Ryder Cup stars missed the BMW PGA Championship
At the beginning of the final round of results at the Wentworth par72 course in London on September 17, six members of the European Ryder Cup team were able to carry the BMW PGA Championship 2023, including Ludvig Aberg, Tommy Fleetwood, Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, Sepp Straka, and Viktor Hovland. At that time, Aberg held the top of the table, at -16, Fleetwood -14, Rahm -12, Hatton and Straka both -11, Hovland -10, and Fox -13 like Aaron Rai. These are the last riders on the starting schedule.
Hovland and Straka crossed the finish line first. In the whole match, Hovland earned five points, Straka only one point. Finishing right behind Hovland's group, Rahm finished -16, Hatton -17 and became a target to overcome.
In the penultimate group, Rai scored a bogey on hole 1, Fox collapsed on hole 3 with a triple bogey result. At that time, Fox was five strokes away from the top spot. But from then on, he and Rai gradually narrowed their disadvantage. From holes 6 to 17, Rai scored six birdies and one bogey while Fox continuously increased his score thanks to seven birdies, the most impressive being at hole 15.
At the end of the penultimate hole, Rai reached -16, Fox reached -17.
Entering hole 18, Rai put the ball into the green in his second shot with a hybrid club and then rolled the left rim of the hole in a putt to find an eagle 12 meters away. And so, he got birdie, finished close range and returned -17.
Fox couldn't score like Rai in the second shot because the ball landed in the rough and there was a water hazard in front of the green. The situation forced him to put the ball in front of the trap, then into the green on his third shot. With this strategy, Fox birdied the target hole from a putt 1.8 meters away, thereby closing the tournament score at -18.
The last group, including Aberg and Fleetwood, both lost their fire. At the finish hole, Aberg thanks to the par score to keep -12, Fleetwood took birdie to get back to -14. Here, the BMW PGA Championship 2023 ends with the championship and 1.53 million USD belonging to Fox, a New Zealander, 36 years old this year.
Before this title, Fox had three cups on the DP World Tour, the most recent of which was at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in October 2022.
The BMW PGA Championship was born in 1955 and has been a key event on the DP World Tour since 1990. The last match brought together the entire European team about to compete in the Ryder Cup with the US at Marco Simone Stadium in Rome from September 29 to October 1, including Aberg, Fleetwood, Rahm, Hatton, Straka, Hovland, Rory McIlroy, Matt Fitzpatrick. , Justin Rose, Nicolai Hojgaard, Shane Lowry and Robert McIntyre.
The entire team passed the cut, of which seven players finished in the top 10 overall - Hatton finished T2, right above Rahm, Hovland finished in the top 5, Fleetwood ranked sixth, McIlroy ranked 7th, and Aberg and Straka were in T10. The rest are scattered from T18 to T64 - Fitzpatrick, Rose, Hojgaard, Lowry and McIntyre.
