Corey Conners won the Valero Texas Open on Sunday at TPC San Antonio, concluding the round with a bogey-free 68 and finished fifteen under for the tournament. This will be the second time Conners has won here, taking the event in 2019 for his first career PGA Tour victory. This is Conners second overall win on the PGA Tour and will allow him to compete in the Masters Tournament at Augusta National this week.
Conners started the round at eleven under, one shot back from Patrick Rodgers who led after fifty-four holes. Rodgers dropped multiple shots early with bogies on the fourth, sixth and seventh holes. Rodgers unfortunately dug himself too deep of a hole with his first PGA Tour victory alluding him. The Stanford alum concluded the final round at eleven under, giving him a top-five finish.
Sam Stevens and Sam Ryder made strong charges in the final round, finishing one and two shots off the lead respectively. Stevens had a birdie opportunity on the eighteenth that would’ve tied him with Connors for the lead. The Fort Worth native came up just short though, the ball needed a touch more juice to land in the cup with an inch or two to spare. Stevens capped off his tournament at fourteen under.
Chez Reavie had the lowest score of the day, closing with a 65 (-7) placing him ten under for the tournament with a top-ten finish. Reavie’s round was the second lowest of the tournament, only surpassed by Conners score of 64 in the first round. Matt Kuchar was able to rally on the back nine after a bogey on the eleventh. Kuchar proceeded to birdie on fourteen, sixteen, seventeen and eighteen to finish tied for third in the event at thirteen under.
The Masters Looming
Conners victory in San Antonio earned him a $1.602 million purse. The win helped the three-year PGA Tour veteran to rise sixty-four spots to eighteenth in the rankings for the Fedex Cup Standings and places the Canadian at twenty-eighth in the OWGR.
Conners hopes to take this momentum into the first major championship of the calendar year at Augusta National but will be competing in a packed field of returning champions and some LIV Golf participants who still qualify for the tournament.
The field will have a tough task contending with defending Masters champion and current world number-one Scottie Scheffler. Scheffler took home a win at the Players Championship earlier this year and put together a strong performance recently in the WGC Matchplay Tournament.
