Meadow 60th; Power 76th; Hurley III wins
Stephanie Meadow
LPGA Tour — Stephanie Meadow closed with a one under par 70 to share 60th place in the Walmart NW Arkansas championship.
Currently outside the 60 qualifiers for the Olympic Games, she improved her chances of making it to Rio as she finished on four under par, 13 shots behind winner Lydia Ko.
Meadow, who birdied her last two holes on Saturday to make the cut, earned $4,558 for just her second cheque from five LPGA starts this year.
Ko's win, her third of the LPGA season, was worth $300,000.
Power falls back in Web.com Tour rankings
Web.com Tour — Seamus Power tied for 76th behind Ollie Schniederjans in the Air Capital Classic in Kansas.
The West Waterford player posted rounds of 70, 65, 73 and 71 to finish on one under par at Crestview Country Club in Wichita, 16 shots outside a playoff between Schniederjans (68 67 61 67), amateur Collin Morikawa (67 70 63 63) and J.J. Spain (67 68 64 64).
The trio played the 18th twice with Schniederjans birdie the second time around good enough for his maiden win.
“I felt like it was probably a 20 percent chance of making it,” said 23-year old Schniederjans, about the 18-foot left-to-right putt that moved him to third in the Web.com Tour standings. “I just wanted to pure the heck out of it and see what happens. It went in beautifully; it was incredible.”
Power fell two spots to seventh in the money list ($182,681) with the top 25 earning PGA Tour cards at the end of the season.
Dream win for Hurley III at Congressional
PGA Tour — Billy Hurley III achieved a dream victory in the Quicken Loans National. closing with a 69 to see off Vijay Singh by three shots at Congressional Country Club for his maiden PGA Tour win. Rookie John Rahm (64 67 70 70) tie for third with Bill Haas on 13 under.
It was almost surreal that the title went to the Naval Academy graduate, ranked 607th in the Official World Golf Ranking as he returned home to win his hometown event.
He beat two former world No 1s and major champions in Singh and Ernie Els (fifth) to triumph by three on 17 under par before receiving the trophy from tournament host Tiger Woods.
It was a win that gave the 34-year old some closure on a dark period in his life that ended with his father's suicide.
It was at this event last year that Hurley announced his father, Bill Hurley Jr., was missing and pleaded for him to return home.
Hurley Jr., who served as a police officer for 25 years and provided security at golf tournaments, was found later that week in a library in Texas while watching the Quicken Loans National on a computer.
Roughly two weeks later, he was found dead at 61, the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
"He's worked so hard and had to overcome so many obstacles," said Cheryl Hurley, Billy's mother. "Obviously this past year was the hardest obstacle to overcome, and, truth be told, he was very discouraged at the beginning of the year and it was very difficult."
It took a sponsor's exemption from Tiger Woods to get Hurley into the field this week at the Quicken Loans National — an event that means more to him than any other on the schedule.
Hurley grew up in nearby Leesburg, Virginia and played college golf at the Naval Academy, where he won seven tournaments and was a member of the victorious 2005 Walker Cup team at Chicago Golf Club.
Before pursuing his dream of playing golf professionally, Hurley spent five years post-graduate in the service, two of them during a tour of duty in the Persian Gulf aboard the destroyer USS Chung-Hoon. Read more at PGATour.com
