Back-to-back PGA champ Brendon Todd proves power of perserverance

Brendon Todd, outside the top 2,000 in the world entering 2019, is now a back-to-back winner on the PGA Tour after taking the Mayakoba Golf Classic on Monday

Brendon Todd is the best player on the PGA Tour right now.

That’s a statement that would’ve seemed absurd at this time last year. After all, Todd was coming off a terrible three years on tour that had him reconsidering his future in the game. But that’s all changed over the past month.

First, Todd won the Bermuda Championship on Nov. 3, his first victory on the PGA Tour in more than five years. Then, early on Monday morning, he won his second straight event at the Mayakoba Golf Classic in Mexico, finishing at 20-under par to beat Carlos Ortiz by one shot.

The 34-year-old Todd was once a star in the making on the PGA Tour. An All-American and NCAA champion at Georgia, he won his first event on tour in 2014 at the Byron Nelson Championship. He followed that up with top-10 finishes at Colonial and the Memorial, was 17th at the U.S. Open, and qualified for the season-ending Tour Championship. He rose as high as 41st in the Official World Golf Rankings.

Then his career came undone. Todd played in 44 events between 2016 and 2018 and missed the cut in 39 of them. He went two straight years without breaking 70 in a round. At the end of 2018, his world ranking had plummeted all the way to 2,012th.

Through it all, Todd always maintained hope he would get back to his winning ways. “I think a lot of it for me was just the self-belief I had. All the previous success I had. I’ve won at the highest level of junior golf, the highest level of college golf and won at all levels of pro golf before I had the struggles,” he said on Monday. “While it did last longer, and I did consider maybe looking for other things to do, I always knew if I got my game back I would know how to play at this level.”

Rain delayed the end of the Mayakoba Golf Classic to Monday, with Todd and Vaughn Taylor tied for the lead on the 15th hole. Todd separated himself from Taylor by holing a 15-footer for birdie and maintained a one-shot lead going to the 18th. He short-sided himself on his approach to the green but managed to get up-and-down to save par and deny Ortiz the chance to not only win on home soil but to become the first Mexican winner on the PGA Tour since 1978.

Todd is now 83rd in the world rankings and No. 1 in the FedEx Cup standings. He’s only the fifth golfer to win back-to-back events on the PGA Tour in the last four seasons, joining Xander Schauffele, Bryson DeChambeau, Justin Thomas, and Dustin Johnson. And he says he’s not finished winning.

“That’s my main goal,” he said. “When I only had one win and I was struggling and even coming back, my friends who had three, four and five wins, I was envious. Because I feel like I’m capable of being a guy who wins five to ten times out here. But I hadn’t proven that. So to have the opportunity now to go out and keep playing for three, four, five, ten, fifteen more years out here and chase wins is a big deal for me.”

Todd may have found his form just at the right time. Tiger Woods has already made his captain’s picks for the Presidents Cup, but Brooks Koepka’s status for the event that begins on Dec. 12 is still in doubt while he recovers from knee surgery. If Woods needs to fill that spot, he’ll go looking for the hottest player. No one is hotter than Todd right now.