Sunday Swing | Burns and Boutier Earn Wins With Clutch Play

Welcome back to the Sunday Swing presented by 2nd Swing Golf. This week the PGA Tour hosted its only match play format event of the season- the WGC Dell Technologies Match Play from Austin Country Club in Austin, Texas. The best ladies in the world played the LPGA Drive on Championship from Superstition Mountain Golf & Country Club in Gold Canyon, Arizona. 

WGC Dell Technologies Match Play - Tournament History 

The WGC Match Play event is perhaps the most unique event on the PGA Tour’s regular season schedule. Dating back to 1999, 64 of the best players in the world start the week in 16 pools of 4. In the group stage, players will play a match against all three of the others in their pool. After these matches are completed, the player with the most points (best record) advances out of group play and into the 16-man single elimination bracket play. After playing seven rounds of golf in four days, one player is crowned champion. One of the most prolific singles players in history, Tiger Woods, has won this event three times in his career. The only other players to win the event multiple times are Geoff Ogilvy and Jason Day, who have each won two titles here. 

Austin Country Club is a 7,108-yard par 72 designed by the legendary Pete Dye. The course features lots of drastic elevation changes allowing the players to hit some drives upwards of 400 yards. Typically the players make birdies in bunches and also have multiple opportunities to make eagle. The previous five champions of this events are as follows: 

2023 - Sam Burns 
2022 - Scottie Scheffler 
2021 - Billy Horschel 
2019 - Kevin Kisner 
2018 - Bubba Watson 

The Big Swing

This week the Big Swing goes to Sam Burns, the 2023 Dell Technologies Match Play champion. To set the scene, the final four was made up of significant firepower, consisting of red-hot defending champion Scottie Scheffler, world No. 3 Rory McIlroy, and rising stars Cameron Young and Burns. In the semi-finals, Scheffler and Burns had a roller coaster of a match. Burns birdied the opening three holes to go up three, which Scheffler followed up with his own birdie barrage to take the lead by two holes into the back nine. Burns then squared the match again with birdies on holes 16 and 17, forcing a playoff. On the third playoff hole, Burns snuck in a long birdie putt to advance to the championship match. Meanwhile, Young rallied late against McIlroy to force a playoff. In the playoff, after a bad break off the tee, Young managed to make a birdie the old fashioned way at the par-5 12th, which ultimately was good enough to take McIlroy down.

Burns was untouchable in the championship match. He made eight birdies in 13 holes, including five of the last six, to pull away from Young for the dominant victory. After struggling for the last several months with his form, Burns appears to have found the same swing that helped him win three times in the 2021-2022 season.

Winner’s Bag - Sam Burns 

Sam Burns gets Team Callaway back in the winner’s circle with his victory in Austin, joining the likes of Jon Rahm and Si Woo Kim to earn victories early on in 2023 with Paradym in the bag. Burns is playing the new Callaway Paradym Triple Diamond woods – the driver at nine degrees and the fairway wood at 16 degrees. At the top of his iron set, Burns has the Callaway Apex UW (21 degrees) which allows him to land the ball softly from the 250-yard range. Powering the approach play is the Callaway Apex TCB irons (4-GW) and Callaway Jaws Raw wedges (56 and 60 degrees). This week, it was the putter that proved most valuable for Burns, who dropped countless long putts to steal holes in many of his matches. He uses an Odyssey O-Works 7S putter, one of the most popular mallet designs from Odyssey. The ball that ties it all together is the Callaway Chrome Soft X. 

In the World of Women’s Golf 

This week on the LPGA Tour, the best in the world were in Gold Canyon, Arizona for the LPGA Drive On Championship. This event is played at Superstition Mountain Golf & Country Club in Gold Canyon, AZ. 

The course was playing easy this week and scores reflected that with players making loads of birdies. On Sunday, it was Georgia Hall, Celine Boutier, and Ayaka Furue who formed a three-horse race for the title. Hall played fabulously on the back nine carding a 6-under par 30 en route to a 7-under par 65 to take the clubhouse lead at -20. Furue, meanwhile, birdied the closing two holes, but that was only enough to get her to -19. Boutier remained the only threat to Hall as she played the par-5 18th, needing a birdie to force a playoff. She calmly executed a tricky up-and-down from the bunker to make the birdie and advance to a playoff.

On the first playoff hole – No. 18 again – Boutier played the hole flawlessly. When Hall’s birdie putt didn’t fall, Boutier had about five feet to seal the victory and she rolled it in with confidence. This is Boutier’s third LPGA Tour victory and her first since the 2021 ShopRite LPGA Classic.