Zurich Classic 2017 results: Cameron Smith and Jonas Blixt win Monday playoff in New Orleans

The PGA Tour’s first team event in 36 years was an unqualified success.

The golf was not exemplary on Monday at the Zurich Classic, but that doesn’t mean it was boring. Plus, it was a free Monday golf, which we don’t get very often and is a nice way to ease us into a new full-week grind of our miserable lives.

Cameron Smith and Jonas Blixt, who held a lead for much of this Zurich Classic, needed four playoff holes to take out the South Carolina duo of Scott Brown and Kevin Kisner. It looked like that would be the result late Sunday night, but Kisner went stealing and chipped in for eagle to take away the win and force extra holes.

The putting, to put it gently, was not good. The 18th at TPC Louisiana is a par-5 that could be an exciting playoff hole with the potential for multiple birdies and an occasional eagle. All we got was a suitcase full of layups and pars, thanks to one missed putt after another. The layups were excusable — the course was drenched on Sunday and it was playing long and none of these four had the distance to get home in two, or even come close. But we wanted more than just pars, and that’s all we got the first two times through 18 and once through the par-3 9th.

But in the end it was Smith, the one who kept ripping as close as he could to the green, that poured in the clinching birdie putt the third time through the 18th in the playoff. The young Aussie left himself a nice wedge shot to throw to the back right pin location, and considering he’s one of the best wedge players in the world, a birdie seemed likely. He stuck it to just a couple feet, close enough to take another putting misfire out of contention.

Smith watched Kisner and Brown miss their birdie tries, then stepped up and cooly brushed that one in for the clincher. After the round, he broke down in tears in multiple interviews with both CBS and Golf Channel, saying he could barely talk.

Smith is a big talent and seems like a great kid. I’ve had some limited exposure to him and he’s going to be easy to follow and root for. He burst on the scene with that run at Chambers Bay, contending in the U.S. Open at the wire two years ago. That close call got him some nice perks and a Masters invite, but he also throttled down a bit and got comfortable. Since then, he’s been grinding to fully maximize his talent, getting through the Web.com Tour finals to get his PGA Tour card and then making the most of his year in the big leagues this season.

He’s still just 23 years old and there should be more success to come, seasoning that maybe even allows him to talk on the 18th green afterwards.

This wasn’t all Smith, of course, as Blixt did his part over four-plus days to keep the duo on top or near the top of the leaderboard. They never made a bogey, which seems next-to-impossible given that two days of this new revamped Zurich Classic featured an alternate-shot format. This is Blixt’s third PGA Tour win but it’s been a few years since he was really contending week-to-week like he did early in his career. Now both have a two-year exemption to the PGA Tour, a million dollar check, and a bucket of FedExCup points. Smith also gets an invite to The Players Championship in just more than a week.

We’ll have more on the new and improved Zurich, which featured the first team game on the PGA Tour in 36 years. It was an obvious success but a few tweaks can be made here and there. It was just nice to break up the monotony of a 72-hole stroke play event and something the PGA Tour will need to look into more at other stops that might need some juice.

Here’s your final leaderboard: