Nick Taylor drains improbable 72nd hole chip to win Sony Open

One of the great traits of sports is that they are presided over by a commanding sense of fate.

The competition may be intense and the possibilities may be many, but by the time we have reached the end, we usually feel as if we have gotten the outcome we deserved. In golf, all that’s left to learn by the time Sunday morning rises is the path from point A (opening tee shots) to point B (the winner’s circle).

But there is no person in the golf world, and perhaps no person in the spiritual world, who would have predicted Nick Taylor would win the Sony Open by the time he reached the 72nd fairway in Waialae. It wasn’t just that Taylor was trailing by two shots on the last hole, with the leaders still behind him. Not just that he’d blown consecutive four-footers on the 69th and 70th holes to fall into that position. Not just that was seconds away from overcooking his approach on the 72nd hole to the back bumper of the green, leaving a gnarly 60-footer down a ridge just to get to a playoff. It was that Taylor himself didn’t think he had a chance.

“It was a tough day,” he admitted later. “I was 1-over through 7 and not really thinking about winning.”

But then the great pendulum of fate swung from behind the 72nd green in Waialae, and suddenly Taylor was watching his ball roll down the ridge at the perfect pace and perfect line, tracking nearer and nearer to the hole. And then, equally suddenly, it fell in, and Nick Taylor wasn’t two shots off the lead anymore. He was the leader in the clubhouse, tied with Echavarria. And Spaun and Jaeger were in trouble behind him.

The sequence arrived in an instant, and was visible best on NBC’s broadcast, which had effectively shifted its focus away from Taylor to keep maximum attention on the three golfers with the best chance of winning the tournament. The start of Taylor’s chip hardly cleared over the television screen, and then it was in the bottom of the hole and the NBC crew was expressing its solemn shock at the possibility that Taylor might now be headed for a playoff.

When Spaun and Jaeger missed the 72nd fairway behind Taylor, it seemed that possibility had become probability. Probability became certainty when Spaun and Jaeger each tapped in for par to end their rounds at 15 under, one shot behind Echavarria and Taylor. Still, victory was another thought entirely. Taylor needed to win a playoff against Echavarria on the same 18th hole, and his foe wouldn’t go away easily.

The two golfers made birdies each on the first playoff hole. But then, after returning to the 18th hole for a second time, it seemed a conclusion was nearing. Taylor had undercooked his approach this time, leaving 40 yards to the pin, while Echavarria had struck a towering hybrid to 40 feet.

But Taylor would not go away. He struck a downright perfect chip shot to 3 feet, swinging pressure back in the direction of Echavarria, who popped up his putt off the back fringe.

It was Echavarria’s turn again, and this time, the birdie putt missed, leaving a 3-footer for Taylor to clinch the title. Taylor struck his putt straight into the bottom of the hole. Tournament over. Victory.

As the weight of the moment washed over him, so did the depth of his shock. For the third time in the last three years — the first being his equally dramatic 72nd hole make at his national Canadian Open, the second being in an equally thrilling playoff at the WM Phoenix Open — Taylor had plucked victory from the jaws of the impossible.

Taylor was a winner again on the PGA Tour, and he’d solidified himself as one of the Tour’s nastiest finishers — though the level-headed Canuck would never admit as much.

“I feel like I can rise to the occasion and it’s pretty fun,” he said Sunday with a grin.

Indeed he can. In ’23, the clutch gene remade the Canadian Open tournament logo. In ’24, it turned him into a Signature Event winner. And in ’25, it made him a winner even when he didn’t believe it possible.

Was it fate? Perhaps. But it sure didn’t feel that way.