ALTON, Ontario, Canada – Sunday’s 62 was the best round of Sam Burns’ seven years as a PGA Tour pro, and carried him to the brink of his sixth career win, with an 18-under par score at the RBC Canadian Open.
But you can’t play defense in golf. Burns had no answer for a brilliant 256-yard approach shot to six feet by New Zealand’s Ryan Fox, whose birdie on the fourth playoff hole provided a sour finish for the 28-year-old Choudrant-based pro.
The players parred the par-5 18th hole three times in their playoff after each poured in a clutch birdie there to finish their regulation rounds and get to 18-under.
Burns center-cupped his downhill 10-footer exactly two hours before the playoff began. Fox sank a do-or-die 16-footer, getting it to fall just inside the left lip as the last player to finish, entering the day sharing the 54-hole lead, then forcing the playoff.
On the first extra hole, Burns stuck a wedge 5 feet from a birdie that would have won, but the Tour’s No. 1 putter missed on a left lip dip. He had more misfortune on the third hole, when his 75-yard approach landed 20 feet above the cup but spun back, caught the slope below the pin and rolled into the rough. A nifty pitch-and-putt salvaged par and extended the battle.
Fox’s fourth-hole finish earned him a $1.74 million winner’s share of the purse. Burns collected $1,068,200, upping his PGA Tour career total to $31.5 million, $3.5 million this season. He climbed to 29th in the FedEx Cup standings and 33rd in the Official World Golf Rankings with his 18th career top five finish.
It was his fourth top 20 since closing with a 68 The Masters – contending in the RBC Heritage, the Byron Nelson, the PGA Championship and a week earlier at The Memorial.
The Shreveport native, who plays out of Squire Creek Country Club in Choudrant, blistered the back nine Sunday. He had five approaches within 10 feet during a closing 29, rolling in five straight birdies starting at the 10th hole.
Burns, a two-time All-American and the Jack Nicklaus Collegiate Player of the Year at LSU, sank 93 feet of putts in his final 18 holes of regulation, posting nine birdies and one front-nine bogey.
The thick rough at TPC Toronto North will help him prepare for next week’s U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club north of Pittsburgh.
