[PHOTO: Eakin Howard]
Forecasting success is a risky venture given the vagaries of a notoriously fickle game, but in the case of Ryan Gerard the signs continue to suggest a bright and lucrative future.
Gerard, 25, won the PGA Tour’s off-Broadway stop today, victorious in the Barracuda Championship on the Old Greenwood course at Tahoe Mountain Club in Truckee, California, several hours after the completion of the Open Championship.
A PGA Tour victory beyond the view of the mainstream is still a victory, and in the case of Gerard a portent of even better days ahead. In an event scored via a modified Stableford format (five points for eagle, two for a birdie, none for a par, and minus-one and minus three for bogeys and double-bogeys or worse), Gerard had 47 points to win by three points from Erik van Rooyen.
“I want to say yes,” he said when asked whether he saw this coming, “but you never really know in this game. Been playing a lot of really good golf. Felt like I haven’t been getting the scores out of the shots I’ve hit. It’s been a long time, a long grind, so it’s pretty cool to end up on top.”
A college teammate at North Carolina of another blossoming star, Ben Griffin, twice a winner on the PGA Tour this year, Gerard, with the $US720,000 he earned for the victory, ran his season earnings to $US3,637,522. He has made the cut in 20 of 23 starts, has finished in the top 10 in four of them, including a runner-up finish in the Valero Texas Open, and already lives in the postcode of stars, the southern Florida city of Jupiter.
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Gerard eagled both of the par 5s, the second of them at the 11th hole, to get to 48 points. He gave one of them back with a bogey at 16, but consecutive pars on the final two holes cinched a victory that capped a wild two weeks.
He played in the Genesis Scottish Open the week before and was the second alternate to play in the Open Championship, but he decided against waiting on the outside chance he’d get into the field and headed back to the US to play in the Barracuda Championship. A good decision, needless to say.
The victory earns him a start in the Sentry, the Players Championship and the PGA Championship next year.
