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Nico Echavarria birdies the last and stares down Justin Thomas to win the 2024 Zozo Championship
Shortly after upsetting one of the best players in the world to win the Zozo Championship, Colombia's Nico Echavarria phoned his mother at home and tried to fight back tears but it was a losing proposition.
"My parents are at home in Medellin and it's pretty late there. They stayed up all night watching the golf and I'm glad they did," Echavarria said. "Yeah, very happy and emotional just being able to talk to them because my parents are the reason I play this beautiful sport."
And he played it beautifully on Sunday, making birdies at two of the final three holes to shoot 3-under 67 at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club in Japan to secure his second PGA Tour title.
When he won for the first time last year at the Puerto Rico Open, Echavarria said the victory proved to himself that he was better than he even thought. Asked what this second win means, he smiled and said, “Proving it a little more now.”
He added: “I don’t think I would’ve gotten this win without the victory in Puerto Rico. I took a lot from that and kept myself calm,” he said.
With just one top 10 this season and three missed cuts in his last four starts, Echavarria was a surprise contender, racing into the lead with a pair of 64s and a 65 to set the 54-hole tournament scoring mark and grab a two-stroke lead.
Tied for the lead at the 72nd hole, Echavarria reached the par-5 18th in two, leaving himself a 40-foot eagle putt. He lagged to 3 feet and converted the clinching stroke for a 72-hole total of 20-under 260, to edge former world No. 1 Justin Thomas and rookie Max Greyserman by one shot.
Echavarria, 30, started the final round with birdies at Nos. 2 and 7 before a bogey at No. 8 dropped him back into a tie. He reclaimed sole possession of the lead at No. 13, planting his tee shot to 13 feet and canning the downhill, right-to-left breaking birdie putt. He pumped his right fist, one of two times he'd do so on the back nine as his putting prowess shined.
"New grip this week, that was the difference," explained Echavarria, who swapped out the grip on Tuesday. "Just needed one week for the putter to get hot and this week was it."
One hole later, however, his lead was gone thanks to a two-shot swing when he made a sloppy bogey at the par 5 and Greyserman canned a 29-foot birdie putt. That proved to be Greyserman's final birdie. Echavarria wasn't done yet and answered with another 13-foot birdie, this time at the par-3 16th and clenched his fist. Echavarria and Geyserman, who had been partners this season at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans and finished T-4, remained tied until the 72nd hole.
Greyserman missed the fairway at 18 and had to lay up and his 25-foot birdie putt burned the right edge. He closed in 65 and unlike at the Wyndham Championship where he blew a four-stroke lead with five holes to go, he had no reason to hang his head after earning his third runner-up finish in his last five starts. He topped the field in Strokes Gained: Putting, and made over 100 feet of putts in each round.
"It wasn't like Wyndham where I gave it away, I felt good out there the whole time. I mean, super comfortable. It was like I was playing at home," Greyserman said. "Didn't quite execute down the stretch when I needed to. I mean, Nico stepped up there and he hit a great second shot. He earned it."
Thomas, who was seeking his first victory in 29 months, closed with a bogey-free 66 but after sinking three birdies in his first six holes, his putter went cold. Before the tournament began, he switched back to a trusty mallet that he’d used in many of his 15 previous Tour titles but it let him down when it mattered most in the final round. He burned edges and lipped out putts, making 11 consecutive pars before a birdie at the last. He ranked 66th in SG: Putting in the 78-man field on Sunday and lost strokes with the short stick for the week.
"It's a mixture of obviously bummed and disappointed, but I played so well," said Thomas, who made just one bogey all week and led the field in multiple statistical categories, including scrambling. "I played plenty well enough to win the tournament."
Rickie Fowler shot a bogey-free 6-under 64 and finished fourth. It marked his first top-10 finish in 23 starts this season and best result dating to his last win at the Rocket Mortgage Classic last July.
Echavarria, who had missed the cut in three of the four previous FedEx Cup Fall events and hadn't recorded a top-10 finish in a stroke-play tournament all season, sensed his game was close, results be damned. Victory, which includes a spot in his first Masters, made the hard times worth it.
"Moments like this are the ones that make everything better," he said.
When told that his 72-hole total broke the previous mark set by Tiger Woods in 2019, Echavarria marveled that he had won the same tournament as Tiger.
"This is my second victory, so I just need 80 more victories to catch him," he said. "I'm on my way, though."
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Nico Echavarria birdies the last and stares down Justin Thomas to win the 2024 Zozo Championship
