Koivun shot 5-under-par 66 to stave off hard-charging Scottie Scheffler, who \u200cclosed with a 63 at TPC Twin Cities.<\/p>\n
Less than two months ago, Koivun was in college helping Auburn to its second NCAA championship in a three-year stretch. He demonstrated more poise while playing the final two rounds \u200cof his third \u200ctournament \u2060since turning pro without carding a bogey.<\/p>\n
“Definitely had some nerves coming down on 18,” Koivun said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“All throughout the crowd I kept hearing, ‘Scottie’s coming, Scottie’s \u200ccoming.’ I just tried to tone that out and keep playing the golf I knew I could.”<\/p>\n
Denny McCarthy (66), Brian \u200bHarman (65), Chandler Phillips (67) and Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama (64) tied for third place at 20 under.<\/p>\n
World No.1 Scheffler birdied three consecutive holes to begin the back nine as part of his bogey-free round. He birdied No.16 \u2060and 18, leaving him trailing by \u200ctwo \u200bstrokes.<\/p>\n
Koivun then birdied No.16, extending the margin to three strokes \u200bwith two holes to \u200cplay.<\/p>\n
Koivun, a three-time Player of the Year in the Southeastern \u200bConference college system, surged into the lead across the final nine holes on Saturday (Sunday AEST) and then went right to work on Sunday, with his approach \u200bshot \u200bon the first hole \u200bspinning back to within 2 feet of \u200cthe cup for an easy birdie putt. A birdie on No.4 pushed his lead to five strokes, with Scheffler among five golfers tied for second place at the time.<\/p>\n
“I just love this game. I love golf, it’s everything I do,” \u200cKoivun said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I have a tough \u200ctime getting away \u2060from it. Like I said, it’s been love at first sight.”<\/p>\n
Jake Knapp shot an early 62 \u200bto rise quickly on the leaderboard and finish at 16 under, \u200btying for 13th.<\/p>\n
Defending \u2060champion Kurt Kitayama (68) finished tied for 24th \u200bat 13 under.<\/p>\n
No Australians made the cut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Koivun shot 5-under-par 66 to stave off hard-charging Scottie Scheffler, who \u200cclosed with a 63 at TPC Twin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-826025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826025","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=826025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}