Brian Gay comes up big to win Bermuda Championship in playoff

In the 20-plus years and more than 600 times Brian Gay has played on the PGA Tour, he realizes the game is still full of surprises. Sunday was one.

Gay rallied from a three-shot deficit on the back nine, hit gap wedge to 3 feet for birdie on No. 18 for a 7-under-par 64 and beat Wyndham Clark on the first extra hole with a 12-foot birdie putt in the Bermuda Championship in Southampton.

Since golf returned from the coronavirus-caused shutdown in June, the 48-year-old Gay was missing enthusiasm and putts, not helpful for one of the shorter hitters in golf. He had missed the cut in nine of his previous 11 events.

“Crazy game,” Gay said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”

He piled up nine birdies over his last 14 holes, including one extra hole in a sudden-death playoff, for his fifth career PGA Tour title and his first in nearly eight years. Just over a year away from being able to join the PGA Tour Champions, Gay is now exempt through August 2023.

He’ll be at Kapalua for the Tournament of Champions to start the new year. He’ll be back at Augusta National for the Masters in April.

“I’ve always known I have the game to compete,” Gay said. “It’s easy to doubt yourself. The players are so good and so young. A lot of them are my daughter’s age.”

Gay was happy to see at least a few fans at the Bermuda Championship as the PGA Tour slowly gets back to having spectators. What he could have used was a video leader board.

Only after he gunned a birdie putt some 5 feet by the hole for a three-putt bogey on the par-5 17th did he realize that cost him a share of the lead. On the closing hole at Port Royal, from a side hill lie with the ball slightly above his feet and the wind at his back, he hammered a gap wedge that was so good Gay could be heard...