Daniel Berger earns place in history as Charles Schwab Challenge champion

Daniel Berger wins in a playoff at Colonial as PGA Tour returns.

In front of the clubhouse at Colonial Country Club stands a bronze statue of the man most synonymous with the course, Ben Hogan, captured in the middle of his legendary swing.

The Fort Worth native won the tournament in his hometown five times; ever since the course has been known as “Hogan’s Alley.” He was driving back home to Fort Worth in February 1949 when a Greyhound bus collided head-on with his Cadillac. Told he was lucky to be alive and that he would never play golf again, Hogan recovered to win six more major championships.

Daniel Berger, like Hogan, knows all about overcoming adversity. Berger was a two-time champion on the PGA Tour by the age of 24. He held a share of the 54-hole lead at the U.S. Open in 2018. But that June, while taking a swing during the Travelers Championship, he felt a twinge in his right thumb.

Berger played another six events that summer before deciding he could go no further, pulling out of the Dell Technologies Championship in September. He wouldn’t play again the rest of the year. Forget the three-month layoff leading into this week’s Charles Schwab Challenge, Berger endured four months where he couldn’t crush a Coke can, let alone grip a golf club.

So it was fitting when, on Sunday, the player who thought his career might be in jeopardy persevered to win at Colonial in the first event of the PGA Tour’s restart. Berger beat Collin Morikawa, the 23-year-old California native who turned pro just one year ago, on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff, earning his third career title to go with his two trophies from the FedEx St. Jude Classic in 2016 and 2017.

Berger tied for the lead after hitting a 9-iron from 143 yards on the 18th hole to 10 feet, rolling in the putt to get in the clubhouse at 15-under. Earlier, on the 14th, his 21-foot birdie putt paused on the edge of the lip for a brief moment before falling into the cup.

He made his putts when he needed them, but the other contenders can’t say the same. Morikawa got to 15-under with a 49-footer for birdie on the 14th, the longest putt he made all week, then had a five-foot putt to win on the 18th; he missed it to the left. A bulked-up Bryson DeChambeau made a costly bogey on the 17th, overshooting the green by 20 feet, then missed a 12-footer on the 18th to tie. Former World No. 1 Justin Rose saw his birdie putt at the last just break away from the cup in its dying moments.

Then there was Xander Schauffele, who had the most agonizing miss of all on Sunday. Schauffele looked to shoot himself out of contention when his approach shot from a fairway bunker on the 15th flew into the Trinity River. But he managed to save bogey by holing a 30-footer, then made a 25-foot putt for birdie at 16 to get back into a share of the lead. He had another birdie putt at the 17th but blew it three feet past the hole. His come-backer hit the cup with some speed, took a 360-degree turn, and lipped out.

Daniel Berger earns place in history as Charles Schwab Challenge champion

Schauffele, DeChambeau, and Rose all finished a shot behind along with Jason Kokrak, leaving Berger and Morikawa the last two standing for the playoff. It wouldn’t last long, as Morikawa missed—what else—a short par putt on the 17th green. Berger won with a par and earned the right to don the famous plaid jacket awarded to champions at Colonial.

In any normal week, Morikawa’s missed putt in the playoff would have been followed by an audible groan from the gallery, then raucous applause for the champion. This wasn’t a normal week. No fans were allowed at Colonial and the tour implemented a strict safety protocol to protect players and staff from COVID-19. It had the potential to be distracting, even a little weird, for the players without a gallery, but Berger believes it went as well as it could have.

“I think the PGA Tour did an unbelievable job,” he said at his post-victory press conference. “You know, it was a little different without fans but it didn’t feel like it wasn’t a PGA Tour event. You still felt that pressure, you still felt that there was so much on the line.”

“Making a putt on the 18th hole to tie for the lead and not hearing any roars is a little different…But overall, the golf course was fantastic, the atmosphere, in my opinion, was fantastic even though there weren’t any fans out there. You knew that millions of people were watching at home and that was just enough for me.”

Berger now belongs in the conversation of the hottest players on tour. He’s finished in the top-10 at his last four events and extended his streak of consecutive rounds of par or better to 28, the longest active streak on tour; he hasn’t shot worse than 71 in a round since October. He understands this wasn’t just a normal PGA Tour victory, not with all that has happened since March.

He and the rest of the top players couldn’t wait to get started after such a long layoff. All top-5 players in the world rankings were in the field this week; they’ll be at Harbor Town next week for the RBC Heritage, as well. Golf’s ‘new normal’ began this week, and Berger will always be remembered as the player who lifted the first trophy handed out on tour after a despairing 98 days.