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Record Breaker: Brian Gay Dominates the Verizon Heritage

Written by golfguy on April 24th, 2009

In a stunning show of skill, Brian Gay dominated the Verizon Heritage with an astonishing 10-stroke lead. Gay has twice narrowly missed an invitation to the Masters; with this win, however, Gay need wait only another 50 weeks until he competes in the 2010 Masters.                      

Gay has shown steady improvement over the course of his 11 full PGA tours. Last year, he won his first career victory at the Mayakoba Golf Classic, along with more than $2.2 million in earnings – a personal high. This year, he has made 10 of 11 cuts, six of which were top-25 finishes, and three of which were top-10. This year’s victory is the second in his career, and marked his 330th career start on the PGA tour.          

The last player to win a PGA Tour event in the double-digits was Phil Mickelson, who steamrolled the 2006 BellSouth Classic by 13. (Mickelson, by the way, went on to gain his second green jacket at the Augusta Masters one week later.)

Gay’s double-digit lead is the ninth in the tour’s recorded history, tabulated since 1970 when record-keeping began.

The course, Harbour Town, is ranked as the second most-difficult course this year, with players hitting just 57.1 percent of the greens. The most difficult course is Bay Hill, where players hit an average of 55 percent. Both rank well below the 2009 tour average of almost 67 percent.

Despite the difficulty, Gay played the best game in his career, dominating all four days of the event and astounding spectators with his top-notch performance.

In the front nine, Gay launched his winning streak when he pushed in first an 18-foot birdie on the par-3 4th hole, and then a 25-foot birdie on the next hole. He hit a third straight birdie as he approached from a fairway bunker, another at less than 10 feet inside the 7th, and yet a fifth with a 20-foot putt, reaching 10 under. 

He finally settled for a par on the ninth hole. 

In all, Gay made six birdies on the front nine, five of which occurred consecutively from the fourth to the ninth holes, giving him a 66 and a one-stroke lead over former British Open champion Todd Hamilton.

Gay’s only bogey occurred at the tenth hole, after which he parred in to keep the lead. 

Gay’s competition at Harbour Town was strong but not exceptional. Many of golf’s top ranked players, including Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and last week’s Masters winner Angel Cabrera, took the week off to recuperate from the Augusta Masters. Of the top 20 players in the world, just six attended Harbour Town. Nevertheless, Gay offered a stellar performance on par with that of golf’s greatest players. 

Gay finished the tournament with a game that seemed to have broken records all over the place. At 20-under 264, his winning score broke the previous scoring record at the Verizon Heritage of 19-under 265, set by Loren Roberts in 1996.

The 10-stroke win margin is also a tournament best, topping Davis Love III’s 7-stroke lead in 1998. Gay won the Verizon Heritage with the largest margin of victory in the event’s history.          

At 83.9 percent, Gay was second in driving accuracy; first was Tim Wilkinson with 89.3 percent. At 66.7 percent, he was T-3 in greens in regulation. He was also T-3 in putts-per-round at 25.25, and with 1.604, third in putting average.

Most impressive, though, was the fact that Gay made only two bogeys for the week. This is the fewest number of bogeys at the Verizon Heritage since 1983, when the organization began to keep scoring records. Gay’s ratio of birdies or better to bogeys or worse was 10.5 to 1; the same ratio for the runners up centered around 2.2 to 1. 

With such a flawless performance, Gay more than earned his invitation to next year’s Masters.        

Cindy Ferguson is a high-ranking sports writer in the Football Betting industry. To view more of her exceptional work; visit the sports betting archives.

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