Adam Schenk stays steady, survives 65kph winds to earn breakthrough victory in Bermuda

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[Photos: Mike Mulholland]

Adam Schenk stared at the green, needing to confirm what had happened, or perhaps refusing to believe it had. He tried to stop the tears he knew were coming, pawing at his eyes and shaking his head, a man who’d finally caught something he’d spent a lifetime chasing while half-convinced it would forever stay beyond reach.

It wasn’t easy. Of course it wasn’t. Not on a day when wind whipped flagsticks into near-horizontal submission and professionals needed 5-irons for 120-metre approaches – only to come up short. But Schenk stayed steady, buoyed by an unlikely saviour: his short game, historically his Achilles’ heel, delivered precisely when failure meant collapse. Thanks to a nifty up-and-down at the last hole, punctuated by a converted four-footer, Schenk earned his breakthrough win at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship.

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“Unbelievable. Was really hoping this day would come at some point in my life. Never really know if it is,” Schenk said afterwards. “That’s what makes the journey so amazing, interesting, and it’s a surreal moment when it finally does.”

Schenk, 33, has carved out a steady if unspectacular career in eight PGA Tour seasons, his game built on power generated from a lanky, 188-centimetre frame. He’s the type of ball-striker who mesmerises on the range, the kind that makes you wonder why the winner’s circle has eluded him. This year provided the answer. The Indianan limped through 2025 with just two top-20s against 15 missed cuts in 27 starts, his tee-to-green work rendered meaningless by a short game in freefall. The putting became so dire that Schenk resorted to one-handed experiments, a desperate attempt to cure a vicious case of the pulls. Sitting 134th in the tour’s FedEx Fall standings entering Bermuda, he needed a career week to preserve his playing privileges.

Schenk delivered, and emphatically. A second-round 65 vaulted him into contention. A third-day 67 earned him Sunday’s final pairing with a dozen viable challengers within range, all chasing the same prize he desperately needed.

But Schenk’s battle extended beyond those on the leaderboard. While the official record will show the final round unfolded at Port Royal Golf Course, viewers at home could have sworn they were witnessing a different kind of theatre – something closer to gladiatorial combat against the elements themselves. Throughout the afternoon, anemometers registered sustained winds approaching 65kph, with gusts turning the field into helpless spectators of their own shots. It descended into one of “those days”, when physics seems corrupted and every bounce betrays your best intentions. When you watch your ball climb beautifully skyward only to have invisible hands swat it sideways mid-flight without warning or mercy. When flagsticks lean so violently they might as well be pointing back towards the clubhouse, suggesting everyone pack it in. When the game stops feeling like a competition between players and becomes something more primal: man versus nature, skill versus chaos, will versus the universe’s apparent determination to humble you.

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Schenk understood the stakes. One birdie against one bogey through 16 holes, a tightrope walk that left him clinging to a one-shot lead at the par-5 17th. When his approach settled within four feet, the champagne seemed all but uncorked. Victory, at last, within reach. Then the wind reminded him who was truly in control. His four-footer, the putt meant to slam the door, to exhale eight years of near-misses, caught just enough lip to pirouette around the cup’s edge before spitting out. Schenk lurched upward from his crouch, eyes searching the Bermuda sky for answers he knew weren’t coming. The 18th offered no respite, his approval sailing long and leaving him to scramble for par and avoid a playoff with Chandler Phillips. His third shot was a nice lag, but it left him staring down roughly the same distance he’d just missed moments earlier. This time the ball tracked true, diving into the heart of the cup with finality. The normally reserved Schenk released a muted fist-pump. Not just celebration. Vindication.

Schenk has flirted with this moment before; two career runner-up finishes, a handful of top-fives that felt like consolation prizes wrapped in what-ifs. Perhaps Bermuda becomes the watershed, the week that liberates him from the weight of almosts. With two years of exempt status now secured, he’s earned the psychological oxygen to chase more than survival, to play attack instead of defence, to discover what happens when desperation gives way to freedom. But this victory wasn’t about tomorrow’s possibilities, instead honouring the odyssey that delivered him here. This was start No.243, a number that captures frequency but not the full truth of what it cost. The figure can’t quantify the thousands of hours on empty practice ranges, the sting of boot slams, the hotel rooms in forgettable cities where doubt crept in after midnight, whispering the question every journeyman athlete knows by heart: is my best actually good enough?

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“Like in a sense a little bit of, you know, just relief that it was so difficult, so a little bit of relief that it’s over with, and to finally get it done because it just seems like at some point or another I’ve been so close so many times,” Schenk said. “Eventually you get it done or you don’t, and I’m only going to have so many more of these opportunities, especially if I would have lost in a four, five-man playoff and still end up having to go to Q-School.

“That was just a massive putt for me to make, a massive putt to have go in. It’s somewhat life-changing. It’s life-changing I get two more years on the PGA Tour. I feel like I’m playing the best golf of my life that I ever played. For a lot of this year I just haven’t putted well and maybe putting one-handed this week a little bit. Unfortunately, it was too windy over the weekend to actually have one hand on the wheel, so I had to put the other hand on top, but I’ll be interested to see how that holds true next week in Sea Island at RSM [Classic].”

Two hundred and forty-three starts. But only one answer that mattered. And on a windswept day in Bermuda, with everything on the line, Adam Schenk finally found it.