David Puig is now in the same sentence as Seve Ballesteros.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old LIV golfer won the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland, becoming the first and only Spaniard to pull off that feat since Ballesteros in 1981.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name, being with Seve\u2019s name as the only two [from Spain] … makes it even more special,\u201d Puig said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Puig finished at 18 under, two strokes ahead of China\u2019s Wenyi Ding. He co-led after 54 holes, with 31 players within six shots of the lead, but pulled away with a final-round 5-under 66.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels amazing,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve really had a lot of close calls in a few events throughout this year and last year and I kinda wasn\u2019t able to pull it through. It feels unbelievable, especially to win here in Australia and I played some awesome golf, so I\u2019m really excited and happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Puig elected to skip his senior year at Arizona State and joined LIV in September 2022. It\u2019s the second big recent win for LIV\u2014and Spain. Last week, Josele Ballester, the 2024 U.S. Amateur Champion who joined LIV this year after also playing collegiately at Arizona State, claimed the Asian Tour\u2019s Saudi International<\/a>.<\/p>\n As the European nation racks up victories, Ballesteros, a five-time major champion, always serves as inspiration. <\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s such a big figure for Spanish golf,\u201d Puig said. \u201cHis presence and everything he accomplished; it\u2019s marked in Spanish players and in a way we try to be like him.<\/p>\n \u201cPlay with that freedom … attitude, behavior and how much he cared and hopefully we\u2019re kind of on the right path.\u201d<\/p>\n More Golf from Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Puig is now in the same sentence as Seve Ballesteros.\u00a0 The 23-year-old LIV golfer won the Australian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-318977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}