PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Tom Hoge stole the show.
On the grand stage named Pebble Beach, in the final-round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, with fan favorite Jordan Spieth owning the spotlight since his high-wire act on a cliff’s edge the day before and his pace-setting ways on the back-nine on Sunday, Hoge broke through for his first PGA Tour title.
With three birdies in his final five holes, Hoge overcame Spieth with a final-round 4-under-par 68 to finish at 19 under to win by two shots.
Hoge, who played in the final group in last year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am with Spieth before fading to a tie for 12th, joked shortly after winning that he hadn’t won anything in so long that he forgot how to celebrate.
“It’s incredible,” Hoge said. “I’ve waited 11 years for this. It was a tough grind out there. The wind was really tricky today. But I hung in there really well.”
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On another glorious day by the sea, seven players held at least a share of the lead during the final 18. Hoge, one of three to hold the 54-hole lead, seemed to have given up his chance to win when he doubled the short par-3 fifth. But Hoge, who took the outright lead with a first-round 63 at Pebble Beach, bounced right back with birdies on six and seven.
He got within one shot of Spieth with a 15-footer for birdie on the 14th, and caught Spieth with an iron from 140 yards on the 16th to tap-in range. Then, as Hoge stood on the tee at the 17th, he saw Spieth bogey the hole – Spieth had found the bunker with his tee shot and missed his par putt from 5 feet.
And then Hoge found the green at 17 and knocked in a 22-footer for birdie and a two-shot advantage. He safely parred the final hole.
Hoge, 32, who moved to 39th in the official world rankings, finished second two weeks ago in the American Express.
“I really thought I made too many mistakes to really have a chance on the front nine, to be honest with you,” Hoge said. “I looked up and I was still kind of right in the game then making the turn. So I just tried to hang in there as best as I could, and I finally started making a few putts.”
Now he gets to putt at Augusta National, earning his first invitation to the Masters.
Spieth, the 2017 Pebble champion who tied for third here last year, stood on the 15th tee with a two-shot lead. But he scrambled for par on the 16th, bogeyed the 17th and hit his second into a bunker on the 18th and settled for par.
With a 69, Spieth finished at 17 under. It was his sixth top 10 and ninth top 25 in 10 starts in the event.
“I’ll look back and kick myself for not winning this tournament, just having the lead and looking back at where the pins were on the last four holes,” said Spieth, who missed the cut last week in San Diego. “But if you told me I would have the lead on Sunday on the last Thursday I would have said I’ll take that.
“So played well, tempo got a little off on the driver as kind of nerves were up and such. I’ve driven the ball really well the whole week, and just kind of started missing some contact. So I’ll probably dissect that a little bit into next week and try and improve.”
Spieth wasn’t surprised Hoge won. A few years back, Hoge taught Spieth how to play craps.
“He’s a Texan, he’s from Fort Worth, somebody who I’ve really gotten to know,” Spieth said. “The general public doesn’t realize that he’s a guy when he’s in contention will be the guy that can close it out. There’s few and far between the guys that are going to sit there and embrace it and play fearlessly.
“And he’s somebody that I knew when he was on the heels I needed to make birdies, he wasn’t going to falter.”
Beau Hossler had a chance to tie with an eagle on the final hole but hit his second shot into a greenside bunker and made bogey to finish with a 71 and at 16 under.
Troy Merritt, who birdied seven of his first 10 holes and took the outright lead with a birdie on the 14th, doubled 17 from the back bunker and finished with a 67 and at 15 under.
Patrick Cantlay, the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 4, who had two wins and two other top 10s in his last four starts, finished with a birdie to shoot 71 and also finished at 15 under. He never got his game going after a birdie on the sixth, making three bogeys coming in.
While Hoge waited 11 years for his first PGA Tour title, his caddie, Henry Diana, waited 23 years.
“I really have a lot of respect for Henry,” Hoge said. “He’s helped me, more so, I would say, practice and manage my game really well and just helped me be more of a professional I would say. And just having that steady guy with me the whole way, we were right there, so feels great to get it done for him, too.”
And Hoge finally got it done by learning how to play better when in contention.
“Being in the hunt, I played a couple times with Tiger (woods) on Sundays, and you really can’t practice for those moments,” Hoge said. “The energy, the excitement that you have in your body.
“For me the takeaways are always, it’s kind of hard to quiet my mind, quiet my hands, that sort of stuff with putting, whatnot. Every day’s a little bit different, but I always, when you’re getting in that situation once or twice a year, it’s hard to play your best golf on those Sundays. So I felt like for me to get a win and to be sitting here finally I needed to do it more often and get up there in the mix a little bit more often, which is, it’s hard to say, but I’ve been doing that pretty well here now with this whole season so far, going back to last fall.
“But just being there a couple week ago in Palm Springs I had a little bit of those same nerves, excitement, that energy off the start and I calmed down pretty fast, and I felt pretty good the whole day, but today I felt great right from the first tee.”
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