PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. – When Max Homa won the Genesis Invitational last year in a playoff, he was the hometown kid from nearby Valencia winning at Riviera Country Club. It was an ending — not to mention the missed 2-foot putt – that Hollywood moviemakers would have rejected. The local boy making good angle happens once every blue moon – John Merrick of Long Beach in 2013 was the last – but could we possibly be in story for another L.A. story?
Patrick Cantlay, another SoCal native from Long Beach, is on a serious heater. He’s won two of his last six starts dating to August and lost a playoff on the third extra hole Sunday at the WM Phoenix Open. Cantlay isn’t beating himself up over his latest close call.
“I try to do my best to understand and realize that seconds and thirds and playoff losses are going to happen while at the same time never being satisfied with all top-10 finishes this year,” he said. “The goal is to win tournaments and so far this year I’ve been shut out.”
Winless, perhaps, but playing some of the best golf of his life. Here are some more eye-popping numbers: Cantlay is 132-under par in his last 30 Tour rounds, with 28 of them in the 60s. Now he comes home to a course that he loves as much as any.
“It’s a tournament I went to growing up as a little kid with my dad and my grandpa and then played NCAAs here when I was in college at UCLA, my last year there,” he said ahead of the Genesis Invitational. “It’s a golf course that I think is one of the best if not the best on Tour, so I love being here this week.”
As a kid, he remembers standing by one of the greens – might have been the old 8th green, he said – and being no more than 10 paces from the hole location anll three balls stopping on a dime in front of him. He was amazed.
“Because in my head I was like, well, we might get hit standing here, we’re that close, and yet they all came in there, must have been a wedge, and they all had inside 10 feet for birdie,” he said.
Another time, it rained all day and he remembers how tough it was to get out.
“We sat in traffic for two, three hours leaving the golf tournament,” he said.
And then there was the time Justin Rose flipped him a golf glove.
“I thought that was pretty cool,” he said.
But mostly, he loves Riviera, one of the best ballparks on the Tour schedule.
“I think it defends par without getting tricked up better than any golf course I’ve ever been to. They rarely grow any rough, there’s basically no rough out there, there’s no water, you only can really hit it out of bounds on the 12th hole and yet 13, 14, 15, 16 under wins pretty much every time. They could make it a lot harder if they wanted to and they give you the first hole as a par-5 with a 3-wood and a 7-iron. I think it’s an amazing test of golf,” he said.
Cantlay doesn’t even mind the Kikuyu grass, a spongy turf that has been called “Bermudagrass on steroids.” It makes for a nice fluffy fairway lie but as rough can grab at the club and has been known to injure a wrist.
“Most people’s problems with Kikuyu is they never play on Kikuyu. There aren’t very many places in the world where we see this grass; even the other L.A. courses don’t really have Kikuyu,” Cantlay said. “So anytime you have to play on a surface that you’ve never played on before or played very rarely, it’s difficult. I fortunately grew up a southern Californian so I like the Kikuyu grass and don’t think it’s that particularly difficult.”
Cantlay is making his seventh career start here this week and has recorded four consecutive top-25 finishes. If he were to win this week and Jon Rahm finishes worse than solo fourth, Cantlay would rise to World No. 1 for the first time. There would be no more fitting place for him to do so.
“I think this one would be special for a number of reasons – hometown on my favorite golf course on Tour,” he said. “I’m hoping that someday my day will be here at this golf course and I’ll be able to win.”
