Tom Kim: Confirmed electric factory.<\/p>\n
Kim\u2019s hole-in-one on the penultimate hole Tuesday night at the SoFi Center helped Jupiter Links GC to defeat The Bay Golf Club and earn the final spot in the playoffs in one of the most thrilling moments in TGL\u2019s short history.<\/p>\n
Jupiter Links will take on the top-seeded Boston Common Golf in one of the SoFi Cup semifinal matches while Los Angeles Golf Club will take on defending SoFi Cup champs Atlanta Drive GC in the other.<\/p>\n
Kim, who was playing just his second match of the season, made an ace on the 138-yard par-3 14th hole \u2013 with the hammer thrown \u2013 to help Jupiter Links complete the comeback.<\/p>\n
The Tiger Woods-led squad was down 6-3 at one point before scoring six unanswered points to win 9-6 over The Bay in a win-and-get-in scenario in the 15th and final regular season match of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m very proud to be around guys who don’t give up,\u201d Max Homa said.<\/p>\n
Kim\u2019s ace \u2013 the second hole-in-one recorded this season after Neil Shipley made one for The Bay in February \u2013 gave Jupiter Links a 7-6 advantage before Kevin Kisner played the par-5 finisher with aplomb, rolling in a 13-foot birdie to put an exclamation point on the match after Wyndham Clark missed a 22-foot birdie try for The Bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor each one of these guys to earn the holes coming in and contribute like they did, it couldn’t be more special and better for these guys,\u201d Woods said.<\/p>\n
The Bay, to their credit, got off to a steady start, leading 2-0 after four holes before Jupiter Links began clawing its way back, winning Nos. 6 and 7 to tie the match. The Bay pulled ahead again after Ludvig Aberg made an 11-foot birdie on the par-4 8th before Min Woo Lee drained a 38-foot birdie on No. 9 \u2013 the second-longest putt in TGL history \u2013 to give The Bay a 4-2 advantage heading into singles.<\/p>\n
Homa won the first singles hole, No. 10, for Jupiter Links, cutting the lead to 4-3, before The Bay seemingly began to pull away, winning Nos. 11 and 12 to lead 6-3.<\/p>\n
But just two days after Shane Lowry coughed up a three-shot lead on the PGA Tour with three to play after making back-to-back double bogeys for the first time in his career, anything can happen in indoor golf just like in the real world.<\/p>\n
On No. 13, Homa nailed a nine-footer for birdie after Aberg missed his 14-foot attempt, cutting The Bay\u2019s lead to 6-5.<\/p>\n
And then Kim, who had been clutch earlier in the match, stepped up and knocked his wedge just past the hole on No. 14 and saw it spun back to the bottom of the cup. The celebration was epic, and even shades of the Masters in 2005 when Woods chipped in on 16 (the, \u201cin your life!\u201d chip in) and did the double-barrelled fist pump. Given how fragile Woods\u2019 body is these days, you\u2019d be forgiven if you thought their celebration came on a little too strong.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve never been tackled before,\u201d Kim said with a smile about the chaos that unfolded after his ace. \u201cThat was one thing. It’s a shot that I’ve hit well before and it’s a shot that I’ve practiced a lot in the stadium. I haven’t made much hole-in-ones in my life, and not a better way to do it than today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mayhem calmed just enough for Kisner to hit three perfect shots on the long par-5 closer. He needed two putts from 13 feet to win the match and send Jupiter Links to the playoffs but alas, Kisner needed just one \u2013 despite not necessarily thinking he had it in him. Kisner said he texted Homa Tuesday morning admitted if the match comes down to 15 then the team is \u201cprobably screwed\u201d because Clark, a longer hitter, could get to the green in two shots and Kisner couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, Tom makes a hole-in-one and then they throw the hammer and Max is like, well, \u2018You asked for it at 17, so here you go.\u2019 It was cool, man. Good way to finish,\u201d Kisner said. \u201cYou always dream about having a putt to win a match, and really cool after the way Max and Tom played the two before me to finish it off. It wouldn’t have been as cool if I didn’t finish it off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jupiter Links and Boston didn\u2019t make the playoffs in TGL\u2019s first season \u2013 and in the case of Boston, it didn\u2019t even win a match in season one \u2013 and their first-round match-up will be a rematch of the most exciting regular season match of season two, with Boston winning 7-6 in overtime.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles defeated Atlanta Drive 7-3 in their regular season match in February.<\/p>\n
The TGL semifinals will be contested as a double-header on March 17 and despite the longest of odds, it will feature Woods\u2019 team. Woods himself was non-committal about whether he would play or not, but he said, like he\u2019s been all year long, he\u2019ll be in the building with his team regardless.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is what we set out to do with TGL. We tried to grow the game, tried to do it differently. We don’t normally play golf at 9 to 11 at night, so to be able to do this out here and to have this showcase, to have this group of guys, to be able to do what we did at the end, to have a hole-in-one, to have everything that happened at the very end, that’s what it was all about,\u201d Woods said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Kim: Confirmed electric factory. Kim\u2019s hole-in-one on the penultimate hole Tuesday night at the SoFi Center helped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-513473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}