Smotherman captures first PGA Tour title in 100th career start in Utah

Austin Smotherman birdied the last to finish 26 under at Black Desert Resort, winning the Bank of Utah Championship in the 100th PGA Tour start of his career.

Austin Smotherman won the Bank of Utah Championship on Sunday for his first PGA Tour title, delivering it in the 100th start of his career on the circuit. He finished at 26 under par at Black Desert Resort in Utah.

Smotherman began the final round one shot ahead of Doug Ghim and extended his cushion with birdies at the first, fourth and fifth holes. Seven consecutive pars followed before trouble at the par-4 13th, where he hit the fairway but saw his second shot catch the lip of a greenside bunker and his third, which carried only 24 feet, settle in another. The resulting double bogey cut his lead from three shots to one.

He answered right away. Smotherman birdied the drivable par-4 14th and added another at the 16th, and while a bogey at 17 pulled Ghim back within two, a fairway hit at the par-5 18th set up a second shot that stopped just short of the green. He took two putts from there for a closing birdie and the trophy.

The victory grew out of a fast start to the week: rounds of 63 and 62 gave Smotherman the lead at the halfway point, and a 6-under 65 on Saturday produced the second 54-hole lead of his career. After that round he said a victory "would be just a lifelong dream come true."

The first 54-hole lead had come in March at the Cognizant Championship, where the then-31-year-old negotiated PGA National on Sunday and finished tied for second as Nico Echavarria claimed the title and Shane Lowry faltered. Smotherman called it his "first really big pedestal," adding that a "back door-ish" top five at the Mexico Open at Vidanta a couple of years earlier had not come with the same pressure coming down the stretch.

That runner-up finish brought an invitation to his first Signature Event, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, but he withdrew from Bay Hill with an injury. A tie for 13th at the Players came the following week, and the rest of the season brought missed cuts and middling finishes, leaving him 80th in the FedEx Cup standings and outside the playoffs.

The breakthrough capped a 10-year professional road that ran through SMU, two years on PGA Tour Latin America and more than two on the Korn Ferry Tour. When his final putt dropped, Smotherman hugged his caddie and Ghim before embracing his wife on the green.

Interviewed afterward by Golf Channel's Amy Rogers, an emotional Smotherman said he had hit it "just good enough" and hit it close early to ease the pressure. "Oh my gosh … we won on the PGA Tour. That's insane," he said before ending the interview with a shout of "Gosh … we did it! Let's go!"

An hour later, with the trophy beside him, Smotherman reflected on the "learning curves" at each level of professional golf and on what the win might make possible. "One hundred starts out here is an incredible number, just to have 100 starts," he said. "But even more so, to play professional golf now for 10 years, travel the world, have the support I've had, it's pretty unreal to lift a trophy at the highest level. It's something we've dreamed about since I was a kid. Here we are."