JERSEY CITY, N.J. — A final-round 62 highlighted by his first-ever hole-in-one, in the end, was not enough to win him the Wyndham Championship on Sunday. But Chesson Hadley walked away feeling every bit as good as champ Kevin Kisner, while putting a focus on those who grind for a living in golf.
Hadley, 34, has a single PGA Tour win in 2014 and was not in position to win the PGA Tour’s regular-season last tournament. But he knew he needed a good finish to advance to the FedEx Cup playoffs that begin Thursday at the Northern Trust.
More so, that good finish was needed to keep his exempt status for 2021-22 on the PGA Tour.
By tying for 15th, Hadley earned enough FedEx Cup points to grab the 125th and final spot in the Northern Trust field at Liberty National, thus avoiding a trip to the Korn Ferry Tour finals, where he would have needed a good stretch of events to regain PGA Tour status. The first event is this week in Boise, Idaho.
“All that was weighing on my mind,” Hadley said Wednesday at Liberty National. “It was either jumping on a plane to go to Boise or jump on a plane to come here and try and maybe make my way to Atlanta [for the Tour Championship].
“It has been such a kind of up-and-down year, just with having the really great opportunity to win at Congaree [the Palmetto Championship] and letting that slip away to just not really getting anything out of it and just kind of thinking — like this seriously can’t be like — I seriously can’t be missing the top 125 after Congaree, and then Sunday happens, and it all made sense honestly. It just all came together.
“I felt like I beat Kevin [Kisner], honestly. I felt like I won the golf tournament.”
The ace he made on the 16th hole — his seventh of the round — elicited a wild celebration that could not be fully realized until he learned he had earned the last spot. And that only occurred after Justin Rose three-putted the final green to drop into the 126th position. (Rose won the FedEx Cup title in 2018.)
Afterward, Hadley did an emotional interview with CBS and on Wednesday was still trying to explain why it meant so much.
“It’s hard,” he said. “We are on the road a lot. I don’t sleep in my own bed. I don’t see my family necessarily as much as I want. That’s an aspect of this game that people don’t understand.
“I’m not on a private jet. I don’t get on a jet and fly to the next location. I don’t have that luxury. I certainly have the potential to unlock that, but I’m obviously battling to finish 125 this year, and I can’t afford to do that. This is hard, and this is a grind. I do love it. You guys saw in my interview that I love what I do, and there are certainly a lot of aspects of it that I love, but there are aspects of it that are not great honestly. It’s not that much fun, and it’s a challenge.”
By qualifying for the FedEx Cup playoffs, Hadley assured himself a minimum of $101,000 in bonus money — approximately $30,000 more than he would have made for finishing 126th. He also has the chance to move up in the standings, even if he doesn’t qualify for the BMW Championship next week, which requires he move into the top 70 in points. He will need at least a top-10 finish at the Northern Trust to achieve that goal.
“I’m playing with house money,” he said. “I’m on credit at the casino, and I can just kind of let it go. I think I need to set a new goal to — I probably need to figure out exactly what I need to finish to get inside the top 70, so I need to set a new goal, figure out kind of where I need to finish, and just kind of look at the leaderboards and kind of get motivated and figure out a way to get to that number and obviously try and win the golf tournament.
“But you can’t win the golf tournament until Sunday. Let’s just put ourselves in position and see what happens.”