappointing days in recent few months and slipped in both individual and team standings on the final day of LIV Golf Jeddah presented by ROSHN.
Paul Casey’s four-under par was the best round of the day for Crushers at the Royal Greens Golf & Country Club, but Captain Bryson DeChambeau (even-par 70) and Charles Howell III (68), who were both contending for the individual title, could not make the charge.
Anirban Lahiri holed out his second shot for an eagle on the second hole, but that was the only bright spot for the Indian, who closed with a 71.
It was a top-10 finish for Howell (11-under par, tied sixth), but DeChambeau, who was in a position to win the overall Individual Championship, slipped to a tie for 11th position. Casey improved to tied 24th place at six-under total.
With Smash’s Brooks Koepka winning the title following two holes of playoff against Talor Gooch, he also managed to push DeChambeau out of the top-three in the individual standings.
The 28-under par total as a team was not enough to overtake the 4Aces on top of the team standings going into next week’s Team Championship in Miami, but Crushers still finished in second place at 186 points. They will have the luxury of a bye to the semi-finals on Saturday as the second seeds.
Quite unusually, DeChambeau, Howell and Lahiri all started with bogeys, and never really got it going.
“It was a terrible day in the office for the team, and individually as well. I think we all just got off to a very weird start. A lot of people did, and that could be end-of-season fatigue, or a little bit of the heat catching up,” said Lahiri, who had three second-place finishes this season.
“But these are all excuses. At the end of the day, I got off to a bad start and just never got any momentum going. This whole week has been very strange. My wedge play and my putting, which are usually my strengths, let me down big time.
“And even for the team, it was very disappointing. I think we’ve all been playing well. But we just didn’t show up today. In a way, it doesn’t really make that much of a difference going into Miami, but it would have been nice to finish as the number one team at the end of the year.
“If you ask me if we’d rather stand on the podium this week or the next, I will definitely go for the Sunday in Miami.”
At the end of the regular season, DeChambeau was fourth overall with 149 points; Mayakoba champion Howell was 10th with 102 points; Lahiri was 13th with 99 points and Casey 35th with 20.