Standing on the 18th tee Sunday at the Sony Open in Hawaii, Canadian Nick Taylor had just a 0.4 per cent chance to win the tournament.
DataGolf, a Toronto-based golf statistics and data visualization company, had crunched the numbers. It was unlikely they had ever seen such a low chance-to-win percentage by an eventual champion before.
But Taylor, as he has done so very frequently on the PGA Tour, stepped up big in the clutch. He pitched in for eagle on the par-5 closer from about 60 feet away to get to 16-under 264 for the week at Waialae Country Club and would go on to make back-to-back birdies in a playoff with Nico Echavarria.
Taylor emerged victorious on the second extra frame.
The chip-in was followed by what has become a Taylor signature — an epic, emotional fist pump. It’s quickly become one of the best on the PGA Tour.
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Taylor has become even more known for his impressive clutch gene as he continues his march towards an all-time PGA Tour career by a Canadian.
“I think,” Taylor said Sunday, “I enjoy being in those moments.”
Consider this: Taylor has five career wins on the PGA Tour now, trailing just George Knudson and Mike Weir on the all-time list by Canadians, with that duo both notching eight titles. Taylor has won in each of his last three PGA Tour seasons, something that no Canadian male has ever done.
While the current generation on the PGA Tour is this country’s best ever, Taylor has now emerged firmly as the winningest. He has the same total number of victories as Corey Conners, Adam Svensson, Taylor Pendrith and Adam Hadwin combined.
There is absolutely nothing guaranteed in the turbulent professional ranks of golf, where everything is earned, not given. Taylor, out of this whole group (which also includes Mackenzie Hughes, who has two PGA Tour wins), certainly gave Canadian golf fans reason to believe he would be something special as a superstar amateur in British Columbia. The native of Abbotsford, B.C. would eventually ascend to No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and was named the Ben Hogan Award winner in 2010 as the best male college golfer in the United States.
He broke through for his maiden PGA Tour title in 2014. There was a six-year gap between victories before he bettered Phil Mickelson in a Sunday duel to win at Pebble Beach in 2020. And then, of course, there was the RBC Canadian Open triumph in 2023 — a moment immortalized by tournament organizers last year by changing the official logo to include Taylor’s silhouette, a change that will be permanent going forward — after a 72-foot eagle bomb to win.
That victory came in a playoff, along with his win at the WM Phoenix Open last year (when he made five birdies in six holes, including two in the playoff) and then, of course, Sunday’s win in Hawaii.
Taylor has gone 7-under par in the eight playoff holes he’s played in his PGA Tour career.
“You either have it or you don’t,” Taylor’s caddie Dave Markle told CBC last summer. “And when he’s in those moments, he certainly has it.”
With the win, Taylor — who is now Canada’s top-ranked male golfer at No. 29 in the world, jumping Conners at No. 34 — punched his ticket back to Augusta National and the Masters this April, marking a foursome of Canadians who are set to tee it up at the first men’s major of the year. Taylor joins Conners, Pendrith (who is making his Masters debut), and of course, Weir (the 2003 Green Jacket winner) in the field. There has never been more than four Canadians playing the Masters in a single year, but that’s become the commonplace number over the last half-decade or so.
That is, then, the next kind of place Taylor is hoping to have success at.
His major championship record is disappointing, considering how hefty his trophy cabinet is getting. Taylor has gone eight straight major championships without finding the weekend and hasn’t made the cut at a major since the Masters in 2020. Taylor’s triumph in Hawaii Sunday night was his first top-10 finish on the PGA Tour since his win in Phoenix last February. And with his tough stretch through the summertime last year, he was left off the Presidents Cup team on home soil at Royal Montreal.
“Not making the Presidents Cup definitely hurt,” Taylor said Sunday night. “I felt like my play … I had more myself to blame.”
Taylor, who had finished tied for eighth the last two seasons at the Sony Open and was quick to heap praise on the golf course as one he felt matched his game nicely, said he put in a little extra work in the off-season after spending a good chunk of time at home after a busy 2024 that included the Olympics. He said he wanted to be ready to go, considering he earned his way into the two early-season Signature Events (the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Genesis Invitational) on account of finishing No. 60 in the FedExCup Fall standings and being the last man in to those two big-money tournaments.
“Not that you're ever expecting necessarily to win right away out of the gates after some time off, but I knew my west coast — because I was in the first two Signature Events — that my west coast was going to be great and a lot of golf courses I played well on and enjoy,” Taylor said. “To have this good of a start is awesome.”
A good start that came thanks to a dramatic playoff finish — now something of a Nick Taylor staple.
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