CALGARY — Last week Ken Tanigawa got a kick in the pants from his wife, Angela. This week, he got a kiss from her behind the 18th green after breaking a five-year winless drought on PGA Tour Champions.
Tanigawa captured the 2024 Rogers Charity Classic by two shots, finding the winner’s circle on the senior circuit for the first time since the 2019 Senior PGA Championship — a run of 123 starts.
“It’s been a long time since 2019 to be in this position. Time goes by and you wonder if you can win again,” Tanigawa said. “To be able to do it, just over the moon.”
It’s been an up-and-down summertime stretch for Tanigawa, who ran off three top-10 finishes in a row through June. He missed the cut at the U.S. Senior Open — a rare four-round affair on the PGA Tour Champions — and then went T70-T64-56 in his three previous weeks before coming up to Calgary.
After a second-round 78 last week, Tanigawa got the talking to from his wife and went out and made 10 birdies the next day. He said he felt like the momentum was on his side as he came to the Rogers Charity Classic for the sixth time.
Tanigawa was first for the week in putts per green in regulation. He said yielding a hot flatstick was the scoring key at Canyon Meadows.
“Anybody who wins an event obviously putted really well, so I probably just holed a few more putts (than anyone else),” Tanigawa said. “It always comes down to that, and that’s always the separator.”
It looked like it was going to be a two-horse race between Tanigawa and 54-hole leader Richard Green, but Tanigawa ran off five birdies in his first seven holes — keeping his momentum going from Saturday when he matched the course record at Canyon Meadows with a 61.
Tanigawa bogeyed Nos. 8 and 12 as he made the turn, however, and started to give a few back to the field, while Green went on his own impressive run through the middle part of his day.
Green made five birdies in six holes from No. 8-onwards and was firmly in the mix to win for the first time on PGA Tour Champions before bogeying par-3 14th and making another ill-timed bogey on the penultimate hole of the championship. He hit his drive offline on the par-5 finisher, when an eagle would have got him tied with Tanigawa. That was a tall task, however, as no one recorded an eagle on No. 18 all day.
Green recorded his seventh top-10 finish of the season and his third runner-up result.
“It’s just a shame that things just at the end there didn’t really fall my way,” Green said. “Everybody wants to win. We all want to do it. I think that’s probably the hardest thing — to not let that get in your way. I probably am battling that at times, just thinking about trying to get it done instead of actually letting myself go.”
Major champ Darren Clarke and Jason Carron finished tied for third at 14 under while Stephen Ames was the low Canadian at 10 under. He finished tied for 10th, his 13th top-10 on the season and seventh in his last eight tournaments.
International Presidents Cup captain Mike Weir finished tied for 20th after a 3-under 67 and told Sportsnet he took a look at the PGA Tour leaderboard when there was a back-up on No. 15 Sunday. He saw International Team leader Hideki Matsuyama win, but also Canadians Nick Taylor and Mackenzie Hughes had their seasons end after not making it into the top 50 in the FedExCup standings to earn a spot in the second leg of the FedExCup playoffs next week.
The next two weeks for Weir will make for some serious decision-making time, as he’ll make his Presidents Cup captain’s picks on Sept. 3. Weir still has a little competitive fire in him, however, as he’s flying home to Brights Grove, Ont., this week and will drive just 70 minutes to the next PGA Tour Champions event in Michigan.
Speaking of competitive fire, Tanigawa admitted the winless drought got to him a little — of course, he thought, maybe he would never win again. He quit playing golf professionally in the mid-2010s and then wanted to give it one more try, turning pro, again, and earning PGA Tour Champions status in 2018. He won that year, and again in 2019, but not since.
But Sunday, the drought was over. There was one last tip of the custom cowboy hat, a champagne toast, and a big smile at his wife.
“She said, ‘Hey, you’re obviously a pretty decent golfer if you’re out here playing, so just keep your head on and stay patient and just forge on and plug away,’” Tanigawa said of his partner’s pep talk. “And, jeez, here I am.”