Patrick Cantlay's Wins Started Long Before He Dusted Bryson at Caves Valley

The tragic death of a friend helped put golf in perspective for Cantlay, who won for the third time this season and secured the sixth and final automatic spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team.

Patrick Cantlay was the big winner on Sunday,

No, this is not Captain Obvious reporting from the BMW Championship.

Truth told, Cantlay was the big winner before he forced Dan Hicks and Paul Azinger to mutter “clutch” a world record five billion times, before he helped turn Caves Valley into an amusement park, before the most amazing playoff you’ve ever seen… and regardless of the outcome.

More truth told, there was more than one winner on Sunday. Obviously, by the time Bryson DeChambeau and he were done impersonating Tiger Woods and Bob May at the 2000 PGA Championship, Cantlay prevailed. Yet another 20-foot putt secured as much on the sixth playoff hole for “Patty Ice.”

But you might also say Patrick Reed was a big winner. Reed didn’t actually play in the BMW, as he continues to recover from an ankle injury and double-pneumonia. Nonetheless, he snatched the 30th and final spot for the FedExCup finale at East Lake Golf Club on Thursday. Whether he is be able to play in the Tour Championship remains to be seen. At worst, he’ll finish 30th and make a $395,000 check. You have to label that another win, even from a prone position.

And then there is Cantlay, the real champ, the guy who wins every time he tees it up.

By navigating yards upon yards of his pressure-packed putts, Cantlay improved his place in the field of 30 next week. In fact, he’ll be at the head of the line, carrying the 10-under par head start, taking aim at the $15 million jackpot while everyone else chases. No matter how the race turns out, he’ll win.

To explain, Cantlay spent 55 weeks on top the world rankings as an amateur. In 2011, he was the low amateur at the U.S. Open. A week later he shot 60 at the Travelers Championship, the lowest score by an amateur in PGA Tour tournament history. In the following spring of 2012, he was the low amateur at the Masters, then made another weekend stay at the U.S. Open. He was 20 years old.

Cantlay skipped his final two years at UCLA and turned pro, played on the Web.com Tour and won the Colombia Championship in March, 2013. He was on kicking on the PGA Tour doors. A few weeks later, he warmed up to play in the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial when his back went out. The problem turned out to be a fractured vertebrae, an issue that would cause various stops and starts over the next four years.

But that wasn’t the most pain Cantlay would feel, and certainly not the worst.

Cantlay’s caddie, Chris Roth, was a long-time pal and former teammate at Servite High School in Anaheim, Calif. In February, 2016, shortly after Cantlay was told to quit playing golf for the remainder of the year, the friends were crossing a street in Newport Beach, Calif. Roth was struck by a hit-and-run driver. Cantlay rushed to his side but there was nothing to be done. Roth was pronounced dead at the hospital a short while later.

All at once, Cantlay had lost his friend, lost his ability to play golf, and lost his emotional whereabouts. He nosedived into depression, wondering if any of this was worth it, wondering how to go on. But he fought back.

His back healed and ever-so-slowly, so did his heart. In 2017, Cantlay found a different way to swing and a better way to train, ways that would not aggravate his back. Most importantly, he found a new reason to play, which he explained in a 2018 interview with Golf.com.

“I’m for sure a different person,” Cantlay said. “It’s hard for me to imagine what my headspace was before, because it’s not at all the headspace I’m living in now. Looking back, golf was more of a big deal than it is now. Golf was the most important thing in my life, and the worst thing that could happen was playing bad golf.

“What else is going on when you’re 20 or 21 and you’ve never had anything bad happen to you? Now, knowing there are realities much worse than playing bad golf — I think that helps.”

He won the Shriners Hospitals for Children in 2017. He won The Memorial in 2019, tied for ninth at the Masters and tied for third at the PGA. He won the Zozo Championship in 2020, then won the Memorial again earlier this year. He has six top-10s during the season and more than $11.5 million in earnings. He has moved into the top 10 in the OWGR, busted down the door for an automatic spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team and battled DeChambeau in what promises to be a legendary six-hole shootout.

So it should have come as no surprise, when his ball dropped into the water on the 71st hole on Sunday — he was not going to stand down. During the entire afternoon in Owings Mill, Md., Cantlay traded blows with the bomb-blasting DeChambeau. He ignored some verbal nonsense from his playing partner, made tap-ins out of 20-footers, made pressure seem like peaceful respite. He made DeChambeau earn every bit of it — then took it anyway.

There were no smiles, no frowns, no algebraic equations. There was just Patty Ice. “Same as I have all week,” Cantlay explained. “I felt like I tried to stay in my own little world.”

Cantlay’s world is different now. Five years later, he’s here, playing golf. He wins, regardless.

Now, he is headed to East Lake, carrying a smoking gun, staring down a FedEx Cup championship, suggesting he might even be the 2021 Player of the Year.

He’ll have two strokes on Tony Finau and three on DeChambeau. He’ll have more than a fighting chance, and one might do well to never doubt Patrick Cantlay with a fighting chance.

As he has clearly demonstrated at this point, the guy’s a winner.